Cooper's first appearance already alludes to his crucial characteristic traits. He is crossing the state line and then enters the town of Twin Peaks, noting the majestic trees growing in the woods. Cooper dictates all kinds of seemingly insignificant details into his 'narratee-microcassette' (and secretary) Diane. The collection of apparently irrelevant material creates a humoresque effect, yet leaves the viewer uncertain about the meaning of this procedure.

We found that it is essential for the classical detective to deduce from details that appear to be peripheral to the case, yet turn out to have some importance within the narrative. Not so with Cooper's litany of daily trivia. Cooper's obsession with that kind of trivia sets him apart from the rationale of the classical detective. Cooper's first appearance could almost identify him as a character in a commercial evaluating food prices and motel accommodations. His enthusiasm in commenting on commercial products appears as both odd and sympathetic. This spiel already introduces a new element in the detective character: the complete involvement in and identification with the commercial world. It is important to note that Cooper does not seem to intend his comments to be ironic. His seriousness reveals an ambivalent, almost schizophrenic state that Cooper occasionally enters.

It is interesting to compare Cooper's mental ambivalence with the traditional detective's 'Bi-Part Soul'. Angela Hague remarks that "the detective-hero has a long history of unusual – and perhaps non-rational – behavior, a fact that is rarely stressed by critics impressed with the mental acrobatics of logical detection" (Hague, 136). The Bi-Part Soul appears, indeed, to be the only psychological principle that is shared completely by Agent Cooper and Dupin, the classical detective. It is the connecting point where the purely logical and analytic Dupin and the intuitive seeker Cooper meet, namely in a state of mental schizophrenia.

Cooper is, however, far from the detached and almost arrogant distance of the aristocratic Dupin (or Holmes) who lives completely removed from the outside world. Cooper is delighted by trivial details and daily devices, a typical middle class man who enthusiastically embraces the earthly pleasures that consumerism offers. Cooper "demonstrates an uncanny empathy for his new surroundings, noticing the smell of the pine trees and glorifying a piece of pie he ate at a roadhouse diner" (Pollard, 296). The traditional detective's emotional distance has vanished. Cooper links his personality to everything he observes, although one has to question the depth of his superficial observations. Cooper is still a lot traditional FBI agent in the show's pilot (although his 'just the facts' tone often fuses with an unexpected awe), yet his more conventional character traits will soon subside.

Scott Pollard notes that "Cooper pays much closer attention to detail than his training warrants or his job requires. From his details he observes and interprets. Cooper creates a moral surface out of Twin Peaks" and Pollard states that "he reinforces the cogency of that surface" (298).

The following dialogue with local sheriff Harry S. Truman (his Dr. Watson, as the character himself remarks at one point) already points at the strange juxtaposition of Cooper's character as a professional detective and as an admirer of natural details and common middle class trivals:

Cooper: Sheriff, what kind of fantastic trees have you got growing around here? Big majestic ...

Truman: Douglas firs ...

Cooper: (in awe) Douglas firs. (Matter of factly) Can someone get me a copy of the coroner's report? (Lavery, TP Scene Breakdown, P.15)

As an investigator Cooper appears unconventional, as I will demonstrate in the analysis of his Tibetan method. As a human character he maintains an ambivalent obscurity which connects him with the classical detective's eccentric and irrational behavior: "Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the philosophy of the Bi-Part-Soul, and amused myself with fancy of a double Dupin - the creative and the resolvent" (Poe, 66), remarks the narrator in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". In this mental state Dupin's eyes become "vacant in expression" (77), his voice rising to an uncharacteristic treble, a behavioral phenomena that reminds of Cooper's appearance when he discovers an item formerly unknown to him, e.g. douglas firs, cherry pie, ducks on a lake or a box of chocolate bunnies.

I will thus coin Cooper's inner split as a 'consuming' and a resolvent. Cooper is, indeed, an inspired and vital consumer. It almost seems as though he creates a philosophy of consumerism, maybe a protective shield that enables him to get along in a consumer society. A pile of donuts is therefore referred to as 'a policeman's dream' (Lavery, P.34) or the RR diner as the 'place where pies go when they die' (4.11). Sheriff Harry S. Truman is taught by his master that 'one should pause at least once during the day to give oneself a present.' This present turns out to be a cup of coffee (7. 6).

Whenever Dupin falls into this schizoid state, it is merely because he is concerned with the case and the intellectual pleasure he will gain from solving it. The inner split of his Bi-Part Soul is solely dependent on facts concerning the case to be solved. Dupin's split demonstrates a general obscurity and distance towards the real world, which is not included in his criminalistic puzzle:

In 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' Poe associates this mental division ... with the image of a battle of wits between a mastermind and an automaton ... Dupin's analytic power is of such superiority that, compared to him, other men are like automata, slavish mechanisms playing against, and ultimately manipulated by, a mastermind who has the power to see into their inmost beings. (Irwin, 113)

Cooper's character parodies the detective genre and its Sherlock Holmes-like reliance on a coherent world in which everything can be understood by using deductive logic based on factual evidence. The absence of consistent, coherent meaning in the world is shown in Cooper's equal treatment of facts relevant to solving the murder chase and completely inane and irrelevant facts... facts, experiences, feelings, prices, are recorded with equally deliberate yet random precision. This may describe a postmodern sensibility in which no one fact takes priority over another. (Reeves, et al., FOS, 182)¹³

An essential question that consists throughout TP is where Cooper is heading and what his general mission is. Scott Pollard claims that Cooper wants to "restore to TP a unifying principle based in a middle-class nostalgia for the happy days of the post-World War II boom" (Pollard, 299). According to Pollard's point of view Cooper is essentially a conservative character whose apparent openness for Eastern thoughts and dream visions is basically a means to protect a conservative American consumer society. "What Cooper sees threatened is the very community that capitalism created" (298). Cooper is living in a postmodern world which he loves and wants to protect, yet not change. His constantly changing modes are puzzling. The tension between bizarre murder and idyllic life do not seem to really affect Cooper who assimilates quickly to smalltown life in Twin Peaks.

¹⁴ In 1993 Lynch directed four commercials for the Japanese coffee brand 'Georgia Coffee'. In these thirty second spots Kyle MacLachlan "goes over the top in his portrayal of Agent Cooper – practically every one of his lines is a loud exclamation." (WIP19, 9) The character's eccentricity and schizoid nature are taken to an extreme in those segments, the fact that Lynch (ab)used the Cooper character to sell a commercial product enhances the postmodern aspect of the detective in TP.