Twin Peaks: Cooper's Dreams First Watch

April 22, 2017 3:01 PM - Season 1, Episode 6

Cooper, Truman, Deputy Hawk, and Doc Hayward venture into the woods for a revelatory encounter with the Log Lady and find the location of Jacques Renault's cabin. In the meantime, Audrey continues her efforts to assist Cooper by taking a job at her father's department store, while Donna and James Hurley pursue their own line of inquiry into Laura's death by taking Maddy into their confidence. Elsewhere, Leo's battered wife Shelly decides to get revenge.
posted by rhizome (4 comments total)

How do you not notice the cigarette smoke wafting from your office closet? I lost track of how many times I said "Oh, Audrey," like a disappointed parent in this episode.
posted by Ruki at 9:41 PM on April 22, 2017

I remember my actual first watch of this: this episode and the next aired as a two-hour combo twenty-odd years ago. It's still strange to me to see this episode end with an exec producer credit over Audrey in Cooper's bed.

Anyway, this episode's wonderful trek through the forest introduces Cooper to Margaret Lanterman's log. The Log Lady is in some way the mirror twin of the Sherrif's Department. She has no deputies or staff; she gives clues freely instead of searching for them; she doesn't adopt or even seem to like Cooper; she prefers tea and cookies to coffee and donuts. Whether her log contains her husband's soul or is just a coping fetish doesn't matter. "Crack the code, solve the crime," is Cooper's mantra, but the Log Lady knows that for some victims, solutions only dilute contaminants--they can never be removed. Like Nadine, she has chosen to keep her pain always visible.

(On a side note, I'm very surprised that the phrase "Fire is the devil, hiding like a coward in the smoke" hasn't gotten more traction in fan art.)

So our heroes continue through the woods. My memories of Jacques's cabin scene have it taking place in late afternoon/evening, but this is not so. In the last twenty-odd years, I created the darkness myself, cut to suit the earlier striking profile shot of the four men side by side, facing left.

The cabin is a very dark scene even without the twilight, with the Julee Cruise song "Into the Noght" based on "Laura Palmer's Theme" playing loudly on a loop (our heroes hear the cabin before they see it). More than the train car, more than the rocky shore where Laura washed up, this record is the circular cosmic spot upon which the rest of the episode revolves. There's always music in the air, but it's decidedly sinister music, repeating itself as the air in the cabin grows dustier and mustier.

If Margaret has built herself a convent in the woods to protect herself from the indifference of the world, then Jacques's cabin is a Chateau de Silling, a dwelling befouled by its owner and his interests. This is another appearance of the duality motif. Both houses, owned by singular individuals, could only exist as they are in the woods, away from well-meaning neighbors.

And taken together, both houses point toward another "nunnery" with French-Canadian ties—One-Eyed Jack's.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:25 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

It always struck me as strange that Truman and the gang wouldn't already know where Margaret lived.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 12:42 PM on May 2, 2017

I have trouble remembering characters names (in general, as well as these ones particularly; too many of them are somehow the same type, like Donna and Audrey). Anyways, I couldn't remember Audrey's name until the summary up above, so I've been calling her Jailbait. (I mean, maybe she's eighteen like she says, can but she doesn't tell the truth all that often. And honestly, being barely an adult is really not enough for it not to be sketchy.) I am really curious if FBI is actually into Jailbait-- that love story would be weird. But I guess the town is full of weird love stories, couples who should've divorced and have moved on to new relationships but are somehow still married. I don't understand it at all.
posted by Margalo Epps at 10:43 PM on August 10, 2017