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| Agent Cooper (right), with several of the locals of the town, all attending Laura Palmer's funeral. Every character embodies some degree of poor decision-making, oddity, or a combo. |
What a strange little slice of TV history to return to, a full thirty years after its initial airing and nearly twenty years after my original viewing of it.
Those of us in Generation X almost certainly remember the buzz surrounding Twin Peaks thirty years ago. Even if you never watched it during its original airing (I didn't), you heard about it. You knew it was about a murder mystery in a small town populated by weird characters. The question of, "Who killed Laura Palmer?" percolated into the mainstream, despite the show being so markedly odd.
I, being a fairly unadventurous 14- and 15-year old back when the show originally aired, had zero interest in the show. It wasn't until a good decade later, when I was working in a small town in the north of Japan that I was hunting some new viewing material and picked up the VHS tapes (that's right - VHS tapes) of the first two seasons. I plowed through them in a matter of about three weeks, only then seeing why the show had developed a cult-like following so quickly ten years prior. I also saw why, after such a meteoric rise to popularity, it ended after only its second season. But how does it all hold up now, thirty years after its release, and after creator David Lynch returned for a "Return" season on Showtime in 2017?
The answer is that is doesn't hold up too badly, though it's fairly clear why it was canceled.
For those unfamiliar with the show, it kicked off with the discovery in a small town in the Pacific Northwest of the dead body of Laura Palmer. We soon learn that Laura was the "dream girl" of the town - the beautiful, high school prom queen that was the object of many people's eye and many men's desires. The strange details around her murder attract the attention of the FBI, who sends agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) to Twin Peaks to investigate. Cooper is a rather odd fellow, who is always extremely chipper and seems to have boundless fascination with the supernatural. He is also a Sherlock Holmes-caliber investigator with immense powers of observation and logic. He soon learns that he will need all of his skills to solve the case of Laura's murder, as Twin Peaks has more than a few strange and dark characters lurking within and around it, some of them weaving sinister plots that belie the otherwise sleepy town.
Nearly everything about Dale Cooper and the mysterious and creepy details around Laura and her murder were what made this show so compelling. And they still are, even if you recall how the tale played out. Kyle MacLachlan turns in an iconic performance as the peppy Agent Dale Cooper, and his become the scenes that you are always looking forward to. Yes, there are other amusing characters and some decent acting from a handful of the other cast members, but it's MacLachlan's Cooper who made this show what it was. The great novelty of this character was that, instead of merely being an amazing crime investigator, Cooper was more than willing to think outside the boundaries of classical Western logic, following hints and clues gleaned from altered-state visions or even outer space. These elements of Twin Peaks (still evident in the recent revival of the show) are what made it distinct, and I'm not sure that it would have worked without MacLachlan's fearlessly ebullient turn as Cooper.
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| Any scenes with Bob were chilling, especially since you often didn't know when they were coming. |
So why did the show get canceled after only two seasons? Some of it is a bit obvious, while some of it I had to research a little. The obvious is this: the show wasn't always very consistent, thanks in part to David Lynch's proclivity for casting people based more on looks and the "vibe" they exude than on acting skills. Some of this actually works, as there's often more than a little campiness to the show, which can often give it a very soap opera feel. Some people love camp, and while I can appreciate it at times, it's not my favorite style or mood in TV and movies. More than this, though, is that the murder of Laura Palmer was actually solved by the middle of season two, apparently against the wishes of David Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost. This left the second half of that season following secondary and tertiary characters through stories that were either uninteresting or just plain goofy. Another element was an upended airing schedule that got shuffled due to coverage of the Iraq Desert Storm invasion in 1991. According to what I read, these reasons together resulted in the show's rating dropping precipitously enough that the network gave it the ax. The shame is that, in the final few episodes, it seemed like the show had started to find its footing again, with the introduction of Cooper's nemesis Windom Earle and a solid cliff-hanger. Alas, we would have to wait nearly three decades to get the continuation of the tale, though we would get a prequel movie just over a year later...
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| As disturbing as the original show could be at times, the prequel film goes well beyond it, thanks to a lack of network restrictions. And the movie leans hard into that, going completely dark in the second half. |
This prequel film, released a little more than a year after the final TV episode, covers events leading up to Laura Palmer's death. It begins roughly a year before the murder, following a different pair of FBI agents who are on the trail of a murder that has happened some way south of Twin Peaks, closer to the Pacific coast. The two agents start to piece together enough clues to realize that the victim was killed by the serial-murdering "Bob" character who later kills Laura Palmer, but the agents mysteriously disappear before they can learn more. The tale then fast-forwards to about a week before Laura's murder, where we get a close look at how troubled she is, and how much self-destructive behavior she engages in, in order to dull her inner turmoil. It takes the form of drug abuse and even highly risky sexual adventures. These habits bring her all-too close to the people who help pave the path towards her ultimate destruction - the murder that triggers the events of the original TV series.
As any type of stand-alone film, Fire Walk with Me isn't very good. Anyone who hasn't seen the TV show would be completely lost and probably totally disconnected from and baffled by any of the events. Yes, there are some dazzling visuals, some decent acting here and there, and some great music. But the story and dynamics between characters are bound to leave an unversed viewer annoyed at best, and angered or bored to tears at worst.
As a prequel to the TV show, though, it's an interesting enough chapter to the greater story. Without the restrictions of network TV, Lynch could get as dark and disturbing as he wanted to, which is saying something. It can be a bit odd to see more sexually graphic material and more colorful language in a world that previously was molded by prime time American sensibilities, but it fits the subject matter well enough. And the darker sequences with Laura and Donna in a hedonistic drug and sex den were strangely hypnotic, thanks mostly to the trippy, opium jazz buzz of the music score and the camera and lighting work. This scene, and a few others, made the film worth watching for me, even if there was more than a little narrative fat present.
Anyone interested in the full Twin Peaks story should check out the movie, but one shouldn't expect any grand "magic bullet" answers to the more bizarre elements and greater questions around the tale. That's not what David Lynch is about, and this film just serves as further proof. Keep your expectations in check, be aware of what Lynch does, and you'll find a few things to appreciate in this film.
And with all that, my wife and I were ready to jump into "The Return" show, which I'll be reviewing in the next week or two.
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