Blue Rose

I mean, not to sound too crazy and obsessive, but Laura really did start out as a plot device made up of a collection of character tropes and set pieces. She was the plot catalyst in the shape of a crime scene. She was either the static and staged Homecoming photo, or the corpse on the beach, no more full of agency and character than a bowl of fruit in a painting. She was a set of cryptic statements in people’s mouths, she was a leitmotif in the soundtrack of other people’s tragedies, she was the playing field in other people’s games. But then 1992 came out with Fire Walk With Me, and the sight of Laura screaming, crying, forcing laughter, taunting her friends, making goofy jokes, and floating through Twin Peaks like its a stale prison and not the quirky fantasy land it was introduced as, and folks hated it, because, oh yeah, this whole time it about a girl being abused and no one helped. She ruined the fun of the whodunnit, and literally gave away the answer to the detective, only for him to forget (and then conveniently remember). She stripped away the sexiness and mystique because there wasn’t any to begin with.