in episode 27 of Twin Peaks, a strange phenomenon begins to take hold of the town. residents begin to experience seemingly random trembling in their right hands; and there seems to be no logical pattern among the people afflicted by it.

the first we see experience the tremors is an unnamed woman enjoying a slice of the double R diner’s famous cherry pie.

two named characters are next; cooper’s hand begins to shake as he laments that his personal attraction to annie is impacting his professional life, while pete’s appendage acts up while he looks onward as audrey loses her virginity to her sweetheart jack.

at the very end of the episode the reason behind this epidemic seems to rear its head; the killer BOB is reemerging into the physical world right hand first. as bob has done in the past, he is presumably exerting his influence through the possession of human beings; and as the personification of the evil that men do, he is allowed access to people only during through moments of violence.

what allows bob to take control of cooper’s hand is obvious. the special agent’s worldly attraction to annie is beginning to supersede his ascetic attitude toward his work. he is thinking of the flesh when he needs to be thinking of the spirit.

the woman with the pie is stranger. not only is she a one note background figure, seen in this shot and never again, but she’s seen doing nothing more than the completely innocuous act of eating.

but the next time the episode shows us the double R diner, annie is in the middle of cleaning up a visceral red stain, no doubt left behind by some kind of bright red food, but evoking the image of a scene of violence nonetheless. and then immediately afterward cooper and annie share an embrace, knocking a set of plates onto the floor, dirtying the diner with even more red sauce.

several seconds pass as we watch crimson drip to the ground. a dramatic beat usually afforded to a shot of a corpse. the destruction and consumption of the diner’s food is explicitly being linked with “violent” acts of the flesh.

certainly the most concerning are the unfortunate implications this has for pete’s character, though. what it might mean that he is taken by the demon of violence as he watches the younger woman with her boyfriend is obvious.

nobody in twin peaks is completely free of evil.