In which we re-watch all of Twin Peaks and spout spurious nonsense about it.

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So what’s the first thing that we see in this series full of iconic images? Without checking you’d probably think of Laura lying on the beach and a shell-shocked Pete Martell, but as with everything in Twin Peaks; it’s a lot more complicated than that. The first image we see is two black onyx statues followed by the bright red splash of Josie Packard’s lips.

Black and red. This whole episode is slaked in them. After Jack Nance speaks the line that launched a thousand fanzines, the next half hour is all about Officer Harry S. Truman spreading the news of Laura’s death and a trail of red precedes him – Pete’s initial call is transferred to “the table by the red chair… the black phone” – and then we’re chasing the information around town, always one step ahead of the massive cast this episode has to introduce to us.

Because we know what the characters don’t, all of their interactions are tainted for us with that knowledge – Laura’s mother’s harassed shouting (and our first view of that corridor…), her call to the Briggs’ in their bright red kitchen, then to the school changing rooms with red walls and red football uniforms. Finally she calls Leyland on a slick black telephone and even as he tries to assuage her fear we see the police car pull into shot, Leyland’s face tear and Sarah’s primal, guttural scream. So subtle, beautiful and traumatic.

We follow the bad news travelling fast around the rest of the cast – Bobby (Dana Ashbrook taking the heightened soap opera acting and running with it) and Shelley, Donna (in red), Audrey Horne (changing her black and white loafers for a pair of shiny red heels), James Hurley every inch the 1950’s rebel. Finally the principal’s announcement echoes down the empty school hall and we focus on Laura’s photo in the trophy cabinet, both framed in red. The same photo takes us to her parent’s house where her face is en every frame of her mother’s suffering.

The discovery of Ronette Paulaski (over state lines) brings our immaculate, cake loving, coffee connoisseur Agent Dale Cooper. Coop is the embodiment of all that is good and right at this point (Dr. Jacoby Freudian slips ‘Gary Cooper’) and we’ll follow a lot of the story through him. He gently takes charge of the case from the local police who are very obviously no equipped to deal with this – we’re given the impression that murder is unheard of in this seemingly perfect little town, although there are a few hints to the contrary (“is this going to happen every time” Harry asks Andy). The rest of the episode is Coop teasing out the beginnings of the investigation.

And what beginnings – Laura’s Diary with the safe deposit key, a videotape taken my a mysterious biker, ‘nervous about meeting ‘J”, the half heart locket, Ronnete’s words “don’t go there”, the blackened railway carriage and those words. Fire Walk With Me…

Our teenage heroes Donna and James break their curfew to play investigators – what do they know that they’re not telling the police? Funnily, it seems that everything the police do know is wrong – “as far as we know” Ronette and Laura barely knew each other, it is “impossible” that Laura would have been in possession on a bag of cocaine “Mister Cooper, you didn’t know Laura”. Did anyone?

An exposition-heavy hour and a half with a massive cast to introduce then, full of iconic images, great soundtracking and fantastic performances. What a way to start our journey… WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!

Unsorted observations:

There’s a strong post-modernist bent to a lot of it. Coop points out that we don’t know who filmed Donna & Laura’s picnic, making us aware of our own camera.

There are a lot of empty corridors- the school halls, the hospital and the morgue, and the hallway in the Palmer’s house. Always framed in the same way, always with a sense of menace; very reminiscent of Kubrick’s love of fixed focus.

Duality is a recurring theme as well; Ronette’s disappearance takes us to the sawmill which we saw meditatively in the opening credits now a grinding, sparking behemoth, or contrast Leyland’s respectful barely touching of Laura in the morgue with Coop wading in with the tweezers.

“What is so difficult to understand about this?”, Mike asks Donna – Death is always hard to understand.

Donna has a stuffed bird in a cage in her room.

Laura’s face dominates the episode – her picture is everywhere. The close focus on her eye just exaggerates it.

“I am holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies…”

Next week – Agent Cooper finds a great cup of coffee, and the world’s worst cup in the same day.

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