Growing up, most of what my parents and immediate family watched on TV was soap operas, sitcoms, game shows, you know the kind. Nothing wrong with that, but that's pretty much entirely to blame for my relative late blooming in discovering the truly classic television series that have defined the medium throughout decades. But there was one thing that my family kept talking about with a unique kind of reverence... namely, Twin Peaks.
Young and thus unfit to actually watch it though I was, I managed to overhear a number of conversations about it, piecing together an image of the show in my head. It became like some great and ominous mystery stuck in the back of my mind. For years, I kinda feared actually watching it for fear that it might not live up to my admittedly overly-ambitious imagination... but one night, it came on during one of my monthly late-night TV binges as a teenager. And, well... here I am reviewing it on the eve of its 25th anniversary. You might say it's something I'll never forget.
On the surface, Twin Peaks is a rather straight-forward small-town murder mystery, a source of good drama in and of itself. But David Lynch never does anything straight-forward (...except that one time). The whole thing plays out with the logic of a strange fever dream: one day, our chipper FBI lead investigator is conducting a procedural scan of a body for clues; the next, he's utilizing an old Tibetan technique of throwing rocks at glass jars to narrow down a list of suspects. It shouldn't make sense, but in Lynch's world... it kinda does. Aside from the main mystery, everyone (even the kindly lumberjack and his fish-filtered coffee; R.I.P. Jack Nance) got some sort of strange secret in this town, some ominous, some downright bizarre.
The almost suffocating aura of mystery is enhanced by that repetitive, dreamlike, and claustrophobic jazz score. At its best, it makes for some of the most atmospheric and transporting television of all time. Sadly, the show lost its way upon Lynch's departure... though, to be fair, Lynch is probably the only person in the world whose brain convolutions matches the exact mold needed to do it right. For a season and a half at least Twin Peaks was a bold and unforgettable experiment not likely to be seen again.
Unlike anything else ever made.
Growing up, most of what my parents and immediate family watched on TV was soap operas, sitcoms, game shows, you know the kind. Nothing wrong with that, but that's pretty much entirely to blame for my relative late blooming in discovering the truly classic television series that have defined the medium throughout decades. But there was one thing that my family kept talking about with a unique kind of reverence... namely, Twin Peaks.
Young and thus unfit to actually watch it though I was, I managed to overhear a number of conversations about it, piecing together an image of the show in my head. It became like some great and ominous mystery stuck in the back of my mind. For years, I kinda feared actually watching it for fear that it might not live up to my admittedly overly-ambitious imagination... but one night, it came on during one of my monthly late-night TV binges as a teenager. And, well... here I am reviewing it on the eve of its 25th anniversary. You might say it's something I'll never forget.
On the surface, Twin Peaks is a rather straight-forward small-town murder mystery, a source of good drama in and of itself. But David Lynch never does anything straight-forward (...except that one time). The whole thing plays out with the logic of a strange fever dream: one day, our chipper FBI lead investigator is conducting a procedural scan of a body for clues; the next, he's utilizing an old Tibetan technique of throwing rocks at glass jars to narrow down a list of suspects. It shouldn't make sense, but in Lynch's world... it kinda does. Aside from the main mystery, everyone (even the kindly lumberjack and his fish-filtered coffee; R.I.P. Jack Nance) got some sort of strange secret in this town, some ominous, some downright bizarre.
The almost suffocating aura of mystery is enhanced by that repetitive, dreamlike, and claustrophobic jazz score. At its best, it makes for some of the most atmospheric and transporting television of all time. Sadly, the show lost its way upon Lynch's departure... though, to be fair, Lynch is probably the only person in the world whose brain convolutions matches the exact mold needed to do it right. For a season and a half at least Twin Peaks was a bold and unforgettable experiment not likely to be seen again.