Twin Peaks Decaps — Episode 1.00 — “Northwest Passage”
If you’re a person on the internet — and I am confident that you are a person on the internet, let’s be real — then you may be aware that a mere three months from now the seminal television show Twin Peaks will be returning with new episodes. Original creators David Lynch and Mark Frost have written it, Lynch has directed it, and a good number of the original cast will be appearing in it (along with approximately ten thousand other actors).
To celebrate and capitalize upon this surprising-yet-not-surprising turn of events, I have crafted, lovingly and at great personal expense, the definitive series recap. I expect considerable fightback against my use of “definitive”, but if last year — the one ending with “016”; I refuse to speak its name in full ever again — has taught me anything at all, it’s taught me that words don’t have any meaning anymore so you can say whatever the hell you want, nothing matters, morality is a sick joke and in fact the entire notion of ethics is simply a desperate abstraction we have collectively applied to evolutionary survival reflexes (fully detached from which the villains among us have mutated and mutilated themselves), that sort of thing.
Still, like my deadbeat spiritual father and noted dove mishandler George Oscar (“GOB”) Bluth, I am mature and Canadian enough to retain a scrap of hono(u)r when it comes to making the label match the contents. In that spirit, and to preempt ever having to discuss with recreationally argumentative internet strangers the matter of what they expected, I have coined the word “decap” to separate and/or disclaim my efforts in relation to those of serious people possessing dedication and patience.
(Also, I wanted something catchy and memorable, yet distinct, to maximize my positive search engine karma. There’s definitely no danger of someone DuckDuckGo-ing the word “decaps” and finding anything unwelcome on the internet in the form of images or whathaveyou.)
(Maybe even someone can’t remember the name of the show but they know it’s about a murder so they search for “murder decaps”. If someone is looking up “murder decaps” on the internet I obviously want to ensure my name comes to their immediate attention.)
“Who are these Twin Peaks decaps for?” is a question you might ask if you’re still here. “Why are you treating rules of grammar and punctuation with cavalier disregard?” might be another one. “Are you going to sound like a smarmy Dave Barry wannabe the entire time? Because I’m not really up for that,” is a third thing you might say.
Look, I grew up reading Dave Barry. I’d argue that the informal internet voice that has grown ubiquitous since 9/11 owes him a great debt, even though if you ask him in person he will probably admit that he did nothing whatsoever to stop those terrible attacks. I’m still Team Barry, and if that counts as grounds to be deported from these United States of America, you’ll have to port me first, because I am a Canadian living in Canada, and after that you can just point me at the white-people-we’re-deporting line, and if you’re not sure which one that is I’ll just look for the short one.
Anyway, to answer your initial question that I made up for you, these murder decaps will ideally suit someone who has watched the series in its entirety at least once, and who has a tremendous amount of patience (though perhaps that second part is implied by the first).
What I’m saying is, I intend to take a cavalier attitude toward spoilers.
On the other hand, I also intend to be an unreliable narrator, because that’s a thing I learned about once that made me pretty excited. Therefore, anyone reading who hasn’t watched the first two seasons already — which is a weird thing to do, shine on you crazy diamonds — can fortify their spirits by assuming that I’m lying about everything.
(Incidentally, regarding spoilers… As I get older and weaker and more deeply anxious about everything that exists or may not, I have found that some shows and movies that I started to consume were causing me too much stress to continue without some foreknowledge of stressful events. Will this person die? Will that thing go badly wrong? Exposing myself, accidentally or otherwise, to certain key spoilers would sometimes soothe the tension enough that I could persevere. For example, you may have picked up on hints that by the time we get to season two this will have unintentionally devolved into a full-on mental health autotherapy-blog. SPOILER: it probably will.)
SO ANYWAY THE ACTUAL EPISODE OF THIS SHOW
Oh, these credits. It’s like getting into a warm bath beside a fireplace with a glass of eggnog, assuming you like those things. The languid music and gentle dissolves promise to immerse you in a world of wistful comforts.
(In this pilot episode it takes over two and a half minutes to get to the actual show, which is forever in tv time. The most interesting thing in this episode’s instance of the credit sequence, aside from the sheer nerve of it, is the misspelling of “Catherine Martell” under Piper Laurie’s name. I promise to keep delivering such high-quality observations for as long as you’re willing to continue reading.)
Speaking of spelling, it’s really easy to type “epidoe” when trying to type “episode”. It’s like how I always type “Tiny Fey” instead of “Tina Fey” the first time.
Shh, show’s on now.
Josie Packard is humming. And Pete Martell’s wife Katherine For This Episode But Catherine After That doesn’t seem to like him very much, which probably isn’t why he’s going fishing, but he’s going anyway.
Listen to the bell as Pete walks outside. It’s a tense note against the chords of the score, but it’s not arbitrarily discordant — it fits the chords perfectly to denote something being wrong. It reminds me of the hi-hat replacement blips from a Radiohead song, and I thought the song was “Idioteque”, but I checked and it’s not.
Anyway, at some point I noticed that Pete’s fishing pole visually crosses the exact spot in the background where Laura Palmer’s beached body is resting. My first thought: interesting coincidence. But after reading about how David Lynch and Jack Nance (who plays Pete) would go over his precise movements in excruciating detail years earlier when they were filming Eraserhead, I think it’s plausible that this visual cue was choreographed.
Pete goes out to fish. His rod precedes him, representing his intention. His intention becomes a discovery, his discovery sets the story into motion. Of course the rod leads us straight to it. Pete is a death dowser. Pete, played by Nance, the original filmic Lynch surrogate. Simple as pie.
Lucy.
Here we are at the Sheriff’s Station, ready to witness Lucy at the beginning of her destined purpose: to revive and reset the modern archetype of the ditzy female subordinate. You can’t see it yet, but she will prove herself to be smart and capable and reliable. Lucy is the struggling but undaunted heart of the law enforcement team. Lucy is the best that the town of Twin Peaks has to offer. Lucy is all of us in our imperfect glory. The world is sustained by the resilience and conscience of Lucys everywhere. Lucy is Life.
Her direction to Sheriff Harry S Truman regarding the telephony about to occur is the first joke of the show, and lets us know what to expect in terms of the ambitious approach to humor that the series, at its better moments, will reach for over the simpler, more well-trodden path. And like the opening credits, and the events slowly unfolding at the Martell/Packard house (technically known as Blue Pine Lodge, though if it’s referred to by that name more than even once over the duration of the series, my memory is betraying me), we are being instructed that this is entertainment for a patient audience who are game for something unusual.
(Incidentally, Kimmy Robertson stays in character when the camera is off her, faintly reflected on the rightmost edge of the glass partition as Sheriff Harry S Truman takes Pete’s call. Sure, that’s a director’s direction, and she wasn’t placed there in the shot by accident, and it mirrors Truman’s reflection moments earlier. No matter. Be like Kimmy. Be like Lucy.)
Back at Blue Pine Lodge — a name I’ve already used more than the collected scripts, I’m telling you — the traditions of an older, quainter, classically early-Lynchian society manifest. Men act, and women witness men taking action. If every frame of David Lynch’s filmed history wasn’t dripping with terrifying quasi-irony, I would be forced to call this Problematic, with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for Tumblr.
(I don’t know why I’m picking on Tumblr. Tumblr is fine and people who care about issues of social equality are right to do so. I was just determined to gracelessly cram in the Music Man reference once it occurred to me.)
(2001’s Mulholland Dr. — which a clerk at Video Centre in Montreal once handed to me whilst calling it “Mulholland Doctor”, and like an asshole I immediately corrected her, which, how dare I, I, who once referred to Evelyn Waugh as “she” at a time when I was working in the best bookstore in Winnipeg — goes a long way to correcting this gender throwbackery, despite the somewhat-gratuitous boobs.)
(And while I’m in the neighborhood, I love David Lynch like no other artist apart from perhaps Mr. Bowie, but when I look at the totality of his work I am uncomfortably obliged to borrow a phrase from Buggin’ Out, how come you got no brothers up on the wall? Everybody’s been white, pretty much all the time, and the casting announcements for 2017 so far have not been encouraging in that regard. I grew up in the eighties in a town smaller than Twin Peaks in a remote area of Manitoba that had more black people in it than Twin Peaks seems to have. Apparently Twin Peaks also had no people of Chinese origin except for those traveling directly from China with nefarious intent, and only one (or maybe two) Native American person (or maybe people), which for the Pacific Northwest is kind of baffling, especially since loads of (presumably Coast Salish but I don’t really know) Native American art is strewn around all over this show as flavoring. Lynch definitely knows they still exist, since he notoriously smokes American Spirit cigarettes. And “Native American” is still acceptable nomenclature, right? I hope I don’t forget to look that up later.)
(I think I got through all that pretty well.)
Anyway, my point is that it’s funny when Deputy Andy is taking photos and his head disappears.
Lucy is Life, Andy is Loss.
Okay, that pic of Deputy Andy with no head was my fifth screenshot already and I’m maybe seven minutes in. I have to adjust my pacing if I’m gonna be doing this every goddamned day for the next month except for a few days about halfway through for a reason that will become apparent without me having to explain.
But I mean, come on. It’s Laura Palmer. This was The Image of 1990. And if there’s been another iconic and culturally ubiquitous image from a television show since, I can’t think of it right now at two in the morning.
Okay, I had to do this one too. Because this shot,
this closeup of a ceiling fan above the stairs,
this shot that seems to fit into place as nothing more than another oddly chosen moment, like “Bigmouth starts talkin” or bereaved Sarah Palmer’s upcoming post-phone kitchen shriek after her husband Leland silently confirms her fear that their daughter is dead or Jim the morgue attendant saying “Jim”, is in fact a setup.
A setup isn’t a setup without a payoff. The payoff comes two real-world years later, in the feature film prequel Fire Walk With Me.
And it is horrifying.
Anyway, a sneaky thing that happens during this entire Sarah At Home scene is that despite being literally ten minutes in, the show just plain tells you Who Killed Laura Palmer and suggests something of the metaphysicalities of it, or if you prefer, the direct linear consequence of a previous generation’s sin, or both.
If you don’t know the resolution of the Laura Palmer murder plot — listen for the gravelly scrape of the rolling of my 2 a.m. eyes — skip the next two paragraphs. But it’s a pretty clever trick.
So, there are three important factors about Laura Palmer’s murder that are alluded to in this scene, and it comes from Sarah’s phone conversation with Betty “I’m Sure Sarah Said Beth” Briggs. Sarah, reaching for a sensible explanation, says “You know, I’m wondering if maybe she went out with Leland, he had an early meeting…”
First, yes, she went out with Leland, out to a train car where he stabbed her to death. Second, she also went out with Leland, in the sense that they were both subject to the dark magical forces that represent certain evils in the world of Twin Peaks. Third, she also went out with Leland, in the sense that she was subjected to childhood sexual abuse (and the associated symbolic spirits of possession) as he was in his own “early meeting” — hers at his hand under their own roof, his at the hand of that mysterious neighbor up on Pearl Lakes. Thus she is saying to Betty, in her calmest, clearest voice since she discovered that Laura was missing, “I wonder if my daughter was murdered by my husband, who was also sexually abusing her, in some final jealous and incestuous interdimensional frenzy that can be traced back to but not necessarily fully explained by his own trauma?”
OKAY LET’S MOVE ON TO SOMETHING LIGHTER
like there’s school, and the love stories are starting and damn that jukebox is loud, ehh, nobody cares. I mean it’s great and all, and I love it, but it’s not really why we’re here. We love murder, can’t get enough of it.
Here’s some more teenage girl corpse with Leland dadding around it in a daze that will soon become tragicomic in keeping with nearly every other element of the series.
And here’s a bunch of school stuff, the empty chair being the highlight for me. It lets we happy viewers figure out something hidden, which is fun, and also provides an excuse for focusing on just the few main characters who would be in a position to figure it out along with us.
Grace Zabriskie is a champion of acting. Just wanted to throw that in there. I’m glad she’ll be back for the new season.
Speaking of which, I really hope the new season lets us know how things turned out for Fred Trueax, whose only line was his name and only role was getting fired within fifteen seconds of appearing onscreen.
Ronette Pulaski (also glad Phoebe Augustine is returning, I promise I won’t do this with everyone) is not just a set of fresh leads for the plot to work with. She is the embodiment of Laura Palmer’s suffering, which Laura herself cannot express. Donna Hayward is frequently described as “Laura’s best friend”, but that Laura is dead now, and even in the prequel we only spend some of the time with her. Dark Laura’s best friend is Ronette, and Ronette’s loyalty to her after the murder is as strong as Donna’s, and her importance in the investigation is as vital.
Yeah, I feel like Ronette gets a bit discounted as a character, and that this reflects as a sort of class thing too, in the way that the Pulaskis are not a sophisticated family like the Palmers or the Haywards and are not celebrated in the same way. This makes Ronette a more “natural” victim, like the as-yet-unmet trailer-dwelling estranged daughter Teresa Banks. All three were in the same line of work together, but Teresa and Ronette were no Homecoming Queens.
Huh. After twenty-five years it just occurred to me for the first time, watching the Gas Farm scene, that it’s funny to have Nadine fixated on curtains, given how prominent curtains have been in David Lynch’s work.
Anyway,
Oh hey, speaking of iconic, here’s the best character introduction in television history except for possibly a handful of others I’m forgetting but I’m not writing about those shows right now. Meet FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.
My eye for detail, or maybe ear, is satisfied to note that Cooper’s “shouldn’t be too hard to remember that” is not just a punchline on Harry S Truman’s name, it’s a natural outgrowth of his concerns in that moment — making an effort to remember the name of the contact he is about to meet in this unfamiliar town, a minor task that he would have to do on a regular basis and which could be costly in terms of goodwill to get wrong. So it’s a funny line based in a real character motivation so small that many writers would overlook it.
Smart writing gives me brain tingles.
Incidentally, we’re over a half-hour in and we just met the primary protagonist. The nerve.
And here’s where Watson and Holmes meet, way down at the end of a hallway. They do the small talk thing, and Coop segues into his unavoidably uncomfortable assertion of authority and manages to make it both gentle and firm. Harry is receptive, not defensive, and as a result Cooper immediately lets down his own guard and gets excited about trees. The beginning of a bond is formed, and we see it develop more as the episode unfolds and they head into the unknown together.
(That honestly wasn’t meant to be as slashy as it reads but upon review I totally see it.)
Speaking of unknowns,
Elsewhere and othertimes, the Gas Farm stuff continues to be mildly dull laying of plot pipe, and is only slightly more interesting when you remember that technically Big Ed Hurley is a suspect. Ed could literally have been the murderer. Think about it: Ed has an unpleasant wife, he’s close to Laura’s best friend Donna, his nephew James Hurley is dating Laura… Okay, it’s weak, but at this point in a story nobody knows yet, he’s a viable object of suspicion.
Andy reports from the creepy train car crime scene, and it’s funny up until the moment when it isn’t. This is Twin Peaks at its Twin Peaksiest. The line between funny and horrible where David Lynch frequently sets up camp.
Cooper has a nice Cruel Sherlock riff while interrogating Bobby, ending the interview with a shocking (and by that point gratuitous) “You didn’t love her anyway”. Unexpected and unnecessary, like so many of the show’s memorable moments.
OK, Bob. Speaking of creepy as hell,
No, different creepy.
This Audrey scene where she distracts all the Norwegians with her kittenish sighs is creepy as hell. And it’s not immediately apparent, because there’s Comedy Music™ playing over it, so we’re being told to take it as funny. It’s not not funny — she’s clearly up to mischief and the “young pretty girl” delivery delivers — but imagine the scene without the derpy soundtrack and you come away with a very different feel.
This music will return when the Norwegians leave, which implies that it’s their theme, but to me it’s more tied to Audrey’s “emotional problems” and how they cause her to act destructively, simply by virtue of recurring in these scenes that establish her behavioral pattern. Which is a weird way to downplay it, given that her impulsiveness is a central trait of hers that gets explored a lot more throughout the show and is clearly part of her arc. Maybe starting off cute gives it somewhere to go? Maybe I’m overthinking it?
Ehh, if I start worrying this early about overthinking Twin Peaks I may as well pack it in now.
So, Donna’s obviously not going to be much help for the time being, but at least Lucy is there to pick up the slack that Coop has already rolled up into a tight little ball of evidence. Heyyy, has it been mentioned that the killer might be someone who knows Laura and has a motorcycle?
Oh, the Norwegians are leaving now. Oh, Comedy Music™ again. Oh.
By the way, in season two Diane Keaton directs an episode and everyone hates it. I personally don’t hate it, I think it’s fine and helps fight against the terrible subplots that are getting flopped around by then. But one of the complaints is her formal choreography of character movement and how it’s silly and detracts from the seriousness of the show.
I assume those people didn’t pay attention to the character movement in this lobby/exterior scene.
So, here we are at the creepy dirty blood place! This train car scene is well-known and well-discussed and I don’t have much to add. But I can’t recall anyone pointing out what they’ve done with the opening shot — manufacturing a reputation of danger and power for the unknown killer via stage-setting of the investigation. Let’s call it Lecterfying.
There’s no viable narrative reason for a dozen cops and randos with guns to be actively on guard outside the train car, watching the door and prepared to fire. It’s not like the killer is still in there, since Andy (at least) has been inside and knows it’s empty. And even if there was a lurking killer this is A) overmanning the problem, and B) a terrible on-the-ground strategy.
All that excess firepower is there — and on some level we recognize it as excessive, even if we don’t have the explicit thought — to create an aura of unprecedented and unpredictable danger. That may seem like Cinema 101 until you watch a couple of episodes of current television shows during this era of Peak TV and realize how often they don’t even know where to put the camera to deliver basic character dynamics, never mind how to stage a scene to evoke such subtleties as Mood or Subtext or Being Interesting.
Speaking of sophisticated storytelling, Heyyy, has it been mentioned that the killer might be someone who knows Laura and has a motorcycle and also has the other half of the heart necklace and is staring at it?
Incidentally, just as an aside, fuck this entire Johnny Horne side story. Fuck it to heck. It’s dumb and it was tone-deaf even then, plus it was overgilding the already well-gilded Saint Laura and Disturbed Audrey lilies, and in any case nothing worthwhile ever came of any of it. In the fanedit in my head these scenes just don’t exist.
Some standards must prevail.
Anyway, Special Agent Dale Cooper is about to open a dirty magazine in hopes of finding a seventeen-year-old girl or two in it.
I had some notes of how Leo Johnson’s first appearance makes him seem like a weedy little twerp, even though he gets really scary really fast later. And also about the weird living situation at the Martell’s (a.n.k.a. “Blue Pine Lodge”). And about the Town Hall meeting where Harry explains some of that shit and sets up a lot of sawmill plot for later. And some other stuff.
Instead, I want to take that space and typing time to unpack the stakeout at the Roadhouse — specifically as it pertains to Harry and Coop’s relationship.
When Mike Nelson and Bobby Briggs show up at the Roadhouse, Cooper hints to Truman that trouble may be on the horizon. It’s not just an observation, or a cue to orient the audience, although it is both of those. It’s also a moment of Coop testing Harry. Will he pick up on the hint? Will he react to the implication? Whether it’s because he missed it, or because he has his own read on the situation, Harry does nothing for now.
But when Donna arrives, Cooper makes an explicit suggestion that they should call for backup. Harry knows which way the wind is blowing, and revises his request from one unit to two, at which point Cooper gives a nod of agreement that says they are on the same page. Thumbs up!
The bond is strengthened in the direction of senior lawman to partner. Cooper approves of Harry’s judgement and capacity to perform his duties.
This dynamic is respected later on when, Donna having slipped through their net, Cooper says “my fault, Harry, not yours”. It isn’t clearly more one man’s fault than the other’s, but if Cooper is in charge then Cooper honorably shoulders the responsibility.
Tons of exposition and feels in the James and Donna conversation about the night before (much of which we get to see first-hand in Fire Walk With Me), and my main takeaways here are that it’s beautifully shot, it confidently goes on for a long time without flagging, and — incredibly minor spoiler — Dr Jacoby has some weird night walk routes if you ask me. I mean, they drove for ages to get way the hell out there, and he’s just amblin’ around?
(extremely Tim Bisley sheepish voice: “Amblin’ rhymes with Tamblyn…”)
I’m sleepy, but I want to point out that motorcycle and jewelry enthusiast James Hurley looks effectively small and weak like a kicked puppy this first night in jail across from Mike and Bobby, especially compared to later when he’s done his duty by talking to Coop and Harry and returns to his cell with confidence.
(Honestly, James Marshall (as James Hurley) is maybe the most dedicated of all the “teenager” actors in the show when it comes to acting like a teenager believably might. I will remind you, that these actors are meant to be portraying teenagers.)
Look, this whole show after the next episode and onward is based on “a policeman’s dream” when it comes right down to it. But what I want to talk about here is how this Tomorrow Comes Early scene completes the bond of acceptance that I mentioned in the stakeout sequence.
This time it’s Harry S Truman, the local sheriff who Cooper will respectfully defer to at points in the future due to his position in the community, who is in the position to pass judgement.
And as Cooper leaves the conference room — and the episode — heading down the hallway dictating notes into his recorder just as he did when he entered the town — and the episode — Harry breaks into a charmed smile.
Thus the bond is strengthened in the direction of local lawman to outsider. Harry approves of Cooper’s unorthodox methods and unusual behavior.
This allows the audience to accept Cooper as a legitimate lawman as well. But most importantly, it closes the circle of respect and burgeoning friendship between the two partners.
This is really the end of the episode, if you think of the episode as the investigative day (as I tend to do). But there’s still some barking and some snogging and some
shrieking.
