10 Most Disturbing Twin Peaks Moments
8. BOB Murders Maddy Ferguson
Regrettably, network pressure forced Lynch and Frost to reveal the identity of Laura’s killer midway through season two, effectively destroying any hopes of the show’s longevity and highlighting the profound lack of understanding placed upon Twin Peaks by executives, only interested in mainstay soap-opera style entertainment. Luckily this does not diminish the impact of this sequence, now considered one of TV's most infamous murder scenes.
Madeleine Ferguson, the spitting image of her murdered cousin Laura (a doppelganger theme runs throughout the story), came to Twin Peaks to aid in the investigation and is ultimately doomed to suffer the same fate, totally unaware that the killer is closer than she realises.
As Sarah Palmer lies drugged, unconscious on the floor, the horror of the scene plays out, sound tracked by a stuck record left revolving on its turntable, clicking with a rhythm of inevitability. BOB, now in control of Leyland, Maddy's uncle, takes the stage, illuminated with a spotlight (metafiction) and holds Maddy’s bloody body in an embrace. Leyland weeps, unable to stop himself from killing her, slamming her face into a picture frame on the wall. "It's happening again," says the giant.
It’s an intense and visceral scene, as touching as it is painful to watch. The murder is taking place in our own living rooms - Lynch is showing us the violence we have allowed to penetrate our lives, his final message to us before departing the second season.