I recently got into Twin Peaks by obsessively binge watching the original series (Seasons 1 and 2), Fire Walk With Me (the prequel film) and the long awaited and much talked about The Return (Season 3). Twin Peaks was off the air for 26 years and its cult following had secretly initiated many of my friends into its fold. This made The Return a magnificent event to both observe from the outset and experience from within. As a non-watcher, seeing the excitement of a whole community of people who loved the show was infectious, and eventually led to me watching the show myself a full year after its release.
Sometimes the reason why I watch a TV show is because of its community. I love being caught up in the discussion threads, jokes on social media and the collective anticipation of what’s coming next. For Twin Peaks: The Return, I was entertained as a friend would share his excitement, praise and frustrations after each weekly episode whilst he also shared hilarious excerpts from the subreddit. The community leaked into my news feeds too as people I followed would comment on The Return each week and use such unique language to describe it, which only piqued my interest further.
I’m surprised that Twin Peaks eluded me for so long. I had been aware of it from a young age but didn’t have the usual introductory avenue of a parent showing it to me. However, The Simpsons (which still had a large part to play in my upbringing) was what introduced this surreal TV experience to me. In Lisa’s Sax (Season 9, Episode 3) of The Simpsons, Homer is sat in the living room transfixed on the TV watching Twin Peaks, or rather, it’s own interpretation of Twin Peaks and it’s following.
TV: That’s damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks. And damn good cherry pie!
Homer: Brilliant!… I have absolutely no idea what’s going on!
A man with a bow tie dances with a white horse under a traffic light swinging from a tree branch. A jazzy yet mysterious saxophone and double bass descent rolls through as Homer watches intensely in the dark, paying more thought to it than he does with everything else in his life. He calls it “brilliant” but immediately admits that he has no idea what is happening.
I must admit that the lighting and music here made it seem very ‘raunchy’ which sealed in a false impression of what Twin Peaks was early on. I think that this is because it visually reminds me of the moment in Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment (Season 2, Episode 13) when Bart runs a porn channel peep show in his living room…
Another influential Twin Peaks introduction from The Simpsons was in Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two) (Season 7, Episode 1) when a sleeping Chief Wiggum drifts into a homage to the iconic dream sequences of Twin Peaks. On first viewing, this completely caught me off guard and I didn’t realise it was a Twin Peaks reference until many years later. The red curtains and zig zag flooring seemed like the kind of surreal comedy that The Simpsons would invent, but it wasn’t until many years later when by chance I saw live action footage used in an online video of the ‘Black Lodge’ with all the aforementioned details. I was taken aback by seeing this imagery I had so strongly linked to The Simpsons in live action and I finally realised that Twin Peaks actually existed.
Thinking back, I don’t know why I consciously avoided watching it for so long. I openly admit to occasionally being a contrarian hipster at points but maybe I also didn’t want to engross myself in something I fully well knew I wouldn’t completely understand.
But sometimes it’s a good thing to not be a know-it-all with stories, something I came to realise.
Another thing to think about is the amount of influence that Twin Peaks had internationally and more specifically here in the UK. The show’s popularity in Japan is always noted as inspiring a short revival for a canned coffee ad campaign but when talking to my parents about the show, they had no idea it existed.
Looking back at what I could find, the UK premiere of the show was no doubt surrounded with a large amount of anticipation after starting its run when it’s home audience was halfway through the second season on October 24th 1990. But beyond that, I don’t believe that it resonated with UK audiences as much as it was a phenomena in the US. Obviously, the innovations it brought were all eventually seen in the television landscape, but I can’t help but think that there was a disconnect with UK audiences.
The crux of what Twin Peaks is remembered for is the inherent surrealism embedded in its facade of a traditional soap opera, but to play along and fully realise that facade you have to already be somewhat familiar or bored with the idyllic American small town values, lifestyle and scenery as a starting point for its references (or parody) and eventual divergence to have an impact – something the UK audience may have missed out on.
Regardless of all that though, I’ve been fortunate to live in an age where the media we consume is a lot more internationally available than previous decades and after watching all of Twin Peaks, people have been asking me the same question and now it’s time for me to answer it:
“Do you actually like Twin Peaks?”
When I was first asked this question properly, I answered no. I thought about all the frustrating moments and payoffs from most of the series and my belief that many of the elements are simply ‘weird for the sake of being weird’. Although I recently read Andy Burns’ Wrapped in plastic. Twin Peaks from the Pop Classics series which heavily refutes that claim, I still can’t help but believe it especially with the most iconic moments of the show.
At first, I thought that the original series was overrated – a selectively remembered show with some interesting elements but a tedious mess filling out the time in between. From viewing the first season I was surprised about the overlying soap opera element, as I had the impression that it was primarily a supernatural show which would have me constantly captivated with strangeness. But that was far from the truth, the melodramatic subplots dragged on as I wanted to see more of Dale Cooper’s dreams and to discover the identity of Laura Palmer’s killer.
However, as I found myself caring more and more about Andy, Lucy, Josie, Ben and Shelly etc., I realised that this is what the show was and that my expectations were what was askew. That was when I noticed I was enjoying it and the comfort of the characters and their quirks being familiar to me and doing things that were predictable for them to do. Still there are significant weaknesses, but this was at the later end of its original run, especially in its second season.
To me, the true value of Twin Peaks is its unique balance between it’s supernatural, surreal sequences and the soap opera characters, setting and stories of the town.
Twin Peaks is a victim of its own success. Its influences have been surgically removed and implanted in every popular homage and discussion about how good it is which doesn’t do it justice when neglecting its more “traditional” moments. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve its acclaim. It’s very much a product of its time and it changed the landscape it was in then, so much so that when watching it amongst what it influenced today it’s quite easy to take what it did so differently for granted.
So, an hour after I initially answered with no, I looked back at the truly magical moments of Twin Peaks, when the most beautiful things occur or when it pays off very well. My answer changed to yes, I do like it, but not all of it. My final answer pretty much changes each time I think about it, I can never fully remember a whole 50-hour story, but I feel as though it depends on which part of Twin Peaks comes to mind when I think about it.
To help illustrate this more successfully, I’m going to break the whole Twin Peaks into its constituent parts and share my thoughts which first come to mind:
Twin Peaks Season 1 (Episodes 1-8)
Season 1 starts strong on a melodramatic foot. We start off by finding Laura Palmer’s body on the beach and observe how her murder ripples through the whole town, affecting everyone somewhat. One of my favourite things about early Twin Peaks is the overuse of ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ during the most dramatic moments. The song is beautiful, and David Lynch obviously knew this as he swiftly shoehorns it into the most emotional sequences.
Its first season demonstrates the planned and intentional shift into the fully surreal quite early in its lifespan during the second episode after the Pilot: In “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer” – the wholesomely quirky Agent Dale Cooper employs a Tibetan spiritual deduction technique in a charming rock throwing sequence. You know early on that these aren’t the rugged, hard-boiled officers of the law you normally see in fiction – these men cry when they see a dead body or turn to spiritualism for their next lead. Twin Peaks embeds these elements early on and eventually come to an iconic peak with Cooper’s dream sequence at the end of the episode, where it goes completely wild. All this was in the second episode too; deep rooted in the show’s developing mythos ensuring that when it falls deeper into this hole later, it isn’t jumping the shark – it all feels at home and makes some sense. Season 1 also keeps the momentum up by continually providing more questions when people want answers, leaving viewers with the fresh mystery of “Who shot Agent Cooper?”.
Twin Peaks Season 2 Part 1 (Episodes 9-17)
I was slightly dreading getting through the show’s 22 episode long second season but mainly because I was eager to join the club of people watching ‘The Return’ and had heard bad things about it. But otherwise, I really enjoyed the first half of the second season. If you take the perspective of splitting it into two separate seasons by the arcs, then it becomes a bit more digestible. That still doesn’t excuse the corporate meddling into the story but the producers’ best efforts to work around it still created some excellent television.
The very start of Season 2 starts off excruciatingly slow (particularly with the thumb ups) following the cliff-hanger. Cooper’s recovery was quicker than I imagined, and it was a relief to see him conscious and back to work without any significant breaks in the plot.
The introduction of David Lynch as Gordon Cole – one of the funniest self-insertions into any work of fiction – was very welcome, and the build-up to the reveal of Laura’s killer was both predictable and horribly disturbing. The sequence where her killer is shown to the audience shows the skill involved in making horror for the cushy realm of 90s network television, creating something uncomfortable to watch yet transfixing.
In my opinion, Cooper’s deduction of Laura’s murderer is one of the most beautifully crafted revelations ever – the fusion of the show’s characters, sound, visual style and mood all come together at an amazing point where everything is suddenly clear. Following that, the satisfying capture and incarceration of her killer provides a short sequence of validation only for it to be snatched away, leaving an emotionally beautiful mess in its wake.
Twin Peaks Season 2 Part 2 (Episodes 18-30)
This is where it all becomes a bit of a blur for me. The episode following the conclusion of the Laura Palmer mystery was bittersweet and felt as though it was the typical conclusion of the entire series until the punch that Cooper is being investigated by internal affairs. My eyes kind of rolled at this point, because I sensed a weak effort to prolong the season. It’s at this point where the show loses its balance between the parody and the parodied and focuses too much on Leo’s uncommunicative state, Nadine’s amnesia and Ben Horne’s office Civil War re-enactment. Now all these storylines were barely manageable for me whilst binge-watching the show, but imagine if you were waiting week after week for the next development on the Black Lodge?
Even in writing that sentence I realised the inertia the show had at this point in its story – why else would the audience tune in? Maybe for the Windom Earle vs Dale Cooper plotline but I found Earle to be more comical than anything else. The friend who had recommended the show to me mentioned how some fans suggest that specific episodes be skipped, which I thought was an abhorrent suggestion to make for a TV show held in such high esteem as Twin Peaks.
It all eventually ends in a David Lynch directed finale where we are finally shown the Black Lodge in its purest form – experienced by Cooper as a reality. The prolonged, lingering silences and uncomfortable mood take away any warmth and whimsy you might have related to the dream sequences before, making this familiar environment once believed to be imagined into something which demonstrates a horrifying reality of the world of Twin Peaks; not just leaving you on a cliff-hanger, but instead throwing you off the cliff entirely.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
I found Fire Walk With Me to be an interesting departure away from the friendly faces and mood we would all expect from the preface of Twin Peaks when we’re at this stage of the watching order. A lot of people didn’t like this departure and from the outset I couldn’t believe it – how can something from the very creator of the show be so far away from what people expected?
I think that there are two major factors with this – the full creative control of David Lynch/the non-involvement of Mark Frost and the unbounded format of film itself. From what I know of David Lynch’s films: sexuality and the grotesque are used (not exclusively) tastefully to unnerve the audience and keep their minds questioning.
With Twin Peaks these are obviously quite prevalent in the spoken revelations on what Laura Palmer did during her evenings, but we were never shown these because of the network television format. But in Fire Walk With Me, the violence, drug use, nudity and explicit themes in general all build up and highlight the differences between these two sides of Twin Peaks. When you come to watch it, you can be blindsided by these small details and feel a lot more uncomfortable when a fingernail is removed up close or someone is suddenly bludgeoned.
Furthermore, Lynch’s freedom with the structure of the film doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, with the first part of the film following Chet Desmond and Sam Stanley in an uncomfortable doppelganger of everyone’s favourite idyllic American town. Even when the familiar sight of Dale Cooper, Albert Rosenfield and Gordon Cole appear it’s still an uncomfortable sequence. The only moment when the film comes close to making me feel as though I’m watching the show mood wise was the cut to Laura Palmer on her way to school, with the TV show’s theme playing. I specifically remember feeling warm when Fire Walk With Me shifted to this sequence, as I felt as though I was home. However, this didn’t last long as you begin to see, up close and personal, the darker side of the town of Twin Peaks only hinted at in the TV show.
Twin Peaks: The Return
Ah, The Return…the reason why I wanted to watch Twin Peaks in the first place. I could write a whole article on long awaited continuations, but I believe this is a special case. After watching the full Twin Peaks saga, I have to say upfront that I think The Return is a parody of the show it shares its name with and I think that this is due to a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the creators of both what the show was originally and what audiences wanted, coupled with a determination to make something deliberately subversive for the sake of being subversive.
What immediately comes to mind when I look back on The Return is the tonal departure from the original’s wholesome mood shared with Fire Walk With Me. Seeing familiar characters in a world of grotesque violence, sex and even in a widescreen HD format made me feel as though the charm was lost.
The original combination of circumstances is what made the original so popular – the network television ‘censorship’ protecting and steering the show in a wholesome direction, the saturated market of murder mysteries and melodramas, the whimsical direction and surprise appearance of the surreal along with a whole load of other pieces of the puzzle which have been overanalysed in the past 28 years – this is what made Twin Peaks what it was and I see The Return as something which hurt and attempted to redefine what Twin Peaks is.
The new opening sequence is especially indicative of this to me with its particular focus on the zig zag floor and flowing red curtains of the Black Lodge being shown outright to the audience, signifying how they have been embraced as part of the show’s very identity. But this feels wrong to me, the best thing about that aspect of the story is its sparing use and the perfect balance the original managed to maintain in its heyday. Exploring the surreal aspects is ruining the mystery and the more you commit to expanding it, the more you lose focus on what made the original so intriguing, comforting and entertaining.
But on the other hand, there are some moments in The Return that I thoroughly do enjoy. The teasing of characters returning and seeing how these people we canonically saw 25 years ago have turned out is something everybody wanted to see. These moments are few and far between but pay off very well, often making me jump out of my chair in excitement. But otherwise, I found The Return to be a frustrating mess overall, with an imbalance and misunderstanding of all the elements that made Twin Peaks the success that it was.
minutiae+musings 