There's a brief but interesting bit about Twin Peaks in People's Celebrate the 90's special issue. It's two pages with that fashion shot of Audrey and Coop, with coffee and pie, in an RR booth, the other has thumbnails of the road sign, various characters and a little then and now with Sheryl Lee. Here're some Frost quotes which raise some interesting thoughts I think we should discuss.

Did Anyone Understand This Show?: "I have no idea. That's what was so odd about the show. We just threw stuff up from the subconcious every now and then. We didn't have any definitive meaning we wanted to impose on anyone. It was more a Rorschach test for who the viewer was."

Owls: "The owls were a particular way of hinting at a supernatural presence around Twin Peaks. They probably harked back to Native American legends. Also, in UFO-ology some people apparantly claim that their memories of owls were a substitute for those little gray men who had actually abducted them."

Dwarf/Giant: "I remember David Lynch calling me up one day and saying, 'Mark, there is a giant in Agent Cooper's room.' I said, 'Uhh, okay. Well, let's try and figure out what he's doing there and go from there.' We decided that the giant and the dwarf were both aspects of either an imaginary world dwelling within the mind of Laura's father, Leland Palmer (who turned out to be the killer) or of an alternate universe intruding on ours."

Who was Killer BOB?: "That is the big question. Again, was Leland just insane and BOB a fragmented part of his personality? Or was BOB a real demonic presence? It's really hard to tell when you read accounts of genuinely irretrievable schozophrenics. They believe they are posessed."

Ok- does anyone think it's possible that Leland is just insane? What does that mean for Cooper and Laura? That the red room sequences are like the machine in The Cell that opens a window into a killer's dream world?

If Cooper didn't have any interaction with BOB in the final episodes, I would say that it could just be Leland. But because BOB exists after Leland and because of the whole Red Room incident, either 1) Cooper has gone insane (maybe there's something in the coffee) or 2) BOB is a spirit.

Jordan .

I agree, jordan.

I like the idea that it's "another reality encroaching on ours." Like, the waiting room is a world that used to exist only in dreams but is now becoming real. Sometimes I feel that way about this tv show. Life is a funny interlude, isn't it?

But it may be a part of Cooper's special nature that he has an unusual capacity for empathizing with the disturbed state of his "subjects". Mike suggests as much in the interrogation scene... And there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of schizophrenic symptoms "rubbing off" on people who are close to the sufferer, especially when they're a charismatic type... Perhaps this is why Cooper is capable of entering Leland's and Laura's shared interior landscape. So Cooper has sorta gone insane by that theory -- he got too close to the fire and got burned, and until there's a sequel we'll never know how badly.

In the end, though, who's to say that a person's subjective convictions can't become so powerful that they manifest externally and be apprehended by others?

Jordan .

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

interesting discussion...i believe in the other dimension intruding into our world theory.white lodge good,black lodge evil. just like our world theirs has both yet only the evil from the black lodge has come through. think of the possibilities if the series had continued of good coming from the white lodge to help combat the evil allready here from the black lodge...or perhaps that in fact the good exists in dale cooper and that is why he is so intuitive to leland and laura and bob and mike in dreams. birthplace of agent dale cooper...the white lodge!

I think everyone makes concessions for BOB not being real, and Leland just being a spirit, because it is a much cooler way to view the show! As has been discussed before, it seems like an easy way out for Leland to just have been possessed all that time. Having said that, his death scene aside, there are lots of hints that Leland had some input into the terrible things he did, without BOB being there.

I think Frost and Lynch went too far with the whole spirit entities. I love BOB's sparse appearances in the pilot and first series. It works so well, but they introduced so much spiritual stuff that it's clear that they believe Leland isn't insane, he is possessed. (Or at least the possession came before the insanity). There's a lot of mythology  you have to ignore if you want to believe that BOB is just a metaphor for evil/Leland's insanity etc.

Frost/Lynch going too far or not far enough is a double-edged sword. If they don't go "too far," certain aspects of the show are more interesting. Dale's weird dream of the Red Room says more about his eccentric methods than it does about the world of Twin Peaks. Leland is a more complicated character if he isn't "simply" possessed, etc.

However, by going all out with the "Lodge Spirit" concepts, we get the second Red Room sequence in the series finale and the more fascinating bits of FWWM--i.e. Desmond and Jefferies' experiences, Dale and Annie crossing over from the Lodge, etc. So it's a bit of a wash for me.

Maybe this has been stated/discussed before but at the end of the European Pilot doesn't BOB say, "you may think I've gone insane, but I promise I will kill again"...isn't he referring to Leland?
 

 he also says it "as Leland" in the series while in jail. it's like he was saying "you can't catch me".

shortly thereafter Leland is left to remember everything and the episode ends when Harry says "where's Bob now?" and we see the large owl flying off. remember "the owls are not what they seem".