I can’t stand this bloody series. ‘It’s art for the sake of art’. ‘This is really Lynch’s gift to all subsequent media’. ‘There is so much we owe to this series.’
What the hell. It’s just random pieces of script written by monkeys on a typewriter, slapped together. No part of the story is ever finished. ‘Ah but that’s where the depth resides!’. Rubbish. Anybody can write a story that doesn’t properly finish.
Oh I know I will introduce 20 new characters, this will add so much depth. Yeah, they have no motives, no character development BUT I will add this random surreal thing that happens to them, for additional depth. But what happens to X? Who knows! And to Y? You have to guess! And to Z? No one can tell!
Maybe using steel-faced actors will improve the plot? I know I will cast myself in one role with quirky details because it’s so fun. Yeah I don’t know how to act, why? Is it necessary?
And the goddamn music is unsufferable. ‘You can’t separate Lynch’s work from Badalamenti’s music’. Yeah I know they’re both shit. Oh and the effing gigs in the sequel of the series. Aaaaaah!
But at least there is some symbolism! Yes, what is it? Who fucking knows!
May I ask how old you are? I’m not prying, but I’m curious if you watched it when it was new or if you are younger and only know it from DVD/streaming.
I am old enough that I watched it as it was broadcast, and it was unlike anything that had been done on TV before. I don’t even know how Lynch got it made. It landed like a bombshell in the midst of sanitized pap. It was gritty and played with sex, drugs, and evil in a way that made shows like Miami Vice look vapid. It may seem like half finished, trope laden junk now, but it cut the path that every edgy show since had followed. Issues like the duality of people - the homogenized surface facade of presenting how we want to be vs the inner desire and how we are just hadn’t been addressed in that way before.
There is some deliberate hokiness to it. The parallel of the soap opera to the town is deliberate and a wink to the fact that every story is largely the same but dressed up in a new way. Think of “a stranger comes to town, or someone goes on a journey” level analysis. The humor is pure Lynch.
It may seem different in retrospect because it’s done better now. Audiences are comfortable with this kind of thing. It was brand new then, and somehow approved by the same network that approved Thirtysomething and cut 40 minutes of sex and drugs from Scarface.
Without giving too many details: I’m old enough to have watched it on TV years ago and I had to go through it again with my wife recently.
I was in university and I remember being in Montreal in a bar when an episode was about to air. I went to a stranger’s home to watch TV with them and their friends because none of us wanted to miss an episode.
I’m reminded of the first time I saw Citizen Kane. I was a teen back in the 90s, and I thought it was pretty bad. But that’s because a lot of the cinematography that it pioneered became commonplace in everything from adverts to training videos. It was groundbreaking to such an extent that it redefined the fundamental techniques of filmmaking.
That said, Twin Peaks has always fascinated me. The weird, unsettling, menacing, cryptic, and darkly sexual undercurrents that typify most things Lynch touches just struck an instant chord with me.