Cooper, Miko, and Ophilia scramble to keep up with the veritable smorgasbord of character introductions in the feature length pilot to Twin Peaks. Entitled Northwest Passage, this first episode of Twin Peaks has the unenviable task of introducing the plot, the style, and the town, all at once. We all love on Special Agent Dale Cooper just as much as we hate on Mike Nelson and Broody McBroodersen. Um. James.
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I’ve really enjoyed your podcast on Twin Peaks so far. I first discovered this show years after it aired on vhs at a very well stocked video store. At the time only the first season was available and I had to wait years before the release of the 2nd season onto dvd.
The one point I would like to make regarding the pilot episode was in regards to the level of domestic violence and all the cheating in Twin Peaks. In your conversation you touched on it and then dropped it without delving into it more. Was this due to issues of spoilers?
So, this next part might be spoilerish (?) not sure. Anyway, I found the level of domestic abuse in the town to be tied into Lynch’s idea to almost have two towns on top of each other. Every character is a sort of composite or split personality in a way.
They have a public face and a private one and the difference between the two is at times enormous while at others is merely one of shades. This leads to there being almost twice as many characters or motivations for characters in the plot as you need to deal with both sides of each person and understand how their actions are at times doubled by this duality (the coffin scene being the one that jumps to mind first).
Also the cheating sets this up nicely as well with a kind of insidious dishonesty that everyone is engaged in making Laura’s death doubly difficult to solve. It reminded me of the 1996 (?) Hamlet film where almost everyone enters or leaves a scene through a secret door as a constant reminder of the degree of court intrigue and duplicity.
The other part is the sub story of the evil in the forest infecting people in the town. Even those who fight this evil are touched by it in some ways it seems. Also when people do bad things they, for the most part, leave the town and go to the woods such as where Laura is killed, where Laura is found, the buried necklace, (there are more but spoilers).
Also it seems the further a building is located from the town the more it becomes a place where bad things happen such as the biker bar, the sawmill, Leo’s house, etc?
Also, are you going to discuss the log lady commentary at the start of the episodes?
Thank you for the excellent work you have been doing on this podcast so far. I look forward to the next episode.
Cheers,
JH