Why you Should Watch Twin Peaks

For the past month or so I have been housebound with a leg injury which has kept me off work and had me searching around for something new to watch. After debating Netfilx’s House of Cards I ended up going in quite the opposite direction and decided to watch David Lynch’s 1990s television series Twin Peaks. This is a series that I have heard a lot about from as early as school days, with a group of particularly edgy/cool/stoner types constantly telling me how great it was. I got pretty close to watching it in school but never quite made it as I knew so little about it. It was only after recently watching Lynch’s Mulholland Drive that I became been keen to finally watch it and I placed it top of my things to watch list. I have recently finished the whole series which only ran for two seasons before being cancelled due to falling ratings and I thought I would offer a review/recommendation for the show.

There is no real way to accurately describe Twin Peaks, I have found, without either making it sound relatively ordinary or just simply bizarre. At the centre of Twin Peaks is a mystery surrounding the death of Laura Palmer, a much loved teenager in the fictional secluded mountain town of Twin Peaks. The town is small and remote, with all its inhabitants knowing each other, making the murder an event which affects the whole town. The murder leads to the arrival of FBI Special agent Dale Cooper, a young, handsome and slightly eccentric agent with a real passion for hot black coffee and cherry pie. Cooper serves as the show’s main protagonist and the show’s story centres on the continuing investigation into the murder of Laura Palmer. As the case progresses other secrets of the town and its inhabitants are revealed as something sinister seems to haunt the quiet mountain town. On the face it the show might not sound particular ground-breaking or unique with that description; a murder mystery in a quiet town. What makes the show stand out however is its style and originality.

What is great about Twin Peaks is that it seems to exist in style completely of its own which often feels very dream like. The show has an unsettling tone and style that is found in most of David Lynch’s work which takes elements of horror, surrealism, and supernatural thrillers and blends them with classic sitcom elements and humour. It’s quite a melting pot, and the result is the show that can be scary, unsettling, funny, sexy and mysterious all within a single episode. At times you’re not entirely sure what kind of a show you are watching but it has a powerful ability to draw you in and keep you there, as the show often hypnotic and sometimes erratic score channels the show’s moods. The show is often surreal as it delves into aspects of dreams and hallucinations of characters as the case of Laura Palmer is conducted. What works so brilliantly in Twin Peaks is the show’s ability to switch between these ideas and themes rapidly, at one moment you feel like you could be watching a classic 90s sitcom before a sudden switch of tone leaves you unsettled and unnerved.   For these reasons Twin Peaks is one of the most original shows I have ever watched and I don’t really expect there to be another show like it made.

Twin Peaks is definitely a show best watched without much knowledge of it before so I don’t want to give much away; I will say however that although Mulholland Drive is very different to Twin Peaks, It did in some ways prepare my for the style and approach the show takes which may be at first alienating to those not familiar with Lynch’s work. Having said that though I was not familiar with Lynch before Mulholland Drive and it never prevented me from enjoying the film. All I knew about the show beforehand was that it was about a murder, that there was something to do with a ‘red room’, and that there was someone called Laura Palma; really, you don’t want to know much more than that. For the purpose of a recommendation I know that isn’t much to go but sometimes you should just go with one.

The Sopranos has always been given credit for making TV cool again, and giving it a cinematic edge and complexity that has persisted ever since. The current stick of recent TV shows such as The Sopranos, Lost, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men etc  have earned the title of the ‘golden age’ of television as TV seems to have become cooler than film. Big name directors are now more than ever working on television projects with David Fincher’s involvement in House of Cards a fresh example of that. At the time it aired the fact that David Lynch, a renowned film director, was making a TV show made the show a huge talking point in the 1990s. While the Sopranos certainly changed the game I would argue that Twin Peaks did it first much to the same degree. The cinematic style of almost all good modern TV shows was not really seen before Twin Peaks and many of its traits can be seen in more recent shows. Shows such as Lost, that worked on the basis of mystery creating suspense and interest certainly owe a lot to Twin Peaks. So if you are looking for something new to watch, perhaps with the recent end of Breaking Bad or Dexter, watch Twin Peaks, I guarantee you won’t have watched anything like it.

Things to note:

·         The Pilot episode is 90 minutes so you should be able to make you mind up if you think you will like the show after the first episode.

·         DO NOT watch the international version of the pilot. This was released as a one off special in case the show wasn’t picked up and so resolves the murder at the end of the episode.

·         YES IT’S FROM THE 90s. One of the main reasons I delayed in watching the show for so long was that it was so old. With so many new shows coming out who would want to watch a show from the early 90s? It is a poor excuse believe me, it’s great.

·         IT IS VERY 90s. That was my first impression on watching the pilot. The music especially at first made me laugh in that kind of ‘what is this music?’ way. The music quickly became my favourite thing from the show however.

Why did it get cancelled? (Spoilers)

Ok well there aren’t any actual spoilers in this section but this will probably make more sense if you have seen the show.

The show got cancelled for the same reason any show gets cancelled, it suffered a fall in ratings which eventually led to the show being axed. By now I hope people are aware that a show being cancelled in no means that it was a bad show, it just means no one watched it(hint: Arrested Development). Twin Peaks did run until trouble in its second season however which led to falling ratings and I thought I would offer a few suggestions on what could have possibly saved the show, for what it’s worth.

The obvious main issue for the show was the resolution of the Laura Palmer story. Apparently Lynch and Frost had actually desired to never reveal the killer, and that the murder and mystery would in itself bring out new stories and mysteries from the other characters that would lead the show on. This can be seen happening throughout the show before the murderer is revealed and it is clear that the studio pushed for the resolution of the murder in the second season. There was no way that the studio wasn’t going to push for the killer to be revealed, it was the centre of the show, the thing that everyone wanted to know and the network pushed the show to reveal the killer half way through the second season.

The biggest mistake I think the show inflicted itself however I feel was the length of the second season. The first season has only 7 episodes which worked brilliantly for the timings of the show and stopped it losing steam or focus. American shows tend to have huge seasons in comparison to most British TV as it’s a much bigger operation. Shows like Lost, House, Heroes all have massive 20 plus episode seasons and in the case of Twin Peaks I think this was a massive mistake. I personally prefer shorter seasons; I just think they work better. The show was obviously only committed for 7 episodes based on the network’s idea of ‘we like it lets see how they do with seven’. With the show being a hit they then order a massive block of 22 episodes for the second season.

 The problem was then that they forced the show to reveal Laura Palmas murder in the 7^th episode of the second season concluding a huge story arc. Would it not have made sense to end the second season there? The resolution to the Laura Palmer story arc concluded in the 8^th episode of the second season and that is where I think that season should have finished. It would have made that second season so much more powerful, and more importantly given the creators of the show more time to come up with a new set of stories. To suddenly have your main story line concluded, the reason people watched the show, and then have to come up with another story immediately for the next week is an obviously daunting task.

There is an obvious lull in the second season of about 6-7 episode where, while there is some good stuff, it gets pretty boring and descends into a feeling of strangeness just to be strange. When the Windom Earle storyline comes in and starts developing towards the end of the season in the last 5ish episodes the show improves again but by this point it was already too late. The shows middle section in the second season was its death bed. If the season had ended with the resolution of the murder then the third could have started stronger with the Windom Earle storyline or an alternative one and been more focused. I do understand that if you get commissioned a 22 episode season on US TV you’re not going to turn around to the network and say thanks but we will be fine with 8, but with a show like Twin Peaks I think it was a mistake to commission so many episodes.

Others factors will obviously have played their part in the shows demise. Lynch and Frost’s real involvement with the show began to drop in the second season and it perhaps as result veered away from its focused beginning as Lynch in particular wanted to move back to film. There is also the possibility that even if the second season had been shorter the third would have still therefore failed to deliver on the quality of the first two, it is impossible to say. Whatever the cause of the show’s demise I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, but I hope that its cancellation does not put people off, and I hope that more people watch Lynch Twin Peaks and experience a truly original piece work of television.