F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper is half the fun of Twin Peaks. A dedicated cop, expert marksman, and brilliant analytical detective, he comes to the eponymous town to solve the brutal murder of a teenage girl named Laura Palmer.
Cooper chooses to lean on his intuition as well as his intellect. He uses methodology that seems nonsensical, but produces dead-on results. In an infamous early episode, he dreams of a dancing dwarf who turns out to have useful information.
If it works, it works.
As Cooper investigates, he learns the secrets of the town, all while consuming large amounts of coffee and cherry pie. He has an over-the-top positive attitude that rubs off on the townsfolk, who accept him into their midst. Somehow, he comes across as noble and trustworthy instead of ridiculous.
The town of Twin Peaks is strange, and the townsfolk keep getting stranger as the series progresses. They exhibit a wide variety of psychological disorders, which is only natural, with David Lynch co-helming the show. Lynch's other work is filled with characters who disappear into imagined identities, or fail to distinguish their dreams from their lives. They experience paranoia, and off-the-chart OCD.
Maybe it took someone a little crazy himself, like Cooper, to come to Twin Peaks and untangle things.
Cooper is crazy, yet square. It’s a good thing, too.
His decency helps to sell a very dark series.
As the first two seasons unfold, the writers ratchet up the surrealism, while placing an ever-greater emphasis on the supernatural. Characters dance on desks, and a spirit world is introduced, with its own attendant mythology.
I won’t lie: the original, thirty-episode run of Twin Peaks has its dull patches, and way too much empty melodrama. It’s still a fascinating experience, with enough tonal whiplash to keep the viewer off-balance and constantly engaged.
These first two seasons offer a glimpse at a world that vacillates between eccentricity and madness. In their way, they are also very charming.
By contrast, the horrifying prequel movie, Fire Walk With Me, plunges the viewer down a rabbit hole to the dark side. It’s a film made for devotees of the first two seasons, but it’s sordid and violent, with almost no relief.
Thankfully Agent Cooper shows up from time to time, reaching out through the spirit world and acting as a kind of guardian angel to Laura Palmer. He even gives the end of the movie an incongruous and welcome sense of hope.
If you’re a fanatic, the information contained in the movie will interest you.
If you’re not a fanatic, beware.
Truly.
Twin Peaks was eventually revived for a belated third season. It took twenty-five years, but it happened. Amazingly, the revival contains no fan service. It doesn’t rely on nostalgia. It’s just a continuation of the story...a very, very bizarre continuation.
With the revival, Lynch has taken Twin Peaks, and television, into a place that Lewis Carroll might have imagined, if he had been writing for twenty-first century adults. The dancing dwarf has “evolved” into a tree; David Bowie’s character from the movie has been reborn as an orb of energy flowing from the spout of a giant tea kettle.
I would never presume to explain all the things that happen, yet I think I can explain the ending, which shines a light on everything that came before.
I won’t wade into the details of the mythology.
I’m interested in the emotional impact.
Major spoilers follow.
To truly appreciate Twin Peaks, one has to understand that the central figure isn’t Agent Cooper, but poor Laura Palmer. Towards the end of season three, Cooper goes back in time to prevent Laura’s murder from happening in the first place. He intercepts her in the woods as she stumbles to the place where she’s fated to die. Then he holds out his hand and asks her to come with him instead. It’s an emotional moment, if you’ve followed these characters from the beginning.
Yet Laura has lived such a terrible life that erasing her death won’t save her from the darkness that traps her. Before she died, she was a beautiful, popular, seventeen-year-old prom queen. She projected a perfect picture to the town, and the town accepted the picture, yet her life was secretly a nightmare, and she couldn’t escape.
When Cooper stops her murder from happening, he’s doing everything in his power to save her. When he holds out his hand, he’s doing everything he knows how to do.
It isn’t enough.
In the final moments of Twin Peaks, she is reminded of her nightmare-life, and plunged back into it.
As some people go through life they seem happy, but secretly, they are lost.
Simply...lost.
Is Twin Peaks just a dream in Laura’s head? Is she fantasizing about her own death, because she believes that a horrible death is the only thing that will make people notice the horrors in her life? Is Cooper her imaginary, shining knight, leading a group of other heroes on a quest to avenge her?
She eventually flies away and becomes someone else, but her demons will follow, no matter where her mind travels.
All of us are fated to face our demons.
Running is not a long-term strategy.
Through his work, David Lynch communicates a lot of pain. It cuts through his weird doublespeak, hits us in the solar plexus, and makes a sincere storyteller out of him.
Amazing analysis. Thank you.