John Bernardy
Late in Twin Peaks Season 2, Dale Cooper reassures John Justice Wheeler that taking a chance on love is a good endeavor by saying it “feels like someone’s taking a crowbar to my heart.” Wheeler says it sounds bad, but Cooper says “No, I think it’s been locked away long enough.” This is great, right? Our special agent is feeling love, and we’re finally getting a chance to see what that looks like when he unlocks his heart. Except this relationship isn’t born from the slow-burn interactions between Cooper and Audrey Horne, which is a sin to many viewers even today. It’s with fast-tracked newcomer Annie Blackburn. And no matter what you may feel on the matter, I think Cooper and Annie’s relationship is a good thing. A better thing.
Sure, Annie and Cooper’s pairing reinforces some forced narrative conventions by rushing in a new romantic interest for Cooper out of nowhere. And sure, it appears to deny established characterization by not igniting the Audrey/Cooper romantic tension like viewers were demanding for quite a while. But in other ways, it absolutely reinforces Cooper’s characterization by pairing him with a much better fit for him as a person. It’s not Dale and Annie’s fault the episode count and plot had to derail them before they could win over most of the viewers.
Why Not Audrey?
When Dale first sees Audrey in his bed back in Season 1, viewers were sold on their chemistry, but Dale Cooper turns her down gracefully. She is a girl in high school and he is in the FBI, not to mention Audrey is involved in the case he’s working on. It’s a non-starter.
To add to this, in Diane… The Twin Peaks Tapes of Dale Cooper –Which MacLachlan seemingly took to heart when he recorded it as an audiobook over the summer of 1990– Dale speaks of Audrey as an immature innocent who “wants to play detective” and “help with the investigation.” He says “I’m sure it’s a young girl’s romantic fantasy to her. She’s 18 by the way, last August the 24th. I must remain alert and cautious in this area, Diane. She clearly doesn’t understand the dangers involved, both physical and emotional.”
Dale knows exactly how old Audrey is, so there’s definitely some attraction, but right away he implies she’s not grown up enough to be involved with his dealings. Based on his previous trauma, Cooper can only feel that he would be bringing trauma into Audrey’s life for the first time. Audrey hadn’t even been in love at this point.
I understand that the Twin Peaks writers were planning to go forward with a Cooper/Audrey romance arc anyway around Episode 17. I’m not going to get into any meta issues why Kyle MacLachlan may have nixed the romance before it even began. I don’t need to. From the point of view of Cooper’s character, MacLachlan was absolutely correct. It would have gone against anything Cooper ever said about Audrey’s maturity. It would have made him interested in someone he saw as a child who was starved for friendship. He would value what it means to be that child’s first love, and how incongruous that would be for him. It would have made us all wonder who Cooper could be, for all the wrong reasons.
Seven episodes later, the writers finally give Cooper and Audrey their romance arcs, with other people. Audrey is paired with John Justice Wheeler, and Cooper is paired with Annie. From a nuts and bolts perspective, Annie is none of the things Cooper was concerned about with Audrey. Though Annie would become embroiled in Windom Earle’s machinations later, she has nothing to do with anything Dale is working on. And despite Heather Graham’s actual age, she was playing older same as MacLachlan was playing a slightly older character.
Annie is not a child. The reasons that drove Annie to the scars on her wrist happened no earlier than her senior year of high school. Her entry into the convent happened –at the earliest– that same year, and she was at the convent for 5 years after that. This places Annie between the ages of 22 and 25 years old when we meet her, which still isn’t great compared to Dale’s age of 35, but the difference was more socially acceptable at the time, not to mention there’s an evolutionary difference of knowing oneself when graduating high school versus when they’re the age to graduate from college. Especially when the person in question spent the last five years deeply focused on learning to make peace within themselves and feels ready to rejoin the world.
And about those scars on Annie’s wrists: she’s been hurt by love before and came through the other side. Just like Dale, who was internally scarred by his relationship with Caroline Earle. But there’s more to Dale and Annie than shared trauma and proper ages.
Why Annie?
The fact that they’re in a TV show and Dale is the protagonist meant that drama needed to collide with their story. But from where they began, these two make a lot of sense together.
As Norma’s sister, Annie literally comes from the Double R side of Twin Peaks where love is baked into pies and cups of joe every day. She has absolutely nothing to do with any of Dale’s cases which means no conflicts of interest, and from moment one she brings him his intuition fuel.
Their first meeting is quick and above board. Cooper goes in to the Double R, and is smitten immediately, slowing down his order of “deep black joe”. He welcomes her to the town, deducts she’s Norma’s sister, and implies he hopes she stays for a while.
The next day, Harry and Cooper are back at the Double R debating finch or chickadee on the Dodge Dart in the parking lot, and Annie silently joins in and backs up Cooper’s answer. She uses his terminology and gives him a “cup of deep black joe” before offering a hangover solution of “Tea totaling and prayer” to Harry.
Cooper loves that answer and asks her how she is, and Annie proves that she’s an overthinker. ”I’m fine. I’m weird actually. I’m disoriented, I’m not sure where I am. I mean, I know where I am but it feels odd being here. I’m okay.”
Cooper echos an “okay,” and we see Harry verify that Cooper is vibing with Annie. Dale assures her if he thought she was strange he would tell her.
Annie says “You don’t [nose wrinkle] think so [that she was strange]?” Cooper says ”Not a bit.” Annie is surprised and relieved. “Good, glad we got that cleared up.” It’s an odd but cute interaction.
A lot of love energy is happening in this scene –most notably the counter esperanto between Gordon and Shelly– but Dale and Annie hold their own. While ordering lunch Dale tacks on a joke about two penguins. Annie has to leave when one penguin tells the other penguin it looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo, but when she comes back she asks “so what did the second penguin say?” She was listening, and wanted to!
“The first penguin turned to the second penguin and said, you look like you’re wearing a tuxedo. And the second penguin said, maybe I am.” The charm is all in MacLachlan’s delivery, and it doesn’t quite make sense to us, but Dale and Annie both giggle because they get it.
The next day Cooper goes in to order donuts and coffee and invites Annie to a nature study date. She accepts and it’s all 1950s TV wholesomeness. Dale echoes Gordon’s language on Shellly’s magical ability to be heard by Gordon’s ears. “When I talk to you, I get a tingling sensation in my toes and in my stomach. I don’t think it has anything to do with coffee.”
On the date, we get Annie’s backstory when we learn about what got her to the convent, and that she’s overcoming her fear by returning to where it all went bad. But it’s not all dark backstory. She admits her intuition is telling her to trust Dale, and they kiss for the first time. Later they coincidentally meet at the Great Northern’s bar where Dale reassures Annie and commits to helping her on her path through her fear.
Technically, the writers are spelling out a lot of things for viewers here, and Cooper could just be falling in love with protecting Annie. But he could have just as easily fallen in love with protecting Audrey. Why does it work here? Cooper and Annie are people who need intellectual safety to make crossing personal boundaries safe. And they’re able to grow together at the same rate from the same starting positions.
From here they’re preoccupied with each other. Cooper sees her face and hears her voice when he should be focusing on his petroglyph investigation, and Annie sees his face in the eggs she makes at the Double R. They also catch each other’s intellectual quotes they use to understand reality, and they giggle when they feel recognized.
Annie agrees to go dancing with Dale even though she’s scared to dance, and they are cute when Dale holds his hand out to her and she shakes her head no. They nonverbally get her onto the dance floor with him, and Cooper says “just think of it as a walking embrace, two people, stepping, as one would step. Follow me.” And Annie counters with a perfect encapsulation of why they work: “we’ll follow each other.” This scene is a perfectly balanced instance where there’s plenty of telling and showing.
I just wish they could’ve continued on this trajectory.
Timing and Plot Was Against Them the Whole Time
The writers did not do the relationship any favors by coming up with it so late in the season. Annie and Cooper obviously had something, but by the time the Twin Peaks writers got to Cooper’s romance arc, there were only six episodes left in the season. Which meant it was time to ramp up towards a dramatic season finale that would absolutely hinge on the show’s protagonist, Cooper.
It was the worst possible time to give him a romantic interest, but that wasn’t the writers’ primary concern anyway. Mark Frost said to Brad Dukes in Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks, “the character of Annie was central to the Windom Earle story and the idea was that this was an echo for Cooper, of the one thing he had done that he was most ashamed of: the affair with Earle’s wife and this presented a chance for him to redeem himself.”
So there we have it: she was created to be an echo of Cooper’s past, rather than a character on her own merits. And for storytelling purposes she was literally doomed from the start, needing to meet and couple with Cooper in five episodes so she could be a damsel in distress in the sixth.
That’s why she ends up being an outsider who “grew up in town” yet is never recognized. That’s why their rushed courtship feels less organic and more like when Cooper fell slightly under Lana’s pheromone powers. And it’s why many fans theorize that Annie is somehow Lodge-maneuvered or could be a tulpa.
It felt incongruous because Audrey and Cooper had all that fire that was able to simmer for 23 episodes before Annie entered the show, while Cooper and Annie had a low-key cerebral slow-burn vibe that led into a physical relationship in five episodes before we as viewers had a chance to decide if we liked the pairing or not.
If Cooper’s romance arc started when it was intended to in Episode 17, however, there would have been 13 episodes left in the season. There would have been time for some decompressed episodes where he could live in his feelings and enjoy meeting someone without needing to rush into a commitment. Annie could’ve been allowed to be a character on her own merits, and there would have been time for the audience to like her before Cooper needed to nail down his intentions to be in a relationship with her.
Instead of getting an awkward conversation about forests and trees coded as past trauma leading to them getting into bed together after only knowing each other for 5 episodes, we’d’ve supported Annie and Cooper like we did Andy and Lucy, because they match that kind of well. But instead, we’re comparing it against the visible fire from the previous romantic tension.
The pace of TV production was moving so quickly that the producers didn’t even think of making a new love theme for Annie and Cooper. A new noir-heavy theme was made for Josie and Truman; it could have been done. It’s like the writers knew this wasn’t supposed to last so they didn’t make it grow enough on its own. Instead Cooper and Annie got the same Love Theme selection everyone else got at that point of the show: the Audrey’s Prayer music cue. And there we have that comparison mucking things up again.
Imagine how much easier it’d be to see Annie and Cooper on their own merits if they had given Annie a music cue of her own, and then it was gradually used with a saxophone (Cooper’s instrument) playing the melody during their scenes.
It would have been even easier to be on Annie’s side when she told Dale “I understand why you hesitate, why you treat me with care. The convent evokes the image of helpless women, fearful of the thought of any emotion other than those derived from scripture, and prayer. But when you hold me, when we kiss I feel safe and eager and I’m not afraid, of anything that you make me feel.”
It would have been so much easier to see the two people stepping as one would step, following each other.
I’m not sure that Annie being Dale Cooper’s grand new love interest was the story that David Lynch (sorry to exclude Frost and the others) was going for, so I doubt it would have mattered if the audience had time to warm to her. If Twin Peaks was typical soap opera fare, yeah, sure then, fine, but I doubt Lynch envisioned it as such. Or maybe, more accurately, since it came through his mind and heart it was always bound to be something far deeper, more different, more darker.
That’s the other problem most fans have, the ones that side with Kyle MacLachlan’s excuse for nixing the Audrey/Cooper romance: They can’t see Cooper as being a gray individual. He needs to be a more intelligent Dudley Do-Right in their eyes.
Why fans are so quick to believe that Leland Palmer was a horrible abuser just hiding behind a nice guy image, but regarding Dale Cooper some can’t even admit he might become CONSENSUALLY involved with an OF-AGE high school girl because he just happened to fall in love with her without meaning to is difficult to understand.
On the other hand, I tend to believe that Leland, while guilty of going to prostitutes (some of them underage), was innocent of hurting Laura in any way, other than being absent. He was never presented to us as being as sane, moral or wholesome as Dale Cooper, which was probably ultimately a good thing for Leland because he wasn’t perfect.
Like Tim Kreider, I tend to think that Dale Cooper was really Laura’s murderer. But worse than that, I think he purposely killed several different women, probably 15 in total. The first 2 of his victims were unintentional, while numbers 3-15 were done willfully. This is the explanation for the American Girl (the real Laura) being inside of the room with the #3 electrical throw switch device. She was his first intentional victim. Naido (Betty), his last victim, was #15. This brings deeper resonance to Cooper existing in room 315 at the Great Northern.
Ultimately, viewers became so obsessed with the incestuous sexual abuse aspect of BOB that they forget that he was always established as being a serial killer. He promised to kill again, afterall, something that kind of always negates to me that he merely represents the evil that men do, otherwise, that would go without saying.
After seeing The Return, I have come to accept that behind Dale Cooper is the dreamer, William Hastings, a well respected man whom hides a monster.
I also believe wholeheartedly that the Hornes, and Dale Cooper’s relationship with Audrey in particular, hold the answers to many of the series’ mysteries, they just go unexamined because fans think the whole Dale/Audrey relationship was abandoned/forgotten about, either to their disappointment or their relief.
Infact, the dissolution of Cooper’s planned romance with Audrey further helped to cast Dale in too much of a “good” light, cementing that he was repressing some very dark truths about himself, especially in regards to Miss Horne. Lynch used this to his advantage to explore what was really going on, only in a veiled way, which better suited the mystery aspect he loved.
What it comes down to is…even when the series WASN’T about Audrey/Cooper, it still WAS really about Audrey and Cooper. It was just done in a way so neither MacLachlan or Fenn could complain.
If Twin Peaks is a dream, and all characters therein some aspect of the dreamer, it becomes seeable that the dreamer, wishing to preserve the noble Dale, quickly dreamt himself as John “Jack” Justice Wheeler so he could still be involved with Audrey without “tainting” his avatar inside of the dream, an avatar which was impossibly good. I suspect this wasn’t even because a relationship with Audrey was deemed as being immoral on the grounds of her age, however.
I believe, deep down, it was really because Audrey Horne is his mother, a mother whom conceived him from the abuse of her own father and whom carried on the abuse with him. Hastings couldn’t ultimately accept his love for and attraction to her. He dreamt himself as her protector instead, one whom harboured forbidden feelings.
The dream was also meant to save Hastings from the truth. He scapegoated his family’s history of abuse onto the innocent Leland and Laura. Only after their deaths does Ben and Audrey’s relationship miraculously heal and Dale and Audrey’s fade.
But the illusion falls apart gradually, the truth seeping in, because the truth can’t be escaped. No matter what bit of misdirection the Magician uses to work his magic, it will ultimately always be a lie.
Okay, so, not wanting his good side (Dale) burdened with an attraction to Audrey, the dreamer invented Jack, but with some disturbing indications and repetitions.
The Ben/Audrey/Jack storyline is similar to what the Windom/Caroline/Dale dynamic must have been initially, apart from the fact that Caroline was Earle’s wife. It’s the same, older man mentors younger man, whom falls in love with the woman in the middle, whom is closer to his age than the mentor’s.
Wheeler also shares Audrey’s brother’s name, which is often overlooked because he goes by his nickname rather than his real name.
If Audrey had her father’s son, it would be her brother.
John is Dale, the less goody-goody version though.
That makes there little chat in a dark room by the fire (at the Great Northern, where most fires are seen in Twin Peaks) all the more delicious. They are the same person, dreamt by the dreamer, each serving their own purpose. Jack holds a pessimistic view on love, while Cooper’s more positive; they are both sides of the same coin. It also makes it important why Dale doesn’t learn who Jack is talking about. Deep down, even the most ardent Annie/Dale shipper has to wonder what Cooper’s reaction would have been to the knowledge that Jack was talking about Dale Cooper’s own precious little Audrey Horne.
Would he have flipped out?
Or, at least, flinched?
So if Jack is Dale who does that make Annie?
Well…
Annie is also Dale.
Personality wise, she’s almost an exact duplicate of him, the reason they get each other so well. Who better to understand you than yourself? They are like those Goofy Gophers from the old Warner Bros cartoons. It’s probably why so many fans actually enjoy their relationship. Hey, people love Cooper and what’s better than one Cooper? Two Coopers!
The dreamer, attracted to no other woman accept his mother, invents Cooper’s new love interest out of the same fabric as his dream self.
This makes Dale and Annie consummating their relationship in his bed at the Great Northern, more of a masturbatory act, one where Dale is in complete control.
In The Return, we basically saw his common position being submissive and on the bottom. The only time we saw a fragment of Dale on top was when he murdered Darya, in another motel/hotel room.
Is the good Dale making love to Annie also symbolic of his desiring her death on some level? Didn’t he turn Audrey away, forsaking a physical relationship with her, to help keep her safe? Is Annie just another scapegoat/decoy?
Deep down, Annie is nothing more than the embodiment of the dreamer’s habit of masking the women he is attracted to (the women he eventually murders because they remind him of his mother) beneath a contrary appearance. Dark sensuous beauties become light angelic creatures.
Betty (Naido) became Diane (okay, so we know Laura Dern is blonde, that’s enough for me)
American Girl became Laura Palmer.
And, despite his desire to keep her safe, I believe that Teresa Banks was always just Audrey Horne.
Yeah, I think the dreamer killed his own mother, but probably unintentionally and probably through fire. She is either #1 or #2.
This act of masking is why, after entering the Red Room and wearing the ring, Annie comes out as an empty shell, only existing to give a message intending to save Cooper. That’s all she ever was: a blank shell meant to protect the dreamer from the truth about his dark side.
This further directly links to the purpose Annie serves within the dream and betrays the fact that the dreamer is a destroyer of women. Cooper wouldn’t get involved with Audrey because Windom was missing and he didn’t wish to endanger her. And yet, knowing of the threat of his former partner, Coop became involved with Annie, leading to her endangerment. Why?
Because, as I insinuated before, he WANTED it to happen.
In truth, he wanted her to be hurt. Or, at least, his dark side did, and his dark side is closer to the truth behind the dreamer than Dale ever was.
Hastings kills women whom remind him of his mother and yet they also fail him because they are not his mother and never can be.
Secretly not giving a damn about Annie, this is why Dale’s doppleganger, what he has hidden, can turn the question “How’s Annie?” into a monstrous joke.
It never really mattered.
She never even existed to him as a real person.
As opposed to Audrey.
At Calhoun Memorial Hospital, Mr C ignores the catatonic Annie to show his attention to Audrey Horne. Remember the fact that Audrey was comatose when his attack happened, he and BOB could not have fed on her fear. That’s important to me. In a way, she was spared from this, but why? It’s because she was special to the dreamer and he partly wanted her protected, just like when Charlie gets her out of the Roadhouse…or when Dale Cooper turned her away to help save her.
Another thing about the act of Mr. C’s “attention” when he went to see Audrey: Audrey being comatose meant that she was in a way sleeping.
Just like the dreamer himself.
It linked the two in a powerful way.
There is another clue to the importance of the Cooper/Audrey relationship that you mentioned in passing in your article but never stopped to think about. Annie and Cooper were given the love theme that everyone was given at this stage.
And, like you said, it is Audrey’s Prayer.
The same piece playing as Audrey said a prayer to her Special Agent.
Before the New Mexico girl was impregnated with the frog moth (this event and many other aspects of Part 8 echoing Audrey Horne’s impregnation by Mr. C), the song My Prayer was heard.
In a motel room, as Cooper had sex with the distressed Diane, My Prayer played again.
After that scene, the motel changed into a hotel.
And Dale Cooper was given a new name.
Richard.
The same name as his son with Audrey.
A coincidence? I doubt it. Mark Frost said the whole Linda/Richard thing was David’s idea and he alone knew what it meant.
I think he was bringing it back to Audrey and Cooper and the specific hint that Cooper is really Audrey’s son outside of the dream.
And hopelessly in love with her.
As the song says: “My prayer is to linger with you. At the end of the day in a dream that’s divine. My prayer is a rapture in blue.”
Twin Peaks is the dreamer’s prayer answered.
Afterall, the song playing when Laura Palmer visited the Roadhouse is “Questions in a World of Blue”.
As long as the dream keeps going, some part of Hastings can be with his mother. When it is over, she will not be there at the end of his prayer and he must wake to the realization that she is gone.
And, worse, that he was the one who killed her.