Chapter 6: Part One: "My Log Has A Message For You"
006 - A Skeleton Key To Twin Peaks, 2nd Edition
Please note: the entire chapter is too long for email. Please click through to the web version for the most updated content. I will be making frequent revisions over time. Paid subscribers are welcome and encouraged to ask questions and offer feedback in the comment section for each chapter.
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 Fire Walk With Me, where Laura Palmer tells Cooper she will see him again in twenty-five years. This scene shifts to images from the Twin Peaks 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.
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 with the famous hand-framed gesture of her face, saying, “Meanwhile.” 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.
I consider Fire Walk With Me a sequel, not a prequel, to Twin Peaks Seasons One and Two. In my analysis, that film is constructs a narrative projected through the dreamy lens of Dale Cooper’s mind as he sits in the Red Room chair and considers what he knows, what he suspects, and what he imagines Laura Palmer’s final week of life felt like in addition to what happened.
Cooper’s dreaming mind reviews images and sounds from his memory as well as those projected by his powerful intuition, along with the combined psychic energies of these powerful Lodge entities who have agency in his dreamy realm. Each of these strange creatures here is vampiric in how they feed from the positive and negative emotions of the dreamers trapped in the shadowy halls and strangely lit rooms with their emotionally bent up decorations. The darker forces feed from harvesting pain and sorrow (known in Twin Peaks mythology as “Garmonbozia”). Demonic as well as passive shades twist and squeeze the unfortunate quarry who have fallen into this dreamy trap of trees outside the town of Twin Peaks and in the minds and souls of those who dwell here.
Question: Is Cooper the only character who experiences the Red Room as we viewers see it?
My Answer: This is a delicious mystery that I chose to leave alone and sit unanswered.
Question: Is what we see in the Red Room a blend of multiple characters’ experiences?
Answer:Possibly. What a wonderful thought experiment. I see the Red Room Layer of this dream as a place where Dale Cooper’s memories and heart clash with his anger, ambition, and cruelty. What results from that struggle determines if the behavior of the person who wakes up will act with 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 The Return.
I see Fire Walk With Me as Cooper’s attempt to fill in the gaps of mystery and assign agency with a potential explanation for Laura’s suffering, but it is a fool’s errand. Laura Palmer is dead from the Twin Peaks “Pilot” to the end of The Return. She never has agency in any of Twin Peaks, except arguably in her diary, and even then, Laura is presented to the viewer (this is important) 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 hand, 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 The Return offers us.
Fire Walk With Me 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. The top layer of the complex multi-layered narrative of Twin Peaks is where Cooper’s actual investigation of Laura Palmer took place up through the capture of Cooper’s psyche and the arrest of his soul.
Cooper’s imprisonment began in the final minutes of the final episode of Season 2, and he has never left the liminal space between sleep, dream, and death that we sum up with the phrase Red Room. Cooper dreams inside the top layer of his narrative reality and his dream, once the place of insightful intuition, has become a prison. 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 The Return.
The question I’d like you consider is, “What is the role of the viewer?” Are we watching what’s happening on screen, or do we have a larger role to play? To be continued.
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 The Fireman’s Lounge, 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 sound of electricity.
I think of this place, where the Fireman hosts his guests, as Cooper’s Frontal Cortex. I accept this may be analogous to the White Lodge. I interpret the character of The Fireman as a shepherd of Cooper’s best self, when he is driven by good and willing to sacrifice for others. Also, in Cooper’s dreaming mind, the image of Major Briggs is a familiar of The Fireman, Briggs represents the counter-espionage and defensive tactics it will take to mitigate the dastardly plans about to be enacted on the poor, unsuspecting soul of Dale Cooper as he’s caught in this Red Room fly trap of a dream. The Red Room Dream Layer operates on the borderline of menace, but a balance in this layer of the dream has prevented it from becoming a full-blown nightmare. But, unfortunately, that balance is about to teeter over the edge into darkness.
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. Consider these sectional quotes from the book Rewire Your Anxious Brain: how to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic & worry (2015) by Catherine M. Pittman, PhD and Elizabeth M. Karle, MLIS.
“...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)
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, planning, and (this is important when considering The Return), “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 symbolic 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)
Anxiety is a slow-coming rainstorm in The Return that develops into a literal whirlwind. Revisiting the human brain structure one more time, it’s essential to call out the often competing role of the amygdala as it relates to anxiety and the traumas embedded in bad memories and dark inclinations.
“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)
The Return can be viewed a story about one man’s prefrontal cortex going to war with his amygdala, while Cooper’s cortex holds tight to his moral center, where his faith in justice, mercy, and kindness lives, metaphorically presented in this narrative as a golden seed. While his amygdala battles from the sewer of his soul with fear, regret, and a potent, continually growing anxiety, the further Cooper becomes divorced from that golden seed, the more danger he is in of losing his soul. This is the story of The Return, in a nutshell. As Steven Hawking pointed out, the entire universe is contained in a nutshell.
I posit this opening scene occurs after Cooper sticks the fork in the socket of his Las Vegas home in The Version Layer of this dream. 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 courage or heart, because those attributes are part of the golden seed that the Fireman protects. But, on the other hand, like in The Wizard Of Oz, The Fireman can provide the means and direction to return home but the action must be the Dreamer’s. It isn’t until Dorothy become self-actualized within her dream that she exits. This is important to consider as you make up your mind about what is happening here on screen.
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 riddles within the narrative. The viewer is brought immediately into a safe place (likely the White Lodge) to witness the cryptic plan to save Cooper’s soul. Logistically, I think we are watching a scene between Parts 15 & 16 here. Keep in mind this may be a future part of the narrative; we’ll come back to it.
The Fireman guides Cooper to action, which involves a crazy scheme that looks complex up close but becomes simple when we zoom back. Mr. C is racing to find the exit while Cooper is distracted with his case files and with the labyrinth he is about to be put through because a corrupting influence has invaded his psyche and attacked his soul with Cooper’s dream machine. Weaponized dreaming. Freddy Kruger stole this from Shakespeare in 1984’s Nightmare on Elm Street.
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 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 his driveway with a single large carton secured in the back.
We discover this is Dr. Lawrence Jacoby’s house, or at least his workshop. He comes out of a dark trailer wearing a dark pair of glasses over his usual colored glasses. He receives a 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. We will discover that he has created a vitriolic persona named “Doctor Amp.” While filled with negativity and poisonous speech, Doctor Amp’s podcast will become the channel through which Nadine finally frees Ed to release raw and unapologetic love into this narrative.
It’s interesting to note 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. Many barriers and obstacles will be put in front of our eyes during The Return. We must learn to look through many of these layers and lens to detect what can’t be seen or heard.
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 erupts in light at night. But from the street level, we are bathed in shadow. We zoom up to a building cast in this shadow like it’s hiding between the lights. Inside this building is a glass box. A young man named Sam sits on a couch that sets 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 serious 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 it, looking menacingly misplaced with Tracey and Sam. Tracy acts like a spy, looking over Sam’s shoulder when 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.”
This scene with Same Tracey echoes the previous scene 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 labors alone, performing work that seems to have no purpose. We begin The Return with scenes of isolation, seemingly pointless labor, and turning down the offer of help and company. Establishing this emotional marker filled with loneliness and declining the assistance and comfort of community. This marker is where we begin our emotional journey in Twin Peaks The Return. This is Cooper’s emotional state at this point in time. 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 characters traveling in the void between dream narratives. For Cooper, he will be ejected from The Red Room Dream Layer, 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 nothing out of the ordinary is happening inside this glass box. Sam drinks his Z coffee and watches to wait.
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 at the Great Northern Hotel to tell him a wealthy woman “Responsible for the spa,” has complained about a skunk on the other side of the property. Ben has asked Beverly to deal with this 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,” changing his description. Ben replies that she is married, and Jerry tells him that never bothered him before. The hotel business is now the less profitable subsidiary of the Horne empire as Jerry has gone into business as a marijuana edibles manufacturer, which is three times better than 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 was having an anxiety attack.
First, the skunk is likely Jerry’s dope, which is funny subtext. 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 can be viewed as incredibly funny in this context. Jerry notes that his cannabis concoction is perfect for “Creative sojourns of a solitary nature.” This is only the third scene, and yet again, we are being told about loneliness in labor. Jerry is happy here, content. But he is about to experience an anxiety-filled unwinding and he is not alone.
This scene with Lucy and the Insurance salesman feels like Twin Peaks fans are having their expectations poked at with a light 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 one-two Trumans, one being sick while the other 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 attacking his dream, the Dale Cooper we know and love may return to fighting form.
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 boxed set). Mr. C’s long hair makes him very BOB-like, mean, and nasty 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, and 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 in. 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, bringing a creature of androgynous appearance. It seems almost shy and becomes aggressive, smacking the glass hard and loud with a dull ringing thud. Eventually, the beast 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 over the act of murder.
Otis’s shack is a requisition location that produces shady characters inside The Version Layer of Cooper’s dream. This could easily be the metaphoric representation of Cooper’s amygdala. It’s intriguing to consider this shack and the Fireman’s Mansion as symbols for the psychic and biological areas of a dreaming human being, where negative and positive energies flow into the framework of this creature’s memory, to shape perception of reality and infuse dreams with creative hallucinations deployed to remind the Dreamer they are sleeping, and it’s time to wake.
Why is it so easy for Mr. C to dispatch the guard? In this Version Layer of Cooper’s dream, Mr. C calls the shots aimed at the Golden Seed of Dale Cooper. Otis is the first character who gives Mr. C his name first in The Return. This scene marks the beginning of bold action in The Return, but it’s not the beginning of the narrative.
Tracy is back in the dark waiting area outside the camera room. But is this the future of the next night? Or is it a return to the past? Liky Lucy’s response, the answer matters because it makes things different. Now the guard is missing. Has something has changed? We can assume the guard was there when Sam came to work but left at some point. Either way, Sam acknowledges that it’s strange to find the guard missing, and then he invites Tracey in with a warning about not knowing what they’ll do if the guard returns. This scene likely takes place during Part Three. Something strange is happening in the camera room while they ponder where the guard has gone.
Whatever was responsible for that guard missing saved Cooper’s soul, because his absence prevented Sam from seeing Cooper enter that glass box during Part Two coming up. Poor Sam and Tracey are offered up as a sacrifice to save the soul of Dale Cooper. But, it’s not so bad if we think of them as characters in a dream. Perhaps they just return as energy to their respective lodge in the Dreamer’s cortex and amygdala. This creature spreads terror whenever it discovers, consumes, and digests strong human emotional energy. There is a class of these dream shades in The Return, from the Woodsmen, to frog moths, to vomitous, crazy, sweating, murderous sub demons and full-out BOB-level devils. There are powerful psychic forces 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 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 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 they enter Ruth’s apartment, we see several books on Ruth’s 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 the left eye. Outside the building, Hank is speaking to someone and 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. If the original Twin Peaks took the goofy norms of soap operas and blew them apart to create a different kind of art, The Return took the boring tropes of the police and crime procedurals, then likewise converted them into a modern-day Odyssey.
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 murder mystery show. As we will soon discover, Ruth Davenport was a local librarian in Buckhorn, South Dakota. In addition, she was having an affair with the town’s school Principal, William Hastings.
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 (“The Log Lady”) calls the Sheriff’s Station to tell Deputy Chief 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.
The Log Lady is the first line of defense in Dale Cooper’s mind and memory. Her image is wholly incorruptible throughout the narrative complexity of The Return. Margaret Coulson in this dream layer is a memory from Cooper’s life in the waking world. Many of the characters who inhabit The Return are rooted memory but damaged by creative dreaming gone mad. Here, in the Version Layer labyrinth, Margaret activates the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department through Hawk, the most loyal and wise character still living in Twin Peaks. Hawk is also uncorrupted in this narrative, as are Andy and Lucy. They are all pure, honorable representatives of the light inside Dale Cooper. Each of these characters are blends of memory but also containers where the dreaming Cooper stores his loyalty, honor, friendships, and immense talents for doing good in the world. Each of these special characters are shepherds of Cooper’s Golden Seed of goodness, and they are being collectively called to his aid against great cosmic forces of darkness and terror.
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, who enters 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, “The Morgans are coming over for dinner!”
Part One sets up three primary narrative sacrifices: Sam, Tracey, and William Hastings. After several viewings, I believe we can clearly see Hastings’s wife, Phyllis, knows more than she lets on, and indeed we will discover she is in league with dark forces.
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 carries 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) and was born on the same day as Marlon Brando. Hawk is running low on patience and invokes the “Coffee & Donut” ritual in the conference room for tomorrow morning.
While Mr. C’s plan kicks off, these memory shepherds of Cooper’s mind, each filled with the spirit of his best nature, begin coordinating counter-measures none of them will fully understand. From this perspective, they represent “We The Viewer.” Despite their endearing quirks, Andy and Lucy are effective shepherds of the Version Layer of Cooper’s dream, and both characters will play critical roles in the reaction plan that emerges.
If the Twin Peaks Sherrif’s Department, along with the Blue Rose Task Force of the FBI, can follow this whacky trail of often-ridiculous bread crumbs, they could save Dale Cooper’s soul in his own whacked-out nightmare. It’s important to ask ourselves, “What’s the worst that can happen to Dale Cooper here?” My answer is that if Cooper cannot bring forth the goodness within himself and project it through a controlling agency in this dream, his soul will become morally corrupted, and the entire world will suffer. From this perspective, Cooper represents every human born to die and struggle in the search for purpose and salvation.
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.” Twin Peaks is the story of Dale Cooper, but it only brings focus to the universal story playing out inside every human being. Twin Peaks is a moral work of art.
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 room with Dave, Bill denies knowing Ruth Davenport or ever having 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. Bill 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. Finally, he says to Don, “My flashlight is broke.” They find something under a cooler in the trunk that looks like a piece of flesh, 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 emotional breakdown erupts on Bill’s face as he reacts to news of Ruth’s death. He thought it was just a terrible dream, perhaps brought on by the guilt of infidelity. But if what happened in that dream actually happened, then reality isn’t the same anymore for William Hastings. His face in this scene is a screen projecting a horror film happening behind his eyes.
Is this a dog leg? By the end of Part One, viewer confusion grinds against nostalgic expectations to produce incredible narrative tension through frustration. The broken flashlight not only broadcasts frustration, it’s a call back to the blinking coroner’s light in the Twin Peaks “Pilot” episode. The new viewer may be immune to the frustration here, but Part one equally delivers a massive cloud of confusion that shields the connections between what seem to be distinct narrative threads in The Return, but patience is rewarded here.
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 listens to the phonograph playing, which seems to be producing the same repeating scratching sounds that he played for Cooper in the beginning. The scratching sound plays twice and then the credits roll.
The absence of music, despite the presence of machinery to produce it, is an exciting facet to think about in Part One of The Return. 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, making a distinct sound as the needle jumps from layer to layer in the track.
Consider this image, which is the visual sound graph of this scratching sound that plays from The Fireman’s phonograph. Again, I see a repeated sound pattern that can be visually described as two peaks Is this sound a set of coordinates has cost the lives of at least four characters in the first hour of The Return?
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
That early exchange with The Fireman hits hard, makes so much sense now that I’m reading this.