By Elija Fischer

CW: Sexual assault, drug addiction, and abuse mentioned

The Missing Pieces is a feature-length collection of deleted scenes from David Lynch’s 1992 all-American nightmare, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. In one of these scenes, homecoming-queen-turned-martyr Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is asking her mother, Sarah (Grace Zabriskie), to borrow the car as soon as she walks in the door, arms still full of groceries. Sarah has Laura hold her lit cigarette as she fishes the keys out of her pocket to hand them off, and Laura happily trots out the door with the cigarette still in hand before her mother calls her back. Sarah takes her cigarette back and gives her daughter a motherly warning: “You will never be a smoker if you don’t start”. This simple moment is among the most heartbreaking in a film already teeming with misery, despite not making it into the final cut of Fire Walk With Me. The tragedy is that Laura is already a smoker, and that it’s only one of the many vices Laura destroys herself with every single day. Whether Sarah’s futile advice is a marker of how little she truly knows her daughter, or a performance to convince herself she’s still capable of protecting Laura, or just a tragic attempt to stop her daughter from growing up to inherit all her worst qualities (Mrs. Palmer herself is a chain-smoker) it’s a moment that reminds us Laura was as much her mother’s child as she was her father’s, something that’s easy to forget in the midst of all the horrors that unfolded under the Palmer’s roof.

Sheryl Lee and Grace Zabriskie in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) New Line Cinema/Lynch/Frost Productions

Sarah and Laura Palmer’s relationship isn’t touched on frequently by Twin Peaks fans and scholars. Though a bit strange, considering Sarah’s grief in the pilot of the original 1990 TV show is our first glimpse into how the death of Laura Palmer would change the world forever, it’s understandable considering the role her father played in her tortured life and brutal murder. Despite The Missing Pieces being full of scenes of Laura interacting with her mother alone, in the final cut of Fire Walk With Me, the pair never share a scene without her father Leland (Ray Wise) also being present. Leland interacts with Laura alone multiple times, whether it’s innocuously driving Laura to breakfast or apologizing to her in private after an abusive outburst. Her mother, on the other hand, only interacts with her during meals. It’s safe to say that Laura is much closer to her father than her mother, bringing to mind a quote from feminist philosopher Bonnie Burstow: “Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not as bright as they are and cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.” As night falls and Leland gives his wife what is implied to be a drugged glass of milk so that he can rape his daughter without being disturbed by her mother this quote takes on ominous depth.

There’s no real way to answer how much culpability Sarah shares in Laura’s fate, but one thing is made clear by Fire Walk With Me: when the opportunity arose, Sarah tried her hardest to protect Laura. When the family sits down for dinner and Leland (possessed by Bob (Frank Silva), the supernatural embodiment of cruelty) begins abusing Laura at the table, Sarah stands up for her daughter to the point of screaming. From the level of familiar discomfort Sarah displays as Leland asks Laura increasingly more aggressive and personal questions, getting closer to her and beginning to put his hands on her, it’s clear she’s aware of what he’s been doing to their daughter behind closed doors. Fans have caught on to the implication that Leland was a victim of abuse himself through stories he shares in the 1990 TV show of meeting Bob as a child, but what’s overlooked is whether Sarah herself has a history of abuse, whether at the hands of Leland or earlier in life. There is no shortage of abuse for women in Twin Peaks, be it sexual or physical, so perhaps there is more to Sarah’s helplessness than meets the eye.

Laura herself suffers a similar dilemma. At 17, she has already been forced to grow up too fast as a result of her father’s abuse, spending nights prostituting herself at local bars to support the cost of her cocaine addiction. When her friend, the innocent and kindhearted Donna Hayward (Moira Kelly), wants to tag along, Laura tries to turn her away, but when Donna comes anyway and is subsequently assaulted by one of Laura’s customers, she immediately rushes to intervene. Laura screams, just like her mother in the dinner scene, and pushes the man off Donna. However, again, like her mother, Laura is unable to vocalize what was wrong with what she witnessed, so she simply chastises Donna for borrowing her sweater and takes her home. In the morning, Laura comforts Donna, telling her, “I love you, but I don’t want you to be like me.” Just as Sarah wants to protect Laura from her fate, Laura wants to protect Donna from hers, but both Palmer women are powerless to prevent the cycle of abuse from spinning on. Viewers have interpreted Bob (Frank Silva)and his presence as a rapist and murderer of women within the Twin Peaks canon as a metaphor for the patriarchy and the death of girlhood, but in a world where Leland Palmer is not the only man seeking to corrupt innocence there is only so much Sarah and Laura can do to save the girls they love from falling victim to the same monster.

If Bob is a metaphor for the death of girlhood, then he is also a metaphor for the cycle of abuse that perpetuates it. In Fire Walk With Me, Laura is terrified as Bob has told her “he wants to be her or he’ll kill her”, and has begun possessing her and grooming her to become his next vessel to reap pain and suffering from the world after Leland. Because of this, Laura embraces her death despite being warned numerous times of its coming in her final seven days. However, in The Return, the third season of the Twin Peaks TV show that picks up 25 years after the original, we see that Laura’s death didn’t end the grip of supernatural suffering on the Palmer women. Now alone, following the death of both her husband and her daughter, Sarah Palmer is possessed by Judy (the female counterpart to Bob, whose union with him on Earth is prophesied to end the world). In Twin Peaks, the death of the abuser or the abused does not end the cycle of pain and suffering. As the ending of The Return confirms through having Sarah’s voice and Laura’s screams echo even in an alternate reality, some pain and suffering is so powerful that once it has been put out in the world, it can never be removed.

Despite that, the love Sarah and Laura put out into the world is itself a force to rival the pain and suffering they endured. Sarah’s love for her daughter influences Laura’s protection of Donna, which in the end allows her to save Donna from being robbed of her girlhood by the same forces she fell victim to. Twin Peaks is a story haunted by the fear that love is not enough in a world so full of suffering, and yet even in a film as painful as Fire Walk With Me, Lynch leaves us with the message that no force can withstand the strength of love. In the end, Sarah’s attempts at protecting her daughter are echoed in Laura’s appearance as an angel to her fellow abuse victim, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), as she is freed before Laura’s death at the hands of Bob. They are echoed in the love shared between James (James Marshall), the only man who ever truly loved Laura, and Donna. They are echoed in every soul we see that Laura touched throughout the 1990 TV show. Laura was terrified of perpetuating the cycle of cruelty her father drew her into, but in the end, the parent she ended up echoing the most was her mother.

You can watch Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on Apple TV

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