Each night – or, in some cases, day – we all lie down for a number of hours and proceed to lose consciousness and hallucinate vividly. You might think you don’t dream, but you simply don’t remember them. We all dream, and if we don’t, we’ll deteriorate fast. It’s important to dream. And whether or not you believe that dreams may hold the key to understanding your own psychology, your life, or even the future, this much is clear: we all dream. And all dreams are weird.

For the most part, dreams exist in a very strange world where things make sense in the moment, but cannot possibly be explained out of context. Faces morph, places become other places, and there is often an unseen enemy lurking just out of sight.

Dreams have been used in many stories, usually to somehow advance the plot or reveal something important to the characters. Unfortunately, this usually leads to dreams that are far too lucid and clear, not at all like the bizarre alternate universes that most of us find ourselves in nightly. In this article, I shall expound on the virtues of a few shows that got the dream sequence just right – and just what’s right about it.

Twin Peaks

This cult classic series about an eccentric FBI agent tracking down a killer is famous for many things, most notably its dream sequences – spooky, surreal, and very David Lynch. Agent Cooper’s first dream occurs a few episodes into the first season, and features two main characters, besides Cooper himself: an exuberant midget, and a glamorized version of Laura Palmer, the murdered girl around whom the series revolves. When Cooper asks the girl if she is, indeed, Laura Palmer, the girl explains: “I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back.” Oh, and did I mention that everyone speaks in backwards-talk played forwards?

Yeah.

Six Feet Under

In a show where everyone fantasizes and hallucinates almost constantly, it’s no small feat to weave a cool dream sequence. But this series contains many, all of which are trippy and random while still revealing some deep-seated anxiety or fear. However, they suffer from a lack of backwards-talking midgets.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy devoted an entire episode to dreams in its Season Four finale, and it turned out to be a fan favorite. Packed with meaning, subtext, and literary allusions, “Restless” is funny, scary, and very real (in a dreamlike way). Though each character’s dream is a reflection of his or her own thoughts and feelings, each of them is “killed” by a terrifying and demonic presence at the dream’s end. But that’s not all they share: each is also visited by the Cheese Man, who offers them slices of cheese along with cryptic cheese-related advice. Show creator Joss Whedon has explained that the symbolism here is very simple: the Cheese Man represents that part of our dreams that just doesn’t make sense.

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