*The final installment YOU NEED TO VISIT TWIN PEAKS - PART THREE will arrive later next week to complete the triptych.
Meanwhile please enjoy this special extended edition article combining PART ONE and PART TWO. Thanks for reading and have a damn fine holiday weekend!
PART ONE: Secrets & Symbolism of the Masterpiece That Changed Television Forever
Since its original broadcast in 1990, the primetime television series Twin Peaks remains in a league of its own across all media.
Maybe once or twice in a decade an exceptional classic appears, such as The Simpsons, Seinfeld or Friends. Even if you aren’t a fan of those three you can acknowledge they had a massive impact on countless shows that followed. The best elements that made them runaway hits are now token go-to formulas that have spawned so many descendants they can almost be considered specific genres, possibly; animated social satire (cartoons for grown-ups), snarky awkward situational banter bounced around everyday oddballs (“What’s the deal with…?”) and the big city fantasy life (hang out, hook up, repeat).
The same genre-establishing influence should be credited to Twin Peaks, a cliffhanger action-comedy labyrinth of twists, turns, clues and wow! Did you see what happened on the show last night?
While it’s still not as well known as Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!”, George Costanza’s Larry David-isms or Rachel Green’s side-parted bob cut, Twin Peaks is certifiably an overall artistic masterpiece.
It remains an enduring body of rich, layered work that is deservedly the subject of study in major universities. Twin Peaks is to television what the iconic band The Velvet Underground was to subversively popular alternative music of the 1970’s and forever more.
Overall this review will be spoiler-free. If you’ve never watched a single episode, we hope you will be inspired to do so. The secrets and clues and payoffs along the journey are golden moments we would never dare to ruin by early reveal. If you already know the story arc these articles will be a reunion with old friends and enemies, a stroll down the dark path of intrigue hidden deep in the forest that winds between the White Lodge and the Black Lodge.
These posts will only focus on the thirty episodes that comprise Season One (broadcast from April 8, 1990 to May 23rd, 1990), Season Two (broadcast from September 30th, 1990 to June 10th, 1991) and the feature film prequel Fire Walk With Me that premiered on August 28th, 1992.
Season Three, alternately known as Twin Peaks: The Return and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series, aired on the Showtime network in 2017 and will be discussed sometime in the future at a later date.
Pie Heaven, Primal Fear & the Ghost of Marilyn Monroe
The world of Twin Peaks is vast and dense. Within there exists a galaxy of characters and subplots to follow. Even the considerable space of a three-part feature article series is merely a coffee mug attempting to contain the ocean of connections, layers and theories available to enthusiasts of the mythology.
This is a key to the enduring, almost timeless appeal of the program. Questions are posed, striking imagery is presented but the answers and true meanings are rarely delivered, only hinted at. It’s up to the viewer to ponder and decide.
This is also what makes the series so fun and engaging. In a parallel quest to Agent Cooper’s determined journey to bring the killer of Laura Palmer to justice, so are you the viewer tasked with the challenge of making sense of the show as a whole. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense at all. Or does it?
Unlike clear-cut trials of tangible evidence and credible testimony, you can’t prove anything after watching Twin Peaks. It seems to fulfill the creative team's intention to leave you utterly baffled, bewildered and mystified. This is to your benefit and makes the show endlessly rewatchable.
In order to proceed with our analysis in any coherent way we need to start with an outline of who, what and most importantly, where. We’ll move forward with the assumption that you have not watched Twin Peaks before, or if you have that it’s been a long time since then and you’ll be thankful for this recap. We won’t be able to delve into the psychic powers of the Log Lady or question the disappearance of Major Briggs with any efficiency or clarity if we don’t start out on the same pathway through the woods together.
As previously noted, while some plot points must be mentioned to convey the arc of the narrative, this review will be spoiler-free. The truths behind the secrets of Twin Peaks will remain yours to uncover or rediscover.
For those of you brand new to the shadowy universe of Twin Peaks, the central drama revolves around the disturbing murder of popular local teenager Laura Palmer, the disastrous ramifications her death has for the community and the journey of main protagonist Special Agent Dale Cooper, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to solve the mystery. The plot is neatly summarized by the unofficial tag line for the show and ultimate water-cooler conversation question in the spring of 1990 -
“Who killed Laura Palmer?”
Twin Peaks can be described as an action comedy drama or a murder mystery soap opera. The numbers of colorful people that populate the tale are extensive. The biggest, most important character of all is the sense of place, hence the title of the show.
The Woods
You can’t see the forest for the trees.
Only fools deny the beauty and power of nature. Forests are places of serenity and spirituality intimately connected to the wellsprings of Life itself. The Druids believed it was impossible to worship God or the Goddess in any building made by man, so all their rituals and ceremonies were performed in the woods, usually in clearings centered in circles of tall trees.
Some characters in the show eventually discover a circle of twelve sycamore trees deep in the Ghostwood National Forest outside the town. The trees surround a rocky pool of black liquid flanked by two more sycamore trees. This eerie location is a supernatural portal to another world beyond our own. The area is named Glastonbury Grove, in a direct reference to the burial place of the legendary King Arthur and his often-downplayed connection to the ancient pagan Druid religion.
The forest is sacred. It is also a place of danger. Humans - especially humans reared in the age of technology - are far out of their element in the dark night of the forest. Fear of the dark woods is a deep, primal fear from the earliest days of our time as human animals on the planet Earth. While the trees seem stoic and passive, silent and unmoving, they really see and know everything about human weakness, frailty and our collective fall from grace as worshippers of calculated science over primordial nature.
You may think you can hide your secrets in the woods, but you can never hide your secrets from the woods. All the most sophisticated updated navigation equipment in the world is worthless in the deep woods. Wi-Fi is non-existent. Connection lost. Power down. Network not available. No one can hear you scream.
If a tree falls in the woods but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
The Town
The fictional town of Twin Peaks lies in the Pacific Northwest. The name derives from two mountains that exist in the real town of Snoqualmie, Washington. This is where all the action takes place. Despite the regional exterior and landscape-specific backgrounds, it’s a stand-in for Everytown, USA. You have the high school and the police station, the diner, the hotel, the hospital and the bar. Like everything in Twin Peaks, they appear to be commonplace on the surface but what actually goes on behind closed doors is clandestine. This is a recurring theme throughout every episode.
Duality is everything in the work of series co-creator, director and mastermind David Lynch. Two locations worth special mention due to their contrasting duality are the Double R Diner and One Eyed Jacks.
The Double R Diner (“Double R” for Railroad) is a happy place. It’s where to find the best cherry pie in the tri-county area, as Agent Cooper confirms “This must be where pies go when they die.” The counter is usually staffed by the owner Norma Jennings and waitress Shelly Johnson. They’re both consistently good-natured and welcoming, presenting warm smiles and positive vibes even when their personal lives are in turmoil.
It’s a gathering place for friends and families, a calm port in the storm for Cooper and Sheriff Truman to take a break from the madness of the case. It’s a safe haven for food, nourishment, friendship and happy times. They even have a jukebox full of classic oldies. People come into the diner stressed out, anxious and afraid but they leave satisfied, replenished and renewed with a sense of hope. Who doesn’t love a good diner?
One Eyed Jacks is the opposite. People go there looking for a good time or to make some money and they leave in ruins, if they leave at all. This is not a moral stance against the activities that take place there, it’s a statement of what happens on the show. On the surface, One Eyed Jacks is a gambling parlor and gentlemen’s club just over the other side of the Washington state border in Canada. This is convenient because it’s outside the jurisdiction of Twin Peaks and United States law enforcement.
The fact that One Eyed Jacks is a brothel is not a well-kept secret. It’s also the central hub for drug smuggling operations into Twin Peaks. It’s not a colorful Vegas-style party palace you visit with friends for gleeful abandon over a weekend of well-intentioned debauchery. One Eyed Jacks is a place where souls are bought and sold, akin to or much worse than the place described in the song “The House of the Rising Sun.” It makes the House of the Rising Sun seem like Chuck E. Cheese’s. Everything corrupt, wicked and twisted in Twin Peaks has some connection back to One Eyed Jacks. Keep your distance.
Who Killed Marilyn Monroe?
The original inspiration for the tragic character of Laura Palmer was none other than Marilyn Monroe.
While most associate Twin Peaks as the masterwork of David Lynch, it’s unfair to omit the significant credit due to Mark Frost, co-creator and co-author of the original script. It may be Lynch’s otherworldly visions that take the show into realms of the infinite but Frost and Lynch worked closely together to shape and bring the concept to life.
After first collaborating in 1987 on the screenplay for a film titled One Saliva Bubble - a gonzo comedy about a top secret government weapons project that goes chaotically awry when stray spittle from a security guard penetrates the computer system, causing it to go haywire and induce the local townspeople to swap identities, set to star Steve Martin and Martin Short but ultimately unmade due to the sudden bankruptcy of producer Dino De Laurentiis - Frost and Lynch continued their collaborative efforts with an adaptation of the book Goddess: The Secret Lives Of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers.
In the David Lynch biography Room To Dream, Mark Frost explains:
“An agent at CAA brought us together to work on a feature called Goddess for United Artists. We both wanted to expand the story beyond strict realism and inject lyrical, almost fantastical moments to it, and we started seeing a synchronistic way of working together.”
Eunice Murray was Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper at her residence in Brentwood, the neighborhood west of and adjacent to Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. On August 5th, 1962 Eunice was awakened suddenly in the middle of the night around 3:00 AM with a foreboding sense of something wrong in the house. Rising to investigate, she saw a light on in Marilyn’s room but found the door locked. In a panic, she phoned Ralph Greenson, Marilyn’s psychiatrist, who broke the bedroom window to gain entry only to find Marilyn dead in her bed.
Toxicology tests found lethal amounts of chloral hydrate and pentobarbital in her blood and liver. The percentages were so high that authorities ruled out death by accidental overdose. In the decades since, many believe her death was an execution via lethal injection somehow directly related to her personal involvement with President John F. Kennedy.
In light of the press reports insinuating Marilyn was suicidal, Eunice Murray was later quoted responding; “It is my feeling that Marilyn looked forward to her tomorrows.”
The film conceived by Frost and Lynch intended to explore these macabre connections. Unnamed producers overseeing the project at United Artists deemed it unworthy of being greenlit. In a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, Lynch confirmed;
“You could say that Laura Palmer is Marilyn Monroe, and that Mulholland Drive is about Marilyn Monroe, too. Everything is about Marilyn Monroe.”
The questions of the unmade screenplay eventually made their way into the dialogue of Twin Peaks Season 1, Episode 1 (not the Pilot) - “Traces to Nowhere”.
One of Agent Cooper’s most eccentric and prominent character traits is talking into a handheld mini tape recording device to his colleague in the FBI named Diane, who we never see on screen. The understanding for this habit is that Cooper, as an agent in the field, collects and sends these self-recorded monologues back to Diane as a real-time transcript of his daily work on the case.
After dismounting from hanging upside-down on an exercise device like a bat in his hotel room at the Great Northern, Cooper confesses to Diane via his tape recorder:
“Diane, it struck me again earlier this morning; there are two things that continue to trouble me, and I'm not just speaking as an agent of the Bureau but also as a human being: what really went on between Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys? And who really pulled the trigger on JFK?”
PART TWO: The Dissonance of Despair, Harmonies of Hope & a Season in Hell with The Man From Another Place
American animated comedy classic The Simpsons has always had a knack for witty satires of pop culture. Episode 3 of Season 9, “Lisa’s Sax” first aired on October 19th, 1997, but the main storyline is a flashback episode to the year 1990, recounting how and when Lisa was first given her beloved instrument. Many references specific to 1990 are shown, and Twin Peaks makes a comical appearance. In true Simpsons fashion, it’s a fairly accurate summary of how many people responded to the show.
Homer Simpson sits alone on the family room couch, leaning forward in rapt attention, his eyes wide as plates, fixated on the TV. Smooth saxophone jazz music with finger-snapping percussion exactly like the music of The Red Room on Twin Peaks is heard before we see the screen he’s zoned in on. We see Homer watching a lot of TV on The Simpsons, but never posed like this on the very literal edge of his seat. Cut to a close up of Homer’s face, looking intense but confused, and we hear the TV dialogue in voiceover;
“That’s damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks, and damn fine cherry pie!”
The camera cuts to the TV, but instead of seeing Agent Cooper (who delivers the famous ‘damn fine coffee’ line in Season 1 Episode 1, “Traces To Nowhere”) we instead see a field under a moonlit night sky, where the Giant (a memorable supporting character) and a white horse (your guess is as good as mine) are slow dancing together under a tree. The tree has a traffic light stuck on red swinging from a branch. The dancers twirl, then the Giant dips the horse backward.
The jazzy tune crescendos and we cut back to Homer, now smiling and laughing, saying out loud to no one around him -
“Brilliant! Heh heh heh. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”
No other show before or since is as simultaneously entertaining and bewildering as Twin Peaks. That’s why we’re still talking about it.
What is the meaning of creamed corn?
Haunted Symphonies of Hope & Despair
From a production value standpoint, Twin Peaks delivers on every aspect; the set design, the casting, the writing, the acting and more. One element that really stands out is the music. All of the score was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, in close collaboration with David Lynch.
Angelo was born in Brooklyn in 1937 and started studying piano at the age of eight. He began scoring films in the 1970’s and in 1986 was hired to assist actor Isabella Rossellini with her singing for the title track of the film Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch. Using David’s lyrics and Angelo’s music, the two collaborated to compose the song “Mysteries of Love”, featuring vocals by American singer Julee Cruise. The three would go on to create incredible music together in the following years, and Blue Velvet was where it all started. Badalamenti’s role in the production grew from being hired as a vocal coach to eventually serving as music supervisor and composer for the full score. It was abundantly obvious that Lynch and Badalamenti shared a unique chemistry and harmonic synergy.
Angelo then delivered the scores for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and the holiday classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). Soon after he got the invite from his old friend David to get together and work on music for a new show he was developing with Mark Frost.
In a DVD bonus feature for the Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition Badalamenti sat in his music room behind a heavy dark keyboard and explained how history was made.
Gesturing toward the imposing instrument, Angelo recalls;
“This is the keyboard that all the major themes were created for Twin Peaks. It’s an old Fender Rhodes, and um, kinda beat up, and David would sit right over here, right to the right of me, and we would put a little cassette, just about over here on this keyboard, just keep it in record and just keep it playing.”
“David would sit here and I’d say “Well, what do you see David? What is - just talk to me.” And David would say “OK Angelo… we’re in a dark woods now… and there’s a soft wind blowing through some Sycamore trees, and uh, there’s a moon out, and there’s some animal sounds in the background and you can hear the hoot of an owl, and you’re in the dark woods, you know, just get me into that beautiful darkness with the soft wind.”
“And I started playing… (hits deep ominous minor key notes low on the keyboard, the opening of “Laura Palmer’s Theme”)... And David would say “Angelo that’s great! I love that, that’s a good mood, but can you play it slower?” And I’d say “Slower David? OK…” And I’d go… (plays the same melody at half speed)... He says “That’s it, that’s a good tempo, just keep it going, slow like that… just keep that going for a while…”
“And in David’s mind, you can just see that he was visualizing the description that he envisioned. Then he would say “OK, Angelo, now we gotta make a change, because from behind a tree, in the back of the woods, there’s this very lonely girl, her name is Laura Palmer, and it’s very sad, but get something that matches her…” And I just segued into this… (plays ascending major note scale, slowly moving the melody higher)... And he’d say; “Oh that’s it! That’s very beautiful! I can see her, and she’s walking towards the camera, and she’s coming closer, just keep building it, just keep building it… (continues playing higher up the major scale)... And she’s getting close, now reach some kind of climax…” And I would go… (hits a very high bright major note far up the right side of the keyboard) And he’d say (exclaiming) “Oh that’s it! Oh, that’s so beautiful! Angelo, oh, that’s tearing my heart out! I love that, just keep that going, now… she’s starting to leave… (begins playing descending melody) so fall down, keep falling, keep falling, and falling… Now go back into the dark woods…” (returns to playing the ominous opening minor tones from the start)... (As David) “That’s it, keep going…just keep it going…very quiet and mysterious… (keeps playing with his eyes closed, finishes the melody and looks up, as if returning from a trance in another world)...”
“David got up. He gave me a big hug. He said “Angelo… (smiling) that’s Twin Peaks.” I said “OK David, I’ll go home and I’ll work on it.” He said “Angelo, don’t do a thing and don’t change a single note. I see Twin Peaks.” And that’s how it was done.”
Every song on the soundtrack is compelling and worth listening to beyond the context of watching the show. The music is spectacular start to finish.
“Twin Peaks Theme” is the title sequence song that welcomes you to the world with soft piano and plucked guitar notes booming with echo and reverb, followed by a rising melody that crescendos blissfully.
“Laura Palmer’s Theme” is the haunted centerpiece that leaves you unnerved by its contrast of ethereal beauty mixed with the minor dissonance of the damned.
“Audrey’s Dance” is the shadowy lounge jazz drifter driven by loud finger-snapping sounds for percussion, a walking bass line and sudden stabs of brass.
“The Nightingale” is a heroic anthem of guitar chords drenched in reverb featuring soaring vocals from Julee Cruise. It’s not all sadness in this world, and the exceptional performance from Cruise makes this a slow-dance love song of reassurance and hope.
“Freshly Squeezed” returns to the finger-snapping and walking bass theme that makes those sounds a sonic signature of the series.
“The Bookhouse Boys” introduces a saxophone melody, but the echo and reverb is turned up so far it creates an eerie distance of a place far away before rollicking drums and reverb soaked guitar bounce along, bringing back the finger-snapping and walking bass signatures.
“Into The Night” has a faster tempo repeated piano riff and a hi-hat cymbal keeping pace as Julee Cruise adds her breathy vocals, calling out to a missing lover while the music lulls you into the gloom.
“Night Life In Twin Peaks” is a spacey instrumental, again based around a light jazz style drum kit of brushes on cymbals. Strange dissonant off-notes played on horns and brass float in and out, like ghosts in and over and through the trees.
“Dance Of The Dream Man” is almost the same music as “Audrey’s Dance”, but with a faster tempo and a more pronounced, stronger saxophone line. It could be the perfect music for a dark red velvet jazz club, or the dark red velvet dimension of claustrophobic confusion known as The Red Room.
“Love Theme From Twin Peaks” is very similar to “Laura Palmer’s Theme” in melody, but played on layered flutes at the forefront of the mix, with soft piano in the background. The notes are nearly identical but the lighter tone lifts it toward a more romantic, less dreadful place, though the sadness is never completely gone or forgotten.
“Falling”, the last song of the soundtrack, is the “Twin Peaks Theme” with lyrics by David Lynch sung by Julee Cruise. The full version of “Falling” actually came first and was released in 1989 as the lead single from Julee’s debut studio album, Floating Into The Night. The instrumental was used as the theme song for the show a year later. Julee’s version was a big hit at the time, charting in fifteen countries and going all the way to Number One in Australia in April of 1991.
In his October 1990 review of new singles for the UK magazine Music Week, Nick Robinson offered “Every now and again a truly beautiful single comes along transfixing everyone that hears it… The sparse haunting instrumentation combines with Cruise's dreamy vocals to produce a stunning piece of music.”
Badalamenti earned an industry trophy for his efforts in 1990 at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, taking home the win for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for “Twin Peaks Theme.” He continued a very successful collaborative run with David, going on to score Lynch’s films Wild At Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Lost Highway (1997), The Straight Story (1999) and Mulholland Drive (2001), in addition to other various short films and episodic projects.
The importance of Angelo’s musical contributions to David’s cinematic worlds can’t be overstated. They are forever united in originality, emotive majesty and atmospheres of mystery. The two remained close friends up to Angelo’s passing of natural causes in 2022 at age 85.
Where We’re From, the Birds Sing a Pretty Song
One of the most foreboding and disturbing locations in the series is The Red Room, which seems to exist not in the physical town of Twin Peaks but in a supernatural dimension outside of our known realm. You don’t want to go there.
It’s also not really a room, but an unclear series of hallways around a central “waiting room” with shifting furniture, dark brown and white chevron style printed floors and a stubborn denial of the known laws of physics and time. The name derives from the most characteristic feature; long dark red velvet curtains (suspended from somewhere we never see) that serve as walls and distinguish the hallways from the room.
The Red Room was first created as part of the extra twenty minutes of footage tacked on to the pilot episode to wrap up the story with a clear ending so the international version could be sold as a TV movie to European markets. ABC executives requested this in case the show bombed so they’d have a way to recoup costs outside of the U.S. The first time we see the Red Room in the standard series occurs in Season 1, Episode 2, “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer”.
Agent Cooper has a dream. Some theorists argue that the entirety of Twin Peaks is a dream. If that’s true then this is a nightmare. Cooper finds himself sitting in a chair, visibly aged to what we are told is now 25 years older. In the corner of the red velvet walled room, a small man in a red suit is shaking, his back turned to us. Cooper’s now heavily wrinkled face turns from the shaking figure to see a fresh-faced Laura Palmer sitting across from him, dressed in evening wear and smiling languidly. The small man turns around from the corner, claps his hands and proclaims “Let’s rock!”
Thankfully you have subtitles to understand what he says, because from here on none of the language cadence follows what we hear in the waking world. This off-putting effect was achieved during production by having the actors film their physical movements and speak their dialogue in reverse on set, then play the backwards footage in reverse, rendering everything in a twisted, warped netherworld corruption of real time and space. The technique is known as Phonetic Reversal - per Wikipedia: the process of reversing the phonemes or phones of a word or phrase.
The star of this sequence is actor Michael J. Anderson, whose character is later referred to as The Man from Another Place. Some say he’s a demon. He later refers to himself as ‘The Arm’. Could this be a reference to the suspect in Laura’s murder called Mike, the traveling shoe salesman who cut off his own arm because it had a tattoo reading ‘Fire, Walk With Me’? Are you beginning to feel confused and uncomfortable? The Man from Another Place is not your friend.
He walks over, sits down on a black chair across from Cooper and starts rubbing his hands together. A high-pitched ringing sound is heard growing in volume. Cooper looks at Laura, who raises the pointer finger of her right hand and touches her nose. The ringing continues. A shadow of a triangular shape passes across the red curtain behind them.
The small man stops rubbing his hands, beams with a smile and announces to Cooper, in his backwards-contorted voice, “I’ve got good news. That gum you like is going to…come back in style.” Cooper, still silent, looks back at Laura. The man explains, “She’s my cousin.”
Cooper gives him a look of disbelief, and he continues, “But doesn’t she look… ahl-most exactly like Laura Palmer?” Cooper counters, “But, it is Laura Palmer…” - then turns to her to ask, his voice trembling but without the warping effect - “Are you Laura Palmer?”
The blonde woman, in the backwards-forwards voice, replies “I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back.”
The small man says “She’s filled with secrets.” He rolls his eyes upward and continues, “Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song… and there’s always music in the air.” The music from “Dance Of The Dream Man” begins to play.
A strobe light begins flashing from somewhere out of frame. The small man in the red suit can hear the music, as he rises from the chair and starts dancing around, swinging his bent arms and grooving out on his own across the floor. Bright white strobes of light flash over him. The saxophone meanders and so does his tiny body.
The woman (Laura?) gets up from her chair, glides over to Cooper, tilts his chin toward hers and kisses him lightly on the lips. They both smile. She puts her hand up to cover her mouth and whispers in his ear. The small man continues his solo dance. The smile fades from Cooper’s face.
Cooper abruptly awakens in his bed at the Great Northern Hotel.
Symbols for Something Else & the Trilogy Concludes...
When Twin Peaks was first rerun in syndication on the Bravo network in 1993, David Lynch wrote and directed short introduction scenes featuring the brilliant Catherine Coulson as the Log Lady to preface each individual episode.
If you haven’t seen them, each “Log Lady Intro” looks exactly the same; an intensely serious woman with auburn hair and red-framed glasses sits in a chair holding a large wooden log. She cradles the log in her lap like an infant and sits next to a wooden table with a teacup in a room paneled in wood and stone.
The Log Lady then directly addresses you, the viewer, breaking the fourth wall to offer simple statements and elliptical questions. Some of these monologues are outright bizarre, right in key with the show’s overall tone. In hindsight, they seem to reference events of the upcoming episode in varying degrees of metaphors or mind-boggling riddles.
Consider the introduction to Season 2, Episode 2, “Coma”:
“As above, so below.”
“The human being finds himself, or herself, in the middle. There is as much space outside the human, proportionately, as inside.”
“Stars, moons, and planets remind us of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Is there a bigger being walking with all the stars within? Does our thinking affect what goes on outside us, and what goes on inside us? I think it does.”
“Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe?”
“What really is creamed corn? Is it a symbol for something else?"
Beware the meaning of creamed corn. Is it a symbol for something else? Owls - icons of intelligence or harbingers of Death? Depends WHO you ask. Empathy, the power of Love and the saving grace of Twin Peaks…
*To be concluded in -
YOU NEED TO VISIT TWIN PEAKS - PART THREE
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