Twin Peaks: Episodes 1 & 2 Present Tangled Skeins Worthy of Sherlock Holmes

A scene of a younger Agent Dale Cooper in the Black Lodge in the latest incarnation of Twin Peaks. Image from Flickr.

Before you read this article, please note:  SPOILERS!  SPOILERS!  SPOILERS!  If you haven’t seen the new episodes of Twin Peaks on Showtime, please do not read this article!  You have been warned…

“I’ll see you again in 25 years.”

            --- Laura Palmer to Special Agent Dale Cooper

This blog is written by Brian Belanger and Derrick Belanger of Belanger Books.

BRIAN: I remember when Twin Peaks ended its original run, my friend Karen turned to me and said, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if they actually bring the show back in 25 years?”  I told her that yes, it would be awesome, but we both doubted it would happen.  How could it?  Series were canceled all the time, and reboots were few and far between in the early nineties.  The show lived on via reruns and the magazine Wrapped In Plastic kept the fans gorged on trivia and episode analyses, but there was no way the TV show would ever return --- especially not after the dismal profits of the theatrical film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.  

But then, a funny thing happened.  TV shows and movies started rebooting and/or continuing their stories long after their initial runs.  While some were questionable at best (Phantom Menace, anyone?  The Prisoner?), some would go on to critical and popular success, a la BBC’s Sherlock.  Perhaps the most successful example was Doctor Who, which ended in 1990, briefly resurfaced for an American TV-movie in 1996 and then roared back to life with a smart, stylish new series in 2005 that is still going strong today. 

DERRICK: Well, as you mentioned, Twin Peaks did not quite end with the last episode of the television series. We also had the prequel movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me which gave us a glimpse into the final days of Laura Palmer, Cooper's life before Twin Peaks, and even a little of his life afterwards, trapped in the Black Lodge.  

In January, at the annual dinner of Dr. Watson's Neglected Patients, a colleague and I had a lively discussion on Sherlock Holmes films, which segued into other films, and eventually landed in the realm of Twin Peaks. It was argued that the strength of the series lay in the sound and editing as well as the darkness mixed with the lighthearted. I pointed out the lighthearted wackiness was largely missing from Fire Walk with Me, which has always felt like a David Lynch film but never quite a full Twin Peaks film. My friend concurred, and then I posed the question: would the new series feel like the old series? Could they recapture the magic? Would they have the balance of humor and horror? Would it still have those Sherlockian overtones?

BRIAN: And now, 25 years later, Twin Peaks has returned.  It hasn’t been rebooted – this is not a new version of the who-killed-Laura-Palmer mystery – but rather, the series has continued, with all characters returning a quarter century after the events of the original series.  

DERRICK: Yes, and my prayers have been answered. While this series is grittier than the original series (it is on Showtime after all), it has the balance I found lacking in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. We are back in Twin Peaks though we are in other parts of America as well with the most disturbing scenes occurring in New York City and some of the funniest in South Dakota.

BRIAN: For Holmesians worried that the elements of mystery would vanish from the show, fear not. For right away, we are confronted with new mysteries: 

-Why is Doctor Jacoby back in the northwest instead of Hawaii?  Why did he receive those shovels and other equipment?

- What’s up with that strange observation deck in New York City?  Why is Tracy so eager to get inside there?  Was that spectral figure really Special Agent Phillip Jeffries, as implied by Cooper’s phone call?  And what happened to the security guard?

DERRICK (interrupting): The Special Agent Jeffries question is quite the mystery since he was played by David Bowie in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and the actor/ musician died before his scenes could be filmed. Will we have a different Agent Jeffries? It was not Bowie's voice on the phone call. Is that his Doppelganger that attacks Tracy and her boyfriend? Does this have anything to do with Judy?

BRIAN (continuing): - What’s going on with that gruesome murder in the Midwest?  Was that school principal really involved?  Was he framed?  Was this a case of memory loss due to Bob-like possession?  Who or what was that sinister dark figure in the next cell over?

DERRICK: How did the arm evolve into a brain with a tree like body/stem?  That creature is another highlight of the episodes. And what is the giant referring to in the opening of the show when he says, "It is here." What is here?

BRIAN: And there’s more –-- much more.  Watching those episodes, you can feel Mark Frost’s writing in them, setting up the characters and laying down the structural anchor to David Lynch’s stylish direction.  If you’re not already aware, Mark Frost is a veteran writer for TV and the author of two remarkable Sherlockian pastiches, The Mark of 7 and The 6 Messiahs.  He also released a Twin Peaks tie-in novel last year, appropriately titled The Secret History of Twin Peaks.  That book (which TP co-creator David Lynch has said he has not, and will not, read) fleshes out the backstories to many of the original series’ characters.  It also ties in the Project: Blue Book angle, intersecting Twin Peaks with several famous UFO cases of the 20^th century and hinting more strongly that the inhabitants of the White Lodge and the Black Lodge may be from a galaxy far, far away.  While there's nothing in the new series to support that theory, there's nothing to contradict it, either -- and that Saturn-like lamp is still at Coop's side in the Black Lodge.

DERRICK: There is one bizarre part of Mark Frost's book involving the actor Jackie Gleason seeing a menacing force in a secret government room. Could the evil entity in NYC and the one viewed by Mr. Gleason be one and the same?

BRIAN: Of all the mysteries that the opening episode presented, the one that caused the most discussion in my group afterwards was, surprisingly, the character of Tracy, the coffee shop girl who seems really eager to take a look at the top secret project in the New York skyscraper.  Was her seduction of the caretaker part of a ruse to get further access?  Or was she truly innocent?  Had the caretaker and her been flirting for a while before this, as his offhand comment “You’re a bad girl, Tracy” would seem to suggest?  Did she have something to do with the missing guard, and if so, what did she do with him?

While nothing overtly Sherlockian happened in the opener (or did it?  Let us know), we have been given plenty of new threads to follow in this series of mysteries within mysteries, where in order to fully appreciate them, we must not only see… but observe.  The distinction is clear.

Belanger Books is a small press owned by artist Brian Belanger and author Derrick Belanger specializing in new Sherlock Holmes books, Children's books, Steampunk, and genre specific anthologies.  Some of our books have been #1 bestsellers in their categories on Amazon.