The story so far....
Laura Palmer a high school girl with a secret life of sex, crime etc is murdered.
F.B.I. Agent Cooper comes to Twin Peaks to investigate.
He finds Mike who says the murderer is BOB, a parasitic spirit living on sex and fear.
Laura's cousin Maddy (who closely resembles her) comes to stay with Laura's parents Leland and Sarah.
Maddy and Donna (Laura's best friend) befriend Harold Smith (Laura's agoraphobic lover) only to attempt to steal Laura's diary from him.
Bobby(Laura's boyfriend) and Shelley (they are now lovers) are caring for Shelley's husband Leo Johnson( who is in a vegative state) for insurance money.
Catherine (businesswoman) goes missing and returns disguised as a japanese businessman.
Ben Horne owns the Great Northern Hotel and One Eyed Jack's a whorehouse. His daughter Audrey infiltrates the whorehouse and finds out her fathers involvement.
Audrey falls in love with Cooper.
Nadine attempts suicide, goes in to a coma when she comes out she has regressed to a schoolgirl (with superhuman strength).

Scene Breakdown

2.Great Northern Hotel
Mike inspects lodgers to see who's possessed by BOB. Many navy staff bounce balls. As Ben approaches Mike has a fit.

3.Howard's House
Hawk finds Howard hung dead.

4.Palmer House(living room)
Louis Armstrong "What a Wonderful World" on gramophone. Maddy tells Leland and Sarah she is going home.

5.Howard's House
Hawk finds Laura's diary. Cooper finds suicide note," I am a lonely soul". Camera flash, scene whites out.

6.Johnson House
Money trouble. Leo screams, Bobby discovers Leo's boots are at the cobblers.

7.Great Northern Hotel
Audrey confronts Ben. He admits he owns brothel, slept with Laura but he says he didn't kill her he loved her.

8.Cafe
Shelley tells Norma (Cafe owner) she has to quit her job as waitress. Nadine and Ed (married) enter Nadine smashes milkshake.

9.Johnson House
Bobby and friend find micro-cassette in boots from cobblers.

10.Sheriff's Office
Cooper talks into dictaphone inspecting Laura's diary: references to BOB abusing her from an early age. Calls BOB a friend of her fathers and announces one day she will tell who Ben really is. Enter Audrey who tells Cooper about Ben. Cooper remembers Mike's fit and diary: concludes Ben is murderer.

11.Great Northern Hotel
Ben talks to disguised Catherine. Cooper and police arrive and arrest Ben.

12.Palmer House(living room)
Stuck record player. Floor level tracking. Sarah crawling on floor she sees a white horse. Leland is at mirror.

13.Sheriff's Office
Ben put in cell. Loglady enters(she talks to a log):"there are owls in the Roadhouse", Cooper:"something is happening isn't it-"

14. Catherine's house
Catherine reveals herself to her husband. They hug.

15.Roadhouse(bar)
Julee Cruise sings. James(Laura's boyfriend) and Donna talk: she feels guilty about Howard's death. Cooper, Sheriff and Loglady enter. Donna lip-syncs to James "I want you right back inside my heart". A dissolve to signify time passed. Cooper sees singer turn into Giant:"it is happening again".

16.Palmer House
Stuck record player. Leland sees BOB's face in mirror. BOB's face superimposed over Leland's. Leland don's gloves. Maddy comes down stairs she smells burning. She sees Leland turn into BOB and back. Leland/BOB chases Maddy and assaults her, picks her up and dances around with her he keeps changing from BOB to Leland: as BOB he kisses her, as Leland he cries. He screams "You're going back to Missoula, Montana" and rams her head into a picture on the wall. He inserts a letter under her fingernail.

17.Roadhouse
Giant disappears. Bellhop says to Cooper,"I'm so sorry". Bobby looks distressed at bar. Donna is crying. Cooper looks bemused.

episode ends.

Narrative
At first glance Twin Peaks seems just a traditional soap opera with wacky bits. The narrative seems to support the prevalent ideology. In scene 1, Maddy, Leland and Sarah sip coffee: the perfect family. Cooper is the male, white, middle class detective who solves the crimes. When any women try to investigate they get into trouble, Donna and Maddy spark off Howard's death. When Laura dies Maddy takes her place, this shows how communities return to normality despite problems. All the good people in Twin Peaks are middle class etc.

The whole ideology is turned on its head when Leland kills Maddy. It is revealed that he murdered Laura also. This undermines the idea of the family as a safe place. Maddy is a good person, a saint, but she dies the prevalent ideology would uphold that goodness is rewarded.

Also there is the supernatural side of the show. Leland's murderous alter-ego would traditionally be explained through psychology: Lacan's doppelganger (doublewalker), a split personality. In the show another explanation is given, that Leland is possessed by BOB. Both explanations are valid, so as much credence is given to "superstition" as "science" so the prevalent ideology that science holds all the answers is attacked.

The prevalent ideology is debased, but no coherent alternative is given. All we have are a number of fragmented ideology's. This is postmodernism where there is no universal truth, no universal ideology to explain everything. Beneath the normal image of Twin Peaks lurks evil and disorder in the shape of BOB.

Generic Properties

Mark Frost (executive producer) described Twin Peaks as "a take on night-time soaps". Like soaps the plot is trying to evade narrative closure. The familiar plot-lines of american soaps are there: the love and money trouble and the big business deals of Dallas. Coupled with this is the detective genre, which offers a dominant plot-line of Laura's death. Many other genres are evoked. The western genre is shown with the sheriffs cowboy hat, southern drawl, and native american deputy. Donna, James and Maddy could all come from a 1950's teen movie, especially James who was told to act like James Dean. When Audrey talks to Cooper, she is sensual, dressed in black with a bassy jazz theme accompanying her, she could be the femme fatale in any film noir. The death of Maddy is portrayed like a horror movie, with blood, violence and screams. None of these genres go together but they are juxtaposed from on scene to the next. So many genres are evoked that no dominant transcendental genre can explain the show. This disorder of things shows how there is no natural order, all order is constructed.

The genres are also parodied. James and Donna say corny lines in the roadhouse:

James: He was a sick man.
Donna: I think he was hurt inside.
James: Everybody's hurt inside.

The detective genre is also twisted, Cooper is not the archetypal detective. Usually detectives rely on science, Cooper looks to the Giant, the Loglady and Mike who says he is a reformed parasitic spirit. He uses intuition and the supernatural. This goes against the prevalent ideology of science having all the answers.

Televisual Properties

The postmodernist perspective also colours the televisual properties. Traditionally on TV, camera work seeks to naturalise the image, to immerse the audience so they are no longer aware of the artificiality of the image. David Lynch directs, and utilises his auteur signatures from art films. In scene 4, as Leland Sarah and Maddy talk, the camera takes a slow pan around the photos of Laura, instead of shots of people talking the camera then pans onto the record player. The characters are only seen in the distance behind the record player. At the close of scene 5 their is a camera flash and the scene whites out. In scene 11, when Ben is arrested a disproportion shot is used, showing the people out of proportion. When Cooper and the Sheriff talk to Ben, they stand completely still, only their heads move.

All these visual effects defamiliarise the audience and highlight the fact that the image is constructed. This is against realism and the belief that reality can be accurately represented.

In scene 16, Maddy's murder, Leland/BOB changes from BOB to Leland over and over. When he is BOB there is a spotlight on him and the scene is in slow-motion including the sound. So BOB's breaths come out as roars and Maddy screams "Somebody help me!" in a slowed down low voice. These effects add to the dreamlike quality of the scene. The scene is unpredictable so has a greater impact.

Music is traditionally used to provoke an emotional response, to encourage the audience to read the scene in a certain way. Music uses cultural associations to do this and tries to make the audience think the emotions on screen are real. In Twin Peaks the music is used to draw attention to its own artificiality. In scene 4, Louis Armstrong's " What a Wonderful World", plays on the record player. When the characters speak the music gets audibly quieter. In scene 15 in the Roadhouse, Julee Cruise sings on stage, extreme close- ups of her face show she is lip-syncing poorly. The idea of sound as natural is undermined.

Audience

An audience will always search for meaning. Twin Peaks is an exercise in evading traditional interpretation. Throughout the program dozens of non-sequiturs are thrown at the audience.
For instance, there are similarities in the plot to "Vertigo", Alfred Hitchcocks film, in which Scotty's love Madelaine dies another women takes her place and also dies. The name of the sheriff is Harry Truman, his namesake is a former U.S president and the man who refused to leave his house near St.Helens and died in a volcanic eruption. The name of Coopers boss is Gordon Cole a minor character in "Sunset Boulevard". A white horse appears to Sarah Palmer, this could represent death: Revelations 6:8 "I looked and behold a pale horse and his name who sat on him was Death". The Loglady tells Cooper "the owls are in the Roadhouse" in native american (Sioux) religion owls call out the names of the dead. All these dead end references highlight the illogical link between language and meaning. They also show how no text is original but constructed from other texts.

The constant juxtaposing of genres, ideology's and meanings, offer the audience a pattern, some boundaries within which to interpret the program. But as soon as a meaning is evoked it fades into another. So there is flatness, it looks like there is a meaning but all there are is fragmented images which lead nowhere.

Twin Peaks exists in a dreamtime, it is supposedly in the present day, but has a distinct 50's feel in the decor of the houses and the dress of the characters. This isn't a real historically referenced 1950's but the rose tinted 50's of the "Wonder Years", This undermines any sense of identity the audience finds in the past and the idea of accurately representing time.

Twin Peaks is a postmodernist art form. It undermines all ideology and any idea of absolute truth. It highlights the constructed natures of all art and its un-originality. Any reality is represented as a place with no logical pattern ,a disorder. Any traditional interpretation of Twin Peaks will fail, a new type of interpretation is needed which acknowledges the disorder and doesn't try to enforce order on it.