The Owls Are Not What They Seem

A Twin Peaks Retrospective

Watching Twin Peaks today, it's easy to see the ways it impacted a lot of television drama to follow, perhaps even moreso in the wake of Lost. A great, solid story, excellent cast and unique style made it, at its best, one of my favourite series. But at its worst, unfortunately, it really really sucked.

David Lynch seems to be something of a take-it-or-leave-it kind of guy. I've heard a lot of criticism lodged at him and it's sometimes difficult to argue with. Not everyone is satisfied coming away from a movie unsure of what actually happened in it. Twin Peaks is a more accessible example of his work in many ways, maybe because it was tempered by the involvement of Mark Frost. But that's just a guess, since I don't know much about the rest of Frost's catalogue except for his more recent and disappointing efforts. Fantastic Four, for example. I mean, geez.

It's true that the series started to fall apart and unraveled with alarming speed after Laura Palmer's killer was revealed. Storylines became increasingly fragmentary, irrelevant, and zany - I suspect the writers mistook the first season's surrealism for absurdity. Nadine gets amnesia and becomes convinced she's in high school; James becomes involved in a murder plot at some remote lavish estate; Ben and Catherine engage in an over-convoluted battle for the Ghostwood development. It suffered too from leaning heavily on the new antagonist, Windom Earle, who had a cool backstory but ultimately was played too flamboyantly insane by Kenneth Welsh. His elaborate metaphorical chess game with Cooper was too long and pointless. Earle became more interesting in the last couple of episodes, when his ultimate motives were revealed and he started directing his ruthlessness at characters we actually cared about. Maybe if Lynch had stayed on he could've been a real hit, but especially when considered in contrast to the earlier villains of the series, he fell way short.

There's a lot of places to lay the blame for why the series deteriorated. The network was eager to give an audience clamouring for the identity of Laura Palmer's killer what they wanted; it was apparently their hands in the pot that ultimately drove David Lynch to leave the show, and it floundered aimlessly without him. Had he just toughed it out and stayed on, maybe we would've been spared some of the lower points of the series. Low points such as the episode directed by Diane Keaton, which quite profoundly sucked despite Keaton's trying so very very hard (you could tell). Of course there's no use pointing fingers now, twenty years after the fact, and Lynch's return on the finale and finishing off the saga with the film Fire Walk With Me, ending the whole thing on a high note. In similar fashion, I'm now going to move on to the good things about the series.

When the reflection of set dresser Frank Silva was accidentally caught in a mirror during the filming of a dream sequence in the pilot, Bob was born. And man, what a stumble-upon. Bob never looked otherworldly; he wore regular clothing, no makeup, and had regular enough features, and yet his seedy grin and wild eyes managed to convey something so sinister and insane it made you believe - or maybe want to believe - that this wasn't a man so much as it was a creature. Ultimately Bob was the villain of Twin Peaks - the Big Bad of the whole show - and it's a mantle he carried well. He appeared only fleetingly, in disturbing dreams and visions, and there was never any elaboration on his character. What he is, what he wants, and what he can do were never explained in any coherent fashion. Defeating Bob never even seemed to be a goal, if indeed it's at all a possibility. He was occasionally thwarted, though to small degrees and at great cost. In the Twin Peaks approach to evil, that's the best you seem to be able to hope for.
 

As is usual of David Lynch's work, Twin Peaks was chock full of hot babes, and their queen was Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey Horne. Audrey's involvement in the plot as a friend of Laura's was pivotal, to be sure, but what I liked most about her was her relationship with the protagonist, Dale Cooper. Audrey and Cooper had an immediate attraction for each other from the first scene they share. Audrey found Cooper fascinating, and came to be an important asset to his investigation purely out of an effort to impress him and insinuate herself into his life. They exchanged flirtations and wistful gazes culminating in a pretty powerful scene in the finale of season 1, in which Cooper came back to his hotel room to find Audrey naked on his bed. Audrey never seemed like a silly little girl with a crush, she was always a capable and self-reliant character, and her feelings for Cooper were never capricious or juvenile - perhaps reinforced by the fact that Cooper shared them. His professionalism and duty always prevented him from taking it anywhere, but that only made it feel more tragic. In season 2 Audrey and Cooper's storylines branched away from each other, and they were both given other love interests (Billy Zane and Heather Graham) to keep them occupied. Watching those romances play out only made me appreciate the quiet passion they shared which was far more meaningful and way sexier, and a testament to the acting chops of both.
 
Twin Peaks followed in many ways the classical structure of a soap opera - the whole series spanned a relatively short period of time, was set in a small town, and involved a number of families. This was probably handled best in the case of the Renault brothers, a French-Canadian family of criminals with hands in illegal gambling, prostitution, and drug running. The Renaults were introduced one at a time, and each was more ruthless than the last. I really love this fashion of shaping villains, it requires patience and forethought but really puts a sense of dread in the heart of your audience. By the time the eldest of the Renaults appeared, we knew this was a man who was very dangerous and depraved, and he lived up to that expectation well. The Renault brothers were only occasionally in the spotlight, but even so, they really emphasized to me how well crafted the earlier series was in contrast to its later episodes. Jean Renault seemed a much more serious and deadly adversary than even Windom Earle who came to monopolize the villainy of the last episodes.
 
The concept of the Black Lodge is introduced as a dwelling place of strange spirits, interpreted in visions and dreams as a minimally furnished room with a checkerboard floor walled by rich red curtains. There's no scene set in it that isn't worth watching. By filming the characters speaking and moving in reverse and then playing the footage backwards, Lynch created an incredibly alien yet recognizable atmosphere, and some sequences within the Black Lodge are extremely unsettling despite having no outright gruesome or disturbing imagery. The Black Lodge was instrumental in making Twin Peaks what it was, and remains one of the most memorable trademarks of the series to this day. 
 
Finally, one of the greatest gems the show uncovered was actress Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer, the dead girl whose murder the series revolved around. Sheryl Lee's not done much since, which is odd, since her performance of Laura is a highlight of the show. Lynch was so impressed that he gave her a second role as Laura's cousin Maddy Ferguson, but Lee's major showcase was the movie Fire Walk With Me that capped off the series and followed Laura in the days before she was killed. Lee brought to the role the winning smile of a popular high school knockout, but also a very impressive portrayal of all-consuming anxiousness and trauma that brought Laura to and beyond the brink of insanity. The movement away from Laura's character in the second season was probably one of the show's more subtle pitfalls.
 
Twin Peaks has often invited comparison, but there's not been anything like it since and I can't imagine there will be any time soon. It's something of an investment to watch, but to those who are wary I say dive right the fuck in, and to those who are having trouble slogging through the last half of the second season, I say steel yourselves and carry on. Finishing the series is its own dark reward.