Twin Peaks: Cooper's Dreams   Rewatch 
August 14, 2014 10:06 AM - Season 1, Episode 6 - Subscribe

Cooper has trouble sleeping. Leland attempts to get back to normal. Leo has a run of bad luck. Audrey gets a new job.

Scheduling: new episodes posted every Tuesday and Thursday. Both re-watchers and new viewers are welcome.

Watching: available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and for free on Hulu and CBS's site.

Previous Episode Threads:
Season One: Pilot, Traces to Nowhere, Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer, Rest in Pain, The One-Armed Man

Bonus Stuff: Beautiful production design photos (slight spoilers for a character from S2).
posted by codacorolla (4 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
There has been a few art shows inspired by Twin Peaks. I've been to two. In some ways, they act as revisions of the original show, redacting it down to what the artists consider to be the purer vision of the show. So there's a lot of Bob, a lot of the red room, stacks of donuts, Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic, etc.

There's never any Hank, despite the fact that he's one of the drivers of the plot, and that he has such a clear visual brand in the (perplexing) domino he always carries. Now, I like Chris Mulkey, but I think the fans are right on this -- Hank is one of the least interesting things about the show. He seems more of a spear carrier for the plot than a developed character, and the domino thing feels affected rather than important. The second season has a lot of this sort of thing (there's an entire side story about James in the second season that feels lifted from any number of television mysteries), but it is interesting to me that someone so essential to the story has been so completely written out by fans.

There is a primary villain in the second season who gets similar treatment, even though he's set up very early and his story dominates the last half of the second season (which is, like, three times longer than the first season anyway). And I think it's the same thing -- his story feels like a pulpy adventure story, not like the haunted soap opera of the first season. We want our Twin Peaks to be as Twin Peaksy as possible, and these elements just don't fit in.

This episode was directed by a woman, Lesli Linka Glatter, who I think was a terrific director for the series, and here set in place an in-joke that is one of my favorites on the show -- there is always a convention of some sort at the Great Northern Hotel. In this episode, it's a group of members of the American Indian Movement, who can always be seen in the background. These conventions would get more complicated and weirder as the show went on.
posted by maxsparber at 8:26 AM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


Finally caught up to this one earlier today after spending the last few days in the great outdoors. Got to find out what kind of trees those were!

maxsparber, I totally see what you're talking about with Hank. TBH, the last couple of times I've gone through the series I've always had to remind myself of what he even looked like during the pre-parole buildup. It's always a little bit deflating when he finally shows up and basically comes across like any one of hundreds of other soap opera bad guys. I think the key to his superfluity is that he doesn't really have any purpose other than to be a sleazy ex-con who moonlights as a sleazy current con, which means that he's missing that dual-layer that all of the other characters have. My memory of the show after Laura's killer is found is a little spotty, but I don't recall Hank getting some complexity added on later.

Other observations:
  • Ben on the Icelandic investor group: "What are they on, nitrous oxide?" There's no way that wasn't a Blue Velvet reference.
  • Speaking of Blue Velvet references, Audrey is back on Jeffrey Beaumont duty, this time peeking in on Ben and Catherine's scheme. From a certain point of view, Audrey is sort of the Jeffrey analogue of Twin Peaks, an ostensibly naive girl with some slight personality defects who gets in over her head trying to be a detective. With this is mind, it's interesting that she is initially linked to Cooper's character, since both he and Jeffrey are played by Kyle MacLachlan. Since MacLachlan usually plays David Lynch's avatar, maybe Audrey is meant to represent Lynch's feminine side?
  • Big Ed's quasi-breakup with Norma: "Nadine's not well." Is this meant to be news? From all appearances, Nadine hasn't been well for a long, long time. Ed is turning into a lamer character by the episode.
  • The Log Lady says something along the lines of "the owls can't see us here." Along with the shot in the previous episode of the owl apparently watching the spot where James & Donna buried the necklace, this seems to indicate that the owls are visual psychic conduits. This explains how Mrs. Palmer saw the necklace getting dug up in E01. I'd never bothered to figure out the "rules" before, but this seems pretty likely.
  • Leland's ballroom freakout inadvertently creates a new hands-on-face dance craze. Do we know who actually started the music? The editing suggests Audrey, which would make this the second time that she's tried to scare off Ben's investors by reminding them of Laura's murder.

posted by Strange Interlude at 6:11 PM on August 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


I was puzzled by the way that it appears that none of the cops knew where the Log Lady lived.
Also, the next time I'm hiding in a cupboard I'll be sure to puff away on a ciggie for extra hidingness.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 1:14 PM on August 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


Also, overhead light fixtures make a dandy hiding spot for your favorite porno mags.

I was just looking over my index card notes (yes, I'm that kind of TV watcher) for the last couple of episodes, and realized that we haven't really gotten into Invitation To Love as a funhouse-mirror version of the show. There's the obvious parallel to Laura and Maddie with Jade and Emerald, and there seems to be an ongoing scheme to dismantle a family business, as in the Catherine/Ben/Josie subplot. But I also noticed that the wimpy Chet is actually ITL's version of Shelly: He gets unfairly smacked around by the show's big heavy, Montana, and later retaliates by shooting him in the arm -- just like what happened with Shelly and Leo.
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:48 PM on August 19, 2014


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