Twin Peaks is a Masterpiece I Struggle to Recommend

After four months, I finally finished my rewatch of Twin Peaks in its entirity. It is an absolutely fascinating show and has slowed morphed into one of my favourites, but it's also intensely hard to recommend to anyone who isn't already a fan of David Lynch, the co-creator and director of much of Twin Peaks. So, that's kind of what today is, it's a three pronged Twin Peaks attack. I'm going to talk about the various forms Twin Peaks has taken over the years, what makes those forms so hard to recommend to people, but also why I love them so much. I know the title makes it sound like this show isn't going to be for you but hopefully, if you read on dear reader, you may realise that a trip to Twin Peaks is exactly what you need.

Twin Peaks (1990-1991) - The Trailblazer

We begin, as the end credits song for Bojack Horseman do, back in the nineties. Beloved director of weird shit David Lynch and TV veteran and writer of Hill Street Blues Mark Frost team up to create a story about a small town in the northwest of America. This small town is called (you'll never believe it) Twin Peaks and after the dead body of prom queen Laura Palmer is discovered, it turns out that pretty much everyone in the town is hiding some kind of terrible secret. Into this nest of secrecy and scandal comes Special Agent Dale Cooper, an FBI agent who believes the death of Laura Palmer may be tied to a case he has been working on. For whatever reason, this formula made the show blow up in popularity, causing millions of people around the world to wonder "who killed Laura Palmer?". Immediately and against all odds, Twin Peaks became a phenomenon.

If you look at the first season, then it isn't hard to see why Twin Peaks went down so well. It immediately crafts characters who are quirky without ever becoming irksome, places them into a mystery that is totally compelling and refuses to move at a typical pace. This is where Twin Peaks starts becoming harder to recommend in the modern age, as its pacing and production is somewhat unconventional. Modern audiences, myself included, generally expect a TV drama to be really gripping. We've been spoilt by the likes of Breaking Bad or Fargo to the point where Twin Peaks can feel alien. Sure, you're watching because you want to know who killed Laura Palmer, but this has never been an essential element of the show for Lynch and Frost. If they had gotten their way, Laura's killer would never have been revealed. Instead, they revel in getting to explore weird characters in a strange world and if you're on board with that, you're going to be delighted. Most interactions are delivered at a level of melodrama which, again, feels weird compared to modern shows that strive for realism. That weirdness is Twin Peaks though. It's in the drapes, in the brie sandwiches, in the coffee that runs through the show like blood runs through most of us. If you're finding the weirdness of Twin Peaks off-putting, you are just not the right audience.

It's worth mentioning before we carry on into what comes next that the original series of Twin Peaks has some speedbumps that are not intentional. Studio executives pushed Lynch and Frost into revealing the killer of Laura Palmer, creating a storyline that wraps up perfectly but unfortunately robbing the show of momentum. At this point, many viewers on original release stopped watching the show and for a brief moment in time, Lynch wasn't involved in the show, instead making Wild at Heart. This leads to some... Well, some testing moments. Let's put it this way, you'll know how much of a Twin Peaks fan someone is by how much they wince when you say to them "sometimes I just want to get on my bike and go". Eventually the show picks up steam again when Windom Earle comes into the picture, but by this point ratings had dropped and the show had been cancelled. Knowing that they were not going to be able to conclude their show at their own pace, it was up to Lynch and Frost to create an endpoint. The finale, written by the two and directed by Lynch, is startling when viewed in context of how little surrealism had appeared on primetime TV at this point in time. Some of the best moments of the show are here but unfortunately for many, there are also about five separate storylines which are left with cliffhangers wide open. To put it lightly, that can feel frustrating. Especially at the original airing, it seemed like this was it for the world many viewers had come to love, so it's hard to comprehend how it must have felt as the credits rolled. Fortunately though, we are no longer at the original airing and therefore I can assure you that you will get answers. Kind of. A bit.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) - The Nightmare

As I've established, Twin Peaks wraps up on a huge cliffhanger and fans are clamouring for more. So when Lynch and Frost announced a prequel movie, many justifiably expected answers. What these many failed to consider however, is that David Lynch has historically never given a shit about your expectations. So instead of answers, what you get is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The first half hour or so is about FBI agent Chet Desmond, who is investigating the case Cooper will eventually pick up and link to Laura Palmer. We follow him as he investigates a world that feels very opposed to the cosiness of Twin Peaks, picks up clues that will come in handy for viewers 25 years later and then suddenly disappears. Desmond's story is completely dropped and we suddenly find ourselves face to face with Laura Palmer, meeting her alive for the first time in the show. However, we're following her in the days leading up to her murder, which makes the film become an unaviodable tragedy. You are forced to watch as the light blazes out of a young girl, her secret lives all draining her of her life. There are elements of the film that take place during or after the Twin Peaks finale, but this is primarily about Laura Palmer and her relationship with her murderer. Important to note though, while this is a prequel film technically, it does tell you who killed Laura Palmer, so make sure you don't look too much into it if you haven't already explored the mystery.

Being unrestricted by the boundaries of network television and helmed by the man who brought you whatever Eraserhead is, you shouldn't be surprised to find out that FWWM is a nightmare of a film. It's also a nightmare that was despised on initial release, and not just by fans who wanted answers. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival and was booed with vigour by critics. Watching FWWM now, you can kind of see why. Even in a filmography of unpleasant and difficult films, Lynch pushes his audience a lot here, cinematically and emotionally. First there's the narrative divide, which feels clunky if you don't know it's coming, but works pretty well if you do. This is not a film which stands on its own, which in our age of shared universes makes more sense now than it did thirty years ago, but again is weird and clunky if you're not prepared for what's coming. 

There are also sequences that are deliberately... It's hard to know what word to use other than difficult. The "Pink Room" sequence comes to mind, in which the music blares, the lights strobe and characters shout at each other for ten minutes. If you're coming to this film as a Twin Peaks fan and not a Lynch fan, it's a big step. As I've said though, this film also hurts emotionally. Laura Palmer is a young girl, she is not an adult. And yet, we're forced to watch her life be prematurely extinguished. While writing this, I'm listening to the soundtracks from Twin Peaks and a song just came on from a scene with Julee Cruise. That scene is a great example of a moment when you realise how deep this nosedive is going, as Laura takes a moment to pause and listen to beautiful music. She was so wrapped up in growing up that she never got to pause like this and it makes the final few shots of the film sting particularly hard, in a way that only the greatest kind of exquisitely painful art can.

And again, FWWM is not really here to answer your questions about the original series, it is here because Lynch loves the character of Laura Palmer. If the heart of Twin Peaks was "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" then the heart of FWWM is "Who Was Laura Palmer?" The great thing is, we get to find out. There are things that diary extracts scattered across the show can't tell you and that watching a young girl live her life can. We get an idea of why Laura is spiralling, but also who she was before that consumed her life and why it is that she is at the heart of Twin Peaks. Like the very best bits of the original show, you don't get answers but you get to explore and when the characters are this interesting, that exploration is sensational. So much exploring was done that much of the film hit the cutting room floor, not seeing the light of day until last decade, taking the form of The Missing Pieces. It's a glorified collection of deleted scenes, but it adds to that feeling of what Lynch wanted to do, which is explore the world. Is a scene of Pete Martell talking about lumber sizing important? No, not in a narrative sense, but it explores part of his character that gets to blossom in the show. FWWM is a moment where you really see how much of Twin Peaks comes from Lynch's heart. He poured so much of himself into it and on being critically eviscerated, he retreated back into more wonderfully weird shit. That is, until 25 years later, when he and Frost reunited over a cup of coffee.

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) - The Apex

So here we are, 25 years later. Coming out into a world of reboots and returns is Twin Peaks: The Return, which finally returns us to the story of Dale Cooper and the residents of Twin Peaks. Kind of. Nothing is ever going to be that simple with David Lynch. You see, while on the one hand there is the continuation of Cooper's story and a myriad of hijinks with the original crew, there are also extended plots that take place all across America, involving Las Vegas businessmen, alien fanatics in South Dakota and the detonation of the nuclear bomb way back in 1945. Somewhere along the line, without many of us realising, Twin Peaks became a story about the battle between good and evil. Because again, of course it did, it was never going to be simple. If you came into this hoping for nothing but the eccentricities that you did indeed fall in love with in the original series, you are shit out of luck. If you're willing to roll with the punches though, you are in for one of the wildest rides ever put on TV. The Return is such a gloriously phlegmy spit in the face of reboot culture, being so fascinatingly unsatisfying on initial watch but slowly opening up into one of the most brilliantly intricate stories I've yet seen woven. By the end the narrative may still not make total sense to you, but it will almost certainly make emotional sense. Obviously though, 18 hours of intricate weaving is not for everyone, hence me needing to defend it and explain why it's actually brill.

As I just mentioned there, The Return takes its time. For a show that bears the name Twin Peaks, early episodes don't spend a lot of time in Twin Peaks. In fact, early episodes don't spend much time anywhere. We zip around the country, visiting some new characters and some old, all of whom seem to be involved in wildly disconnected plots. I know there were plenty of people who couldn't handle what felt like a disconnected mess, so they dipped. I don't blame them, but they missed what came next. Slowly, the show builds to some incredible stuff, only possible because of the hours we spent doing what felt like pointless work. Narratives collide, characters return, emotional arcs that are 25 years old get conclusions that are all but guaranteed to knock you out. I loved this approach, but it won't work for everyone. I've had conversations with one of my housemates who said she will almost immediately stop watching a film or show if she finds it boring, which is not an uncommon response. It is a response that means you will lose out on the glory of what is to come though.

The problem is, even if you come prepared to wait for story to happen, you may not be prepared for what can only be described as David Lynch on full throttle. Lynch has created plenty of feature films and short films that are wildly experimental, but he was able to dial it in for the original run of Twin Peaks. Dial it in he no longer does, as he creates what may well be his most challenging and experimental work yet. Storylines flow in and out in seemingly random ways, scenes can last minutes on end with nothing happening (like just a guy sweeping the floor) and there are sequences that are as experimental as any of Lynch's short films. "Part 8" has become a notorious example of this, in which the traditional plot is abandoned after ten minutes and the rest of the episode descends into surreal madness. As someone who loves Lynch's surreal work (I am the guy who loves Inland Empire and its 3 hour pointlessness), it's heaven. If you don't vibe with that, again, trouble.

With The Return, David Lynch flexed all of his filmmaking styles in one 18 hour odyssey and took the show to an apex that few shows ever get the chance to even glimpse. As such, it means that anyone who made it through Twin Peaks and FWWM and is now looking for answers to what happened is going to have to fight through an art project to most likely not get answers at all. And that's just what Twin Peaks is. I think if most people gave the show a shot they might be surprised by how much they like it, but I also think our digital culture allows people to so quickly decide they don't get it or think it's too slow and just go back to binging The Office U.S. instead. But fuck, if you want to be pushed out of your comfort zone and discover a transcendental masterpiece along the way, I can't imagine doing much better than Twin Peaks. It's a journey both magical and strange, but one worth taking every step of the way.