Review - Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks
Season 1 - 2
Pilot + 29 episodes
1990-1991

Twin Peaks is one of the most unusual television shows ever produced and has influenced television both in style and substance. Created by surrealist film savant David Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive) and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks captivated American audiences and became a sensation.

The plot begins with the murder of Laura Palmer in the small town of Twin Peaks in Washington state. FBI Agent Dale Cooper comes to the small logging city to investigate and is quickly immersed in the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the high school student and the variety of people who become suspects. To describe the plot any further becomes difficult as more and more new layers are revealed as Cooper investigates and learns more about the inhabitants of the city. The characters, their relationships, and their idiosyncrasies are the heart of the show.

The show is obviously from the mind of David Lynch as dreams, portents, symbolism, and a surrealist bent are firmly within the makeup of the show. In some ways these hallmarks of Lynch's work are quite effective in the serial episodic nature of a television show like Twin Peaks. The mysteries of the show grow and expand in ways that are not possible in 90 or 120 minute film, and the audience is constantly creating their own theories of what is happing in Twin Peaks. There is a quirkiness to Twin Peaks that is refreshing in comparison to what can often pass as a mystery in many other television shows.

It seems almost destiny that a show as original and unique as Twin Peaks would burn brightly but fade quickly. Under pressure from ABC Frost and Lynch wrapped up the central murder mystery in the seventh episode of the second season, a fantastic episode directed by Lynch himself. The pilot, the seven episodes of the first season, and the first seven of the second season are simply some of the best television this reviewer has ever seen. Once the central mystery is resolved the show begins to wander and is unable to refocus quickly enough to keep the momentum the show had built up. In the special features of the DVD release Mark Frost admits to several issues in the collapse of Twin Peaks; the show spent too much time building up the next mystery and several episodes were without the forward direction that had served the show so well, secondly Mark Frost and David Lynch themselves were busy directing other projects, the films Storyville and Wild at Heart respectively. Lynch, himself, admits that they should have never revealed the killer of Laura Palmer. Without the guiding hands of Frost and Lynch the series began to lose much of the heart that had propelled it to the great heights that it had attained. Most painfully the show began to become a sort of parody of itself and became almost too similar to other television shows. The vision of Frost and Lynch was far too unique for others to simply ape. The show would simply have shuffled off to a sad cancellation had this continued, but the last four or five episodes of the second season saw Frost and Lynch come back and attempt to salvage the series. These episodes, while not as strong as the earliest episodes, were a strong return to form and which culminated in a cliffhanger second season finale, once again directed by Lynch, that is among the best episodes of the series. The strong finish was not enough to save the series, but it remains a fantastic experience and is a perfect show for the TV on DVD revolution of the last decade. The show also lives on in the series that clearly owe much to the trail that Twin Peaks blazed in the television landscape.

The continuing mystery and serial nature of the X-files owes much to Twin Peaks. Perhaps most in debt to Twin Peaks is another ABC series; Lost. Lost is similar in many ways; the strength of the show lies in the intricate characters and their relationships, the overarching mystery, the symbolism, and the audience participation and obsession.

The acting is superb and the characters of Twin Peaks are the sort who will stick with the viewer. Quirky, but not defined by their quirks. Standouts include Lynch favorite (Dune and Blue Velvet) Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper, Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna Hayward, Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey Horne, and many more. As a television series the direction of each episode varied in quality with each director, but standouts include each episode directed by Frost or Lynch.

In the end, Twin Peaks is a unique, interesting, and powerful television show. While there is a definite drop in quality in the middle of the second season the show returns to form in the end and needs to be experienced to be believed.

Verdict: 5 stars out of 5.