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Sorry about the hiccup last week, folks. Twin Peaks analyses were planned to be a weekly thing, and that’s what I intend. With that said, let’s hop right into “Episode 2” – the prequel episode! – because there is, as it were, much to discuss.

Now, “Episode 2” isn’t a prequel in the traditional sense, but I forced the issue by making the grave mistake of reviewing “Episode 3” after uploading my thoughts on “Episode 1” the week before. Missing an episode of Twin Peaks, apparently, is like missing an episode of Lost. I might need until next week to make sense of it all.

Most disturbing would be Agent Cooper’s bizarre dream, which he discusses with Harry over breakfast in “Episode 3.” Little did I know that we’d actually get to see the dreamy ditty. And more importantly, that it’d be significantly weirder than Cooper’s recap for Truman.

Strangely, Cooper left out completely the part about the little person, who dances around like a nut job and speaks English in reverse but gets subtitled in Spanish. When the scene came to an end, I figured I’d just seen some of the most genius or bizarrely stupid minutes in TV history.

That dream sequence is where a recap column much like this one is so fun. Here I am - in 2011 - watching Twin Peaks when it’s convenient to me, with additional ability to re-watch blips or whole chunks of content when I see fit. I then imagine myself sitting at home on Thursday, April 19, 1990 with my eyes trained on Twin Peaks at the same moment everyone else is watching, and having little to nothing more to say than what the ef what that?! after that dream scene.

For its time, the sequence must have been revolutionary for the medium. It’s not like The Golden Girls were doing similar things on TV.

The scene, then, which I dig into a bit in my recap of “Episode 3,” seems poignant for all that stuff in the red room, where Agent Cooper looks a few decades older and Laura Palmer is sitting a couch over from him. Only she isn’t, or so she says, since she’s a mere look alike and may or may not have had a run-in with her in the past.

I’ll cheat here a bit by incorporating a thing we might have learned from “Episode 3.” In its final moments, Cooper gets talking about souls, and Hawk throws in his two cents. Specifically, souls are transient. We have more than one, and when we expire, they go somewhere. They don’t just die with the body.

With this in mind, it makes sense to read Not Laura as a being who now possesses the soul of Laura Palmer – and, apparently, looks a lot like her, too. Of course, I don’t know how much good this does us since we meet her in a dream. And the sleepee is Agent Cooper. (And y’all know my theories on that guy). But piecing together the Not Laura and “soul talk” nuggets seems to make some sense here. I mean, Hawk never specified the “where” in departed souls. Why surrender them solely to reality – as we know it?

Before I start writing about something else, I do want to say that those closing minutes really brought home for me an important message. And that message is this: Twin Peaks is about to get really weird. Reverse speech dubbed in Spanish – “we’re going rock dancing” and “where we come from, the birds sing beautiful songs, and there’s always music in the air,” among others – leaves little room for argument.

Anyway, what I appreciate about Twin Peaks – among many things – is that it doesn’t have many boundaries. “Episode 1” ended with Jacoby creepily listening to audio of Laura discussing a man she met. Naturally, we’d want follow up as immediately as possible. Instead, Jacoby doesn’t make a single appearance in “Episode 2.” As well, the episode opens inside the Horne residence where, for a solid minute or so, we watch the family share a meal together. Utensils and dishes clanking, food getting chewed, that whole thing. It’s a masterstroke in mundanity. Literally nothing happens in the traditional sense, save for Johnny dawning full Indian headdress for the occasion.

Soon, Audrey’s Uncle, Jerry, busts through the door fresh off a plane from Paris with a bundle of baguettes bunched under his arms. He and his brother, Ben, proceed to house two of them like they’re mouths are having sex with them. It’s actually pretty uncomfortable.

They leave the dining room and have a talk outside. There, Ben tells Jerry that the Norwegians left, and that Leland’s daughter is dead. Jerry doesn’t offer much remorse for the Palmer family, but does say Laura’s death depresses him (if only because he probably used to sleep with her). Ben says to Jerry that he knows of another girl for him.

Meanwhile, Cooper has another odd moment with food. This time, it’s a cup of coffee, which he sips, spits out and says: “It’s damn good! And hot!”

Outside, he’s assembled Hawk, Harry and Harry’s assistant for a game that could lead to the identity of Laura’s murderer. Saying that the idea came to him from a dream – another dream – Cooper stands next to a bag of rocks while Hawk uprights a glass jar a little ways down. Near Cooper is a board listing all the locals who could be the J in Laura’s diary: James Hurley, Josie Packard, Lawrence Jacoby, Johnny Horn, Norma Jennings, Shelly Johnson, Leo Johnson and, more conceptual, Jack with One Eye – which was written on a note left under Cooper’s bedroom door.

The game is simple enough: The J name is read aloud, Cooper repeats it while embracing a small rock, and then the rock is launched toward the jar. The rock that gets closest or, I guess, smashes the jar, may (or may not be) Laura’s killer.

Strangely, the name that ruptures the glass is Leo Johnson, the same character I’ve long said is too obvious to be guilty of murder. (Or, at least, Laura’s murder). He’s the only consistently troubled Twin Peaksian; we’ve yet to see him in a mood outside “less than pleased.”

Then again, Leo could simply be a red herring. I’m curious to read what – if anything – critics were saying about his character 20 or so years ago.

I think that’s really all worthy of mention here. The other big movement, I guess, is the arrival of Albert Rosenfield, a harsh-nosed character I got a preview of in “Episode 3” and who, like Agent Cooper, I accuse of being alien. He and Cooper will have nice good cop, bad cop chemistry once Rosenfield enters the fray more.