A return to Twin Peaks’ now-familiar strangeness
The Show: Twin Peaks, Season 1, Episode 3 The Moment: The bunny In the rustic Twin Peaks police station, deputy Andy (Harry Goaz) and receptionist Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) sit at a table with files spread over it. “We laid everything out and we can’t find anything that’s missing,” Andy tells Deputy Chief Hawk (Michael Horse).
“If it’s not here, then how do you know it’s missing?” Hawk asks.
They ponder. “But if it is here, then it isn’t missing?” Lucy asks.
More pondering. Hawk says he’ll find what’s missing via his heritage. Lucy stares at a packet of Easter chocolate. She gasps.
“I know what’s missing!” she says. “The bunny! I ate that bunny!”
They discuss the bunny, at length.
“It’s not about the bunny,” Hawk declares. He ponders. “Is it about the bunny?” Ponder. “No.”
Twenty-seven years ago, the original Twin Peaks was radical television. Watching this reboot, you realize how many tropes pioneered by show creator David Lynch have seeped into Peak TV: introducing characters without explanations. The use of sound to disorient, rather than orient (low buzzing hums create anxiety, while squishy plops instead of footsteps gross us out).
The dragging out of scenes well beyond normal, to make us bored yet jumpy. The partially lighted night scenes, in which we only catch glimpses of things. The body horror (eyes sewn shut, trees with blobs of flesh).
But the scene above is also identifiably Lynchian. It’s so deadpan, we ache to find it funny. It feels so pointless, we yearn to freight it with meaning. It’s his world, familiarly unfamiliar, and it’s extremely weird to be back in it again. Twin Peaks airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on the Movie Network and CraveTV, and is available on demand. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.