TP's Bloopers are Practical Jokes

In the pilot episode of Twin Peaks, Sarah Palmer, grieving the night after her daughter Laura's murder, is suddenly disturbed by a vision (in the European pilot the vision is of Bob lurking at the foot of Laura's bed, in the US pilot the vision is of Doctor Jacoby's gloved hands digging up James Hurley's half of Laura's heart necklace). In the background of the shot is a mirror where Twin Peaks crew member Frank Silva can be seen. Based on this alleged flub, David Lynch and Mark Frost were supposedly inspired to cast Silva as the incubus Bob, the arch villain of the series.

However, given the extraordinarily large amount of stylistic and narrative elements which Twin Peaks blatantly borrowed from Dark Shadows, I believe the Frank Silva casting story is a complete falsehood. I believe the mirror shot of Silva as Bob in the pilot episode was simultaneously an intentional plot device and was a subtle homage to the many well known crew-related bloopers found throughout the entire run of Dark Shadows.

In episode #954 of Dark Shadows, Sky Rumson who is secretly a member of the Leviathan cult and his wife Angelique the witch are having a conversation concerning influences (of all things), and the actress Marie Wallace, who is playing the Leviathan/Naga cult member Megan Todd who has just been turned into a vampire by Barnabas Collins in the previous scene and who is not in the present scene being taped, can be viewed for a fraction of a second reflected in the mirror behind the couple in the foreground. It is my suspicion that this is the very scene which inspired the Killer Bob-in-the-mirror flub which thanks to the show's creators has become a legend in Twin Peaks fandom. Not only is the character Megan a vampire, but she is also a member of the Leviathan cult, and as this blog has examined the writers of Twin Peaks made liberal and obvious use of both motifs in their characterization of the owl incubi of the Black Lodge. The inclusion of the incubus Lil, Agent Cooper's Deer Meadow dream mate of Twin Peaks' incubus Bob of Fire Walk With Me, is I believe another example of the association of Twin Peaks and Dark Shadows, since both incubi Lil and Megan (and Sarah Palmer) have red hair.

I believe much of the vagueness of the series writers on plot holes and influences, particularly from the co-creators Lynch and Frost, can be largely attributed to the fact that they were using an abundance of plot elements from Dark Shadows and combining them with the style of Peyton Place to create Twin Peaks. I also believe that the series creators used the material so liberally because they were not creating an ongoing soap opera but were rather retelling the Christian Passion Play.

Probably not coincidentally, the actress in the mirror flub scene of Dark Shadows is named Lara, and she and her co-star are styled similarly to Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer as they appear in the Red Waiting Room of Twin Peaks.