TV Series Review: Twin Peaks
Ah, Twin Peaks. Both the classy restaurant and TV show evoke fond memories. The latter will take you on a long dreamy journey full of all manner of surprises. What you take from Twin Peaks will be largely a function of what you bring to it. This isn’t The Incredibles; it’s not for everyone and even among fans it is an incredibly divisive work. Watch the pilot. If you love it, keep going. If not, save your time.
For my money the pilot is actually peak Twin Peaks. The introduction to the small town, the atmosphere, the colorful characters, the intriguing murder mystery so emotionally and hauntingly presented — it just hooked me. The pilot is basically a standalone short film. Kyle Maclachlan absolutely carries the show as the young quirky FBI agent Dale Cooper sent to investigate the murder of high school student Laura Palmer. As in Blue Velvet the man just does guileless so well, and yet here we see time and again that he is never as naive as he appears.
The colorful cast of characters are really what make the show. The cross purposes, schemes, and funny little asides give the show so much personality. I loved Ben, the classic big business guy villain, and his back and forth schemes with Catherine and Josie. The high school stuff with Bobby, James, and Audrey never felt like cliche typical teen drama. Everyone and everything, from Shelly and Norma and their wonderful diner, to Pete and his awful coffee — it all left an impression. None of it feels like filler in season 1 and there is a lot of clever misdirection. It’s all just so comfy. The soundtrack helps a lot too. That opening theme is like a warm blanket. That jazzy Audrey’s theme and ‘dance of the dream man’ always make me smile when my playlist on shuffle decides to surprise me with either.
Season 2 is where it started to go downhill. Supposedly writers David Lynch and Mark Frost had a lot more interference from the network and were forced to resolve the murder mystery plotline in the middle of the season. This was a mistake I think, not because it was resolved but because it was resolved in the middle of the season instead of at the end. As a consequence a lot of the second half of the season feels bloated. The noir plotline with James and the older woman, for example, is executed well but feels totally disconnected from everything else. There’s a weird plotline where Nadine, Ed’s wife with the eyepatch, develops super strength and has a relationship with a high school kid. It’s funny but very random. The introduction of Annie, a new love interest for Coop, felt forced.
It’s still a very watchable season, especially the first half. It’s just not nearly as consistently good. The film that followed, Fire Walk With Me, is a similar mixed bag. It gives us a lot of backstory on Laura and also a lot of lore on the more supernatural elements of the setting. There is a cool David Bowie cameo. There isn’t much payoff to the first section of the film focused on the FBI agent Chet Desmond and his one year prior investigation. It is not at all a film for the uninitiated; as a standalone movie it will make zero sense. It’s also a lot more ‘adult’. Laura’s scenes include nudity, drugs, and sexual assault. We see that Laura was a very troubled girl, which may frustrate fans that wanted to see her as this pure and innocent victim.
On balance though I think both season 2 and Fire Walk With Me are mostly good and complicated the story from season 1 in intriguing ways.
Season 3 takes place 25 years after season 2 and it is by far the most divisive. If you are hoping for a recognizable continuation of the plot or some kind of nostalgia-fest with lots of callbacks, then you will be disappointed. Lynch very intentionally subverts these expectations with a story that is not just totally different from the original series in terms of narrative and tone, but also in itself does not make much sense. I’m really fine with him not just redoing the same beats to cater to nostalgic millennials. We get catered to enough. However I wanted to at least take something from season 3 or make sense of it as I could the earlier seasons. And believe me, I tried to make sense of it — I read the entire wiki, watched hours of YouTube video essays, and discussed it with lots of fans. The conclusion I came to is that no one has any clue what it is actually about, and I think that was Lynch’s intent.
Main character Dale Cooper, so endlessly charming and fun to watch in the earlier seasons, is replaced by an unspeaking alternate self named “Dougie” for most of the series. The season delves into a lot of weird sci-fi elements with the black lodge and an evil Cooper doppleganger. It is hardly worth even trying to describe since much of it deliberately defies explanation. Lots of scenes are non-sequiturs. There are some disconnected side plots from returning characters like Audrey and Ed. Their bits feel like YouTube vignettes or really well done fan films.
Your reaction to season 3 of Twin Peaks will largely be a function of whether you are more a fan of Twin Peaks itself, or David Lynch. I feel the same way about season 3 as I do about a little kid covered in finger paint with a big smile and super proud of the mess he just made; I’m glad he had a good time but I’ll be damned if I can understand it. David Lynch clearly had fun with season 3 and I’m happy for him. He got a big budget, lots of runtime, most of his returning cast, a network that let him include gratuitous violence, swearing, and nudity, and basically carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. It is 18 feature-length episodes of pure Lynchian-ness, and for many that is what makes it perfect.
For me, “Lynchian-ness” has always worked better as a seasoning. It’s wonderful in small doses. It’s lovely to watch a show that seems conventional only to be suddenly hit by a random musical number or goofy character bit that just knocks you off balance. But just as too much spicy bbq sauce ruins a burger, non-stop Lynchian kookiness for me defeats the purpose. To reference an Incredibles quote, If everything is kooky, then nothing is.
What made the earlier Twin Peaks series so good is that it was both character driven and intelligently wove a web of various plots and personalities in a setting that played its own big part. Season 3 does none of this. The namesake setting is totally irrelevant (a lot of the story is in NYC or in space or wherever). The character motivations are either absent or incomprehensible. It’s twelve hours of stuff and it can work sort of if you turn your brain off and just vibe, but I expected more given what we got before. I also prefered when the weird spacy surreal elements were more subtle. Like in True Detective season 1, less is more with that stuff. Better to tease the imagination with an ambiguous shot or single mystifying scene than forty minutes straight of characters bumbling through purple CGI sets and talking to giant tea kettles.
I recommend Twin Peaks the pilot and season 1 to just about everyone. Like I said, it will either click with you or it won’t. If you enjoy it, I won’t blame you for not bothering with season 2 and instead just reading a synopsis. I would say if you are a Lynch fan you should definitely see all of it. I count myself among his fans though I don’t worship everything he has done. I love Twin Peaks, just not every single second of it. Give it a shot yourself and see where it takes you.
Grade:
Season 1: A
Season 2: B
Fire Walk With Me: B-
Season 3: C
