Subject: Re: TP - A possible explanation of BOB (long)
From: wwd@cellar.uucp (Bill Donahue)
Date: 1990-11-16, 09:31
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks,rec.arts.tv
Reply-to: wwd@cellar.UUCP (Bill Donahue)

Fiona Oceanstar hang me out to dry with:
> >Bill Donahue has some very intriguing things to say:

> >You are prepared to accept an "evil" that can possess our souls at will?
> >What a thought, Bill!  I'm not sure Dale Cooper would agree with you.

Psychoanalytic fight!! Psychoanalytic fight!! No, I bet you would demolish
me rather quickly.

But isn't it a theory that what we label "evil" are those internal traits
which cannot be accepted and so must be projected outside? True, the BOB
entity has become rather a "Jason" character from some Saturday matinee
instead of something more interesting like the shadow of some communal
guilt shared by the town. At Laura's funeral, Bobby said the whole town
was to blame for her death. I hoped that Andy's "I'm a whole damn town."
had echoed that.

> >He feels devastated right now.  His job is to uncover and stop the murderer,
> >and he's failing miserably.  I can't imagine that he's going to be able
> >to sit back and enjoy his pie and cup o' coffee, when the feeling of
> >impotence--the feeling of the hero fallen from grace, as others have
> >suggested--is flooding into his awareness.  If Cooper goes back to being
> >"naive" and finding Twin Peaks "heaven"--which I'm not at all sure that
> >he *does* anymore, even before Maddy's death--it's going to take a major
> >effort of denial on his part.  He is, first and foremost, a lawman.

Well, what did he respond to the judge when challenged just that way?
Something like "Heaven can be very large." Or something like that.
Coop strikes me as rather more laid-back. Sure he messed up, but he won't
obsessively dwell upon it. Just take another jelly donut and some hot Joe
(or maybe a chocolate malted from Bob's Big Boy) and make another go at it.
In the pilot, Truman says "We lost them." and Cooper just replies "Give me
a donut." Now good old Albert, on the other hand, seems like he might
become very upset at any failures and would be rather energetically upset,
even to the point of projecting the failures on those around him.

> >I'm not saying I can't identify with your lovely description about "seeking
> >out the good and the pleasant."  I'm just wondering if this desire, on
> >Cooper's part, doesn't contain an element of flight from reality.  This

Like I tried to suggest later, Cooper has found his rightful place: a
quirky person in the midst of other quirky people! What is so sacred
about reality that it shouldn't be fled from, at least occasionally!

> >is a man who is haunted by his past.  His admirable quality of wanting
> >to give himself a present every day, may contain a secret core of fear.

I thought it was just good common sense.

> >Could it be that Cooper is tired, ready to give up being an FBI agent?
> >Is Twin Peaks his fantasy of the place to prove his prowess, one more
> >time, before hanging up his hat?  Twin Peaks is a quirky place.  It
> >may not oblige Cooper in this fantasy.

Well, if Bend Oregon can have a district office, then maybe the thriving
metropolis of Twin Peaks ...