Pete Martell

Pete Martell is the mild-mannered sawmill worker who stumbles onto the body wrapped in plastic on the shore of the lake, delivering the news that upends Twin Peaks with a shrug of small-town understatement. Fond of fishing and his wife's terrible cooking, he drifts through the chaos with a bemused, unhurried calm.

Jack Nance plays him as a man permanently one step behind the drama swirling around him, and that lag is the joke and the tenderness both. His flat, patient line readings turn throwaway domestic moments into some of the show's funniest, most human beats, grounding the surrealism in something recognizably weary and kind.