"Some ideas arrive in the form of a dream."
-The Log Lady
This episode contains a favorite scene: Agent Cooper throwing rocks at a glass jar as Sheriff Truman reads off the names of various people connected with the Laura Palmer murder. Agent Cooper frames this bizarre ritual as some kind of exercise in near-mystical lateral thinking derived from study of meditative practices from Tibet. Cooper gives a brief historical lesson on the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and one is left wondering, "Is Dale Cooper an FBI Agent with a FREE TIBET bumper sticker on his car?" In retrospect, this scene is a massive piece of misdirection, but it does open up a larger investigation into the corruption swirling beneath the surface of Twin Peaks: illicit drugs, the prostitution ring run out of the One-Eyed Jacks casino across the river, and, of course, Laura is connected to all this. But I get the sense that this early scene was maybe meant to be a portal into that larger world, since the original intent of the series creators was to never solve the murder of Laura Palmer, and have the show be an ever spiraling set of tangents from that tragic starting point.
Whatever the original intent, there is a later scene which, in hindsight, seems like a massive red flag as to who the murderer is supposed to be . . . I won't say what it is if you haven't seen the show, but, well, I dunno . . . maybe not everything is so obvious about Laura Palmer's murder. But someone sure stands out . . .
We have some very atmospheric scenes of scared people venturing into dark woods with their way illuminated by a bouncing flashlight beam-a visual which would recur in Fire Walk With Me. An angry man's face takes on a red tint out there in the woods, and an unknown figure lurks in the shadows-surprisingly creepy stuff. It doesn't look like a TV show in these moments. It looks like cinema. Once upon a time, this was an important distinction. TV tended to look like shit when compared to movies. Now, TV looks great. In many instances. Sitcoms still tend to look like shit. If they're filmed in front of a live studio audience.
The most famous scene here would be Agent Cooper's dream voyage to the Black Lodge and an encounter with the Man from Another Place-a little person in a red suit, who speaks in riddles, and does a really hip dance. This is where the series begins to unveil the metaphysical nature of the conflicts roiling beneath the placid surface of Twin Peaks. Things have been quirky, and a little spooky up to this point, but now a gateway to another reality has opened before us-what will happen next? What new revelations await behind the red curtain?
NEXT: 3/18/18: The Lynch Meditations 12: Wild at Heart (1990)
