“It is happening again” is one of many resonant lines from Twin Peaks. It derives from episode seven of season two, “Lonely Souls,” co-written by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It first aired on November 10, 1990, and it remains one of the most memorable and horrifying episodes of a television show ever broadcast—even measured against the standard of the far more graphic violence, sex and foul language that can be used on television today, especially on cable and premium channels. The episode finally revealed—too late for many viewers, perhaps, though much earlier than Lynch and Frost had ever intended—the identity of the murderer of Laura Palmer, as he kills again, this time claiming Maddy Ferguson, Laura’s cousin/doppelgänger (both characters are played by the same actress, Sheryl Lee, who was originally to play Laura only and whose expanded role is just one of the many instances of how the show changed as it developed). While the murder occurs, the mysterious Giant (Carel Struycklen) appears again to FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)—he initially appeared in Cooper’s room at the Great Northern Hotel in the second season premiere, shortly after Cooper was shot in the first season cliffhanger—twice intoning the warning, “It is happening again,” following which an elderly bellhop (character actor Hank Worden), who first appeared at the Great Northern just prior to the Giant’s initial appearance, approaches Cooper and condoles with him, telling Cooper he is very sorry.
The murder of Maddy is rendered all the more tragic and terrifying as the audience realizes, as Cooper does not, the import of this warning. Cooper’s blank incomprehension testifies to the helplessness the world of rational order, as represented by law enforcement here, is in the face not merely of murder but of inconceivable forces that lie outside the normal realms of human consciousness. Why could the warning not have come earlier? Why could the Giant not have specified what “it” was, or where it was happening, or who was doing it? For that matter, why can the Giant himself not act to prevent it? Perhaps more than any other scene in the series, this one epitomizes its uncanny, elliptical, and enigmatic narrative agenda. Now, more than 25 years later, it is happening again … again.
Twin Peaks, the brainchild of Mark Frost, best known before as one of the writers on the acclaimed and ground-breaking television police drama Hill Street Blues (1981–87), and film auteur David Lynch, flared gloriously and briefly across the television firmament before sputtering in its second season (though ratings declined even in the first season) and being cancelled. Much like Laura Palmer, though, who died before the series began but haunted it throughout its run and featured prominently in the film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Twin Peaks has lingered in the popular consciousness—or at any rate, in that of a significant fan coterie, sufficient to make the show, according to David Bianculli, “the cult TV show to end all cult TV shows” (299). It premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and it finished a mere 14 months later, on June 10, 1991. In sum, the show consisted of a pilot film running 94 minutes (for a two-hour television slot, including commercials; the season two premiere was also an extra-length episode, 93 minutes), and 29 additional episodes (seven in season one, 22 in season two)—approximately 25 hours of material, excluding commercials. For most television series, this would be a short run almost certainly guaranteeing oblivion after the end of an original run, as conventional wisdom states that at least 100 episodes are necessary for a show to survive in syndication (though there are exceptions, such as the original Star Trek series), and Twin Peaks aired well before the release of television seasons on video was a well-established marketing method.1 Twin Peaks did resurface on Bravo in 1993, a broadcast which included new introductions to each episode shot by Lynch and featuring the Log Lady (Catherine Coulson), but it has not been a staple of television since, in contrast to many other shows which have acquired cult status. However, it has not been assigned to the oblivion that the majority of short-run shows faced in the pre-digital era.
Initially, Twin Peaks looked likely to be a huge hit for ABC. Canny pre-broadcast hype and screenings for TV critics yielded it significant accolades. As David Hughes reports, “even before Twin Peaks was broadcast, the press was championing the series as a television milestone,” and “when Twin Peaks went on the air, the rave reviews were plentiful” (117). The pilot achieved “an overall audience share of 33%—in other words, a third of all those watching television between nine and eleven p.m., or around thirty-five million viewers” (118), making it an initial hit not only with critics but also with a broad audience. As Michel Chion notes, “the series very quickly became a worldwide phenomenon of great interest both to intellectuals and the general public” (95). The show was also marketed with an impressive array of ancillary and tie-in products, some fairly conventional and generic like the book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, in fact penned by Lynch’s daughter Jennifer, others rather more odd and specific, such as “cherry pies stamped RR (the town coffee-shop and restaurant where the main characters often meet)” (Chion 95).2 Part of the appeal of the show was Twin Peaks’ suturing together of elements from a wide array of genres, seemingly offering something for almost any viewer. As John Alexander argues, Twin Peaks “is not just superior television drama…. It succeeds because it encompasses all television: soap opera, melodrama, murder mystery, situation comedy, high-school romance—Twin Peaks is the unabridged collection of television clichés” (149).
However, Twin Peaks also challenged the expectations and tolerance of 1990s television viewers, and despite the marketing and tie-in products, suggestive of a broad popular appeal (or at any rate, ABC’s hopes for a broad appeal), it evidently troubled ABC as much as it excited the network. For all the push and hype, ABC clearly hedged its bets. Lynch was required to produce not only the finished pilot for a series but also a narratively-closed film version.3 Lynch explained to Chris Rodley that this was a strictly economic decision forced on the show by ABC: “they said, ‘You have to shoot an alternate ending. It has to have an ending for foreign markets’” (Lynch 163). Clearly, ABC did not see the series as marketable outside North America (a misjudgment, given that it was popular in numerous markets). ABC further hedged its bets by delaying a series order, limiting its initial order to only seven episodes (beyond the pilot)—exceedingly unusual in the American market, in which, at the time, 22–24 episodes usually comprised a full season—premiered the show in April, when most series have already finished their runs (in 2016 the summer became a standard launching season for new shows, but this was not the case in the early 1990s), and held off on ordering a second season until the first season was nearly over. Whether Twin Peaks was going to be an ongoing series, a mini-series, or a proposed ongoing series that ended up being truncated was unresolved until well into the first season’s run. Indeed, the first season ends with a cliffhanger, so the mini-series idea was in fact abandoned prior to the completion of shooting, though the decision to renew came much later.
Why might ABC have opted to put such an unconventional show on the air, especially given the evident uncertainty about its prospects? In the early 1990s, the major networks (then ABC, NBC, and CBS) still dominated the television landscape, but the signs that times were changing were very evident. While the era of cable and premium channels significantly siphoning viewers from network broadcast television—and acquiring a reputation for producing high-quality television that could not only compete with the networks but was actually superior to network offerings (in large part because of the relative freedom from FCC regulations that cable channels enjoy)—hadn’t started, yet inroads had already been made. By the end of the 1980s, the networks “shared just 67 percent of the available prime-time audience … (down from a high of 93.6 percent in 1975), with no end in sight to their spiraling downward” (Edgerton 5). Network programming still to a large extent dominated popular consciousness (breakthrough cable shows such as The Sopranos were still years away), and television awards still went predominantly to network productions—HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show earned “the distinction of being the first cable show to earn Emmy nominations in the awards’ major categories,” beginning in 1992 (Plasketes 183)—but cable evidently represented a threat. Network shows could not include graphic content or language comparable to what could be shown on cable. Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the networks were temporarily able to get away with mild profanities such as the word “shit” and displaying relatively risqué sex scenes and minor nudity (ABC’s NYPD Blue [1993–2005] was especially notorious for its controversial content—co-creator David Milch subsequently created Deadwood [2004–06], perhaps the most foul-mouthed television series to that time … for HBO), they could not compete content-wise with cable.
In such an environment, getting a television creator with a proven track record for success and a multiple Oscar-nominated film auteur (best director nominations for The Elephant Man [1980] and Blue Velvet [1986]—itself in some ways a gestational version of Twin Peaks, right down to Kyle MacLachlan and its bucolic, small town Americana setting, Twin Peaks being similar in many ways to Lumberton—as well as best adapted screenplay for The Elephant Man) to produce a show had potential to provide a viable network alternative to cable offerings. The pairing of Frost and Lynch combined television know-how with the sort of artistic credibility not usually associated with television at the time, so both a popular and an elite audience seemed possible. However, it didn’t work except initially, at least if the measure of success was to be gauged in audience share rather than in producing a gestational version of prestige television. Twin Peaks is more akin to the sort of programming that came to define cable channels than the sort of programming more associated with American network television. It was a show ahead of its time, airing on a network that needed mass appeal for its programming.
Indeed, despite the hype and despite initially enormous ratings, Twin Peaks faltered even in the first season, so much so that whether it would return for a second season was in doubt until the first season had finished its run. What made the show unique, interesting and arguably great also worked against it, especially when coupled with the expectation that it would draw a mass audience rather than a niche audience. While its dilatory narrative approach, its elements of pastiche and kitsch, its postmodern self-awareness of the conventions it was invoking both seriously and subversively, and its persistent refusal to deliver the sorts of payoffs expected of hour-long dramas at the time made it appealing to some viewers—many of whom became fanatically devoted to it, watching it over and over, and participating in the nascent development of online fandom4—made it equally baffling and frustrating to many more viewers. Since the show had been marketed with the tag line “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” thereby setting it up as belonging to the mystery/detective genre, audiences not unreasonably expected that it would move toward an answer to their question. As Marc Dolan points out, “a detective-story plot stimulates its audience to expect unequivocal narrative closure” (37), not the sort of ever-unfolding narrative envisaged by Frost and Lynch—and certainly not the indefinite deferral of resolving the murder mystery.
Some initial viewer attrition, therefore, can perhaps be ascribed to the show’s refusal to provide the sort of closure audiences expected of detective drama. Long-form narrative, outside the realm of the soap opera or the mini-series (and, as noted earlier, initial audiences could not at first be sure whether Twin Peaks was to be finite or ongoing), was virtually unknown on television in the early 1990s.5 Even five years after Twin Peaks began, another ABC show (created by Mark Frost’s former boss, Stephen Bochco, who had also created NYPD Blue), Murder One (1995–97), was marketed for its then-innovative strategy of tracking a single murder across an entire season. Even so, the show quickly began introducing secondary plot lines that could be resolved within an episode or two while the primary narrative unfolded in the background, TV audiences being unhappy about a narrative that took months to unfold. Season one of Twin Peaks did not provide even this level of episode to episode closure, instead spinning out bizarre and even surreal subplots. Dolan wonders “what might have happened if Twin Peaks had been marketed as more soap opera than detective story” (37) but concludes that while such a strategy might have mitigated audience impatience, it might also have precluded the show’s initial success by turning off viewers who didn’t want to watch such low-prestige television as the soap opera. Regardless, as Dolan notes, and as the ratings bear out, Twin Peaks began to shed viewers long before its failure to resolve the mystery could have become a serious concern.
Twin Peaks challenged audiences not merely by subverting genre expectations but by subverting, if not transcending, what television was expected to deliver. The second episode was clearly the acid test. It included some material originally shot for the international film version of the pilot, though not, of course, that film’s conclusion. This material was not part of the original concept for the show but ended up significantly influencing its direction. Episode two introduced the Red Room and the Man from Another Place (Michael J. Anderson) in a dreamlike, surreal sequence that shifted what had hitherto been a quirky show into genuinely strange territory. While some viewers embraced this disturbing development, unlike anything seen on television before, many more became alienated by the show’s increasing strangeness. Indeed, Dolan argues that, from the perspective of conventional television narrative, season two is superior to season one because it paid far more attention to the craft of television, constructing more coherent individual episodes—by which point it was too late to win over, or win back, people who had already given up.
Arguably, the revelation of Laura Palmer’s murder in season two was intended to reverse the decline by providing exactly the sort of narrative closure audiences expected of murder mysteries. Lynch and Frost were pressured to answer the question and reluctantly did so, in episode seven of season two. The gambit backfired. As Jeffrey Weinstock notes, viewership, which had already declined significantly from the premiere’s 30,000,000 collapsed after Laura Palmer’s murderer was revealed to be her father, prominent lawyer Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), dropping from 17.2 million for that episode “to a low of 7.4 million for the penultimate episode” (6) before climbing back slightly to 10.4 million for the finale (7). As Weinstock argues, revealing the killer “arguably broke the show” (7). Mark Frost concurs, albeit for different reasons: “Once the central Laura Palmer–Leland Palmer story was resolved, we were at a deficit in coming up with a story that was compelling. And frankly, we didn’t” (qtd. in Olson 364). Following the solution of the mystery, the downward ratings spiral led to the inevitable cancellation of the show. Without the question of what happened to Laura Palmer on which to hang its real preoccupations, and without a viable new mystery to regenerate interest, the show limped to its conclusion—a conclusion it reached only because fan agitation persuaded ABC to air the six remaining episodes after it had placed the show on hiatus. And as a conclusion, it was a non-conclusion. Lynch returned to put the show to bed, and perversely left his audience with multiple cliffhangers, cliffhangers which remain unresolved, since when Lynch returned to the Twin Peaks universe with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, he set the film before the action of the television series, in effect telling the audience much that they already knew (though, to be fair, also including much they did not know), rather than answering questions. Such a gambit was in keeping with Lynch’s own lack of interest in narrative closure as what drove Twin Peaks, but it led to considerable backlash and criticism of the film, which only relatively recently has been enjoying some critical reassessment. At the time, though, it seemed as if Twin Peaks was as dead as Laura Palmer.
However, also like Laura Palmer, Twin Peaks has continued to haunt us. It remains an enduringly alluring television show, and, as previously noted, has inspired a dedicated and persistent fan base. As a work largely associated with David Lynch (Mark Frost’s seminal importance has arguably been insufficiently recognized), Twin Peaks has also been the ongoing subject of scholarly discourse, not only as an inevitable subject of consideration in most books on Lynch’s oeuvre but also the subject itself of several studies—though, as Jeffrey Weinstock notes, the “existing body of scholarship on Twin Peaks…, although sizeable, is not as extensive as one perhaps might expect” (9).6 Twin Peaks continues to be regarded as a television high-water mark, not only among its fan base but also in general evaluations of quality television. James Poniewozik includes it in his list of the top 100 television shows for Time. TV Guide twice listed it among the top cult shows ever, at number 20 in 2004 and 24 in 2007, and at number 45 in TV Guide’s 2002 list of the top 50 television shows of all time (Durham 8)—though TV Guide’s more recent (2013) list of the top 60 television shows of all time does not include Twin Peaks (Fretts and Roush). Entertainment Weekly rated it number 12 in its list of top 25 cult shows (Durham 12–13). The Writers Guild of America ranks it number 35 of the 101 best-written TV series (“101 Best Written TV Series”). Empireonline ranks it number 28 (Dyer et al.). The Hollywood Reporter ranks it number 20 (“Hollywood’s 100 Favorite TV Shows”).7 Rolling Stone lists it at number 17 (Sheffield). British broadcaster Channel 4 listed it as number nine in its 2007 list of the top 50 television dramas (Durham 8). Metacritic rated season one at number 13, with a rating of 96 out of 100 (“TV Show Releases by Score”).
Twin Peaks has not only received accolades but has also arguably changed television, as it is frequently referenced in and has influenced many shows. Its effect was almost immediate, both in the other programs that could be seen to have attempted to emulate at least some aspects of Twin Peaks and in the impressive array of homages, pastiches, and parodies—including a Sesame Street version, “Twin Beaks” (original air date February 26, 1991, four months before Twin Peaks was cancelled).8 Many shows that aired in the wake of Twin Peaks, and others since, have either been seen as influenced by Twin Peaks or have been created by people who explicitly acknowledge their debt.9 References to Twin Peaks continue to come up, even in unlikely places (albeit perhaps not as unlikely as Sesame Street). For instance, in episode two of the otherwise not very Twin Peaks–like CW television show No Tomorrow, “No Crying in Baseball” (air date October 11, 2016), the character Dierdre (Amy Pietz) refers to her hidden talent: she can tie a cherry stem into a knot using only her tongue, a reference to one of the most memorable Twin Peaks moments, when Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn) demonstrates her own ability in this regard (episode six, “Realization Time”). Another current CW show, Riverdale, transforms the world of Archie Comics into a moody, perverse one that echoes the self-conscious retro-kitsch, generic slippage, and murder-mystery ambience of Twin Peaks; even the show’s name, title lettering, and use of the town’s welcome sign echo the earlier program (Mädchen Amick, who played Shelley, also has a role).
Such references are only likely to increase as Twin Peaks’ return to the airwaves on Showtime draws nearer (four months away at the time of the composition of this introduction). Already, Twin Peaks tie-ins and reassessments are on the rise. Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery was released on DVD and Blu-ray at the end of July 2014, mere weeks before the Showtime revival was announced. Harry E. Teter published Twin Peaks: The True Story in April 2015. John Thorne’s The Essential Wrapped in Plastic: Pathways to Twin Peaks, a collection of pieces from his long-running Twin Peaks fan magazine, came out in April 2016. Mark Frost released his own tie-in book, The Secret History of Twin Peaks: A Novel, on October 18, 2016, in which he revisits the town, raising many possible mysteries and conspiracies—many of them addressing the more straightforwardly occult and paranormal elements of the series—though whether these will be teased out in the show or are only red herrings remains to be seen. Lindsey Bowden’s Damn Fine Cherry Pie and Other Recipes from Twin Peaks was released in November 2016. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock and Catherine Spooner’s Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television, also published in 2016, was the first academic work to revisit Twin Peaks extensively in decades. This volume adds to the ongoing discussion, bringing together 12 new essays that build on previous explorations and open up new pathways into Twin Peaks, as it happens again.
We begin with Nicola Glaubitz and Jens Schröter offering a reading of the interface between surrealist and postmodern elements in Twin Peaks, both of course widely associated with Lynch’s oeuvre. John J. Pierce follows with an overview of the genesis of several key elements in Twin Peaks, such as its invocation of the supernatural and myth, linking them to the subsequent film. Kyle Barrett then explores how Lynch wedded the cinematic to the televisual, an innovative approach prior to the emergence of prestige TV; Barrett considers Twin Peaks in relation to Lynch’s previous cinematic works. Rachel Joseph offers further explorations of Twin Peaks (both series and film) in relation to trauma theory, Lynch’s subsequent films, and the Pacific Northwest’s own brand of the weird. Gavin F. Hurley follows with the first of several essays that delve into the ways Twin Peaks explores manifestations of evil. Hurley’s focus is Twin Peaks in a post–Christian context. Elizabeth Lowry then discusses Twin Peaks as a reimagining of 19th-century spiritual ambivalence and moral panic, especially in its invocation of setting, notably the forest. Next, Michail Zontos explores how Twin Peaks uses demonic possession as a metaphor for domestic violence, comparing what Lynch and Frost do with this concept to how Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick addressed a similar concept in the novel and first film versions of The Shining (novel 1977; film 1980). Siobhan Lyons then analyzes Twin Peaks’ conversion of the American Dream to a nightmare, again contextualizing Twin Peaks in relation to other films with similar themes—including some exploration of the show’s echoes of another Kubrick project, his adaptation of Nabokov’s Lolita (novel 1955; Kubrick film 1962), a film much admired by Lynch. Martha L. Diaz follows with a shift of focus from the television series to the film, arguing for its invocation of the vampiric. Donald McCarthy then shifts the focus from Twin Peaks itself to its influence on the development of prestige television, focusing on the debts owed by shows such as The Sopranos (1999–2007) and Mad Men (2007–15). The final two essays explore how Twin Peaks has been marketed and reformatted in the digital era. Fabian Grumbrecht offers a close reading of how the deluxe DVD/Blu-ray collection of the TV series and film, Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery, recasts the viewing experience and invites reinterpretation of all the Twin Peaks material, not only in terms of how the material is organized but also in terms of how it is packaged. Finally, Scott Von Doviak looks closely at how the extensive deleted material from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, edited together into a sort of companion piece for that film as part of Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery, opens up intriguing possibilities. One can only speculate that the revived series will further explore the past, present, and potential future of Twin Peaks. It is happening again!
1. Though films were becoming available in video format by the late 1970s, consistent marketing of television shows in video format took longer to develop. One of the earliest forays into such marketing was the video release of the series finale of M*A*S*H, which aired on February 28, 1983, and was available a few weeks later on VHS ($79.98), laserdisc ($34.98) and CED ($29.98)—hardly consumer-friendly prices for a single episode, even in 2016. More regular release for the series in video format did not follow until 1992 (“M*A*S*H* on Home Video”). Such prices remained normative for the majority of video releases until the late 1980s; writing in 1989, Paul B. Lindstrom reported that “sell-through prices” (sales for home users rather than to rental stores) were as low as $14.95 to $29.95 for a pre-recorded videocassette, but “this can only work with a few select titles,” and list prices still tended to be high—“as high as $99.95” for a VHS copy of the film Platoon (48). Even in the early 1990s, the idea that there might be a big market for video recordings of television shows had not taken hold. Writing in 1990, for instance, Julia R. Dobrow expresses the widely-held assumption that re-watching films or television shows over and over, as VHS technology made easy, was “curious” behavior; “Why would anyone want to see a movie multiple times? … And perhaps even more curious are those people who watch televised content more than once” (181). (Television’s low-prestige status was evident in such judgments; nobody would have been puzzled at the time about readers wanting to revisit novels—why else would one own books?—or theater-goers to see multiple productions of, for example, Shakespearean drama or operas.) The inconsistency of how television shows were marketed for home media is evident in the home media history of Twin Peaks. It was a popular show for audiences to record at home—it was “the most-videotaped show on network television, with 830,000 recordings per week,” according to Justus Nieland (83), so it is perhaps not surprising that it would get a formal video release, but when the show was first released on VHS—the first seven episodes came out in a log-design box in 1991—the pilot episode was not included, and the cost was $99.95. (By contrast, today, Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery, comprising the complete series on Blu-ray, including both the original and international version of the pilot, the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and various extras, retails for $82.00 on Amazon.com.) The 1993 VHS box set of the series also failed to include the pilot. The pilot was not included in the first DVD release of season one, either, in 2000. A complete home media Twin Peaks set, including the pilot, was not available in North America until the 2007 release of the Definitive Gold Box Edition (“A History of Twin Peaks on Home Video”).
2. The Palmer diary was actually a best-seller, rising to “number five on the New York Times best-seller list” (Lavery 7). Other tie-in products included a book of Dale Cooper’s memoirs (The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper) as well as audiotapes of his messages to Diane, an official Twin Peaks access guide, a series soundtrack, trading cards, coffee cups, and other ancillary products. For a discussion of a few of the more significant ones, see Lavery 7–10. Twin Peaks was also used to market other products, such as Georgia Coffee, for which Lynch directed four commercials explicitly casting Kyle MacLachlan as Dale Cooper and several other actors from the show also reprising their roles (Hughes 266–67).
3. This film is usually referred to as the “international version” of the pilot, though this really is a misnomer. While the first 80-plus minutes duplicate the pilot, the final 20 bring the narrative to a clear close; some elements from that conclusion were subsequently folded into the series, but not all—notably, the mystery of who killed Laura is resolved in a way incompatible with how the show ultimately did so. It is not really an alternate or extended version of the pilot in the way such things are conventionally understood (scenes added and extended, but the original narrative form retained) but a self-contained, narratively distinct two-hour alternative to the 25-hour narrative that unfolded in the serial version.
4. Indeed, Henry Jenkins tracked how Twin Peaks “seemed to invite … close scrutiny and speculation” (54) by fans, as its “narrative abounded with cryptic messages, codes, and chess problems, riddles and conundrums, dreams, visions, clues, secret passages and locked boxes” and more, elements which “invited the viewer’s participation as a minimal condition for comprehending the narrative” (55), an invitation which spurred the emergence of online Twin Peaks fandom on Usenet (at alt.tv.twinpeaks, technically still extant as a Google online forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.tv.twin-peaks; though essentially moribund, it will be interesting to see whether it becomes more active now that Twin Peaks is returning to television). The importance of Twin Peaks as a fan phenomenon is reflected in the recent volume Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks, which focuses on fan responses to the show, from both “a new generation of international fans” as well as “seasoned veterans of the show and film” (Hayes and Boulège 7).
5. Dolan notes that serialization in primetime programming did begin in some ways in the 1980s, beginning with Cheers (1982–1993), which in addition to its typical sitcom episode-by-episode plotting had a long-form structure in which the romance between Sam and Diane developed (though it proved ultimately secondary, as Shelley Long’s departure put an end to this putatively central arc). As Dolan notes, such an arc helped shift audience interest away from plot and instead into “curiosity on the part of the audience about the trajectory of the characters” (34), and he cites other shows which developed similar ongoing romantic entanglements between lead characters. Twin Peaks was also designed as a show in which the real interest would reside in the characters, not in the mystery, but unlike shows such as Cheers, Twin Peaks had little interest in providing any sort of episode-by-episode closure, but instead an episode-by-episode increase to the complexity both of plot and of character interactions.
6. Though Weinstock is correct to point out that Twin Peaks has had less critical attention than one might have anticipated, it is worth note that critical attention did begin early. The David Lavery-edited Full of Secrets, the first essay collection on the series, was published in 1995, but work began on the book “during Twin Peaks’ first hiatus…. By the beginning of May 1990, a month before Twin Peaks’ last episode aired, [Lavery] had received over seventy proposals from potential contributors” (15). However, Martha P. Nochimson’s statement, 20 years ago, that “most critics believe that Lynch and Frost took American television to its zenith with elements of Twin Peaks, but, so far, critics have had difficulty with the sum total of the elements of the series” (77–78), remains largely as true today as it was then. We hope that books such as this one and the recent collection edited by Weinstock and Spooner will help redress this situation.
7. Interestingly, the review of the first episode that ran in The Hollywood Reporter when the show first aired recognizes both its unique brilliance—film director David Lynch shows “producers and critics alike, who look down on [television] as a secondary art form to the big screen … how it is supposed to be done” (Hack)—but also that that uniqueness would spell its doom:
The problem with Twin Peaks is not the show. The problem here is the viewer; and it’s unavoidable. For as classy, clever and well-spun as Twin Peaks is, it makes the mistake of presuming the viewer will watch and listen and perceive. Not so.
Lynch expects the viewer to suck the Tootsie pop slowly until the inner chewy nucleus is revealed. TV viewers chomp through their pops.
But concentration is such a rare event in television viewing that any hope of following the intricacy of Twin Peaks is a dream. Especially after the hour series moves to its regular time slot on Thursday nights from 9–10 p.m. when Cheers and Grand are only a flick of the remote away. Sad but very true [Hack].
8. The revival of Twin Peaks has also led to a revival of interest in such odd artifacts. “Twin Beaks” has been available on YouTube for years but recently has been the subject of short pieces and available for viewing on numerous other internet sites, such as A.V. Club (see Adams et al.), Indiewire (see Hollwedel), Openculture.com (see Halliday) and others.
9. Lynch, however, does not see the essence of Twin Peaks captured in its imitators. When Chris Rodley asked him whether Twin Peaks had started something, given the proliferation of eccentric and/or paranormal shows that came subsequently, such as Wild Palms (1993), American Gothic (1995–1996), and The X-Files (1993–2002; revived 2016), Lynch’s response was dismissive: “People said Wild Palms had something to do with Twin Peaks. To me it had zip to do with Twin Peaks. ZZZIP! And all these rip-off things that came after didn’t catch one little whiff of what Twin Peaks was, to me. But other people see similarities” (Lynch 184). In addition to the shows mentioned above, David Hughes cites Northern Exposure and Picket Fences as shows influenced by Twin Peaks and lists many subsequent references, homages, and parodies (112ff). For a detailed account of numerous shows with Twin Peaks connections, see Shara Lorea Clark’s “Peaks and Pop Culture”; and (as explored by some of the essays in this volume) Twin Peaks continues to influence television creators today. Carlton Cuse, for instance, echoes Lynch’s reference to Twin Peaks rip-offs in his assertion that “we pretty much ripped off Twin Peaks with Bates Motel” (qtd. in Haithman). Furthermore, there are a number of interesting correlations between Twin Peaks and the J.J. Abrams-Carlton Cuse-Damon Lindelof series Lost (2004–2010), a series that, unlike its predecessor, successfully navigated a series-length mystery by utilizing perpetually frustrated sub-plots, red herrings, misdirections, and blind alleys. Bryan Fuller has also been equally forthcoming about the influence of the Lynchian style on Hannibal: “I was very consciously saying, ‘what would David Lynch do with a Hannibal Lecter character? What sort of strange, unexpected places would he take this world?’ I’m a great admirer of his work and his aesthetic and his meticulous sound design” (qtd. in Votaw).
Adams, Erik, et al. “T Is for ‘Twin Beaks’: A Sesame Street Pop-Culture Alphabet.” A.V. Club. Nov. 10, 2104. http://www.avclub.com/article/t-twin-beaks-sesame-street-pop-culture-alphabet-211420. Accessed Oct. 14, 2016.
Alexander, John. The Films of David Lynch. London: Charles Letts, 1993.
Bianculli, David. “Twin Peaks.” The Essential Cult TV Reader. Ed. David Lavery. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. 299–306.
Chion, Michel. David Lynch. Trans. Robert Julian. 2nd ed. London: British Film Institute, 2006.
Clark, Shara Lorea. “Peaks and Pop Culture.” Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks. Ed. Marisa C. Hayes and Franck Boulège. Bristol: Intellect, 2013. 8–15.
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