An "instability of Cooper's physicality" (Nochimson, 149) becomes crucial at the beginning of TP's second pilot (episode nine). Cooper lies bleeding on the floor, after a gunshot had hit him before the summer break (episode eight). Being shot, Cooper experiences another form of border crossing; this time it takes the form of a vision²⁰. The wounding of the body leads to contact with the spiritual world. This implies danger, of course, as it is proceeded by pain. However, the physical endangering of the detective, as we are familiar with from various detective narratives, becomes peripheral and leads instead to another violation of the detective story's convention. The physical penetration leads to a spiritual opening of the detective and

although male detectives have been physically battered before – if not in the 'cozy' detective stories of Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes then in such stories as Raymond Chandler's – still, rarely has this opening of the body's barrier led to contact with the spirit world. (Wilcox, WIP 22)

This is definitely a disruption, not only of the classical detective story's rules, but also of a conventional Film and TV detective's character:

Television's asexual, cerebral Holmesian is even more drastically disembodied...the detective postures as a detached, virtually fleshless site of cleansing. (Nochimson, 145)

The vulnerability of the body is here portrayed as an advantage for Coop – not one that we would care to see pressed beyond the point of no return, but an opportunity to look at reality from an altered perspective (153)²¹.

Cooper's reaction to his bodily pain is unconventional, and his meditative encounter with the Giant can be read as a comforting outcome of positive male and female energies merging.²² However, apparently Cooper denies his vision at first. He reacts, like a more conventional detective figure would, suspicious and he doubts the reality of this encounter. As in his dreams, Cooper experiences the otherworldly stratum merely for few instances, unconventional moments that appear to be interesting, but also perplexing. Cooper's own bewilderment points to the more conventional development that the character will take. Instead of following the direction that has been outset for the new detective, Cooper more and more refrains from the path of the uncommon ZEN detective hero and is forced back into more conventional genre patterns.

The question that TP poses at the beginning of season two (with the Giant's appearance) is, whether Cooper can completely trust the other side of the supernatural, or whether there should still be a maintenance of rationality, as we are presented in characters like Truman or Albert Rosenfield. Following Nochimson's distinction between the male and the female we are, again, faced with the dualistic competition between the irrational, 'feminine' realm of the supernatural and the rational, patriarchal world of the male detective. Cooper himself does not seem to be sure about a finite decision for one of the competing spheres of rational order and supernatural chaos.

Scott Pollard reads Cooper's reaction to his visions as telling for his general behavioral pattern, as "Cooper is never part of the terrain he navigates, for his allegiance is to a discourse which would remake that terrain into its own image" (Pollard, 301). In his complete confidence and believe in middle class existence, Pollard argues, Cooper constantly has to maintain a distance to the supernatural plane, "always returning unquestioningly to the real (that is, normal) world and abandoning all that exists beyond its borders"(ibid.). It seems that Cooper is only able to completely use his gift as a mind-body detective in certain magic moments, as in episode three (the Red Room dream), episode nine (the Giant vision), or in episode seventeen, where he will finally be enabled to solve the murder mystery with the help of his psychic methods, but furthermore with the supernatural element. It appears as though Cooper still has a general tendency towards the male detective, despite that fact that he willingly and openly tries to embrace the 'other' side.

Having read Cooper's supernatural and subconscious experience mainly with a psychoanalytical approach, I will put greater emphasis on formulaic comparison and narrative development in the following. A return to the formulaic and narrative approach will help to understand Cooper's decreasing role as a detective, a process which begins with the solution of the murder mystery. I will pick up the psychological approach again in chapter four.

²² Nochimson argues that the positive phallic energy of the Giant combined with the labial element of Laura in the Red Room help Cooper to find the murderer in the physical, literal sphere of TP.