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Twin Peaks Rewatch 3: Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer

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Twin Peaks Rewatch 3:

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Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer

Things really take a turn for the weird as we hit episode three of our once-a-week rewatch of Twin Peaks. While this week dives headfirst into into dreams, mysticism and melodrama, Jake and Chris agree that the most important development was that Agent Cooper finally finished whittling that whistle.

If you haven't heard our discussion of the Pilot (aka episode 0, aka episode 1, aka "Northwest Passage"), you canCatching up? Listen to the Rewatch archive.

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The dream sequence just had me crestfallen when I saw it the second time. It was a truly great scene.

One thing I love about Cooper is how geniunely he embraces these things. He's so unabashed in employing his Buddhist/mystic rock throwing technique, and he believes so fully in the power of his dream. He just exists in this world so well.

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I'm watching Twin Peaks for the first time and this is the episode where it really hooked and surprised me. The entire rock-throwing scene, the sublime comic timing of Cooper's nose grab, the incredible dream sequence. Just great. 

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Posted this for a brief time, before; however, someone was good enough to alert me to the fact that I was one episode ahead. I have seen other people get confused since then, so I'm not as ashamed for jumping the gun.

 

I love this episode, too. The dream sequence is this episode is really great and is often what gets parodied in other shows like the Simpsons; i.e. the dwarf dancing, backwards talking. Will try and confine myself to only the things in the dream, because Cooper explains the dream a little more at the beginning of episode 4. I couldn't wait to watch it after the cliffhanger ending!

 

I really love the move the original Wicker Man (1973). I think Twin Peaks and that movie have strong similarities. They both have morally upright, pure law men who journey to a small back water community to solve the mystery of a missing/dead girl. The Wicker Man's protagonist is as repulsed by the community that he finds as Agent Cooper is infatuated with Twin Peaks.

 

I had forgotten that Cooper was trapped in the Black Lodge at the end of season 2. I was spoiled to it by reading about the potential new book by Mark Frost. Regardless, in both films, each law men becomes trapped by the places they visit.

 

I also really like the idea of juxtaposing this serial killer drama against the genre defining Silence of the Lambs. In Twin Peaks, the Red Room sequence is a place where Cooper "goes" to connect the dots as it were. We can see it as a purely magical place, or, at this point, just think of it as Cooper's unconscious mind working on the issues. Regardless, some of the most indelible sequences and characters happen there. Silence of the Lambs has it's own "Red Room" sequences when Agent Starling is sent to interview Hannibal Lecter. Silence of the Lambs has a lot of imagery that casts Starling as a Knight questing into the world to find the monster. She even has to go to a castle (the psych ward) and transit into the earth to talk with another trapped monster (Lecter) in order to get the knowledge necessary to catch her monster. However, in Silence of the Lambs, Lecter challenges Starling to figure out the why of the killings in order to catch the killer. It is not a whodunit. We don't have to select from a cast of characters like in Twin Peaks.

 

In fact, when we do find out the killer in Twin Peaks is Leland Palmer, it isn't him at all, but BOB the entity who possessed him. And furthermore, the why of the killings is not even really something that we are supposed to fully understand in Twin Peaks, because the Red Room and the Black Lodge are magical places whose rituals we never completely "get." So, who killed Laura Palmer is paramount and the why of it is explained magically whereas Silence of the Lambs explains it psychologically.

 

In both examples, however, the payoff is not the killers, but the people in the Red Rooms who are really interesting. Hannibal Lecter is awesome because he is infinitely wise but still evil and a predator. What would make one man Yoda has made Hannibal a slave to his pleasures regardless of his wisdom. In Twin Peaks, the Red Room sequence introduces the dwarf character who has a certain type of knowledge and wisdom that comes out all garbled, but he is necessary for Cooper to make the deductive leaps.

 

Watching this sequence after being spoiled to the fact that Cooper was trapped in the Black Lodge, it all reads more malevolent in many ways. When the dwarf turns around and says "Let's Rock!" and you understand that sequence is happening 25 years in the future, it fills me with dread. The dwarf until that moment doesn't seem all that bad. In fact, he always struck me as a helpful character. But maybe he is feeding off the spoils of the murder as much as everyone else in the Black Lodge?

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I buy Wicker Man connection, but Silence of the Lambs might be too much of a stretch. Either way, this is also one of my favorite episodes of the show, mostly because of that dream sequence. There is something so psychically penetrating about it and I'm always enraptured when I watch it. The sound of the (I think) Man From Another World's hands as he rubs them together is especially hypnotic.

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While I honestly don't care for many of the characters in the show, I'm completely onboard with the Sheriff and Agent Cooper. This episode, in particular, seems to have many of those WTF moments I'm growing to love.

 

Coffee- it seems to be adored almost as much as fish in this series. It's featured frequently and the bizarre enthusiasm for a refill during the zen sequence was brow-raising.

 

Dream Sequence- What's with the neck wrinkles? Kyle MacLachlan is pretty young in the series (so much so that from certain angles I wasn't completely certain it was him), and he's got a contrasting network of neck wrinkles during the scene, though it doesn't seem like they've aged him with prosthetics (I'm watching blurry SD so maybe I'm missing something).

 

The backwards talking was interestingly done, at first I thought it was just reversed. Did they record themselves speaking backwards and then reverse it? There are many quirks in the sequence that add wonderfully to the dreamlike feeling of the scene.

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Dream Sequence- What's with the neck wrinkles? Kyle MacLachlan is pretty young in the series (so much so that from certain angles I wasn't completely certain it was him), and he's got a contrasting network of neck wrinkles during the scene, though it doesn't seem like they've aged him with prosthetics (I'm watching blurry SD so maybe I'm missing something).

 

The backwards talking was interestingly done, at first I thought it was just reversed. Did they record themselves speaking backwards and then reverse it? There are many quirks in the sequence that add wonderfully to the dreamlike feeling of the scene.

 

The wrinkles are explained at the beginning of the next episode. Yes, the are supposed to be wrinkles.

 

Interestingly enough, the wikipedia article for The Man From Another Place has a section on the backward talking. Don't go there unless you don't mind spoilers, but important part is this:

 

"The strange cadence of the Man’s dialogue was achieved by having Anderson speak into a recorder. This was then played in reverse, and Anderson was directed to repeat the reversed original. This "reverse-speech" was then reversed again in editing to bring it back to the normal direction. This created the strange rhythm and accentuation that set Cooper’s dream world apart from the real world.[3]

Anderson recalls that his reverse-speech was not difficult to master as, coincidentally, he had used it as a secret language with his junior high school friends. Series creator David Lynch was unaware of this when he cast Anderson in the part, and had hired a trainer to help Anderson with enunciation. When he found out Anderson could already talk backwards, he canceled the trainer and wrote more difficult lines of dialogue for Anderson to read.[4]"

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That's really interesting stuff, thank you!

 

Way off topic, there's a certain serindipity (or, perhaps, unfortunate condemnation) in our both having made the same episode # screw up and residing in the same city.

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The speech thing was also done in this song, which I adore:

 

 

 

Does Mrs. Horne ever show up again after this episode?

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Golden Calf, I love that one. As long as we are talking about videos that rely on inscrutability a la Twin Peaks, I think this is also a good version of that song. Warning: slightly disturbing, but an actual Radiohead version, think:

 

 

EDIT: Better version added with background on the video. You'll have to watch it at Vimeo, but I think it is a better version than the one I posted before.

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Also, as long as we are talking about David Lynch and sound, I thought I would post this. Dune (1984) gets a bad wrap, but it has the sickly feel of David Lynch AALLLL over it. He is a master of understanding that sound, particularly ambient sound and noise are integral to creating a world. I think the effects for the guild navigator are poorly done here (meaning the creature puppetry is somewhat bad) but the sounds when his "train" is rolled in and the phrase, "The Bene Gesserit witch must leave" haunt me. Also, the fact that the guildsmen mop up his ooze as they leave is pretty disturbing. Tried to make the video start at 3 minutes 11 seconds:

 

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Also, as long as we are talking about David Lynch and sound, I thought I would post this. Dune (1984) gets a bad wrap, but it has the sickly feel of David Lynch AALLLL over it. He is a master of understanding that sound, particularly ambient sound and noise are integral to creating a world. I think the effects for the guild navigator are poorly done here (meaning the creature puppetry is somewhat bad) but the sounds when his "train" is rolled in and the phrase, "The Bene Gesserit witch must leave" haunt me. Also, the fact that the guildsmen mop up his ooze as they leave is pretty disturbing. Tried to make the video start at 3 minutes 11 seconds:

Also on that topic, I watched Eraserhead on Sunday night and was so impressed with how he was able to make an ambient drone be so threatening and horrific. He's a master of taking simple things and really twisting them in just the right way.

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I assume this is largely coincidence, but I get a Persona / Velvet Room vibe from the dream sequence.

 

Interesting note about the backwards talking. That's actually how I assumed they did it, based on my experience with reverse-talking in recordings and such.

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Also on that topic, I watched Eraserhead on Sunday night and was so impressed with how he was able to make an ambient drone be so threatening and horrific. He's a master of taking simple things and really twisting them in just the right way.

 

I am ashamed to admit, I have never seen Eraserhead! Aghhhh. For a long time it just wasn't really available, then it was but only from one website...and now, I have no excuse. And apparently, that's where David Lynch's love of sound was most forceful. My wife and I will have to watch it now...on yet, another recommendation to do so. Luckily, it is more widely available.

 

I was wondering what David Lynch's process for coming up with all the sounds was for his films, because, at some point, you actually have to think, when an article tells of the importance of sound to David Lynch, okay, so, is David Lynch the Sound Designer? Because, there is a quality to the sounds in a lot of his movies that must have taken a lot of work and is definitively ...him. And the answer, because I just looked it up, is a man called Alan Splet. I am going to link to an article, but the interesting part is the embedded youtube video in which David Lynch describes how Splet and he worked on the sounds for Eraserhead for 9 hours for 63 days to come up with the sounds for that film. They created all the sounds instead of just referencing libraries of sounds. Then Splet went on to design sounds for a bunch of other of Lynch's movies. It's a shame Splet's wikipedia page isn't longer, because I'm pretty sure his progeny are vast.

 

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/05/13/snapping-humming-buzzing-banging-remembering-alan-splet/

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I am ashamed to admit, I have never seen Eraserhead! Aghhhh. For a long time it just wasn't really available, then it was but only from one website...and now, I have no excuse. And apparently, that's where David Lynch's love of sound was most forceful. My wife and I will have to watch it now...on yet, another recommendation to do so. Luckily, it is more widely available.

I was wondering what David Lynch's process for coming up with all the sounds was for his films, because, at some point, you actually have to think, when an article tells of the importance of sound to David Lynch, okay, so, is David Lynch the Sound Designer? Because, there is a quality to the sounds in a lot of his movies that must have taken a lot of work and is definitively ...him. And the answer, because I just looked it up, is a man called Alan Splet. I am going to link to an article, but the interesting part is the embedded youtube video in which David Lynch describes how Splet and he worked on the sounds for Eraserhead for 9 hours for 63 days to come up with the sounds for that film. They created all the sounds instead of just referencing libraries of sounds. Then Splet went on to design sounds for a bunch of other of Lynch's movies. It's a shame Splet's wikipedia page isn't longer, because I'm pretty sure his progeny are vast.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/05/13/snapping-humming-buzzing-banging-remembering-alan-splet/

For what its worth, this rewatch effort is what finally has started to get me into Lynch. Of his major films, I've only seen Eraserhead. I only watched eight episodes or so of TPs the first time I gave it a shot. Now I'm trying to find time to view more of his films.

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post-26597-0-66946300-1414068581_thumb.gif

I love the expression of genuine amusement on Truman's face. Rewatching the show is even more interesting than I expected because it is so full of scenes and details I had forgotten.

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Oh, god that nose pinch. Like little boys! That snort Truman (or Cooper?) does. Gold!

 

My girlfriend noted at the end, that she felt a bit of the dream universe's sense of mystery was lost by having The Man dancing during the credits. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but I thought it was a valid point.

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I agree that it was offputting. Maybe it's because many newer shows add outtakes or deleted scenes to the credits, but it gave me that same feeling. It changed it from being a bizarre, yet thematic, occurrence in a dream sequence to a, "Hey, wasn't it silly when we had the little guy dance out of the scene?"

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There is a truly great NY Mag article from 1990 (apparently written right after this episode airs). It goes into some background detail about the show, with really great quotes from Lynch on the meaning of the weird parts of Twin Peaks. It's crazy to read something from that era now, with the 20+ year distance. Really worth reading, and zero chance of being spoiled if you have only watched the first three episodes.

 

http://t.co/PY8EM2ip0Q

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Last episode was so low-key, and I was glad when things start getting comically over-the-top right at the start. The Horne family quietly eating their meal for the entirety of the opening credits, getting noisily interrupted, culminating in a conversation through sandwich-stuffed mouths. Nadine hulking out and trashing her rowing machine. And even in the middle of the woods, that table is still stacked with donuts.

 

I'd forgotten how early the first appearance of the Red Room and first real introduction of Bob happened.

 

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I love the expression of genuine amusement on Truman's face. Rewatching the show is even more interesting than I expected because it is so full of scenes and details I had forgotten.

 

That was great, as was this:
post-8476-0-07347400-1414115542_thumb.gif

 

Also, Invitation to Love! I always think of the Lords and Ladies show in Max Payne 2 when it's shown.

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Albert, despite being one of my favorite characters, bugged me to no end because I know I had seen Miguel Ferrer before in a role with a somewhat similar attitude.

A few episodes later, and after racking my brain I realized that he was the villan in the hot 1994 Disney classic "Blank Check." Of course I had to rent it and watch it immediately. It's not too bad, as far as Child Comedies featuring backward baseball cap rad kids go. It also stars Tone Loc, so you know all the hip kids were on board.

 

Anyway, this is the episode that really hooked me. The thought process of Cooper really starts to set in, and we start to see where all these shady deals are headed.

I was surprised at how plainly the Bob/Mike stuff is laid out in Cooper's dream. I guess I was too transfixed by the bizarreness of it all to put anything together.

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Sorry for the wall of text. There is a TL:DR at the bottom.

 

CLWheeljack brought up the idea of magical realism early on, but I didn't remember enough of the details of Twin Peaks to definitively make a case for or against magical realism. You might think, Magical Realism sounds like a boring literary term, so why do I care? The reason Magical Realism is important speaks to the specific way Twin Peaks makes you feel when you watch it. The specific ways in which Twin Peaks plays with reality are its biggest strengths. A weaker example would break the rules of Magical Realism and just leave you irked.

 

Magical Realism's first rule is that the plot has to have a mundane setting such as a small town like Twin Peaks. The second rule is that magical things have to go on in the background and the characters in the story simply have to accept the magical elements without question. A good example of this outside of Twin Peaks, from a culture with more instances of Magical Realism, is Like Water for Chocolate. I am talking about the movie here not the book, because I haven't read that. In Like Water for Chocolate, the narrator has a gift for cooking that has been passed down through the generations; however, she is not just able to cook exquisite meals, she is able to perform magic with her meals. If I remember correctly, she is able to do things like give her sister persistent flatulence and horrible breath or make a whole table full of people become sexually amorous. This is done so expertly that the viewer almost begins to believe in the magic of food. All this is set against the mundane story of a modestly poor family.

 

Now, one of the things that Magical Realism can't do and still be called Magical Realism is confine all the magical and inexplicable things to a dream sequence. Dream sequences are psychological in nature and are the realm of surrealism. Dali is a good example of surrealism and when you look at his paintings, many look like something you vaguely remember from a dream and physics are out the window. The first Matrix movie does a good job of playing with your understanding of the surreal because we are made to understand that all magical and arguably surreal elements are confined to the "dreaming" world. Nothing magical happens in the mundane/drab world of the people in the waking world. Then, in the second(?) Matrix movie Neo uses magic in the real world to subdue some squids that are about to attack them and things become irksome because it breaks the rules but the series doesn't really move toward Magical Realism in any way. This is the best example I could come up with on short notice.

 

Again, why does this matter? It matters because many of the surreal things that happen in Twin Peaks, happen in dreams. All the Red Room sequences are dreams, I believe. My memory is still hazy on the later episodes and season two. So, maybe this will be proven wrong. But for now, all the things that happen in Cooper's dreams are surreal not magically real. The surreal does not rule out the fact that Agent Cooper could be demented. Or, his dreams could simply be the surreal representation of his mind working through the clues and the secrets he learns there could be deductive jumps personified by the entities we meet in the Red Room.

 

But the reason Twin Peaks is so exceptional in its handling of the surreal and magical is that it is attempting to marry surrealism and magical realism and not become irksome while doing so. Lynch and Frost make this easier by the overt characterizations, the music, the sounds and noises, and the quirkiness in the real world settings.

 

In Like Water For Chocolate, the Magical Realism plays with the idea of food and its powers. It deals with the mythos of food and stretches the realities of what are possible with cooking. Twin Peaks has its own mythos that it uses to stretch our beliefs and that is the mythos surrounding FBI agents and the serial killer hunting agent in particular. From the moment we first meet Agent Cooper he is already endowed with the armor of previous incarnations of serial killer hunters. This is why movies such as Silence of the Lambs are so important to the mythos. Twin Peaks takes the precision of these other incarnations and places them in the likable incongruity of Agent Cooper. From the moment he finds the letter under the fingernail we understand that he has been "at this" for a long time. We also are made to gradually understand that he not only has gifted abilities of deduction, he can also intuitively tell when people are romantically involved.

 

However, Cooper's deduction and intuition take a rapid turn in Episode 3: Zen, or to Catch a Killer. We see his otherwise orthodox methods flare out of control when he invites the sheriff's office to the rock throwing ceremony. This scene is really fun to watch with a group of people who have forgotten it or never seen it before, because at this point in the story, we begin to believe that Cooper believes he has otherworldly powers, but the characters in the show literally (four of them on a wooden bench) lean in to the explanation and the exercise. They take it as a matter of course, either because they understand otherworldly happenings, or because they believe in the mythos of the FBI agent serial hunter so strongly that we are given our first inclination that the characters aren't phased by the magical. Regardless, at this point, things get weird. This is followed later in the same episode by the Red Room dream where things become surreal.

 

But I don't think things become trully Magical Realism till Episode 5: The One Armed Man. The beginning of the episode has many of the characters gathered around in the Palmer household listening to Laura's Mom tell of her visions. But they aren't just humoring her. They are working up a sketch and Cooper agrees that was the man in his dream. Then, her vision of Jacoby finding the locket is revealed. Does the fact that Cooper's dream and Leland's wife match up seem to phase anyone? Not really.


 

The trick and fun parts of Twin Peaks are determining those things which happen magically outside of Cooper's dreams or from his dreams until the two different types of fiction get lost in each other.

 

TL:DR When magical things are confined to a dream sequence it is surrealism. Magical realism is when inexplicable things happen in the real world but don't really phase the characters. I believe Lynch and Frost are trying to gradually marry the two.

 

EDIT: Changed the TL:DR to include the fact that surreal things can happen outside dreams.

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Albert, despite being one of my favorite characters, bugged me to no end because I know I had seen Miguel Ferrer before in a role with a somewhat similar attitude.

A few episodes later, and after racking my brain I realized that he was the villan in the hot 1994 Disney classic "Blank Check." Of course I had to rent it and watch it immediately. It's not too bad, as far as Child Comedies featuring backward baseball cap rad kids go. It also stars Tone Loc, so you know all the hip kids were on board.

I remember that movie as having a deep kiss between a woman and a young boy, but I found the scene on Youtube a couple of years back, and while still grossly inappropriate, it seemed like it was chopped or something.

 

I saw Blank Check in the theatres long long ago though, is it possible they edited such kissing for home video release?!  Fucking kid brain.

 

Also I just read that the woman in Blank Check was an FBI agent, just like Cooper. What is it with FBI agents and minors?

 

Now that I have talked too much about Blank Check for one lifetime, I think I'm finally going to go drive by the castle house in Austin. I'm sure it attracts almost no one.

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