Twin peaks season two episode 8 full#

The episode started conventionally enough - Evil Cooper, fresh out of jail, is in the car with Ray Monroe, whose presence he demanded as part of the escape deal he “negotiated” last week with the warden of the prison where he was being held. But then, in its own strange way, it was none of those things (except surreal, because duh), because it made sense in its own manner… or, at least, I think it did, because I think what we saw last night was BOB’s origin story. In one way, what we saw last night was the most cryptic, surreal and indecipherable episode of television that Lynch - and, quite possibly, anyone else - has ever made. The rest of the season has been surprising in its unrestrained Lynchianism, but Episode 8 was perhaps the single most Lynchian thing that David Lynch has devised. 'The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.Last week I wrote about how far Twin Peaks has come from being a murder mystery, which honestly is an angle I wish I’d saved for this week, because hoooooo boy was last night’s episode about as far from a murder mystery as one could get. In one spectacular hour of television, Lynch brings together his entire body of work from Eraserhead to Inland Empire-and even a crazy cigarette ad-into one nightmarish vision of innocence inevitably corrupted, without conceivable explanation. But it's only one facet, and it cannot exist without its opposite.

The image of these children is Lynch's imagined American innocence. But whether meaningful or not, the point is apart from any narrative cohesion.

They may be the future Leland and Sarah Palmer. It's strange then to ponder those two kids in 1956, a budding relationship forming. The reality of suffering is circular, feeding on itself, inevitable. At the same time, through Laura's eyes it was always Leland in BOB's form. BOB was molesting Laura for years in the form of Leland. Their reign of terror is shared, inextricably. In the ninth episode of Twin Peaks Season Two, after Leland Palmer is killed, Albert says BOB is simply 'the evil that men do.' There is no distance, in the end between Leland and BOB. Evil multiplied, genetically conceived, technologically disseminated, rotting the very core of the species and infecting any semblance of innocence. An alien-like creature-a mother-spews eggs from her mouth toward the screen. Technological prowess turned into destruction, poisoning the world, the result of poisoned souls.

The cracking open of the quiet New Mexico desert haunts the American dreamscape. Where other shows-and films, too-have used the weird and surreal as window dressing for straightforward storytelling, The Return brings the true avant-garde to bear on a story where clarity is beside the point, and perhaps impossible.ĭavid Lynch, ever-obsessed with reproducing and tearing apart a 1950s Americana aesthetic, sets a firm marker on the degradation of the American spirit. These dreams have followed me through my life, but neither came as a result of reading a book or watching a movie.įrom its long drive through the night, to its cascade of blotches and sparkles and flames, to its flickering store lights, to its silent expressionism, to its 1950s utopian hellscape of crushed skulls, cigarette-toting vagrants, and bug-frogs, 'Part 8' brought to television screens a work of art that escapes narrative confines.

Twin peaks season two episode 8 full#

I remember when I was maybe 13 and I dreamt I'd been trapped inside a giant metal box full of gears and other mechanical contraptions grinding me into pieces while the sound of metal slamming against metal boomed from outside. I remember once when I was about 9 or 10, sick, and dreaming a giant machine climbing the stairs of my childhood home, coming for me, slamming with unbelievable force on each step until it reached landing. In all my life, I can't recall any work of art giving me nightmares. I looked over at my dog, who lifted his little head from slumber, stared at me confused for a moment and went right back to sleep. Tears streamed down my face, and I was sweating, but the evil was gone. 'No,' I cried out again, but just barely, my voice creaking as though I was suffocating in air. I turned my head to look at whatever it was and the face of BOB struck me. Paralyzed from fear and convinced the spectre of a personified evil hovered over me, I couldn't escape. I awoke in the early morning to the sound of my own voice crying out, 'no, no, no,' into the darkness.