Somehow, despite my adoration for the works of David Lynch, I managed to miss watching TWIN PEAKS, his late 80's/early 90's surrealist neo-noir television series. Thankfully, my Amazon Prime account came to the rescue by featuring the first two seasons. After learning this, I just HAD to give them a look.
First, and most reasonably, I started with the first season. The first episode almost lulls one into a false sense of security from that aforementioned surrealist nature with how normal it all seems in its early moments. A young girl is found dead on a lake shore, and the reactions of various townspeople are shown. Normal.
The arrival of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) pushes it into Lynchian territory, with his constant dictation of current events into a handheld audio recorder, intense fascination with nature, and adoration of pastries and coffee. With that comes another Lynchian trait: a sincere affection for people. Cooper is a methodical man who becomes enamored with the town of Twin Peaks and its citizens, becoming best pals with its sheriff and sometimes going out of his way to help them solve their problems.
I'm going to go on record with saying that Cooper is my favorite character in the show. There's really something to just how much affection he has for the town and its people, along with his willingness to keep an open mind for the more (possibly) supernatural elements at work. There's also the fact that he's just a fantastic investigator, like Sherlock Holmes crossed with James Bond.
The town itself opens up over the course of the season, revealing that nearly everyone had some sort of outrageous skeleton in their closets. Seemingly kind and chaste schoolgirls hide double lives as prostitutes, star quarterbacks work as drug runners, and every other person is sleeping with the other person's spouse. One would almost think it like a soap opera. This is certainly the case as this was also Lynch's take on that particular form of daytime entertainment. I think it lends to his style and desires to explore the dream-like nature of cinema, as soap operas tend to be somewhat dream-like in nature, what with their glossy aesthetic.
When the show dips into its more surrealist aspects, that's when I knew it had me. I mean, I would expect some surrealism. This is David Lynch we're talking about. Yet, its real success is how it all tied together with the greater narrative. Much of the series is made up of the citizens of Twin Peaks confronting hidden (read: subconscious) things. Surrealism deals with the subconscious explored through art. So, we have dreams that have some cryptic relationship to reality (said dreams were had by Agent Cooper), as well as bizarre behavior that never really is explained. This points back to my previous point about Lynch's predilection for cinema's dreamy nature. While there certainly are events in the show that are "real," just as much may only be visions or somewhere in between.
The last thing I want to mention is something that is certainly not the least of things: the music. From the opening theme...
...to the song Donna, James, and Maddy sing...
...to Cooper's theme...
...all of the music leans into a pseudo-1950's aesthetic that Lynch often visits. He often likes to juxtapose that all-American-apple-pie-baseball-GOD-BLESS-AMERICA sense with a darker element. To wit, Twin Peaks seems like a sleepy mountain town, but it really hides incredibly dark secrets. I think this also works with some of the more humorous elements as the mood shifts. Lynch is known for jumping from darkness to light fairly quickly, and in this case he does it (along with his co-showrunner, Mark Frost) with immense skill.
Overall, season one of Twin Peaks seems to be a nearly perfect distillation a Lynchian project. Equal parts creepy and hilarious, it manages to have a massive cast of characters who all get fleshed out in one way or another. While doing all of this, we also get to experience some of the most surreal television ever put to screen. If you have Amazon Prime, I advise you to give it a look. If you don't have that service, get it. It's worth it.
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