Diane, 1 pm, June 14. Love is in the air in Twin Peaks – or at least it’s on the airwaves. With Laura Palmer’s funeral in the rearview, it’s time for some good old fashioned drama. As the townsfolk swoon for one another (regardless of their current relationship status) and all watch a soap opera that seems to be a heightened version of their own dramatics, it seems the town has nearly returned to normal. Of course, normal in Twin Peaks isn’t the same as normal anywhere else, and as two parties begin to creep closer to uncovering the identity of Laura’s killer, it seems likely that the “normal” we’re seeing only masks a complicated, unspeakable evil.
Here’s five thoughts on Twin Peaks episodes 4 and 5, “The One-Armed Man” and “Cooper’s Dreams,” the spoilers below will meet you in 25 years.
1. Invitation to Murder
An interesting soap opera seems to be all the rage amongst the townsfolk. When Invitation to Love first appeared playing on a small TV in episode 2, it looked like it was drawing a vague reference to the town’s kitschy Americana vibes, lampooning the hysterics and over-the-top convoluted ties that bind the characters. We’ve since seen it play on portable TVs all around town.
As it turns out, the satire is more specific than that. This episode offers us a closer look at the events on the screen, and as we get to hear more of the plight of the rich and vain characters of the show, their plot sounds awfully similar to the events unfolding at the town’s main employers: Packard Sawmill, the Great Northern Hotel, and Norma’s Double R Diner. The connection to the actual plot offers some foreshadowing–the return of an ex-husband on the show parallels the return of Norma’s husband when he’s released on bail–but also some clues to the duplicity in the main show’s B-plots. The soap opera has a plot point involving a will, implying that a murder will take place that will pass the victim’s real estate holdings to a pair of conspirators. Does that mean Josie Packard, who up to this point has convinced much of the town that she’s harmless and kind, worked with a co-conspirator to have her husband killed and seize control of the sawmill? Le gasp!
2. Dynamic Duos
In somewhat more serious pieces of plotting, the characters around town are pairing up – always with an ulterior motive beyond simply making a connection.
Audrey Horne is digging deeper into her father’s misdeeds, and she decides to enlist Donna into her plans to go undercover at her father’s business. James meets and swoons over Laura’s eerily identical cousin Madeleine. Shelly and Bobby plot to frame (or, perhaps, to just expose) Leo and his partner Jacques for Laura’s murder. Catherine Martell and Ben Horne scheme to take down the Packard Sawmill and pocket the profits. All the while, the show’s primary investigatory duo of Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman work their way through the dreamlike evidence leading the way to Laura’s killer.
Another duo is at the root of their investigation: the primordial pair of Mike and Bob, one of whom (or both of whom?) might be the episode’s titular one-armed man. After Sarah Palmer provides a police sketch of the man she saw in her living room that looks exactly like the Bob that Cooper saw in his dream, Cooper and Truman (with an assist from Hawk) track down a one-armed man to the Timber Falls Motel, digging up a series of clues involving a poker chip, a myna bird, and a man named Jacques Renault who runs drugs with Leo and appears to be connected to Laura’s murder.
3. Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the Blues
Meanwhile, multiple characters sit down with the eccentric Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) to talk about their problems–or, more specifically, to talk about Laura. Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman speak with him at the station towards the opening of “The One-Armed Man,” attempting to learn just how close he was with Laura. The penitent, forlorn Jacoby who visited Laura’s grave at the end of the last episode is gone, replaced with an aloof, jokey, and ultimately unhelpful man who has his own agenda to pursue.
Continued belowLater, during “Cooper’s Dreams,” Bobby and the Briggs family sit down with Jacoby for some family counseling. The session goes poorly at first with an openly combative Bobby resisting all attempts and mending the family’s broken bonds, but Jacoby is able to break through to Bobby (at least temporarily) by getting at the wound on Bobby that no one else is able to see: Laura. Jacoby surmises details about Bobby and Laura’s relationship in ways that would seem to rival Agent Cooper’s intuition, but Jacoby was likely mining his own sessions with Laura for ammunition.
Bobby shares Laura’s bits of wisdom with the good doctor, offering insight into Laura’s psyche as well as her impact on the people around her. “People tried to be good, but they’re really sick and rotten,” she said, speaking as much about herself as she did about society. In Bobby’s case she pushed him to deal drugs to sate her various appetites, but Laura seems to have been a corrupting force across the entire town, with one hand offering grace and aid and another tempting them toward cruelty and destruction. Bobby says it was like something terrible came from inside her and pulled her deeper into darkness, cementing Laura as both the idealized symbol of the town’s charm and the dark mirror of the town’s woes.
4. The Log Knows What the Log Knows
I cannot overstate how delighted I am to find out that the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson in an exceptionally eccentric performance), a seemingly meaningless presence in the show’s early episodes that accented its eerie small town aesthetic, actually factors heavily into the plot of the investigation. After Cooper and friends meet the one-armed man and search the house of Jacques Renault, their search leads them to hunt for a cabin in the woods, plopping them right on the Log Lady’s doorstep.
Her log offers them more details about the night of Laura’s death–the log saw two men and two girls (likely Leo Johnson, Renault, Laura, and the second victim Ronette Pulaski) in the woods, and later heard the footsteps of a third man. That man’s identity remains a mystery, one that will perhaps be answered in this season’s final two episodes.
What’s most fascinating about this story beat is Agent Cooper’s reluctance to take the Log Lady’s supernatural connection to her log at her word. The Sheriff’s department took Agent Cooper’s methods–and increasing reliance on clues he learned from his dreams–at face value, but that’s not a courtesy Cooper is willing to extend to this lady and her log. He eventually comes around, and following the witness’s account, the detectives discover Renault’s cabin.
5. We Have to Do This for Us
The twists of Invitation to Love are heightened somewhat from the reality of the Twin Peaks gossip, but they aren’t heightened that much. Josie Packard’s co-conspirator might be Norma Jennings’s husband, Hank, who calls Josie from prison just before he’s released. Or it could be Ben Horne, who appears to be having an affair with both Josie and Catherine Martell while scheming to either burn down the mill or have Catherine killed (or, most likely, both).
Hank’s return home is met with a chilly reception from Norma, who (rightfully) doesn’t believe his claims that he has changed. Their relationship is an interesting counter to several others in town, as it is neither openly combative nor overly loving and heartfelt. They are borderline cordial, but ultimately without any passion. They are both obstacles to each other and means to an end, with Norma needing Hank to gain her own freedom while Hank needs Norma to give him at least the perception of normalcy.
Nearly every relationship in this town, it seems, is fraught, toxic and selfish, despite appearing loving or charming on the surface. Our star-crossed lovers James and Donna are prime examples of this. Even as they resolve themselves to solve Laura’s murder, they are doing so as much for their own benefit as they are in honor of Laura’s memory.
“This is for us,” Donna says, “we have to do this for us.” Laura’s death, against all odds, benefitted them both. Clinging to Laura’s memory gives their relationship an electricity that helps to drive it, and investigating her murder isn’t just an effort to find closure. Cynically, it’s a way to unite them in their shared closure, to use Laura to cement their bond and forge their future together. It’s perverse, and transgressive, and very typical of this town where no one earnestly expresses their emotions. Can the two of them work through the tumult and last beyond their shared trauma? Only time (a.k.a. the next 24 episodes) will tell.
