Hotel Palm Deluxe (Twin Peaks)

(In Missing Pieces.)

After Leland “chickens out,” and the three girls are sitting on the bed, we see that above Ronette and Teresa there are two peacocks. Above Laura, there is instead a burn mark,1 as though the third peacock that was supposed to be there has been ripped away to somewhere else. This is the same kind of burn mark that Jeffries leaves on the wall when he is apparently ripped out of Cole’s office and placed back into the hotel.2 And indeed, there is a peacock in the hotel—namely inside a painting;3 note also another repetition of this triplet motif in the form of Jeffries himself, the piece of armor, and the odd shadow that is cast onto the opaque window into the next room.

Especially considering the name “Palm Deluxe” it could be inferred that the hotel has some kind of connection to Laura. Fire, of course, is a recurring motif, and Laura’s struggle with fire is one of the central themes of FWWM.

(Triples.) As for the triplets, this is of course related to another repeating motif, namely the idea of twins and other doubles; one interpretation might be that the third person is the one that can break the pattern; that is, whereas the twins share the same destiny, the third will find another way. (Also: “two birds, one stone” (S3E1); “third man” (S2E1).) The idea of repetition, and events repeating endlessly is a theme throughout the whole series; already with Maddie repeating the fate of Laura—and Ronette, and Teresa Banks—and then more and more explicitly in the third season. The ring is a cycle; a fan moves around in a circle; electrical circuit; “it is happening again”; and whatever happens in the last two episodes of the third season.

I think that we are meant to understand from the events of S3E8 that Laura is sent to Earth in part to break this cycle of violence—whether she succeeds or not is a different matter. So is the hotel where Jeffries stays a kind of dream of Laura’s, or that it is somehow “her” Hotel?4 Perhaps these events at Hotel Palm Deluxe are happening “while” Laura is sitting there on the bed, and that is why Jeffries is there to investigate the murder of Teresa Banks and trace it back to Judy.

I think the name somewhat implies that this is the case, and also the whole interior environment is very symbolic; note for example the huge glass frame (decorated with a blue floral(?) motif) that overlooks a dark courtyard encircled by the hotel walkways. Note also the harp music.

If this Hotel is indeed Laura’s, then it’s interesting that the chrome being apparently sends Jeffries back into what would then seem to be enemy territory. Perhaps one of the ways that Laura is meant to break the cycle of (in this case namely) sexual violence, is by exploiting the especially forceful way in which her soul penetrates into the roots of reality. Therefore, it indeed makes sense that Jeffries would end up somehow inside a place that is somehow an image of her, or otherwise influenced by her in some occult way. However, he will also need to get back out and use what he has learned inside to influence events outside; even if the Hotel is benign in itself, if Jeffries is trapped there forever, then he will never be able to accomplish anything else, and he will be no better off than in the soul-bell-kettle-thing that he somehow ends up in later (or where a double of him ends up, or maybe it’s the same place as the hotel).

(Mail.) At the hotel, note also the mildly bizarre interaction with the clerk, where Jeffries asks about Judy, and receives instead a letter that is never brought up again. This mirrors the letter from Linda to Richard at the end of the third season that is also introduced and then never mentioned again. The same theme is found at the very start of the third season where Cooper fetches Darya and Ray from the lodge, they both hand an envelope to an unnamed character. (Also in his “bad” form, Cooper fails to take any notice of this fact.) More explicitly, Miriam tries to send a letter about Richard, which is then intercepted (except possibly not, because there are maybe two letters by two Miriams5). And Linda (as far as I know the only other mention in the whole series, apart from S3E1 and S3E18) is mentioned separately in connection with mail, when in S3E6, Mickey (her husband) picks it up for her; again we don’t learn anything about the content of any letter. It is noted that she has an electric wheelchair; the man who takes Darya’s and Ray’s envelopes also has a wheelchair, although not apparently an electric one. Finally, there is the name “Carrie Page” (S3E18), which could be interpreted as a desperate final attempt to signal to Cooper that he must take note of this letter (or all these letters, or perhaps they are the same letter in different forms), but which he failed to understand. (There is also the unanswered phone call as he is leaving with Carrie Page but without carrying the page with him, or seemingly having understood its content; he looks for some time at a white horse figurine, as though trying to recall its meaning, which I take to be forgetfulness, anesthesia, false sensory impressions, and other related phenomena; “the horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.” (S3E8))

Another interesting detail is that Jeffries can be seen standing around at the start, waiting for his cue to walk in; the clerk greets him almost before he arrives, as though they are in a play where they are a bit too eager to say their lines.

  1. Image ↩
  2. Image ↩
  3. Image ↩
  4. (Digression on dream sequences:) I tend to think that analyzing Twin Peaks as having “dream sequences” is not really useful (except where something is expressly stated as being in a dream of course), since in a sense, any work of fiction is like a dream. And I think that all of Twin Peaks, like all of Lynch’s work, is heavily inspired by dreams. Sometimes the dreaminess intensifies and sometimes it wanes and things seem more naturalistic for a while. So anyway, this is to say mostly that even if the Hotel is a “dream,” that does not exclude the possibility that it is also a real physical place (from the perspective of this work of fiction)—in fact, it is certainly the latter, whether or not it is also the former. ↩
  5. Reddit ↩