On a Moment That Shouldn't Work

I love you, Sheriff Truman

Even the most casual fan of David Lynch — news of whose death, at age 78, has just reached me — will recall the moment in episode three of season two, when Albert Rosenfield, played by Miguel Ferrer, delivers this speech:

The context is worth remembering. Albert arrived a few episodes ago and has, thus far, embodied the TV archetype of Competent Asshole to a T. He has dealt insult after insult to Sheriff Truman, one of the nicest men in Twin Peaks, for no reason. He has displayed contempt for the town’s residents. He has been a perfect nightmare, though he knows his job. In a normal well-written TV show, the conflict between Albert and Truman would be resolved slowly, by a series of dramatic moments in which both men are forced to grudgingly acknowledge each other’s uses.

Twin Peaks is not a normal well-written TV show.

Nothing David Lynch ever did was simply competent, I don’t think. Eraserhead, his first film, is like an artifact from another planet; Elephant Man, his second, was as close as he ever got to straightforward Oscar bait, but it offers deep feeling where any other young filmmaker would go for sentimentality. Dune is a fabulous disaster. Villeneuve’s is “better,” but by the time I’m dead, I will probably have rewatched Lynch’s version more times. Blue Velvet was one of the films that set the template for “indie hit,” but it is so uncomfortable to watch that it set off a bit of a moral panic. On “Twin Peaks” he sort of wandered off during the second season, and this created a “David Lynch is losing it” narrative that was only fed by the (as it seemed at the time) excesses of Wild at Heart. When Fire Walk came along, everybody was ready to punish David Lynch for being too damn good, and that’s exactly what happened. More than any other movie I can think of, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me has experienced a reversal of critical fortune. 1991-92 was seventh grade for me, and I wanted to be a filmmaker, and though David Lynch movies didn’t typically come to my small town’s theatres, I already paid attention to movie-related news, and people talked about that movie like it was Waterworld. It was a joke. Actually, it is one of the greatest movies ever made, but it took the long comeback of Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Twin Peaks season three to make that conventional wisdom.

Albert’s speech to Truman makes no sense. Nothing we have seen him do before prepares us for it. It is comprehensively unearned. And it doesn’t really resolve their conflict: Albert is a little nicer afterward, but he does not really, precisely apologize to Truman, even though he definitely should. Any screenwriting teacher would tell you to take it out and make the characters work their way up to it. Any literary critic would. And I don’t just mean that some plodding mediocrity like that “rescue the cat” guy would find this scene objectionable on paper — Aristotle would tell you to take this out. The lump that forms in my throat every time I watch this clip makes no sense. The tears that well up in my eyes when I think about it, which I do often, flout the laws of dramatic math. If I were to get a tattoo, it would be these lines, which exist in defiance of everything we know about storytelling.

Why does it work? If you have ever seen Twin Peaks, you know that it does work. People’s attachment to this moment is fierce; I am anything but an outlier among Twin Peaks watchers in feeling a religious awe toward it. After the fact, I can sort of account for why it works, in the same way that a theologian can make sense of a miracle but would never anticipate it. Twin Peaks is a thoroughly mystical show that takes place in a mystical world — David Lynch had to get something from all that meditation. And so the idea of a startling irruption of grace, powerful because neither Albert nor Harry has earned it, makes sense in the show’s spiritual economy. Impossible evil, impossible decency, and impossible weirdness all abound, and David Lynch never tries to resolve them into some overarching mythology, though co-creator Mark Frost does, which creates an endearing tension.

You can almost imagine that Albert’s speech surprises Albert as much as, or more than, it surprises Truman. It jumps out of his mouth as, many years earlier (or later), that bug crawls in to Sarah Palmer’s. Or as Bob possessed Leland. They didn’t deserve it. Neither, so far as we know him, does Albert. The words are suddenly there, and they transform him at least as much as they speak for him. The only person who isn’t surprised by any of it is Dale Cooper. He’s a seer: he knew Albert had it in him.

Say it with me now:

Now, you listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely: revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you, Sheriff Truman.

I love you, David Lynch.