-FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper
"Dreams sometimes hearken a truth."
-Audrey Horne
WARNING: YOU HAVE TO WATCH TWIN PEAKS SEASON 3 OR TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN OR WHATEVER IT WANTS TO BE CALLED BEFORE READING ANY OF THIS. I'M NOT FUCKING AROUND HERE. JUST GO WATCH IT. EVEN IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FIRST TWO SEASONS-JUST WATCH IT. AND BE BEWILDERED. AND DELIGHTED. AND SOME OTHER THINGS, TOO. I ACTUALLY DON'T CARE IF YOU READ THIS THING HERE, BUT TWIN PEAKS SEASON 3 IS MUST-SEE TV. SO THERE YOU HAVE IT.
What surprised me most about the third season of Twin Peaks is how complicated it got with the mystical logic hinted at in the first two seasons. In the earlier episodes, it was gradually revealed that supernatural forces were in play helping and harming human beings to achieve inscrutable goals. You have Killer Bob-a sadistic demon who thrives on murder, rape, and terror-and you have the mysterious giant, who seems to be trying, however cryptically, to communicate with Cooper-"It is happening again." Between these two moral/spiritual polarities-an aggressive predator and an awkward prophet-you have Bob's old partner Mike, who also exists as the flesh-and-blood one armed man Phillip Gerard; the little man in the red suit who is apparently a transformation of the arm that Phil Gerard lost; the creepy jumping kid in the long-nosed mask; a woodsman; and some other creepers you only see in the background of Fire Walk With Me. Season 3 takes all those creepy-spooky types and depicts them as godlike beings who are manipulating mundane humans, possibly for sport, in the manner of the Greek deities of yore, and possibly to pursue a kind of clandestine war of diametrically opposed principles: good vs. evil; chaos vs. order; visionary vs. vulgar; love vs. hate; light vs. dark; and we ordinary mortals are just pawns on some kind of a four-dimensional chess board. Fire Walk With Me suggests that these spirits are fighting for a spiritual creamed-corn edible known as garmonbozia-which is a made-up word that means "pain and sorrow," so are these spirits vampires feeding on our suffering? Seems like it.
Prior to Season 3, these malevolent spirits seemed highly localized, furtive, disorganized, and rather squalid, dwelling in dingy apartments, forbidding forests, and the souls of twisted, predatory men. They're metaphysical vultures who aspire to take over people's bodies to wreak more havoc and destruction and thereby keep the garmonbozia economy cranking. Perhaps that could be a metaphor for how the stock market goes up whenever a scumbag, pro-business politician gets elected.
Season 3 gives us a more detailed mythology: the supernatural manifested in our world after the Trinity nuclear test, which drew a frightful-but kind of sexy in a Silent Hill boss fight kind of way-entity known as The Experiment into our corner of the cosmos. The Experiment vomited up all sorts of evil creatures, including a frog-insect hybrid parasite that crawls down the throats of little girls when they sleep, and the aforementioned Killer Bob. Opposing the Experiment's expectorations is the awkward giant who is revealed to have another name-The Fireman. The Fireman responds to the vomit of evil by vomiting up a ball of light that contains the face of Laura Palmer, and then he has a woman he lives with known as Senorita Dido bless this ball of light with a kiss, and fire it off towards the planet Earth, where it arrives in the town of Twin Peaks. Yeah, uh, I guess the Fireman and Senorita Dido live in a fortress in another dimension? They seem like good people. They're lookin' out for us, at the least, which is something.
At the end of Season 2, Killer Bob manifested a doppelganger of Cooper and escaped from the Black Lodge, leaving the One True Cooper trapped within the otherwordly salon. 25 years later, we have Season 3, and the One True Cooper is still trapped in the Black Lodge. Meanwhile, Evil Cooper-the doppelganger-has been free in our world, creating a far-flung criminal network of killers, thieves, drug pushers, and truckers, all while exploiting his access to FBI resources to evade capture or destruction by the law or by rival criminal outfits. Evil Cooper is the absolute negation of the One True Cooper: cold, cruel, manipulative, murderous, vindictive, living only to satisfy his endless appetites for power, money, vengeance, and sex, he isn't a million miles away from the competence porn protagonists of John Wick, 007 films, first person bro-shooter video games, and legion Steven Seagal straight-to-redbox flicks. Evil Cooper sorta looks like a Steven Seagal protagonist, but more handsome, effective, and in fighting shape. Evil Cooper is good with guns, computer hacking, cell phone spoofing, driving, close quarters combat, arm wrestling, has an excellent memory for coordinates, and seems to have a knack for getting other dudes' wives to fuck him. He is a twisted fantasy avatar of toxic masculinity gone berserk, hilarious and horrifying to behold. I want to see a spinoff where Evil Cooper teams up with Neil Breen. (Breen does doppelgangers, too, I'm sensing excellent synergy here . . . )
Due to abstruse spiritual law-or the surreal whims of Mark Frost and David Lynch-Evil Cooper must evade being sucked back into the Black Lodge. To this end, Evil Cooper has manufactured a doppelganger of himself-that's right, a doppelganger of a doppelganger-and this Decoy Cooper is meant to spoof the system and allow Evil Cooper to continue living the crazy high life of a heavy underworld operator.
Meanwhile, back inside the Black Lodge, the Fireman appears to the One True Cooper and seems to nudge him towards escape. Through a process much too bewildering to summarize-you'll just have to watch the show for yourself-the One True Cooper escapes his spiritual captivity, and manifests in our world. But the One True Cooper suffers a kind of shock to his soul due to his unauthorized re-entry, and he is transformed from his iconic, whipsmart, dashing self into a kind of sleepwalker who must relearn how to be a functioning adult, step by painful step, phrase by awkward phrase. Sleepwalking Cooper is totally dependent upon the people around him, and, at first, his utter, childish lack of competence produces fury and confusion in the people around him. And then these people realize that Sleepwalking Cooper gives them an opportunity to be heroes, to help another human being in direst need, and to show love and empathy. Oh, and Sleeepwalking Cooper also hits nothing but jackpots on the one-armed bandits at the casino. He ends up being a pretty popular dude.
The implication here is that Cooper's qualities have been split across multiple beings. Even though Cooper was a real knight-in-shining-armor in the first two seasons, he was an FBI agent-a super-pig, in other words, and he had typical super-pig qualities: self-righteousness, ruthless in interrogations, cornball affinities for flags and national anthems-but his super-pig self was tempered by high intelligence, compassion for his fellow human beings, and absolute sincerity of purpose. He was also a guy who seemed to be sort of stuck in adolescence, but not in a gross way-he was just so absorbed in being the best FBI agent he could be that he was socially and emotionally a bit of an innocent. Evil Cooper got the very worst of his masculinity and super-pig bullshit. Sleepwalking Cooper is an extreme manifestation of his childlike and adolescent qualities. Evil Cooper is a million steps ahead of God Himself, and is always running angles. Sleepwalking Cooper is encountering the world all anew, and every moment is a chance to discover joy or boredom. Evil Cooper sees through everyone he meets and quickly assesses their value to him and his twisted schemes. Sleepwalking Cooper is a blank slate upon which others see themselves anew, possibly reborn. Evil Cooper could outfight Satan and reign in Hell. Sleepwalking Cooper is some kind of a Christ. You get the idea.
I kinda blew past something extraordinary: Laura Palmer is some kind of a spiritual being. She is characterized as a golden light-THE Light. So, when you look at the pilot for Season 1, and her death seems like a small town version of the death of JFK-well, seems there was something truly transcendent to her. I know, I know-what about poor Teresa Banks. Or maybe even Ronette Pulaski-shouldn't all victims of violence be precious to us? Yes indeed: there's a cruelty at the heart of all the metaphysical New Age transcendental mediation mumbo-jumbo: some people are special, and some people are shit. Some are born with midichlorians and others are fated peasants. Pay for this pricey seminar and you shall be special, and shall not be as shit. Have faith or burn in hell. Makes you feel all warm and screamy inside. And outside.
The last episode adds even more mind-bending complications to all of this: the One True Cooper uses his mojo to travel back in time and prevent the murder of Laura Palmer. But this choice seemingly violates some abstruse spiritual law, and Laura Palmer is sucked away into another reality. The One True Cooper saves her from Killer Bob, but now she is lost from this reality altogether. The One True Cooper undergoes a final transformation into a hard-boiled character named Richard-who brings Evil Cooper's aggression into line with the One True Cooper's unbending sense of righteousness. This Richard goes looking for the space/time lost Laura-the Light-and finds her . . . but now Richard and Laura seem to be lost in a strange new reality, where the cowboys cannot be trusted, and a horrifying demon known as Judy has her claws on the switches for all the lighting cues . . .
The One True Cooper and Laura the Light are bound together by an incomprehensible supernatural fate. Coop must seek out and protect the Light. And the Light-Laura-is doomed to be targeted by a world of corrupt and leering fools. This is insane, arbitrary, and nonsensical. Kinda like . . . do I need to even say it?
