Lost in the Movies: Introducing the (revised) TWIN PEAKS Character Series

Introducing the (revised) TWIN PEAKS Character Series


Guide to all one hundred fifteen entries in the (revised)
TWIN PEAKS Character Series


(Initially, this page included a directory which can now be found here.)

Introduction

There are so many different ways to experience Twin Peaks. We might tour its locations, from the cozy red-and-white checkered comforts of the RR Diner to the majestic, vaguely magical woodsy decor of the Great Northern to the brooding, bittersweet musical milieu of the neon-soaked Road House. We can sample its various motifs: sipping hot coffee, savoring a flaky cherry pie, jolting at the hoot of an owl. Or we could delve into each genre in turn, spinning the wheel to land on the cheerful tone of wacky farce, the sleek style of midnight noir, or the visceral chill of creeping horror.

This written and illustrated online series will focus on another aspect that is able to touch on all of the above. Character is how many viewers, probably a majority, develop a personal connection to the material they are watching. Despite its unique qualities - the eccentric setpieces, the prevailing ethereal mood - Twin Peaks has proven itself to be no exception. As often as they point to touchstones like the iconic Red Room or Angelo Badalamenti's ethereal score, fans will cite characters as the reason they keep coming back to Twin Peaks.

Who is your favorite? Agent Cooper, with his mixture of boyish enthusiasm and professional genius? Audrey Horne, slinking around corners with a diabolical grin? The Log Lady, speaking softly and carrying her big "stick"? Deputy Andy, crying when he finds a dead body; Big Ed, solid as a redwood while the one-eyed buzzsaw Nadine hovers nervously around his trunk; Gordon Cole, cheerfully shouting his way through the hearing world like a deaf version of Mr. Magoo; or Albert Rosenfield, cynically ripping apart the small town's sentimental platitudes before revealing the heart on his own sleeve?

Twin Peaks characters have a cartoonish quality; even the straight men - Ed, Sheriff Truman - are outlined with stark simplicity. Brad Dukes, author of Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks, has described Cooper and the Log Lady as resembling Sesame Street characters in their appeal to him as a child viewer. Indeed, the ability to paint these figures in broad strokes perpetuates their iconography, endearing them to generations of fans. At the same time, Twin Peaks has a serious core, with nearly fifty hours to flesh out the complexities within these broad sketches. And the show makes the best of that potential, always delighting to reveal hidden sides of its citizens, leaving us uncertain about their demons and capabilities. This is especially true in the show's first fifteen episodes, dominated by the question "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Perhaps the most famous character of all, she's gone but still haunting the town before the pilot even begins.

What to expect in 2023

The (revised) TWIN PEAKS Character Series reboots the Character Series I began but didn't finish in 2017, before the third season. This is scheduled to run three times a week through July 31 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The series consists of four prefaces, twenty-four bonus entries, eighty-six official character entries, and an extra surprise on the final day. These entries will be compressed into ninety individual posts. There will be three types:

NEW: completely original entries for new characters or old ones I didn't reach in 2017

LINKS: redirecting readers to old characters whose stories were not continued

REVISED: re-publishing old characters with new material reflecting changes in their stories
(revisions to the text will be marked with a gold ball for the reader's benefit)

For further details, check out the extensive "Notes on the 2023 Edition" section below, following the methodology I mostly laid out in 2017.



METHODOLOGY

This year we will take a journey from Twin Peaks' most minor characters to its biggest star. This month I will mostly combine many characters into short entries with a few "bonus" selections in the third. After that, the main work of the series will begin with the first standalone entry for a character. For inclusion in these standalone entries, my criterion was that a character appear onscreen for at least ten minutes (the exceptions - character I already wrote back in 2017, when the criterion was that we hear them in at least three scenes - constitute June's "bonus" entries).

In a few cases (such as Invitation to Love and "Spirits of Twin Peaks") I combined several characters into a single category and measured their collective screentime. The "Spirits" entry will thus be one of the biggest, taking time to explore major manifestations of the town's psychosphere like Bob, the Arm, and the Fireman, while also observing them all under the umbrella of the show's mythology. Don't worry, the treatment will still be extensive, just all in one spot instead of diluted.

As for the rest of the ensemble, the first bonus character is only onscreen for a couple minutes, and from there we will work our way up to someone who dominates more than a dozen of the show's many hours. Climbing this mountain will require consistent tools step by step, so we can explore each character in turn and compare them to those we've already visited.

The following will be my method.


A one-line description of the character's personality will open each entry.

A Timeline of Events
In this section, I will lay out the character's storyline chronologically, with a short entry for each day, not necessarily in the order the narrative was told but in the order it takes place. I will also be "starting" days at dawn rather than midnight (since it's hard to tell which nighttime scenes take place when). Sleep (usually) and sunrise, rather than the arbitrary stroke of twelve o'clock (which often occurs in the midst of unfolding action), will be my demarcation. If an event occurs in the early-morning hours of March 3, it will be discussed with the events of March 2 even if that's technically incorrect. (For more details, especially regarding the tangled timeline of season three, see "Notes on the 2023 Edition" below.)

Onscreen interactions with other characters...
This section will provide a simple list of other members of the ensemble who this particular character interacts with. Each interaction will be illustrated.

Impressions of TWIN PEAKS through the character
What does the character tell us about Twin Peaks the TV show and Twin Peaks the town? Do they cultivate a sitcom or soap opera vibe? Do they give us a tourist's or a long-time resident's perspective on the community? Do they offer us insight into Cooper, or the mystery of Laura, or the spiritual underbelly, or the criminal world? Each character is a piece in a larger puzzle.

The character’s journey
Zooming in from their collective contribution, how does this character's arc function as a standalone element? Do they mostly cater to other characters, or do they learn and grow along the way? Are there obstacles they must overcome? Whether or not they change, does our perception of them change as we gain new insights into their experiences and desires?

Actors and Actresses
Researching the cast, I discovered how many of them had fascinating careers and even more fascinating offscreen lives. For many, including those whom we might only know for their involvement with this series, Twin Peaks was just one tiny flourish on a colorful canvas.

Episodes
This list will also be illustrated, doubling as a quick survey of a character's physical evolution. I'll also select a best episode based on a mixture of the best development for their character and plain old personal favoritism.

Writers/Directors
Twin Peaks featured eight writers and fourteen directors. Who worked with this particular character? What unique contributions may they have made?

Statistics
In this section, I'll provide the following for the dataheads out there: a rough count of screentime (estimated to the minute); number of scenes, episodes, and days they appear in; which location they appear in the most; which other character they appear with the most; even if they are among the top ten characters of a given episode! This is the nerdiest segment of the series, and although it's a pretty small part of the overall presentation, in some ways the most fun for me to put together (it would have been virtually impossible in an era before digital files).

Best Scene
Subjective, of course, but hey - if you disagree, share your own in the comments!

Best Line
In a compromise between most iconic and personal favorite, I'll quote the dialogue that best sums up this character for me.

Offscreen
When is the character referenced in the story, even when they're not onscreen? For a couple characters, whose offscreen presence is arguably as crucial as their screentime, these moments will be included as part of their timeline (and contribute to their ranking). For the rest, these moments will be gathered in this section.

Books
Wherever possible, we'll explore the character's appearances in the five spin-off books - The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (1990) by Jennifer Lynch, The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (1991) by Scott Frost, Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town (1991) edited by Richard Saul Wurman, The Secret History of Twin Peaks (2016) by Mark Frost, and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (2017) by Mark Frost.

Additional Observations
• In a few bullet points, I'll collect any other stray notes; sometimes these will extend for many, many lines. They will often include scripted scenes that didn't end up in the final episodes.

So that's it. I look forward to following this format which will provide a structure to both anchor and liberate me. I'm hoping I'll hear back from readers along the way too. What do you think of the characters; are there any details I missed; are you familiar with the actors' other work? In a series devoted to community, I hope we can continue to develop a community around this journey. See you on Friday.


Notes on the 2023 Edition

Six years ago, I plunged into the TWIN PEAKS Character Series. The series was scheduled to conclude when the Showtime series premiered in May. I got pretty far - all the way up to a massive entry on the spirit world - but couldn't crack the top twenty in time. I wasn't sure how or when I'd continue the series, though I knew it had to pause while the new episodes aired. A lot depended on the narrative of Twin Peaks: The Return (as Showtime called the third season). Would it continue roughly from where the other left off, making it relatively easy to proceed? Or would it throw all sense of continuity and canon out the window, radically reinventing all the characters and their stories so that this project would become obsolete?

While some might argue that's exactly what happened, I was surprised by the extent to which the new material was continuous with the old. In fact, I was so excited by the possibilities that I began preparations for this revised series a week before the final hours were even released and I proceeded to lay extensive groundwork throughout the fall. Rather than just finish the top twenty (which had already changed based on the characters who did and didn't appear in The Return), I decided to actually "reboot" the whole series. I've described the broad outlines above, but here's how that will work in more detail.

THE SERIES SCHEDULE

This TWIN PEAKS Character Series will run at a more leisurely pace than the last one, three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday rather than every weekday. Starting this Wednesday and proceeding from there, the series will begin with several new prefaces surveying Return characters who are onscreen less than ten minutes: initially just images for tiny bit parts or significant extras, then a few lines, and finally paragraphs on more significant but still not fully prominent characters (including two whom I wrote about before they became more prominent in season three).

A week from Friday, I will post my round-up of twenty-one "bonus" entries. These "bonuses" reflect the fact that many old entries no longer qualify under my new criterion. For the original series, my rule for inclusion was "speaking in three scenes." That wouldn't fly for The Return, in which some characters are only in two scenes, but are onscreen for seventeen minutes - longer than the Log Lady in the entirety of seasons one and two. Hence the ten-minute cutoff as the new rule. Nonetheless, I didn't want to simply sweep all those characters I'd already written about under the rug. Though they no longer fit in the main ranking, twenty-one of these "bonuses" will simply be links to the old entries, gathered into a single post; there was no update to be made in these cases.

Three of the old "bonus" entries, however, will be updated; two because the characters reappeared in The Return (without crossing the ten-minute threshold overall), and one because the character was extensively rewritten in Mark Frost's book The Final Dossier. While the spin-off books are not considered "canon" for the purposes of most of my analysis (including the opening timeline), I do include a section describing and meditating on their contents. A revision was definitely necessary in this case and a few others.

The three a-week pace will continue as the official countdown begins in the last week of January with the eighty-sixth character (whose screentime was closest to ten minutes without being under). Whenever the ranking reaches a character who has already been covered in full, I'll post a "linking post" with their picture and maybe a few short words, re-directing readers to the entry written last spring. There's no point in cluttering up my archive with duplicate posts but I also don't want to delete or change the old URL (this is also true for older versions of revised posts, which I'm keeping for archival purposes and so others' links and bookmarks don't break). This compromise seems easy enough to navigate. The one big change I'll make to the older posts is to re-title them, reflecting their new ranking.

As the weeks go by, there will be fewer of these posts and more completely new or heavily revised entries. The standings of a few characters ranked in the twenties or thirties last time have skyrocketed (you can guess who they are), while a few have slipped. My recent Fire Walk With Me podcast reveals half of the original, pre-Return top twenty rankings...but where do things stand at the end of the new material? I'm hoping people enjoy guessing where various characters will appear, as they did during the first character run. There should be some surprises in store, and as an added detail you can wonder who has risen or fallen with The Return. The #1 character should be shared on Friday, July 28, and I have a cherry on top in mind for the following Monday though we'll see how it goes.

THE CHARACTER TIMELINE

Aside from a few far-flung events (the atomic bomb test in 1945 and the night the bugs and woodsmen came to New Mexico in 1956), most of the narrative's events take place within three compressed, distinct time periods. The original series unfolds between Friday, February 24, 1989 and (probably) Tuesday, March 28, 1989 with a few glimpses of earlier events (video or film recordings of Laura, Windom, and the Hornes; James' and the Hornes' flashbacks). Fire Walk With Me extends this period eight days earlier, to cover the last week of Laura's life.

The film also features scenes that occur a year earlier in February 1988, detailing Leland Palmer's relationship to and murder of Teresa Banks as well as the FBI investigation of her death, Agent Cooper's investigation of Chet Desmond's disappearance, and Phillip Jeffries' visitation in Philadelphia (which The Missing Pieces bookends with Buenos Aires). The Jeffries material was initially scripted and shot to take place in 1989, only moved to the earlier year in post-production. Confusingly, The Return references it as being 1989 again, but we'll stick with what's onscreen.

Finally, most of The Return is set within the space of a couple weeks. Here's where things get slippery. The new episodes play notoriously fast and loose with chronology. Bobby mentions an event that had seemingly occurred days ago as being the same day; Cooper plays ball with his son between two scenes of an extensive night out on the town; numerous nighttime intervals occur between scenes that were supposed to be just a day or two apart; messages take far too long to arrive or arrive way too fast; characters wear different clothes from scene to scene but the same outfit and hairstyle recurs many episodes apart.

Adding to the confusion is the nagging sense that there is some order beneath the chaos...the story may be told out of order, but the characters respond to events as if they are unfolding in a straightforward manner, and the production pays enough attention to costume, hair, and other clues to suggest an underlying chronology. David Lynch and editor Duwayne Dunham seem to have cut up a coherent, linear story after the fact, although it's likely Lynch didn't worry too much about where certain things would fit on set either. What results is a classic Peaks paradox.

That said, I took the game of figuring out what takes place when as a fun challenge and eventually reached a mostly feasible timeline. If you're hardy enough to plunge down the rabbit hole you can figure out how I got there by reading the posts that start here (fortunately, someone else did the lion's share of initial work, though I ended having to make a ton of revisions myself). It's all a fool's errand of course, but was an absorbing diversion and ultimately a helpful way to keep the new material somewhat within the same framework as the older one, at least for the sake of this perspective (its divergences will be explored elsewhere in the entries).

And what year is it?!? I didn't bother - or want to bother - figuring that out for Part 18; this allowed me to let at least some of The Return exist in that dreamy Lost Highway/Inland Empire Lynchian timescape where the hands on a watch spin like crazy and we peer through a cigarette burn to slip into another time and space. For the more grounded bulk of the series, I concluded - like others - that the events could only take place in 2016. There were some troubles even there, but it mostly held up, whereas trying to pin down the show's calendar (several specific dates are given) in 2014, 2015, or 2017 resulted in a complete mess. I was bummed the events couldn't be made to fit the "twenty-five years" hook, but "I'll see you again in twenty-seven years" it is (unless that's Carrie speaking to Coop in the season two finale, and their Odessa encounter unfolds several years earlier in an alt-2014)?

With all the confusion about dates and years, the months at least were very easy to establish. There are multiple references to the series taking place in late September and early October, an autumnal setting that suits the series' mature, reflective, melancholy mood.

WHO'S WHO?

Before I continue, if you haven't read The Final Dossier and still care about spoilers, fair warning. Its contents will feature in some of these entries, and in this section I'll address a big subject it broaches.

At least two character entries will feature unconventional approaches. Diane Evans' entry will include all of Cooper's tape-recorded messages to her in seasons one and two (somehow this seems integral to building her character). Laura Palmer's entry will incorporate other characters' references to her (as long as she is the focus, even momentarily, and not just an offhand mention). How could I do otherwise? While for the most part I'm focusing only on characters' screentime, Laura's absence is one of the defining aspects of Twin Peaks. Her timeline will be divided into two sections, one covering her life (mostly, but not exclusively, as depicted in Fire Walk With Me) and the other organizing the remaining material under Body, Mind, and Spirit, as well as various subheadings under those categories. I know some readers like to skip the timeline section and get to the meaty analysis, colorful pictures, or playful statistics, but I think this will be one to remember.

Cooper also presents an interesting challenge, given his division (is it a division?). I'll be covering the doppelganger within the same entry as "the good Cooper" but, in the timeline section as well as certain other spots, I'll isolate him from the character's other material. And how to treat tulpas? I'm including them alongside their characters because, similarly to doppelgangers, I consider them emanations from the same source. It's also just much more interesting that way (Diane, for example, seems to be more defined by her fractured identities - Naido will also be folded into her entry - than by any sense of a definitive self distinct from the others). In other cases, where the divisions between characters played by the same actor are not entirely clear, I've erred on the side of separation. "American Girl" will not be added to Ronette Pulaski's entry, and - controversially, I'm sure - I'm giving Carrie Page her own entry (though moments in which she and Cooper mention Laura or evoke her spirit will be included in Laura's entry for the above reasons).

Despite not taking the books' word on everything, I am following Frost's lead in emphatically asserting that the New Mexico girl is Sarah Palmer. I was already inclined to do this anyway (given the amount of visual evidence), so the Dossier was something of a relief. Unlike American Girl or Carrie, this isn't a figure with an ambiguous, open-to-interpretation relationship to another...it's a person who either is or isn't, so it's helpful to know. Granted, it's entirely possible that David Lynch disagrees with Frost's interpretation (more than likely he at least disapproves of its revelation, or else we would have found out on the series itself).

Nonetheless, something about Frost's presentation of this identity - especially in a Q & A shortly before the book - suggests to me that he and Lynch at least discussed it, that it's not a Frostian retcon so much as a Lynchian secret Frost chose to unveil on his own turf. More importantly, I think it will contribute greatly to Sarah's entry to view this girl's story as part of her own. And what of Sarah's other identity question? We're not gonna talk about Judy, we're gonna leave her out of this...well, out of this introduction anyway (insert diabolically grinning Cheshire emoji).

Actually, the question of how to incorporate this incredibly important character whom we may or may not see at all is quite interesting. As with the 2017 series, the spirits will all be folded into one mega-entry, but within this they'll receive individual as well as collective treatment. The creature that many identify as Judy will be listed, following the show itself, not as "Judy" or "Mother" but as "Experiment" (although technically, even there the identity as fractured - one episode lists "Experiment Model", another just "Experiment"). Rest assured there will be plenty of digging into what she's all about when the time comes.

Speaking of spirits, another challenge was provided by the one-armed man. Before season three, I discussed all of Phillip Gerard's earthly scenes in an entry titled after his human identity - reserving only a couple scenes, those in which MIKE appears in dreams or the Red Room, for the Spirit World entry. When the actor reappeared in The Return, he was always listed as "Phillip Gerard" in the credits. I've taken the liberty of filing all of these appearances under the Spirit World, expanding MIKE's material rather than than Gerard's (whose original entry will remain intact and unrevised).

If "Phillip Gerard" has any meaning as distinct from "Spirit MIKE," it's the existence of a host body in the physical world, sometimes possessing its own personality, sometimes possessed by another entity, but always rooted in its own material reality. For whatever reason Lynch chose to list Gerard in the credits, I simply can't follow suit or else it makes complete hash of the system I have in place to distinguish overlapping characters.

STICKING THE LANDING
current status (as of January 2): three months ahead - up to #53 complete

When I initiated the series in 2017, I was a month ahead. Eventually I caught up with myself and - combined with the upcoming Return premiere - had to not only stall the project but eventually reboot it (something that probably would have happened anyway, but could have been added to a completed series had I kept to my deadline). This time I'm more than a month ahead. However, as I'm currently prioritizing my Journey Through Twin Peaks videos - working on the character series more as a side project than the main focus of time allotted for online work - it's certainly possible that I'll fall behind again. If so, the series will pause whenever I'm merely a month ahead, because I want to maintain the patron advances. I'll resume whenever I'm two months ahead again. If I'm unable to build up a sufficient backlog by the fall, it's possible I will just stop the series in its tracks, share the finished entries, and consider abandoning it altogether since it's been six years already - but hopefully that won't be the case. When the Journey videos are complete, this will become my top priority once again - if I haven't already finished it by then.

You can follow the behind-the-scenes progress of the character series and many other projects through this post). While not certain, it feels plausible that I'll finish the series well in advance of both publication and the Patreon month-ahead schedule.

Let the characters begin...


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