Twin Peaks. The return. Camera Obscura. Twin Strangers. West Side Story. Ok go.

Waiting for the show to begin I marveled at my defensive strategy. Should my pre-frontal cortex start jonesing for that sweet haptic feedback, diverting my attention for even a second, I lavishly laid out before me my weapons of mass absorption. Six hot pieces of original recipe KFC, three homemade aluminum free biscuits, one bowl of packet boiled gravy, and two cans of Diet Coke. Now sparkle in a pint glass with ice cubes. Call it a day and sparkle god damn it.

Showtime…

So how is, is Annie? Hanging in there I suppose. Or living down in Salem with her abusive second husband while he cashes her checks that she makes at Bob’s Big Boy to pay for his scratcher habit?

We can take our pick from any number of red herring cliffhangers left over from the first series, or we can glom on to new ones unveiled in the next two hours. But we shouldn’t let these less interesting narrative aspects monopolize our attention. In DL’s return to Twin Peaks, indeed as in all his films, we have a Cioppino of pure bliss consciousness ladled onto our quivering tongues at any given moment. How we consolidate the broth and savory morsels into mouthy satisfaction is completely up to us.

To begin, the now legendary story of how Frank Silva came to play Bob bears repeating not only for pure entertainment value, but also as context for understanding DL’s creative process.

Paraphrasing from “Catching the Big Fish” – “As the set dresser while we were shooting the pilot, Frank was never in a million years intended to be on the show. As I was standing outside Laura’s bedroom in the hall underneath a ceiling fan, I heard someone say, “Frank, don’t move that dresser in front of the door like that. Don’t lock yourself in the room.” I went in to see what all the fuss was about and asked Frank if he was an actor. Well, of course he said yes, because everybody in the world is an actor. I did three pan shots of the room, twice without him, and once with him frozen at the base of Laura’s bed. I didn’t know at the time what it was for or what it meant. Later, shooting Laura’s grieving mom downstairs on the couch, she saw something in her minds eye and bolted upright screaming. It looked good to me, so I said, “Cut-perfect, beautiful!” And someone said, “No, that shot won’t work, there was someone reflected in the mirror.” I asked, “Who was reflected in the mirror?” They said, “Frank was reflected in the mirror.” So things like this happen and make you start dreaming. And one thing leads to another, and if you let it, a whole other thing opens up.”

And from this allowance of intuition to change his creation on the spot as dictated by consciousness, he created arguably the most vivid and frightening moments from the first series. Who can forget Bob at the base of the bed. Or Bob slowly stalking the camera over the couch from one end of the room to the other. And of course, laughing maniacally face-to-face with Coop while wearing matching cataracts in the Black Lodge. Not only the most memorable and oft mentioned, but in no way necessary to understand the convoluted narrative that while very challenging even in season one, tried the patience of even the nerdiest fans in season two.

Knowing how he uses it, we can look at where it comes from and how it was employed for these newly released Twin Peaks. Transcendental Meditation (TM) has been a twice daily practice for DL for over 40 years. He hasn’t missed a day, and the ideas he collects for his films are a direct result of allowing his ensuing mega-awareness, or meg-awareness if you will, to do its thing. Much as the Unified Field reveals itself as the beginning of all things, TM reveals itself as the vehicle for all things to become ideas.

As a TM practitioner for over five years, I know a few things. One, you can trip ass twice a day without having to smoke drugs or do crimes. Two, there is a resulting uncanny stillness that while strange and arresting, produces a feeling of physical and mental bliss that serves as both relief from this savage world but also release from the binds that prevent you, from being you. Three, should you want to move on from all this bliss, you can change the channel on your world and vibrate into a state of adrenalized transcendence. A destination where thoughts and feelings lock in with a controlled fervor or randomly skip around in time and space at the behest of no one and no how.

The black and white opening with Agent Cooper and the Giant (fuck yeah) takes place in the third state of consciousness, dreaming. It’s a nice flip-er-ooni with Coop dreaming his usual dream but while trapped in the Black Lodge. Represented here as DL’s interpretation of the fourth state of consciousness, the lodge is transcendence. So dang, Coop never left for 25 years! Cool but scary. Looking back now I should have taken my advice about taking the confusing tangible clue shit in stride. That new dialogue that the Giant and other characters spew about doesn’t have to make sense for the immediate episodes, this is part mystery after all, but I do hope we eventually understand what this “Remember 430” and “Richard and Linda” thing is all about. Thankfully when we hear the scratchy segmented skips coming out of the Xylophone, we’re rewarded later with the duplicate sound of Laura Palmer’s shuffle steps towards Coop. So that one is solved thank god. Laura is back, and she is more beautiful and blinky than ever.

We can move on to Jacoby – dance Doc dance I wanna see – in the woods (waking – first state of consciousness), thankfully abandoning his Hawaii fetish with the exception of his hamster-with-a-tumor glasses still intact. What’s with all them shovels doc? You burying something sinister, or are we going fishing again? I feel like I’m gonna dream tonight Doc. You know. One of those big bad ones you like.

New York City. Pick up the Pace Picante! I wanna shake some action after that Jacoby hiccup. Christ what a city. Pan up with a strange angular menace why don’t you. Wait, something is up there. Maybe it’s another convention turned on its head. Say the fourth wall mirroring the fourth state?

Only after we arrive on the set of the latest revamped Maxell commercial (lamps and all) do we realize that the glass box is not just a holding cell and the circular entrance is not just a hole by which to float or weasel into. The box and hole are an intertwining device and vehicle by which DL moves his players between the gap linking transcendence and waking. The device is that of a camera obscura, or chamber darkened room, an ancient tool of proto cinema, where an image of a scene is projected through a small hole and viewed as a reversed and inverted image on a surface opposite to the opening. Perfect for doppelgangers looking to get they move on. The vehicle of this acme brand conscio-porting device is that of a modern film camera, as evidenced by the nameless witness sitting on the chair, waiting for Twin Peaks to begin, having all his reactions recorded by the lens.

This unnamed character is unnamed (unlike pretty pretty Tracy) because yes, it is we the audience, waiting, waiting, waiting for answers. That sitting figure could be any number of names because an audience is composed of countless souls. So instead of the Brechtian actor regarding the camera and therefore the audience, the Lynchian wall is broken by the camera recording his audience’s reaction to his generous revelation of what he feels is the necessity of humans to still their minds to attain transcendence. You know, that place where violent creativity meets lasting peace but also where the inevitability of an uploaded consciousness needs to evolve and thrive in a constantly expanding universe. As the cherry on top he shows us how to do it and spins one hell of a yarn in the process. Not bad for a kid from Missoula.

Making sure we don’t get too comfortable with our newfound status as hired guns – check the credits, I shit you not we’re in there – or too confident about deep clues regarding intentionality, he gets real mad and sends out a doppeldemon to scratch our fucking eyes out. Just when we were about to bust a nut in Tracy. Classic cock block bro. Gotta hand it to you. As Ashley Judd Shafer once put it, “can you feel the heat…I can feel it, down in my plums. There gettin’ a nice, blueish hue.” I do feel bad for Tracy though. She shouldn’t be slut shamed, regardless of the auteur, this day and age nor any day and age. That sucks dude. Cum correct next episode.

Mystery Questions – What does the Z on each Latte signify? Combined they make ZZ – like sleep? Was it just a foreshadowing of death – the greatest sleep of all? And why are there two sheriff Trumans? Who paid for the room with the glass box? Is the faery circle Black Lodge entrance around the tree in the woods referencing native American culture, prompting the log lady to tell Hawk it has something to do with his heritage? Is that charred wild eyed lumberjack in the cell two down from Bill Hasting’s a doppelganger too? Is that Ally Sheedy playing the post Daria murdering love toy? Did Mr. Todd hire Ray and Daria to kill Doppel Coop, and is Doppel Coop really (actually) Bob or am I really off on that one. If that’s the case, is Bob torturing Mr. Todd, prompting him to deliver that great line, “Roger, you better hope you never get involved with someone like him.”

Love the requisite hammering of coffee references. Somebody either drinks or accepts/refuses an offer of coffee like six or seven times in the first hour. For those inclined to like the T.V. show more than the movie, the inclusion of beloved characters doing their thing should make you happy, and for those who like the intense edgy enigma of the movie, you should be sitting pretty. This show serves as much needed adult entertainment in a world of truck drivers, never pandering to an overt sense of political correctness or contemporary artfulness, but requiring an aspirational morality and intellect from those who want the goods. It hands out sex and violence, but only takes its secret underthings off after you sweet talk it’s alter egos and buy it lunch, maybe some char siu bau with steamed bok choy.

Buckthorn, South Dakota is a stand in for his hometown of Missoula, Montana and it gives him freedom to pillory and deconstruct the clichés of small town life. As he shows us with signature comedy that the citizens and sheriff deputies are just as gullible and incompetent as we coastal elites imagine, we also realize that the complexity of strange violence, required problem solving, and warmth of character is just as pronounced, if not more so, than within the aseptic sanity of Mountain View, California.

Wrapping up part 1, Bill – SLC Punk lemur boy – and Phyllis Hastings play out a deleted scene straight out of “An Invitation to Love.” Ray, Daria, and Jack dine with doppelCoop as he delivers his lecture on the law of diminishing returns and the last of the human freedoms, his ability to choose his own attitude in any given set of circumstances. Hawk stumbles onto the faery ring where the stars turn and a time presents itself. When he turns down an offer of coffee from the Log Lady, you know this is a wink that something amazing is about to go down. Are we ready for the Lodge?

5,4,3,2,1 – Spark It!

“Swip swip swoop swoop swip swoop swis swoop sweep swap swip sweep swap swap swip swip swis swip sweep.” – The thing doing the thing

“I am the evolution of the arm, and I sound like this.” – The Evolution of the Arm

“Whoa!!!!! Holy moses that’s amazing. I can’t right now.” – Me in my Mind

I can’t remember the last appearance of such an amorphous grotesquerie in one of his movies quite like this (several earlier freaks come to mind) but seriously, before the strangest and quotable part of the lodge steals the whole show, we have some other weird and wild stuff to catch up on. But we really can’t. You gotta see it. Words have no quarter here. We can’t talk about how gratifying it is to see Laura and Coop and the odd sense of warmth we feel towards them, as if they were old friends. We can’t talk about the adrenaline of witnessing Laura get sucked out with a blood curdling scream. Or the shifting chevrons and tunnel like 3D expansion as the room grows beyond a singular white horse.

But that damn tree thing! So cool. The evolution of the arm is composed of electric neurons coursing through tree branches with a silly putty head of almost unfathomable originality and chutzpah. Every time it speaks from the bottom of its little face it moves in such a subtle weird way that we can’t help but stare even harder at its mystery and origin. As if staring would make us see something else. As if staring would help us to believe. As if believing would help us live.

Just as the camera obscura serves as a revelation, the evolution of the arm serves as a warning – actualize faster or forever be stuck in your private little black lodge with your private little Bob. Failing that outcome, linger in a timeless purgatory as the hijacked true you gets off in the waking material world. It is known that Kyle Mac’s characters are stand ins for DL’s alter ego, so the seriousness of using his own body as the one who risks conscio-prison should alert us to the extreme honesty of his warning. For even though we show kindness to other people, the superego knows no limits of self-preservation at the expense of all other living souls. Including by this director at the expense of his audience and quite possibly his film crew. Agent Coop is DL, and he quite literally sees himself fluidly existing in all four states, even as a flesh prone entity in his films, constantly putting his neck on the line as fodder for his ghouls. He does this to approach the fulfillment of total authenticity, unattainable by those only capable of placing themselves in proximity to what they fear most.

Mystery Questions Part 2 – Could this whole show act as an infrastructure for what plays out neurologically, psychologically, and physiologically during meditation? Did real Coop miss his chance at 2:53 to jump out of the lodge? How did doppelCoop, or Bob, thwart the plan? Was the evo-arm, like surprised when he missed the rendezvous point, prompting him to act like such a baby? Is there another evil besides Bob materializing as a main player for the series, and did it kill Tracy and the Watcher? Is there synchronicity between the idea of “Twin Strangers”, the phenomenon where you can find within a high degree of probability your real-life doppelganger within minutes if you would only search online?

Liked the Chromatics song a lot. James did look cool even if that line was kinda jarring. I felt sad for him and sad the show was gonna be over. My guess is that Bobby Briggs will be in episode two. Jacques Renault tending bar behind the new guy was a nice touch, but how could somebody with his criminal history and tendency toward excess still be gainfully employed? Should have done another close up of his bespittled mouth.

The show was dedicated to Frank Silva and filmed in Washington. Bring on sum more.