I was a few months shy of eleven years old when Twin Peaks made its television debut. By this point in my life, I’d already had “the talk” with my parents and was generally allowed a bit more freedom in what I chose to spend my free time doing. My brother and I were routinely allowed to see rated R movies (as long as my parents pre-screened them for anything they deemed too gratuitous) and I was allowed to read pretty much anything I wanted. When I was in first grade, it became apparent to my teacher that I required a greater challenge in school. I was the first student finished with their work or tests and would become a bit disruptive while waiting for the other students to catch up. The solution was to send me to the library until the rest of the class finished. In first grade, I read through the entirety of Frank Dixon’s Hardy Boys series and quite a bit of the Nancy Drew series. I loved detective stories. My grandfather was a retired NYPD detective and a budding author. Detectives? Fiction? Yes please.

I became uncommonly familiar with my elementary school library and I can still recall its exact layout to this day. Second grade, read more and more. Third grade, read more and more. By fourth grade, My teacher moved me on to Edgar Alan Poe. I am not making this up. The first story I ever read from Poe was The Murders In The Rue Morgue. I would sit there with this giant collection of Poe’s stories and poems while keeping a dictionary close by to help me define the words I didn’t understand. I credit this specific moment in my life with providing me an above average vocabulary. I cherished this time and my voracity for reading has held firm these decades later. By fifth grade, I’d polished off Stephen King’s The Shining and then The Stand and Salem’s Lot. I loved detectives and horror and the general macabre. I was reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics if I was going to read comics. Give me the weird.

When Peaks launched, I knew who Lynch was. I knew who Kyle Maclachlan was. Hell, because of Hillstreet Blues, I knew who Mark Frost was. I credit my mother with providing me any information I asked for. She taught me how much goes into the media we consume. Like I said a few weeks ago, I loved Dune as a kid and I remember sneaking into the hallway to see what I could of Blue Velvet when my parents rented it from the video store. (That was one film deemed too much for our little eyes, ears and minds, Lol) And here comes Lynch, Frost and Maclachlan with a detective story that quickly got weird in all the ways I loved. I was in.

I credit Lynch as a figure in my life who has helped shape the mind I use to this day. He’s odd in the way that I am odd and I still can’t view this world the way most people do — I see it from a different angle and at this point I assume I always will.

And so here we are in a tiny Pacific Northwest town with a murdered homecoming queen and a town in shock. In comes the FBI with a bright eyed agent, instantly enamored by this small town, to try and solve the crime. What none of us knew was just how indelible an impression this show would leave on the world in eight episodes.

At this point, I don’t even know how to dive in and dissect Twin Peaks anymore. I could talk and write about this show forever — it’s everything to me. The show was famously canceled at the end of its second season, leaving us with an impossible cliffhanger to deal with for twenty five years until it’s eventual return from the grave (or Lodge, if you will). The show was dead by 1992 but in those two short years, it paved the way for several shows to eventually be born in its wake and carry its torch. Shows like The X-Files and LOST could not exist without Twin Peaks paving the way. In actuality, nothing like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad or The Shield or anything else that refused to wrap up a storyline in sixty minutes could exist without Twin Peaks first paving the way. The idea of flawed heroes and redemptive villains who might be non-villains had never really been explored in any meaningful way before Twin Peaks.

Lynch and Frost famously never wanted to solve the murder of Laura Palmer. To them, the idea of the ever long mystery was a driving creative force. Once the mystery is solved, the spell it holds over an audience is broken. This was evidenced in season two when the studio forced their hand, the “killer” was revealed and the ratings promptly fell off a cliff. They then moved Peaks around the schedule and viewership fell even further. They never gave it a chance to recover. Some point to Lynch’s departure in season two and they wouldn’t totally be wrong. He left to complete his film, Wild at Heart, and him not being around to help fight the studio led to friction between him and Frost and the rest of the crew. The studio took advantage and killed off the darling that had recently lost some of its shine. Lynch returned to direct the season two finale and while he and Frost concocted a brilliant turn and cliffhanger in an attempt to force the studio to give them a third season, the gambit failed and their baby was dead. Lynch had more to say and immediately wrote and directed a film titled, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The film was not initially well received but the subsequent years have been kind to it and Lynch’s vision. He aimed to better round out the character of Laura Palmer, adding layers of complexity to her character by introducing her as a high school girl, seemingly perfect, yet leading a double life. It’s in this film where we begin to see Laura as a full individual and not just a corpse. We also learn the truth about her home life and why her father killed her. Throughout the two seasons of tv, we kept seeing an evil smiling man hovering in many scenes who quickly became known as Bob. And Bob was the epitome of evil — a demon of sorts who could inhabit others and bend them to his will. In Fire Walk With Me, Laura’s father Leland is possessed by Bob and repeatedly rapes his own daughter, creating substantial trauma and ultimately killing her to keep her from telling on him. It crashes through myths and legends to present a reality so uncomfortable and ugly. It’s like turning the overheard lights on the night after a party and breaking the reverie of memory.

As I said earlier, this was 1992 and Twin Peaks was now dead and buried, done. Then in 2015, we began to hear rumblings about Lynch and Frost wanting to revisit their iconic story. Then it was announced as a twelve episode limited series for Showtime. And then Lynch quit over budget concerns and the hope we all felt, crashed down on top of us. But Lynch and Frost weren’t done yet. Showtime caved to their demands and actually increased the episode order to eighteen hour longs. In 2017 Twin Peaks officially returned to our lives. And this is where I pause and hit the rewind button for a bit.

As a kid, I lost interest in Twin Peaks during its second season. The middle run of episodes are pretty soft compared to season one and the final few episodes of season two. I do remember the finale well, as we finally got to visit the Black Lodge in all of its macabre glory. The red curtains and black and white zigzagged floor are forever etched into my brain. My beloved Agent Cooper, laughing maniacally after his “rescue” and smashing his face into the bathroom mirror while chanting, “how’s Annie?” Over and over again. That’s what we were left with for twenty five years. I would revisit the show in my late teens and early twenties. At this point in my life, I was completely enamored by Lynch and had my own Netflix account. (This was back when Netflix sent out actual discs via the actual mail) I tried to get my friends into Twin Peaks to no avail and so it drifted off in that way that demanding art often does.

I met my wife in 2002 and instantly saw an opportunity to sucker someone else in to my weird little circle. She had pretty good taste in movies, less so in music but we can’t have everything, can we? I kid, not about the music though, that’s a battle we’re still waging to this day. We were married in 2003 and soon she was into Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson. She already liked Spike Lee and Tarantino. She tolerated Nolan and Jackson, got into Altman and Cronenberg and Jarmusch. We were on a good path. She knew how much I loved old detective movies and put up with that. Hitchcock was good to go and we both agreed that Bill Murray was the greatest person ever. These are the things that help make up a marriage. I could go on and on and one day I just might because I also love talking about my wife but I’ll fast forward to 2017. The Return was fast approaching and she finally agreed to watch Twin Peaks with me. I was beyond excited but also nervous because I knew that tv had changed a lot in the twenty five years since Peaks ended. I hit play. She was instantly hooked. I knew it, she was obsessed with true crime and I should have never doubted it or her. We laughed at the sometimes hokey acting but were enamored with the unfolding mystery. I was watching Twin Peaks for the first time again because I was seeing it through my wife’s eyes. It became a daily routine to drink coffee and eat donuts while we watched. We were completely into it and I was transported through my entire life again. The show got weirder as Lynch and Frost began to blow out the characters and explore the essence of humanity. We saw literal inspiration on our tv for the X-Files and LOST. I began to understand some more about myself and why I have been drawn to the things I’ve been drawn to.

It always begins when you’re a child. Lynch has been with me nearly my entire life. This is why I hold him and King and Poe on these pedestals.

Twin Peaks had begun to shape our thoughts and we began to view current tv and film differently. We could see the imprint it left and we could see, clearly, when a project was taking the easy way out. We’ve become more demanding of what we now consume. If Twin Peaks could spark so much electricity in our minds, doing so with so much going against it and the issue of being twenty five years in the past, why couldn’t new shows? They should have heeded warnings and learned lessons but Hollywood loves to cut corners. Lynch has never cut a corner in his life. He has ways pushed the envelope and maintained his search for what comes next.

We caught up, thirty episodes in about ten days and then it was time to begin The Return. The two episode premier ended and I honestly didn’t know what to think. The show was weirder than ever and I loved that but it also already looked likely to subvert all of our expectations at every turn. It was time to open up and give in or else we were going to have a helluva time getting through this story. And right there I remember thinking that Lynch and Frost maybe had this planned all along. The Return was premiering almost exactly twenty five years after the cancellation, after Cooper went into the Black Lodge and here we were finding out that Cooper had been trapped there for twenty five years and it was his evil doppelgänger that escaped. I honestly wouldn’t put it past Lynch and Frost to have concocted this plan to wait two and a half decades and come back to their baby with full control.

The most interesting thing about the Return was how much took place outside of the town of Twin Peaks. They were acknowledging how the show had grown during its absence. They also gave us three (or four?) different versions of our beloved Agent Cooper. We had Mr. C, the evil one who’s wreaked havoc on the world for twenty five years. We had Dougie, Coopers attempt to escape the Lodge only to see part of his ego make it. And then there was the trapped Cooper who must navigate these extravagant settings as he attempted to return to us and save the day. Dougie was the most polarizing aspect of the Return, with his infantile demeanor bordering on grating and while we all hoped each week would bring Cooper fully back to us. Lynch and Frost waited until the final few episodes before Cooper made it all the way back and the catharsis in that moment was unlike anything I have ever felt from a tv show.

“I AM the FBI,” with that patented smile and thumbs up. Bravo.

But what does it all mean? What makes Twin Peaks so great?

The first season built a mystery infused with the unexplainable. We were given suspects and even though many of them at first seemed good fo the murder, it quickly became apparent there was more going on. The show began to dive in to the daily lives of all the inhabitants of this small town. This drew us in deeper because we grew attachments. As a kid, I thought Bobby was the coolest person I’d ever seen, even if James had a motorcycle, he was too morose for me. Bobby was exciting. And then, this was the point in my life where I was beginning to get interested in girls, and Audrey Horne is just the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I was in loooooove. So, I’m growing up with this show, with this new family on tv.

The second season began to fracture. Lynch left to finish a film and the show dove into many side stories involving secondary and tertiary characters. Now, in 2021, it’s more interesting to me but back then, my interest waned. What was still enjoyable about season two was the main trio of Harry, Cooper and Hawk remained largely unchanged. Even with a dip in quality, the show was still more interesting than anything else on tv. We found out that the evil Bob had a partner in Mike, the mysterious one armed man. Mike was not the killer and in fact, somewhat of a reformed demon who wished to help Cooper. The show now fully identified itself as more than a mere mystery show — it’s diving headfirst into the macabre, the true nature of evil, and even aliens. Cooper’s old partner showed up as a major villain by the end of the show until he’s destroyed in the Lodge by Bob. Cooper was trapped while his doppelgänger escaped and this was what we were left with for twenty five years.

Lynch immediately went to work filming Fire Walk With Me but the film didn’t answer questions, instead opting to ask more of them. Cooper was Cooper again as this was all a prequel to the series and it’s main interest was in diving into the family dynamics of the Palmer household. There were some interesting developments here though. We’re given the first mention of the Blue Rose task force, which would eventually play a major role in the Return. We also met David Bowie’s character Phillip Jeffries. He was an agent who disappeared after investigating for the task force and only popped up to warn Cooper’s boss that Cooper wasn’t who they thought him to be. This, coupled with Cooper watching himself on a security camera was the first acknowledgment that what we saw in the season two final was as bad as we thought it was. Lynch really struggled with this film, he had too much to say for a single feature film and in the subsequent years, a version titled The Missing Pieces has seen the light of day with nearly two hours of cut material that serves to flesh out this world.

This brings us to the Return and it’s in these final eighteen hours of the Twin Peaks universe where Lynch and Frost begin to make their mission statement clear. They want to finish telling the stories of these inhabitants of a small Pacific Northwest town. For Lynch, he uses the eighteen hours to sum up his entire career and draw parallels between each and every one of his works. Twenty five years later and they still chose to challenge us as much as ever while again showing television the way forward. Love it or hate it, love them or hate them, the Return will prove to be a major influence on the stories we see in the future on the silver screen. They used the Roadhouse as an opportunity to provide us with real musical acts that somehow summed up a theme being explored in that hour of story. I was challenged several times by the Return. Part eight has proven to be the most famous hour of the Return and for good reason. It’s an hour unlike anything any of us have ever seen, film or television. It’s a journey into the dark heart of mankind as Lynch weaves a tapestry of horror and loss of innocence. We’re taken to the source of when mankind truly became dangerous to itself with the very first test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. From there we are hurtled through time and space, inside the explosion to witness the birth of Bob by the evil presence Judy — the birth of literal evil. We then follow a young girl in the area as she unknowingly ingests some sort of mutant frog beetle. Later in the series, we’ll come to understand this girl as Laura Palmer’s eventual mother, Sarah. The evil was always there in all of us, waiting for us to remove our societal face and unleash Hell on Earth. I was personally challenged by this episode and it took me three viewings before I had a handle on what Lynch and Frost were getting at. I can also be honest enough about my feelings for Cooper’s infantile doppelgänger, Dougie. I so badly wanted Cooper back that I sometimes grew impatient with Dougie’s antics but once the show had told its story, I understood why we were made to wait. Lynch and Frost were attempting to reclaim their tale and the innocence of everyone involved. This is a tough trick to attempt because you simply cannot undo trauma but the final few hours of the series pulled off a fete for the ages. They began to unwind time as Cooper fought to not become trapped forever like his fellow agent Phillip Jeffries. Cooper defeated his evil doppelgänger and then with help, defeated Bob and sent him back to the Black Lodge where he belonged. He then journeyed through time and space in an attempt to heal all wounds. He showed up in the past, in Laura Palmer’s timeline before her murder and warned her. Lynch managed to insert current Cooper into a scene from Fire Walk With Me as Cooper prevented Laura from marching off to her death, instead disappearing. Cooper than arrived in our real world as a different man and tracked Laura down. She was going by the name Carrie Page in our world and this solved a twenty five year old mystery from early in the series about a missing “page” from Laura’s diary. Cooper and Carrie drove to Twin Peaks and knocked on the door of her childhood home. It’s answered by the woman who actually currently owns this house in real life. She didn’t now them — didn’t know what they’re talking about and shut the door on their hopes for closure. Cooper was rocked to his core and asked, “what year is this?” It’s at this moment where Carrie and Laura’s memories began to merge and she hears her mother Sarah call out to her the morning after she was murdered. She let out a howl of a scream and the lights all shut out, one by one, until we were plunged into complete darkness.

I know this ending left more than a few confused and disdained but this is the perfect ending for the saga of Twin Peaks. Cooper had gone back and prevented Laura from ever being murdered. The mystery was sprung anew. It didn’t even approach the idea of dismissing the trauma that she suffered at the hands of her father instead causing a new timeline where she disappeared from Twin Peaks instead of being murdered. This allowed Cooper to fulfill his hero’s journey while still honoring the devastating events in Laura’s life which led up to a specific moment. Lynch and Frost reclaimed their baby and left us with something indelible to ponder for the decades to come.

Now, I know we didn’t dive in to Twin Peaks with the same detail we dove in to Lynch’s other projects but it’s impossible to fit everything into one post. This one is already way too long as it stands and Twin Peaks is a subject I can talk and write and think about for hours at a time, every day of my life. It’s the biggest influence on my own work and will likely always be exactly that.

This brings us to the end of this post and this was really the only way I know how to talk about Twin Peaks here. It means too much to me to merely recount it beat by beat. It’s a work above and beyond anything else I’ve experienced in my life and I’m grateful I’ve been able to share it now with my wife. My nieces are next, say a prayer for them. And who knows? Perhaps Lynch isn’t as done with Twin Peaks as we thought. We know he’s starting work on a new series for Netflix, titled Unrecorded Night. There are major rumors circling that this new series will be tied to his signature work but that still remains to be seen. I for one believe we’ve seen the end of Twin Peaks and that Lynch and Frost ended the run on their own terms. Let’s just be excited for a new Lynch project of any kind.

Okay, that’s it, for real this time. Next week, we’ll wrap up and discuss what’s next. Until then, love each other.