On June 10, 1991, a long, crazy dream came to an
end… or to a pause. The relentlessly innovative, relentlessly weird series
Twin Peaks sputtered to an early
demise after something less than one and a half standard television seasons. During
its brief run, Twin Peaks made an
impression on virtually everyone in America and generated a cult following that
lasted long past its series finale. So did the series' influence: the strange
mixture of occult and soap opera, mystery and comedy, slapstick and horror caught
on. Series directly inspired by Twin
Peaks were many and outlived it by years and decades – Picket Fences, X-Files, True Detective
and dozens of other shows borrowed something or other from Twin Peaks, whether that be cast, plot, directorial style, or tone.
Early in Twin Peaks,
Agent Cooper says of his breakfast that there's nothing like the taste
sensation when ham and maple syrup collide. That is an apt and possibly very
deliberate metaphor for what Twin Peaks
is. The snide, relentless competence of Albert Rosenfield and the calm,
confident folksy charm of Sheriff Harry Truman are one of many collisions the
show portrayed between people whose ethos – whose very way of being – were
so different that it was hard to believe that the planet could contain both of
them. Consider the outrageously eccentric household home to humble outdoorsman
Pete Martell, his shrewish wife Catherine, and her mysterious sister-in-law
from Hong Kong, Josie. Even unto themselves, these characters were full of
contradictions – simpleminded Pete turning out to be a chess master, Josie
hiding a romance with Sheriff Truman and a life of criminal intrigue, and
Catherine posing for weeks as a Japanese businessman. Sometimes, these
contradictions were developed at length, but they were found even in throwaway
lines as when the Native American Deputy Hawk's refers to his former lover
Diane Shapiro (PhD, Brandeis) and when Agent Cooper throws stones in a mystic
ceremony for a distance of 60 feet and 6 inches (the distance from the pitcher's
mound to home plate in baseball). And the very idea that a supernatural demon
would be named, of all things, Bob (by convention, spelled BOB).
Twin Peaks – the name tells you that duality is an
important theme – was ruled by these clashes between opposites, and more
than any other, there were two particularly ubiquitous dualities: ordinariness
vs. strangeness and purity vs. corruption. And more than in any other person,
these dualities both coexisted in the central but deceased character Laura
Palmer. The beautiful homecoming queen who volunteered for charity was also a
drug dealing, drug addicted, prostitute – something we found out in a
series of shocking revelations throughout the first season. Even more shocking,
we found out in the second season (and the series' print companion – The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer – that
she had long been tormented by a disembodied spirit, a demonic predatory who
has possessed her own father, and who had used his body to assault and rape her
until she accepted death as her only way out.
The Twin Peaks
story thus far, could be broken into the following parts:
• The Pilot, a decent standalone David Lynch film in
its own right, except for its pointed lack of an ending, which was supplied for
the so-called European Ending (aired on European TV and available as an extra
on VHS and DVD) that sped through an unsettling resolution to Laura Palmer's
death in a matter of minutes. Footage from the European Ending was used in
Cooper's dream sequence at the end of Episode Three.
• The rest of the first season, in which the town and
Laura's murder were explored, leading to an explosive finale with numerous
deaths, assaults, and destruction. At this point, the writers had not agreed
upon a resolution to the murder mystery, whose query, "Who killed Laura
Palmer?" became a nationally-known catchphrase.
• The book, "The
Secret Diary of Laura Palmer," by Jennifer Lynch, which was published
during the offseason and provided major developments/lookaheads regarding the
plot, including the supernatural nature of Laura's killer, BOB.
• The first half of the second season, leading to the
identity of Leland Palmer as the human host of BOB, and thus the physical body
that killed Laura. This was filled with clues and red herrings, but led inexorably
to a "twin peaked" conclusion in which the viewers learn first who
killed Laura, and then later Cooper and the other authorities catch Leland.
• The second half of the second season, which meanders
considerably, with a few mundane soap opera-ish plots as distractions from the
central contest between Agent Cooper and his evil former partner, Windom Earle.
The show itself battled ambiguous levels of support from its network, ABC,
until its cancellation became certain and the series was given a memorable ending
in which Agent Cooper returned from the Black Lodge possessed by BOB.
• A theatrical film, Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk With Me that served as a prequel to the series, showing
the final days of Laura Palmer's life, the FBI's unsuccessful interactions with
the spirit world from which BOB hails. Some truly bizarre scenes set in the
spirit world showed that its residents visit our world to feed on the emotions
of pain and suffering, presented as creamed corn and dubbed garmonbozia.
Now, after 26 years, the series resumes a few hours from
now, in the future time frame indicated "25 years later" in the
European Ending, Cooper's dream, and some scenes in FWWM. What will the series cover? It's certain that the
"ending" of the second season will be addressed somehow, which would
seem to require either that Cooper was somehow exorcised of BOB at some point
in the past, or perhaps he still has the demon inside him, decades later.
