Thoughts on the Pilot

Vintage industrial equipment at Crane Cove Park in San Francisco. Photo: J. Waits

I love getting reacquainted with Twin Peaks after all these years. Each week, I’ll be sharing quick thoughts on each episode as well as a photo inspired by Twin Peaks that I’ve taken on one of my pandemic walks in San Francisco. Doesn’t this one give you a bit of a Packard Saw Mill vibe? On to the pilot! If you haven’t watched the pilot yet, be warned that there are spoilers for Season 1, episode 1 in this post.

While the mood and some scenes in the pilot were very familiar to me, I was hazier on details and plot points. I don’t remember how everything plays out, so I am excited to learn how the mystery unfolds. If you are reading this and know more, mums the word for now, as I hope to make it through to the end of season 3 without hearing plot details in advance. For this podcast project, I am only watching one episode at a time, so it’s slow going in an era when we could potentially binge watch the entire first season in one sitting.

Soooo many characters are introduced in the first episode and the soap opera aspects of the show become clear as we learn about romantic entanglements and even witness Dynasty-like drama between Josie Packard and Katherine Martell. Interestingly, Josie is the first person we see. She’s looking at herself in a mirror applying lipstick before turning around, while softly humming. It is an ominous moment and we don’t quite know what to make of it. Obviously Laura Palmer haunts the entire episode. The discovery of her dead body wrapped in plastic is shocking and the talk of the town and the high school. Her specter appears throughout the pilot, as the camera focuses on her framed homecoming queen photo in the trophy case at school and we also see her in a carefree moment on video. What happened to Laura? At the end of the pilot, we are all dying to know.