Chapter 6: First Hour: "My Log Has A Message For You"
006 - A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
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Acronyms & Common Terms
TP = Twin Peaks (1989-1991)
TPTR = Twin Peaks The Return (2017)
FWWM = Fire Walk With Me (1992)
RRL = The Red Room Dream Layer
TVL = The Version Layer
MPL = Missing Page Layer
TFM = The Fireman’s Mansion
Twin Peaks = The entire franchise
INTRO1
Part 1: Scene 1 Red Room Layer: Opening Credits
(0:00:00 - 0:03:42) Local & Global Time
3m42s
Primary Narratives (PN): Intro Credits
Secondary Narratives (SN): None
Before the credits begin, we start with the Red Room scene in FWWM, where Laura Palmer tells Cooper she will see him again in twenty-five years.
This scene shifts to images from the TP Pilot, where the young student runs between high school buildings after learning (we still presume) about the death of Laura Palmer.
The scene shifts to a view of the high school trophy case, focusing and zooming in on the famous Laura Palmer high school senior photo.
Intro credits overlay an incredible bird’s eye view over the familiar waterfall, which morphs into a spinning Red Room, shifting from curtains that blow the wrong way to the zig-zag floor that spins, drains, and refills.
In the first scene of TPTR, Agent Cooper sits in a chair in the Red Room, listening to Laura Palmer tell him that she’ll see him in twenty-five years. She shows the now-famous hand-framed gesture of her face, saying, “Meanwhile.” And Cooper stares into the face of the ghost of Laura Palmer for the next twenty-five years of dream time, caught like a fly in the spider’s web of this Red Room Dream Layer tar pit trap.
I consider FWWM a sequel, not a prequel to TP Seasons One and Two. I view this film as a reconstructed narrative projected through the dreamy lens of Dale Cooper’s mind as he sits in that Red Room chair and considers what he knows, what he suspects, and what he imagines to have been the final week of Laura Palmer’s life.
Cooper’s dreaming mind is viewing images and sounds projected by the combined psychic energies of powerful Lodge entities who have agency in this dreamy realm. Each of these strange creatures here is vampiric in how they feed from the positive and negative emotions of the dreamer. The darker forces feed from harvesting pain and sorrow (known in Twin Peaks mythology as “Garmonbozia”). They twist and squeeze their unfortunate quarry who have fallen into this dreamy trap living in the trees outside the town of Twin Peaks and in the minds and souls of those who dwell here.
Is Cooper the only character who experiences the Red Room as we viewers see it? I don’t have an answer to that question, and I don’t want one. It’s a delicious mystery.
Is what we see in the Red Room a blend of multiple characters’ experiences? Possibly. What a wonderful thought experiment.
My personal opinion is that the RRL is primarily a place where Dale Cooper’s memories and his heart clash with his anger, ambition, and cruelty to determine if the behavior of the person who wakes up will pull energy from the world through malice or feed energy into the world through compassion and good deeds. This reading continues to sit right with me morally, and it is a core component of my analysis and appreciation of Twin Peaks, proceeding from here.
Laura Palmer’s brief and vicious life was filled with mystery, tragedy, and great suffering. Dale Cooper has always been the vessel through which the viewer interprets the meaning behind Laura’s plight in Twin Peaks; this is no different in TPTR.
I see FWWM as Cooper’s attempt to fill in the gaps of some mystery and assign some agency and a possible explanation for Laura’s suffering, but it is a fool’s errand. Laura Palmer is dead from the TP Pilot to the TPTR Fade To Black. She never has agency in any of Twin Peaks, except arguably in her diary, and even then, Laura is presented within the context of an implied frame.
To support this, consider that in less than four minutes of this first scene, we are twice shown Laura Palmer’s face in a frame within the frame of the image on the screen. The first frame is constructed by her own hands, and the second is a literal picture frame inside the frame of a trophy case. Frames within frames is a trope we must get used to if we are to come to terms with the narrative TPTR offers us.
FWWM is a combination of dream imagery, memories, and suppositions based on Cooper’s investigation in the primary story layer of Twin Peaks, which I’m defining here as the very top layer of this narrative. It’s where Cooper’s actual investigation of Laura Palmer took place, along with the “Ms. Twin Peaks Pageant,” and all the other absurdities and wonders of Seasons One and Two.
This top-level narrative story was paused at the end of Season 2 of TP, and I don’t believe we have revisited that narrative since June 10th, 1991. Instead, I think everything from that point on takes place inside Cooper’s dreaming mind and damaged soul, up through the Fade to Black of the finale of TPTR.
A1
Part 1: Scene 2: Cooper’s Frontal Cortex: The Fireman’s Study
(0:03:42 - 0:06:05) Local & Global Time
2m23s
PN: White Lodge Plan
SN: Mystery
The scene opens in TFL, where he asks Dale Cooper to “Listen to the sounds,” which are playing from a phonograph.
There are scratching noises.
The Fireman also tells Cooper, “It all cannot be said aloud now,” and, “It is in our house,” and, “Remember the number 430 and Richard and Linda,” and then says, “Two Birds One Stone.”
Cooper seems lucid and in control of his faculties, telling The Fireman, “I understand.”
Finally, The Fireman tells Cooper he is “Far Away.”
Cooper disappears with the fading sound of an electrical current.
It is important that these cryptic statements from The Fireman work slowly on the viewer throughout this narrative. I will leave them sitting here for now.
I have come to think of this place, where The Fireman hosts his guests, as a functional metaphor of Dale Cooper’s Frontal Cortex as it exists within the mechanistic motions of his dreaming mind. I accept this may be analogous to the White Lodge, but that’s neither here nor there for my analysis.
I view The Fireman in TPTR as a metaphoric angel of Cooper’s best nature, a shepherd of his soul, invoked through the plea of Laura Palmer at the end of FWWM. I have often wondered during my analysis of TPTR if I have some agency in my mind that is connected to my heart in such a fashion. It would be so if I could will such a creature into being.
Laura’s image in Cooper’s mind is neither memory nor benign. From the beginning of Season 1, Laura Palmer has been an active vessel in Cooper’s dreams. Like Luke Skywalker cutting open the tauntaun to survive the freeze of Hoth, Cooper, caught in the Red Room chair, has projected his best self through the investigation of Laura Palmer and will eventually place the last best part of him inside her image itself.
Through the image of Laura, Cooper experiences his struggle to remain a moral human being while suffering the overwhelming influence of a supreme negative force.
I like to assign the emotions of Cooper here at the beginning as a suppressed shame and fury over no one being able to save Laura Palmer before she was molested by many and murdered by the worst one. Beyond being unable to save her, I feel that the dreamer here is desperately seeking to understand the moral truth that lies beyond Laura’s death, some explanation for why evil continues to be allowed to harm the innocent.
The whole town of Twin Peaks was guilty of Laura’s murder in some fashion. They didn’t protect one of their most precious children. Bobby Briggs said this best way back in Season 1, which resonates even more deeply in 2022. This is a heavy burden for anyone with a good heart fighting for those who can’t (or won’t) stand up for themselves. And that’s Dale Cooper on his best day.
Unfortunately, we’re not catching Dale Cooper on his best day, quite the opposite.
Through the ever-evolving image of Laura Palmer across all layers of this dream, we witness characters cast into complex narratives unfolding on multiple levels inside Cooper’s dreaming mind. With a little help from his friends, who come when he calls for it, Dale Coopera will smuggle the best of what’s inside him out of this psychic field of death and eternal despair. And that’s all we’ll get to see in this story. It’s more than enough.
Cooper’s Army assembles on two layers of dream, like bannerman being called to their laird.
Major Briggs, the One-Armed Man, and The Evolution Of The Arm in the RRL, with the investigations of the Blue Rose Task Force (especially Gordon Cole), and the Twin Peaks Sherriff’s Department in TVL, all tentacular characters extending from the hot white light of the benevolent projector in the Fireman’s Theater, cast into these dream layers where they float and respond to Cooper’s action (and inaction) over and through these dangerous waves of sinister somnambular sonar.
Each character container is powered by The Fireman and his machinery to project the frontal cortex’s metaphoric elements onto the dreamer's cinema screen. It is through this machinery, that Cooper’s mind is able to engage in the counter-measures it will take to mitigate the dastardly plans about to be enacted by forces of darkness more ancient than his meager existence.
Let us not forget that the Amygdala also has its theater, and in that nasty cinema, one’s shoes stick to the floor and crunch when walked upon. There is always blood in the bathroom and screams in the stalls. In this darker theater of the mind, characters come from smokey back rooms in awful cabins, and it is indeed a world full of truck drivers.
The RRL operates on the borderline of menace, but a balance in this dream layer has prevented it from becoming a full-blown nightmare. The creatures who hunt in this space are supposed to bring that pain and sorrow back so that it can be recycled into pure energy.
In the metaphysics of Twin Peaks, the shadow self has agency within the dream layer for a limited time before the pain and sorrow they collect is called back to the primal machine of the dreamer’s psychology.
But, unfortunately, that balance is about to teeter over the edge into what could be total darkness for Dale Cooper. The mechanics of his dreaming mind have been damaged by a foreign invasion of total malevolence. Cooper has been possessed by a supreme negative force that is hell-bent on destroying everything good inside him (his golden seed).
I think of the Fireman’s Mansion as Cooper’s Frontal Cortex because that area of our brain is responsible for humanity’s higher functions.
“...the cortex, the portion of the brain that fills the topmost part of the skull. It’s the thinking part of the brain, and some say it’s the portion of the brain that makes us human because it enables us to reason, create language, and engage in complicated thinking, such as logic and mathematics.” (4)1
The cerebral cortex has two halves, the left hemisphere, and the right. Beyond that, it can be divided into lobes with different functions like processing vision, hearing, & information from our senses. But the cortex is also where reality is put together with logic and reason. And the cortex is where imagination and planning occur, which is why I think the Fireman’s Theater serves this function in the dreaming mind of Dale Cooper.
“The cortex also attaches meaning and memories to those perceptions.” (ibid,17)
But the Frontal Cortex has a unique value to my claim that The Fireman in Cooper’s mind dwells in this mental region of his biology.
“The frontal lobes are one of the most important parts of the cortex to understand. Located directly behind the forehead and eyes, they’re the largest set of lobes in the human brain...[they] receive information from all the other lobes and put it together to allow us to respond to an integrated experience of the world...[they]are said to have executive functions, meaning they are where the supervision of many brain processes occurs...[they] help us anticipate the results of situations, plan our actions, initiate responses, and use feedback from the world to stop or change our behaviors. Unfortunately, they also lay the groundwork for anxiety to develop.” (Ibid,18)
That last sentence is very important to Twin Peaks. Anxiety is a slow-coming storm in TPTR that develops into literal whirlwinds. It’s essential to call out the often competing role of the amygdala here as it relates to anxiety and trauma embedded in bad memories.
“The amygdala is small, but it’s made up of thousands of circuits of cells, dedicated to different purposes. These circuits influence love, bonding, sexual behavior, anger, aggression, and fear. The role of the amygdala is to attach emotional significance to situations or objects and to form emotional memories. Those emotions and emotional memories can be positive or negative...the amygdala’s emotional processing has profound impacts on our behavior...the amygdala is at the very heart of where the anxiety response is produced...The amygdala is on the lookout for anything that might indicate potential harm. If it detects potential danger, it sets off the fear response, an alarm in the body that protects us by preparing us to fight or flee.” (Ibid.5,15)
Playing the reductionist, I could charge that TPTR is a story about one man’s prefrontal cortex going to war with his amygdala. But instead, Cooper’s cortex holds tight to his moral center, where his faith in justice, mercy, and kindness lives, metaphorically represented as a golden seed.
While his amygdala battles from the sewer of his soul with fear, regret, and a potent, continually growing anxiety, Cooper becomes more divorced from his golden seed. He is in great danger of losing his soul, and this is the worst thing that can happen in TP, the corruption of a good person who has made questionable life choices, like each of us in our respective journeys.
Twin Peaks is the moral universe of the struggle of humanity bound in the nutshell of one human being’s fictional existence.
I posit that this opening scene occurs after Cooper sticks the fork in the socket of his Las Vegas home in TVL.
The Fireman is a supernatural agency in Cooper’s mind, like The Wizard Of Oz behind the curtain. The Fireman can pull levers but can’t give out a heart or bravery. Those attributes are part of the golden seed, which is The Fireman’s charge to protect, and therefore more ancient and powerful than even he in TPTR.
But, on the other hand, like The Wizard Of Oz, The Fireman can provide the means and direction for the Dreamer to return home, which in my analysis of Twin Peaks, means the Dreamer will awaken morally intact.
Here, in this scene, we witness The Fireman directing Cooper to the exit of this dream with information in the form of clues that become nearly meaningless riddles within the narrative.
In the first scene, the viewer is brought immediately into the White Lodge’s Plan to save Cooper’s soul, but logistically, I think we are watching a scene between Parts 15 & 16.
We witness counter-measures that the Fireman is guiding Cooper to make in response to the overwhelming gerrymandering of his dream’s reality by Mr. C aligned with the demon BOB.
With the help of Cooper’s one true love (Diane, hidden and disguised as a seemingly strange and unknown character Naido), he will send Cooper back into the dark trap of TVL as Dougie Jones, armed with the information and self-awareness he will need to move past this layer of the dream to proceed towards the final exit of the dream altogether.
B1
Part 1: Scene 3 The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:06:05 - 0:08:25) Local & Global Time
2m20s
PN: True Love Of Big Ed & Norma
Our return to the town of Twin Peaks starts above the two mountains, where a shadow rapidly moves over their surfaces.
We see a trailer in the woods. There are contraptions with pulleys and gears all over the yard. A delivery truck is backing into the driveway with a single large carton secured in the truck bed.
We discover this is Dr. Lawrence Jacoby’s domicile, or at least his workstation. He comes out of a dark trailer wearing a dark pair of glasses over his usual colored glasses.
He is receiving delivery of shovels in multiple cartons.
The delivery driver offers to help him, and Jacoby declines, saying he prefers to work alone.
The wind is featured prominently in the sound effects here, but the tree limbs are not blowing to match the strength of the wind’s sound.
Jacoby seems to be in a sad, isolated, but productive state. Unfortunately, we will discover that he has created a persona filled with vitriol, like a reverse Alex Jones with the same level of manufactures outrage.
While filled with negativity and poisonous speeches, Jacoby’s podcast will become the channel through which Nadine finally frees Ed to release love in the mind of the Dreamer.
Interestingly, Jacoby comes out of a darkened trailer (shades drawn with no adequate lights on), wearing a dark pair of sunglasses over his red and blue lenses. Likewise, many barriers and obstacles are being put in front of what’s before one’s eyes. Likewise, the viewer is watching this scene through lenses of which they may be unaware.
C1
Part 1: Scene 4 The Version Layer: New York, NY
(0:08:25 - 0:15:39) Local & Global Time
7m14s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
New York City is erupting in light at night. From the street level, and our view is bathed in shadow.
We zoom up to a building cast in this shadow like it’s hiding between the lights.
Inside this building, on an upper floor, is a glass box that is exposed through a wall.
A young man named Sam sits on a couch on a raised platform across the large room, staring at the glass box. There is a bonsai tree on a table next to the couch he sits on.
We see cameras, cables, and blinking lights, all high-tech and expensive. The hum of electricity is prominent in the soundtrack. This is a severe operation. A voice speaks and says a camera name. Sam gets up and changes the camera memory card, placing the loaded card in a safe that appears to have hundreds more cards. A delivery announcement calls the young man into a lobby area with a private security desk officer.
An attractive young woman named Tracey is there, holding two large coffees from a ‘Z.” coffee house. She wants to come in, but it’s not allowed. Sam seems to want her to come in, but the security guard prohibits this, looking menacingly askew from the other characters in this scene.
Tracy seems like a spy of some kind, looking over Sam’s shoulder as he types the code into the security pad. He feels her watching, coyly looks over his shoulder at her, and says, “You’re a bad girl, Tracey.”
She smiles flirtatiously and says, “Try me.”
There are two primary echoes in this scene from the previous one with Jacoby. First, both characters receive deliveries that seem pointless. Second, Jacoby declines the driver’s offer to help, stating that he prefers to work alone. Sam also works alone, performing work that seems to have to purpose.
We begin TPTR with scenes of isolation, seemingly pointless labor, and the turning down the offer of help and company. Establishing this emotional marker as a base camp from where we proceed into the underworld of Cooper’s psyche is vital.
Metaphorically, the Glass Box seems to be a screen to catch the dreams as they enter narrative realms from the void between dream layers.
For Cooper, he will be ejected from RRL, cast into a void of non-existence, where he will either float aimlessly or be sucked into a filtration net like this glass box.
There is a watcher for now (and we watch the watcher), but nothing out of the ordinary is happening now inside this glass box.
Sam drinks his Z coffee and watches to wait, while we watch him watch and wait. This realization begs the unnerving question, “Who watches us watch the watcher while he watches for the Dreamer?”
D1
Part 1: Scene 5 The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:15:39–0:19:33) Local & Global Time
3m54s
PN: Something Is Wrong In Twin Peaks
Beverly Paige walks into Ben Horne’s office in the Great Northern Hotel. A wealthy woman “Responsible for the spa” has complained about a skunk on the other side of the property. Ben asks Beverly to deal with this troublesome customer.
Jerry Horne enters, looking like an aging hippie. Ben introduces them, and Jerry is charmed. After Beverly leaves the room, Jerry asks if Ben has slept with the new girl, or “woman,” as he changes his description. Ben replies that she is married, and Jerry tells him that never bothered him before.
It turns out that the hotel business is now the less profitable subsidiary of the Horne empire as Jerry has gone into business as a cannabis edibles manufacturer, which is three times more profitable than operating The Great Northern.
Cut to the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Station.
An Insurance salesman enters the station through the front doors and asks for Sheriff Truman.
Lucy Brennan asks him which one? He doesn’t know.
She says (twice), “It could make a difference,” because, “One Truman is sick and the other is fishing.”
Lucy can’t help this man. He gets flustered, leaves his card, and runs out, almost like he is having an anxiety attack.
Ben casts a sad shadow from the beginning of the scene to his final scene in TPTR. He is a character deep in the throes of regret, seeking some kind of salvation.
The Great Northern, once his Kingdom in a realm of sanctuary and scheming, has become an albatross around Ben Horne’s neck, a sad and lonely place where love has run cold and become very rare. This is a deliberate emotional landscape being painted up front in TPTR.
Isolation. Loneliness. Despair. Regret. Don’t forget this emotion because it’s the cage where our best selves get locked inside. Cooper’s too.
During this humorous exchange between Ben Horne and Beverly, it’s possible she asks him, “How did this cunt get a room?” Ben’s double-take is incredibly funny, almost vaudevillian, when heard this way.
Jerry notes that his cannabis concoction is perfect for “Creative sojourns of a solitary nature.” This is only the third scene of Part One, and yet again, we are being told about loneliness in labor and travel.
Jerry seems happy here, content. But he is about to experience an anxiety-filled unwinding, and he is not alone. Anxiety springing forth from the muck of all that isolation + loneliness + despair + regret will be woven through TVL like dye in the fabric of yarn.
This scene with Lucy and the insurance salesman feels like Twin Peaks fans are having their expectations poked at with a small, dull stick. This becomes telling if we substitute the word “insurance” for “my Twin Peaks” here.
“Hi, I’m here to see my Twin Peaks.”
“Which one? It could make a difference. One is sick and the other is fishing.”
“My Twin Peaks.”
“Which one?”
This description of two Trumans, one being sick while the other is out fishing, is also an apt description of Cooper’s dire situation right now. If the cortex could just return from fishing and fight off the corrupted amygdala, the Dale Cooper we know and love may return to fighting form.
Alas, if the dreamer doesn’t know they are dreaming, they are subject to the winds of the dream as if they were really blowing. The clueless dreamer is truly windswept.
B2
Part 1: Scene 6: The Version Layer: Buckhorn, SD | New York, NY
(0:19:33–0:34:35) Local & Global Time
15m2s
PN: Black Lodge Plan
The Muddy Magnolias remake of “American Woman” opens this scene as we are introduced to Mr. C (or “Cooper’s Double” as Lynch refers to him in the Behind The Parts documentaries on The Z to A Blu-Ray set). Mr. C’s long hair makes him very BOB-like, mean, and nasty looking but driving a very nice luxury sports car.
As Mr. C walks up to a country shack in the middle of the woods, a man comes out to face him down with a shotgun. Mr. C quickly dispatches him, leaving him unconscious with the gun.
Mr. C enters the shack and is greeted by a poor-looking fellow named Otis, who seems congenial despite his man getting laid out on the ground with a single punch.
Across the room is a short man in a wheelchair sitting next to a tall man.
The guard comes back in to attack, but Mr. C effortlessly dispatches him again.
Finally, a woman named Beulah enters, and Mr. C greets her, asking for Ray Monroe and Darya, who might be in the back.
Mr. C tells her she needs a new man at the door. Looking down at the unconscious guard, Beulah says, “It’s a world of truck drivers.”
Ray and Darya come out, and Mr. C tells them it’s time to get going. So they leave unimpeded, while Otis drinks clear and ominous liquid (Garmonbozia Moonshine?). Mr. C has some clasp in his hair that could be in the same family as the Owl Cave ring.
Cut to Manhattan.
The security guard is missing, and Tracey is back with her coffee, asking to be let into the secret room.
Sam tells her, “Since there is no one here to stop you.” He then looks serious and says, “I don’t know how you’re gonna get out if the guard comes back.”
Sam shepherds Tracey into the room and explains that this is a job to help out with his school and doesn’t know what it’s for, but he’s paid to watch this box in case something happens. He also says the operation is rumored to be funded by an unknown billionaire.
He tells Tracey that the guy he replaced said he saw something but couldn’t tell him what it was because they aren’t supposed to talk about the box or this place.
As things get sexually intense, the light inside the box morphs into a colorless void, somehow invoking a creature of androgynous and frightening appearance. It seems almost shy but becomes shockingly aggressive, smacking the glass hard and loud with a dull ringing thud.
Eventually, the creature breaks the glass and attacks the couple, consuming their faces in a bloody, slashed-up mess that overlaps with a weird black and white lens overlaying the act of murder.
Otis’s shack seems to be a requisition location that produces shady characters inside TVL, ones driven by the darker forces of Cooper’s dreaming mind.
This shack can easily be a metaphor of Cooper’s amygdala. It’s powerful to consider Otis’s Shack and the Fireman’s Mansion as representing the psychic and biological areas of this dreaming human being. Both negative and positive energies flow into the framework of memory, affecting the dreamer’s perception of reality, and taking creative forms in these dreams when the dreamer loses the knowledge that they are indeed just dreaming.
Why is it so easy for Mr. C to dispatch the guard? In TVL of Cooper’s dream, Mr. C calls the shots and they are aimed at the Golden Seed of Dale Cooper.
Otis is the first character who gives Mr. C his name in TPTR, but it’s not the only name he is called.
This scene marks the beginning of bold forward action in TPTR, but it’s not the beginning of the narrative.
The attempt to point out where TPTR begins quickly becomes a futile exercise, like pointing to a spot on the surface of a clear, oscillating Mobius strip.
Where would you start if you were trying to verbally tell someone (who has seen and understands what happened in the TP and FWWM) the sequence of events for TPTR?2
We assume that Tracy is back in the mysterious office building the next night as they agreed when we last saw her with Sam.
But now the guard is missing. Something has changed. We can assume the guard was there when Sam came to work, or maybe he’s been up for more than a day, and the guard left at some point. Either way, Sam acknowledges that it’s strange to find the guard missing.
And then Sam invites Tracey into the secret room with a warning about not knowing what they’ll do if the guard returns.
In retrospect, we understand that this scene is actually taking place synchronously in the timeline with Part Three, after Cooper gets ejected from RRL, and is cast into the void between dream layers, where he is captured in this Glass Box that Mr. C. has concocted and continues to fund in TVL. From this box, Cooper is to be slaughtered by The Experiment.
But that’s not how it goes down. Because the guard is missing, Tracey gets in and she and Sam get it on, which provides enough of a distraction to buy Cooper time with Naido in the Purple power station, where he is routed while Sam and Tracey marvel over the missing security guard.
Whatever the reason for this guard’s absence, it is a critical component of the counter-measures being executed to save Cooper’s soul.
We can assume that The Experiments is hunting Cooper down and has a limited window of time to take him out while he still has his golden seed intact and operational. I think we can also infer that this Experiment has the capability of destroying this Golden Seed outright if it gets ahold of it, which is ultimately why the Fireman extracts the seed and places it into the image of Laura Palmer, sent into another dream layer altogether to wait for Cooper to claim it and bring it to the dream’s exit.
As we will see, communing with Naido in the Purple Power Station allows the love that still lives in his memory of Diane to switch the polarity of the portal to TVL, offering Cooper a powerful form of protection when he loses the rest of his agency in transit to TVL.
So that guard missing prevented Sam from seeing Cooper (can we assume he was captured on camera?) and allowed Sam and Tracey to get naked and bothered, which was too much of a lure for The Experiment to resist. This slowed down its chase and gave Cooper precious time that he needed to survive through supernatural (if not divine) intervention.
Poor Sam and Tracey are offered up as a sacrifice to save the soul of Dale Cooper. But, it’s not quite as bad if we think of them as characters in his dream. Of course, this statement also seems a bit foolish since all of these characters are fictional constructs in a complex narrative.
Perhaps Tracey, Sam, and all the other characters sacrificed for Cooper and Mr. C in TPTR return as pure energy to their respective mental Lodges in the cortex and amygdala.
The Experiment seems to be a creature of an extreme opposing force, a Dream Eater, who massacres other characters within the dream, spreading terror wherever it discovers, consumes, and digests joy or pleasure.
There is a class of these dream shades in TVL that seem to psychically feed off pain and suffering, from the Woodsmen, to the frog moths, to vomitous, crazy, sweating, murderous sub demons and full-out BOB-level devils.3
There are powerful psychic forces lined up against Dale Cooper’s golden seed, aiming to prevent him from ever waking up himself again.
E1
Part 1: Scene 7: The Version Layer: Buckhorn, SD
(0:34:35-0:43:33) Local & Global Time
8m58s
PN: Blue Rose Investigation
A large woman with a small dog named Armstrong comes wheeling down a long hallway of what appears to be an apartment complex. She smells something terrible and runs to her apartment to call the police.
We learn that her name is Marjorie Grove, and something is not quite right with her. She can’t easily remember her address (1349 Arrowhead), and she reacts strangely when the police officers call her “Mrs. Grove.” We learn the smell comes from the apartment of a woman named Ruth Davenport.
We also learn that the Building Manager’s name is Barney and Hank Fillmore is the Building Maintenance Man.
When the cops approach Hank, he yells at them, “Harvey, you son of a bitch!” Then, he asks them, “Who told you I was going to see Chip?” Chip is Barney’s brother, and, “Chip ain’t got no phone!”
The police get the key from none other than Marjorie, who forgot she had it for watering the plants when Ruth was away.
When the policemen enter Ruth’s apartment, we see several books on her shelf, one of which is titled Dreamland and another American Image. There is also a large black magnifying glass on a desk.
The police discover a woman in the bed who has been shot through her left eye.
Outside the building, Hank is speaking to someone on the phone (not Chip, obviously, and probably Harvey). Hank is very upset. He has a bag filled with something precious; it is all his and Chip’s because Harvey didn’t want to be part of it.
When the detectives and CSI team pull the sheets and blanket off the corpse in the bed, we see the severed head of whom we assume to be Ruth Davenport but under it is the fat, bloated body of a late-middle-aged man.
So begins one of the craziest criminal investigations of chance, circumstance, and jagged oddity in modern fiction. And it begins with fumbling and bumbling. This is the state of the Dreamer becoming aware of something drastic changing in the nature of this dream’s narrative.
If TP took the goofy norms of soap operas and blew them apart to create a different kind of art, TPTR takes the boring tropes of the endless, repetitive police and crime procedurals, then likewise converts them into an Odyssey for the Modern Human Being.
In this scene, we rapidly catch up with a murder that’s already happened. This scene feels like a farcical dissection of the opening to every CSI-type show ever made.
As we will discover later, Ruth Davenport was a local librarian in Buckhorn. In addition, she was having an affair with the town’s school Principal, William Hastings. All this would perfectly fit into a CSI episode.
Beyond that, both of them became caught up in an inter-dimensional investigation, leading them to collude with the dimensional-phasing ghost of Major Garland Briggs, who in turn led them to break into a securely encrypted U.S. Military database to obtain secret coordinates for something mysterious and ominous.
This part of the story is like jamming The X-Files into James Bond and dunking it in a bucket of Mission Impossible.
Major Briggs is a cosmic character in TPTR, one of the few who populates the dimensional void between narrative layers, frequently visiting the narrative layers themselves.
We only see the image of Major Briggs’s face once in Part Three, floating through the dimensional void to give Cooper the clue that sticks with him in TVL, “Blue Rose.”
My opinion is that Major Briggs is tightly aligned with The Fireman as avatars of Cooper’s best nature.4 And whatever happened to bring Major Briggs and Ruth Davenport to literally lose their heads together will forever be a mystery of TPTR. In the end, it doesn’t matter when all of this may just be a story told through interconnected lenses of dream narratives in the construct of a dreaming soul possessed by a demon.
The disembodied head in the bed is a bold image, prompting us (again) to leave all of our expectations behind us and buckle up. This ain’t no prom queen wrapped in plastic. TPTR is unlike anything seen before or since in audiovisual storytelling.
F1
Part 1: Scene 8: The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:43:33–0:45:16) Local & Global Time
1m43s
PN: Hawk’s Investigation
SN: Mystery, Something Is Wrong In Twin Peaks
Margaret Lanterman calls the Sheriff’s Station to tell Hawk, “Something is missing, and you must find it. It has to do with Special Agent Dale Cooper. The way you will find it has something to do with your heritage.”
Hawk is very patient and treats the call seriously, as we expect.
In this scene, Margaret Lanterman activates the first line of defense in Dale Cooper’s mind, the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department. Her image is wholly incorruptible throughout the narrative complexity of Twin Peaks.
Many of the characters living in the town of Twin Peaks in TVL are constructed from actual memories and relationships from Cooper’s life in Seasons One and Two.
In this scene, Margaret activates the Twin Peaks Sherrif’s Department through the most loyal and wise character still living in the town of Twin Peaks, Deputy Chief Tommy “Hawk” Hill. Hawk is uncorrupted in all narrative layers of Twin Peaks, as are Andy and Lucy. They are all pure, honorable representatives of the light inside Dale Cooper, the best of who he was when he was the someone they last knew.
These characters are shepherds of Cooper’s golden seed in TVL and they are being called to his aid against great existential forces of darkness and terror. The help they bring is to follow the clues and investigate the mystery so as to reveal truths to the windswept mind of the Dreamer.
E2
Part 1: Scene 9: The Version Layer: Buckhorn, SD
(0:45:16-0:48:18) Local & Global Time
3m2s
PN: Blue Rose Investigation
Constance Talbot, the Buckhorn Coroner, is eating lunch and analyzing prints from the Ruth Davenport crime scene.
She gets a local hit from Principal Bill Hastings, whose prints were “all over the apartment.”
The body’s head has been positively identified as Ruth Davenport, but the man’s body is unidentified as a John Doe.
Dave Macklay (the older male detective) goes to arrest Principal Hastings, an old fishing buddy he’s known since high school.
There is a wolf knocker on Hasting’s front door. Phyllis Hastings greets the detective warmly at the door and calls for her husband, Bill. He comes into the foyer and smiles warmly at Dave, seeming genuinely surprised and frustrated (but oddly calm) when he is taken into custody for questioning.
Phyllis seems more upset that, “The Morgans are coming over for dinner!”
Part One sets up three primary narrative sacrifices: Sam, Tracey, and William Hastings. In this scene, I believe we can clearly see that Hastings’s wife, Phyllis, knows more than she lets on. We will discover that she is in league with Mr. C, who is obsessively searching for those coordinates that Hastings and Davenport stole from the U.S. Military.
As disjointed as TPTR can seem at times, all the narrative threads are clearly laid out in the first hour of Part One.
F2
Part 1: Scene 10: The Version Layer: Twin Peaks, WA
(0:48:18-0:49:30) Local & Global Time
1m12s
PN: Hawk’s Investigation
SN: Something Is Wrong In Twin Peaks
Hawk is carrying old case files to the conference room, where he meets Andy and Lucy.
We find out that Lucy and Andy have a 24-year-old son named Wally (who has never met Agent Cooper) who was born on the same day as Marlon Brando.
Hawk is running low on patience and he invokes the “Coffee & Donut” ritual in the conference room for tomorrow morning.
While Mr. C’s plan is unfolding, the shepherds of Cooper’s golden seed, each filled with the spirit of his best nature, are gathering to begin coordinating counter-measures none of them will ever fully understand. From this perspective, they represent the viewer. Despite their quirks, Andy and Lucy are effective shepherds in TVL. Both of them will play critical roles in the White Lodge’s Plan.
If the prong of the Twin Peaks Sherrif’s Department, along with the prong of the Blue Rose Task Force, can follow this wacky trail of often-ridiculous bread crumbs, they can maybe save Dale Cooper’s soul from his own wacked-out nightmare.
It’s important to ask ourselves, “What’s the worst that can happen to Dale Cooper in TPTR?”
My answer is that if Cooper cannot bring forth the goodness (golden seed) within himself and project it through the controlling agency in this dream, his soul will become morally corrupted, and the entire psyche will deconstruct to its darkest elements.
How does a human go from being a decent person to being a piece of shit without honor? From this perspective, Cooper represents this struggle that could happen inside any person. It’s universal to resist the forces of corruption and cruelty in our world.
There is a beautiful passage in the Gnostic Gospel According To Thomas, where Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. But, on the other hand, if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”5
E3
Part 1: Scene 11: The Version Layer: Buckhorn, SD
(0:49:30-0:58:42) Local & Global Time
9m12s
PN: Blue Rose Investigation
Detective Dave Macklay meets Detective Don Harrison, a Rapid City State Policeman, outside the interrogation room for Bill Hastings.
Detective Harrison defers to Dave Macklay to conduct the interrogation.
In the interrogation room, Bill denies to Dave that he knew Ruth Davenport well or has ever been to her house. Bill claims he was at a school meeting during the estimated time of her murder. However, there is a large discrepancy between when he left and how long it should have taken him to drive home.
Bill claims he gave his assistant Betty a ride home, and then asks for his lawyer, George.
Later, at the Hastings home, Dave and Don are looking through Hasting’s automobile trunk, and Dave’s flashlight is blinking on and off. Looking ashamed and annoyed, Dave says to Don, “My flashlight’s broke.”
They find something under a cooler in the trunk that looks like a dog leg, to which Dave says, “Woof.”
Detective Harrison is introduced here, and his character goes nowhere, adds little value, and never returns.
Bill Hastings’s first lie is that he’s never been to Ruth Davenport’s home. We watch this man’s sanity begin to dissolve when he learns of Ruth’s murder. The breakdown begins on Bill’s face as he reacts to this news.
I think he believed it was just a terrible dream, perhaps brought on by the guilt of his infidelity. Because if what happened actually happened, that means that what he saw was real. And if what he experienced was real, then reality just isn’t the same anymore for William Hastings (he can join the long line at that club).
Is this one of the dog legs Mr. C threatens the Warden over? Or is it a piece of flesh carved to throw the detectives off track in their investigation into Bill Hastings? Unfortunately, we’ll never know because the dog legs aren’t mentioned again after Mr. C’s escape from prison.
Viewer confusion grinds against nostalgic expectations here to produce incredible narrative tension through frustration. Part one delivers the viewer familiar yet distant characters inside a massive cloud of confusion that shields these seemingly distant threads of narrative from coming together too quickly in TPTR. If these narratives had come together too quickly, magic would have been lost.
A2
Part 1: Scene 12: Cooper’s Frontal Cortex: The Fireman’s Study
(0:58:42–0:58:58) Local & Global Time
16s
PN: White Lodge Plan
SN: Mystery
The Fireman is listening to the phonograph playing, which seems to be producing the same repeating scratching sounds that he played for Cooper in the beginning.
This scene is not presented in the two-hour version that combines Parts One and Two. That does not make it insignificant, but does introduce two versions of the viewing experience. Personally, I watch these parts separately and consider them each unique viewing experiences.
The absence of music, despite the presence of machinery to produce it, is an exciting facet to think about in Part One of TPTR. Consider what happens when one scratches a record needle across song grooves on a vinyl record. The needle moves between audio layers embedded in plastic vinyl. Audio layers contain independent songs that tell different stories, but which are bound together in same vinyl wax.
I believe what we hear coming out of this phonograph is the growing dissonance coming from clashing dream layers, like tectonic plates shifting and grinding through powerful forces converging from all sides.
Consider the image above, which is the actual visual sound graph of this scratching sound that plays from The Fireman’s phonograph. I see a repeated sound pattern that can only be described as “twin peaks.” I believe this sound is the set of coordinates that Mr. C is looking for, the smuggled secret that, so far, has cost the lives of at least four characters in TPTR.
And that’s all in the first hour of this masterpiece.
The Music Of Part One
1. “American Woman (David Lynch Remix)” written by Kallie North, Jessyca Wilson, Jason White, and Butch Walker Performed by Muddy Magnolias.
2 “Sub Dream,” written and performed by David Lynch and Dean Hurley.
3 “Frank 2000,” written by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch Performed by Thought Gang.
In Memory Of... Catherine Coulson
Rewire Your Anxious Brain: how to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic & worry by Catherine M. Pittman, Ph.D. & Elizabeth M. Karle, MLIS. New Harbinger Publications. 2015
Throughout this analysis and appreciation, I’ll attempt to answer the question “Where does TPTR begin,” as best I can.
I have come to think of all these Lodge creatures as metaphors for the energy that caused once sensible human beings to vote Republican in the 2020s.
The Fireman and Major Briggs can be seen as the White Wizards of Cooper’s White Lodge if I can be permitted to stretch the metaphor for Cooper’s frontal cortex battling his amygdala into the territory of Lord Of The Rings references.
This is my favorite passage of any religious text.
That early exchange with The Fireman hits hard, makes so much sense now that I’m reading this.