Twin Peaks

Abstract

Frustrated by the lengthy and increasingly obscure nature of the investigation into Laura Palmer's death, viewing figures began to decline; and after the unveiling of her killer (under pressure from alarmed studio executives), only the most ardent of fans braved scheduling reshuffles to find out how Twin Peaks would survive the resolution of its headline-grabbing McGuffin. In the idyllic small town of Twin Peaks ("where a yellow light still means slow down, not speed up") the body of high-school student Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is discovered, wrapped in plastic; another girl, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), is missing.

Twin Peaks (1990-1991)

ABC/Universal Home Entertainment (Season One)/Paramount Home Entertainment (Season Two)

In April 1990, the plastic-wrapped corpse of Laura Palmer floated onto our television screens, buoyed up by a quirky supporting cast of eccentrics. Propelled by the increasingly offbeat investigation of this absorbing murder-mystery, the first season of Twin Peaks (the brainchild of Mark Frost and David Lynch) was an undisputed phenomenon. But when the second season began in September 1990, the show's initial appeal seemed rapidly to diminish. Frustrated by the lengthy and increasingly obscure nature of the investigation into Laura Palmer's death, viewing figures began to decline; and after the unveiling of her killer (under pressure from alarmed studio executives), only the most ardent of fans braved scheduling reshuffles to find out how Twin Peaks would survive the resolution of its headline-grabbing McGuffin. After just two seasons (comprising a pilot and twenty-nine episodes in total), Twin Peaks ended in June 1991 with the bleakest of cliff-hangers, leaving those members of the audience that had faithfully seen it through to the bitter end gagging for a third season, a craving that the much-maligned feature-length prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) failed to satisfy. Now, after prolonged distribution problems (which have meant that the second season has still not seen a release in the UK and Ireland), Twin Peaks is finally available in its entirety on Region 1 and a selection of mainland European releases on Region 2 DVD. And so it's time at last to brew some damn good coffee, sample another slice of cherry pie and relive the show that gave backwards-speaking dwarves their day in the sun.

Twin Peaks started life as a basic whodunit. In the idyllic small town of Twin Peaks ("where a yellow light still means slow down, not speed up") the body of high-school student Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is discovered, wrapped in plastic; another girl, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), is missing. When she turns up across state lines, bloodied and apparently in a dissociative state, Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is dispatched to lead the investigation, working with Sherriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) and his team of local law enforcement officers. Guided by Tibetan philosophy and the interpretation of his dreams and visions, Cooper goes about the process of gathering clues to Laura's murder (most infamously those offered by the figure of The Man From Another Place (Michael J. Anderson), the oft-parodied backwards-talking dwarf, who would later star in Carnivàle). This was eventually to lead to the unfolding of a larger mystery: that of the Black Lodge, a metaphysical manifestation of what Truman identifies as "the evil in these old woods" which surround the town (a gothic trope which has haunted American culture as far back as Hawthorne). But such prosaic summaries simply can't do justice to the impact Twin Peaks had in its hey-day; and in particular, the pall cast by the characterisation of BOB, an evil spirit housed within the Black Lodge.

BOB is the stuff of nightmares, a primal force of evil, and a shadowy figure that recurs in Laura Palmer's secret diaries as an abusive figure that has tormented her from a young age. His appearances are often sudden and fleeting, and invariably range in effect from deeply unsettling to absolutely terrifying, especially when he invades seemingly benign domestic spaces. In one of the most memorable examples, Maddy Ferguson (Laura's cousin, also played by Sheryl Lee) has a vision of him in the Palmer living room, crawling over couches and tables directly towards her, and directly into the camera. It's a moment that signifies better than any Twin Peaks' effectiveness in bringing murder into the home (where Alfred Hitchcock, embarking on his own televisual exploits in 1955, once claimed it belonged). It also provides as clear an indication as any that the real horrors of Twin Peaks lurk in apparently the most mundane places. The site of Maddy's vision was later to become the place in which Twin Peaks yielded its secret, when BOB strikes a second time in one of the most disturbing and sadistic scenes ever to have been screened on a commercial network (and the relatively conservative ABC at that). [SPOILER BEGINS] As Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) stands in his living room, looking in the mirror, his reflection is revealed to be that of BOB; in a devastating twist, then, we realise that BOB's human host is Laura's own father, previously presumed to be a run-of-the-mill eccentric who deals with his daughter's death by singing show-tunes and dancing like a manic Gene Kelly. These attributes are put to unsettling and surreal effect as we witness Leland/BOB chasing his latest victim around the room (after delivering a couple of bone-crunching blows to her face) and taunting her, before sweeping her into a tight embrace and twirling her about the living room, and brutally murdering her. In the space of a few minutes, then, the nightmarish BOB is unmasked and granted a more human - and infinitely more disturbing - face. [SPOILER ENDS]

If Twin Peaks had dealt exclusively in the dark and nightmarish realms which BOB occupied (and which its feature-length prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me showcased, many would say to its detriment), there's a good chance it would never have gotten past the pilot stage. Indeed, a feature-length version was hastily put together for the European market, which remains something of a curio in Peaks lore. It revealed a mortal BOB to be the killer, before he was dispatched by 'Mike' (Al Strobel), the one-armed man who would prove to be an integral feature of the mythology of the Black Lodge eventually developed over the course of two seasons. (This remained undeveloped in the European pilot, but some related footage from its coda - in which Agent Cooper encounters Laura Palmer and The Man From Another Place in the Red Room - would subsequently feature in Twin Peaks itself, in the form of Cooper's dream.) The darkest aspects of the series - the murders and domestic secrets that shook Twin Peaks - were inextricably linked with this elaborate mythology, but were counter-balanced by the eclectic supporting characters and black humour that also characterised the show. At heart, it remained an elaborate soap opera (mirrored in the first season by its show-within-a-show, the fictional Invitation to Love), and Twin Peaks gleefully parodied soap-land excesses: for example, early in the second season, Cooper was filled in on what had happened since he was shot in the cliff-hanger to Season One:

Truman . Lucy, you'd better bring Agent Cooper up to date.

Lucy. Leo Johnson was shot, Jacques Renault was strangled, the mill burned, Shelley and Pete got smoke inhalation, Catherine and Josie are missing, Nadine is in a coma from taking sleeping pills.

Cooper. How long have I been out?

Truman. Six hours.

Throughout its run, Twin Peaks played with the conventional soap opera format and themes, regularly featuring such melodramatic excesses as the réintroduction of characters presumed dead; recurring story-lines involving love triangles and questionable patrimony; and soap-land's favourite affliction, amnesia - from Benjamin Home's (Richard Beymer) re-enactment of the Civil War to Nadine Hurley's (Wendy Robie) regression to her teenage years and acquisition of superhuman strength, apparently leaving her husband Big Ed (Everett McGill) free to pursue a relationship with his own teenage sweetheart Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton). Some of the more unconventional characters, like the infamous Log Lady (Catherine Coulson) and Major Garland Briggs (Don Davis) would also prove to be key players in the Black Lodge mythology; others, such as odd-ball Pete Martell (played by Lynch regular Jack Nance) and FBI agent Gordon Cole (David Lynch himself) would turn strange quirks and character traits into much-needed (and well-loved) comic relief.

It was these supporting players that came to the fore in the second series after the revelation of Laura's killer, but with very mixed results. A number of guest directors were brought in while Lynch busied himself with the Palme d'Or-winning Wild at Heart, while the screenwriters struggled to keep the narrative on-track as it attempted to establish the wider mythology to which BOB belonged. Some of the new storylines seemed to meander a little too much (worst of the bunch was a noirish subplot involving Laura's biker boyfriend James Hurley (James Marshall) and a femme fatale, which briefly left the town of Twin Peaks behind); others have taken on a cultish appeal of their own, most famously David Duchovny's dragged-up pre-X-Files turn as DEA Agent Denise/Dennis Bryson. And others still represented the best of Twin Peaks' off-beat sense of humour, as when the chronically-deaf Gordon Cole falls for waitress Shelley Johnson (Mädchen Amick) - "the kind of girl that makes you wish you spoke a little French" - only to discover that he can hear every word she says, a memorable light touch amidst the gathering gloom of the show's final episodes. Ultimately, all roads would lead back to the Black Lodge after Cooper's former partner at the FBI Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh) turned up in Twin Peaks, intent on using its secrets as a means to take his revenge on Cooper. Once the show found its way back on track, the stage was set for its devastating finale, with Lynch back at the helm for the final episode in which Cooper must face the mysteries of the Black Lodge in an extended sequence which remains a visceral tour de force of televisual surrealism. By now, though, the series had been axed and with no third season to redeem the fate of Cooper, Twin Peaks ended finally on the most dismal of notes.

Ultimately, Twin Peaks could never have maintained its initial success. The effectiveness of its immediate selling-point (the murder of Laura Palmer) would eventually prove its downfall, and once the identity of Laura's killer was revealed, the show struggled to regain its focus until it was all too apparent that the plug would be pulled. Despite this apparently ignominious ending, though, and seventeen years after it made its provocative debut, Twin Peaks remains an inescapable touchstone for gothic and supernatural programming. Its influence in paving the way for the likes of The X-Files (to which many members of the cast and crew graduated), American Gothic and Carnivàle, for example, is obvious; the success of the format of The X-Files in particular is unthinkable without the pioneering force of Twin Peaks. Its legacy can also be traced to just about any show that dramatises the nightmares that lurk beneath the veneers of suburban and small-town America, most memorably perhaps Six Feet Under, and most recently, the inexplicably popular Desperate Housewives (another ABC show). It displayed its Peaks-isms long before Kyle MacLachlan was added to the cast, by using as the focus for its first season the mysteries behind the unexpected suicide in the first episode of Mary Alice Young (a role originally intended for Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee, but eventually played by Brenda Strong - who also had a minor role in Twin Peaks). But no television show has proven up to the task of fully capturing the darkly humorous and nightmarish spirit of Twin Peaks, or replicating the initial shockwaves that it generated when it premiered. Its reappearance now on DVD provides a welcome opportunity to revisit the show that has remained such a pervasive influence on our television screens; what emerges finally may be a flawed work, certainly, but one which remains compulsive viewing.

jenny McDonnell