I’ll take “News that makes me feel really old for $200,” Alex…
Today, April 8th, 2010, marks the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite shows, Twin Peaks. How much of a fan am I? I’ve made a trip to the original shooting locations in North Bend and Snoqualmie Falls, Washington… twice.
When Peaks came out I was already a “lynchian” – David Lynch had suitably impressed and/or freaked me out with his work in Eraserhead, and The Elephant Man, just to name two – and so I was excited to see what type of odd perspective he could bring to television.
And boy, was it odd.
But what worked – and what still makes me a fan of the show to this very day, is that the oddness made sense. The internal rules were consistent – it wasn’t strange JUST to be strange, it was strange because… well, Twin Peaks was a genuinely strange town, filled with real characters. It wasn’t eccentric just because it could be (I’m looking in you metaphorical direction, Wild Palms).
I consider Twin Peaks to be the spiritual sequel to Lynch’s earlier and brilliant Blue Velvet, a show that delved beneath the surface and showed the “evil that men do” behind closed doors. It was a soap opera that was a parody of soap operas that was also a very GOOD soap opera… and also (again) weird and wonderful.
And while many focus on David Lynch, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also give equal credit to co-creator Mark Frost, who helped produce some of the best ideas and quotes form the series that are still enjoyable two decades later.
You look at Twin Peaks and see that it changed television – David Simon had the courage to do dream sequences in The Sopranos, because Peaks set the precedent. Homicide was able to be dark and gritty because Peaks went there first (one of the most brutal scenes on TV ever was the murder of Madeline Ferguson by BOB). You see it’s most direct descendant in Desperate Housewives… a show that even shares the same night and network that Peaks aired… and also features Kyle Maclachlan.
It also was the first of many innovative shows that was canceled too soon (Dammit, I want to see the good Cooper get out of the Black Lodge!) – shows that the networks never gave a fighting chance to gain a respectable audience. Thank God for cable channels, otherwise shows like Battlestar Galactica, Damages, Nip/Tuck and more would never have more than six episodes.
So… two decades later, does it still hold up? Mostly. The first season, and a good half of the second, is some compelling and timeless television. It had peaks (pun unintended), and it had valleys, but all in all it’s eminently re-watchable. And part of me still wishes (as was the original plan) that they had NEVER solved the murder of Laura Palmer, that they just used that to spin Agent Cooper into more and more weirdness… the show could have kept going for a long long time.