1x03 Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer

[4.2/10] So much of Twin Peaks is going for a vibe of weird or offputting or disturbing. Particularly in an episode like “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer” the show seems to be going for outré at every turn. And almost everywhere, it falls completely flat.

That starts with Ben and Jerry Horne, Audrey’s dad and uncle, who go gallivanting about at the local whorehouse. We’re seemingly supposed to be scandalized by this, or the fact that such a house of ill-repute is right on the border of Twin Peaks and that these two town luminaries would visit the establishment.

Aside from having the two brothers go stupidly orgasmic over a pair of sandwiches, “Zen” tries to make this seem all the more concerning by contrasting it with James and Donna having another dull, overwritten heart-to-heart, meant to give us innocent love contrasted with tawdry sex. But Ben and Jerry are such cheesy, over the top figures that the would-be reveal of their debauchery has no impact. It’s hard to take such contrasts seriously when the people involved are basically cartoon characters.

That goes double for Nadine, the mentally disturbed wife of Ed, the gas station owner. There’s the potential to draw some real pathos from Nadine, given her condition, or some real fear, given her exercise machine-bending fit. The notion of someone who is sad because she’s not all there, but dangerous for the same reason has real potential for an interesting character.

But Nadine is, for the most part, an object of fun for Twin Peaks, someone the show seems to be making fun of with her fascination for quiet drape runners who mostly exists to be an obstacle for Ed’s happiness. Her screams and yawps and manic episodes are played with the same “they’ll hear it in the cheap seats” overexuberance that takes the force out of practically the whole show. It’s probably unfair to expect much sensitivity to that sort of thing in 1990, but it’s just another way the show is trying to shock the sensibilities of the viewer and comes off corny instead.

The worst offender on that front is easily Leo Johnson. While there’s scores of terrible actors on Twin Peaks, Leo has the simplest job and the one he nevertheless fails at -- to be menacing. When he threatens Bobby and Mike, it’s supposed to be unnerving, a sign that he’s a loose cannon and a little crazy himself. Instead, his hokey lines about Shelley or telling Bobby to “go long” turn him into a mustache-twirling version of Snidely Whiplash. Setting these scenes in the woods and having Leo pull the intimidation routine are supposed to create an atmosphere of dread, but instead set up Leo as one of the non-magical Power Rangers antagonists with his generic bully vibe and bad dialogue.

Even Audrey, who has a bit more juice as a character than most, gets lost in some cryptic conversations with Donna about Laura, before she starts dancing by herself to the awful “dreamy” score that permeates this show. Again, it’s supposed to be jarringly strange, but mostly comes off as dumb.

That goes double for the scene with the Palmers, who have a similar, grief-stricken reaction to the loss of their daughter. Laura’s Dad decides to put on some cheery music, caress a picture of his daughter, and then start dancing with it. Laura’s mom witnesses this, tries to stop it, until the picture breaks and blood gets smeared on Laura’s photo. (Oooh, obvious symbolism!) There’s screeching and more dancing and mumbling and what’s supposed to feel like an off-puttingly authentic reflection of grief just comes off laughable and ridiculous.

It’s good then, once again, that there’s Agent Cooper there to pick up the slack for the show. His escapade with throwing rocks at a glass bottle while names of various J-related figures in town are read is played as more quirky than unnerving, it’s the one regular scene in this episode that has any life in it. While Cooper’s zen powers are a little silly, the scene (a.) works as a creative method to deliver a little exposition and remind the audience who the show’s various, numerous characters are and (b.) continues to create an aura around Cooper as an effective oddball that pays off later in the episode (and hopefully in the rest of the series).

The payoff comes in the famous dream, the one that’s been parodied in countless other works (most notably, for my purposes, in the “Who Shot Mr. Burns” episode of The Simpsons). It starts off pretty lousy, with nonsense flashes and silly doubletalk from one guy who is presumably the one-armed man given his talk of removing his whole arm with the mark of the devil, and another guy, credited as Killer Bob, who was the man Laura’s mom saw in the pilot and who threatens to kill again. Both bits feel like bad eighties wrestling promos and have all the terror of a community theater production of Casper the Friendly Ghost.

But then, the show gets legitimately weird, genuinely boundary-pushing, and earnestly different, and it casts the rest of the dross that “Zen” presents into stark relief. You don’t need me to rehash the famous details: the backwards line, the dancing Man From Another Place, the familiar but alien presence of the dead girl in the scene. In an episode that bends over backward to try to provoke a reaction other than an eye-roll or a facepalm, the success of those last five minutes only makes everything that comes before it seem like an even greater waste of time.

Maybe it’s because there’s not much call for great acting in the scene; maybe it’s because all the dialogue is in reverse and subtitled, making it so that no one really has to spit out Lynch and Frost’s horrid lines. Maybe it’s because the jazzy tune actually works for the floating, out there qualities. But Lynch and Frost capture the pretzel logic of dreams, the difficult-to-grasp clarity of those waking moments, and the bizarre features of those dips into the non-waking world.

For the first time in a series praised for being something new, Twin Peaks actually presents something different. It creates a mood and an atmosphere of something true and ineffable in a way the rest of the series strains for and fails to accomplish. And with that success, the unnerving reversed footage and cryptic speech that is recognizable and uncomfortable at the same time, it just makes the rest of the episode, that doesn’t even approach that level of meaning or truth, seem that much worse and pointless and hollow by comparison.