An Eternal Instant, a Quiet Cacophony

That picture in Gordon's office makes perfect sense and yet is also totally absurd. And that's the essence of David Lynch at his best, as he was with Twin Peaks season three. I'm now on my fourth viewing since it premiered in 2017 and am further confirmed in my impression of it as a masterpiece. At this point, I do think it's better than the original series, though I wonder if I'm biased by factors like how many times I watched the old series. A lot of the power of Lynch is in how he surprises the viewer with sounds and images and the more you rewatch his works, the less potency there is in that power. Yet the mysteries on Twin Peaks yield their own rewards for repeat viewings.

It's a sensory experience above all, though. And facts and clues have value insofar as they contribute to that sensory experience. I still come to the end of every episode with that delicious, transformed feeling I normally only get from watching an extraordinary, particularly good movie.

What Lynch crafts is something about the energy between people and the strangeness and improbability of human life. To take an example, the scene where the Buckhorn police are examining the body in Ruth Davenport's apartment. Detective Macklay (Brent Briscoe) walks into the bedroom, holding his hands in the air, which are covered with blue latex gloves. Talbot (Jane Adams) looks up and says, "Good, Dave. You're behaving yourself." It makes sense when you think about it--she's in charge of forensics and maybe in the past Macklay wasn't very careful about putting on gloves to avoid contaminating a crime scene. But without this context, we're forced to contemplate the strangeness of the moment of a man holding his blue hands in the air and a woman expressing approval with slow, careful words.

Even the little moments force you to pay attention, to figure out what's happening not from the standpoint of what you expect from a TV show but what you expect from life.

In this way, the show is a perfect antidote for narrow thinking. It requires a receptive viewer, of course. But if you're willing to sit quietly with it in a dark room, it can help you breathe like few other things in media can these days.