April 8th.
It was on this day, twenty years ago, that the pilot of the landmark television series Twin Peaks aired on ABC. It might
Spiritual FBI agents and 18 year old virgin femme fatales
be hard to understand exactly how important a show that ran for less than two whole seasons is to the landscape of television drama. But without Twin Peaks there might not have been an X-Files. There might not have been a Millennium. There almost certainly would not be a Lost.
But still, with all the bizarre, quirky, serialized shows that Twin Peaks inspired, there has still never anything else like it on television. A science fiction horror soap opera centered around a horrifying murder in a small town? How could that possibly work?
It worked because it was helmed by David Lynch, who’s made a career of the surreal and the strange, who has spent a fairly large chunk of his career exploring the dark and sometimes horrifying underbelly of the “normal” American town.
Before Twin Peaks, serialized television was generally left to daytime. Even shows like Dallas, which had an ongoing, week-to-week storyline, didn’t follow the same type of serialized storytelling that Twin Peaks did. Each episode of the show took place over the course of a single day, so that, after a year and a half on the air, only 30 days had passed in the cozy town. So if you missed and episode, it was entirely possible you’d have no idea what was happening from there on out. It was the definition of “appointment television”.
"She's dead...wrapped in plastic."
The show started out as what seemed to be a very basic whodunnit. The 18 year old town prom queen is found murdered, washed up on the shore, wrapped in plastic, and FBI agent Dale Cooper is called in to work with the local cops to investigate. But, even before things started to get really weird, it was clear from the atmosphere of the show, the strange shots of girls running across high school courtyards screaming, the deceptively dreamy music, that something in this town was very, very amiss.
Who Killed Laura Palmer was the heart of the show, but Lynch really used that as a springboard, to explore the lives of the people of Twin Peaks: a young high school couple in love, an eccentric psychiatrist, the grieving parents of the murdered girl, the star football player and his married girlfriend, and so on.
But what started out as a look at the deep, dark secrets of the inhabitants of the quiet Washington town soon became an exploration of good vs. evil. In the second episode of the
If I had dreams like Cooper did, I'd never go to sleep
series, through Cooper’s bizarre dream (the one with the dancing, backwards speaking midget, perhaps the most famous scene to come out of the show), we’re introduced the idea and the characters of the Lodges, even though we don’t really know it, or what it means, yet.
Soon the town wasn’t just inhabited by horny teenagers and messed up adults. There was also a midget, a giant, a one-armed man, and a demon named BOB. Lynch didn’t just subvert expectations by bringing up question after question, but by doing things like revealing the killer early on in the first season. But just because we know that the maniacal BOB killed Laura, doesn’t mean we know who BOB is. Does that sound confusing? Yeah, that’s how Twin Peaks rolls.
Poor Ronnette
One of the things that really made the show special was how brilliantly the horror was mixed with humor, or with honest emotion. Lynch seemed to realize that, while he had created something genuinely frightening, there was a certain absurdity to it all that was kind of humorous. Only Lynch could balance the humor of a crazy, one-eyed middle-aged woman with the sad story of the way she actually lost her eye.
But it also managed to combine this terror with moments of absolute heartbreak. There’s a murder scene in the second season that is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen on television, but it’s also incredibly tragic and utterly, completely heartbreaking.
Sadly, the network forced Lynch to reveal the identity of the killer early on in the second season, which caused a definite storyline dip for the middle part of the section. But the creative team seemed to suddenly realize, right before the final third of the season, that they still had this epic story of good vs. evil to tell, and it’s in that last run of episodes that the show really came together as an exploration of that ultimate theme. With the appearance of Cooper’s nemesis, the insane, but totally badass Windom Earl, the show picked up steam, and it ended with a bang. The series finale is creepy, sad, and 100% nightmare fuel.
A year after it’s finale, David Lynch released the prequel film, Fire Walk With Me, which tells the story of the final seven days of Laura Palmer’s life (warning: do NOT watch this movie if you have not seen the entire series). It remains one of Lynch’s most memorable and haunting works, a film that makes the downfall of even a character as unlikable as Laura Palmer almost unbearably heartbreaking.
Twin Peaks may have only lasted two seasons, but its impact shows in the way it’s being celebrated today, on its 20th anniversary. Most shows that get canceled after their second season are hardly even remembered twenty years later. That’s just how great Twin Peaks was. Even after twenty years, we can’t quite let go.
thoughtful.thinking.thoughts 