Titus writes:
For
a complete change this week, I am not going to extol the virtues of a
band or artist(e) that you may not have heard of......instead I am
writing about the cult TV series of the 1990’s ‘Twin Peaks’.
I
remember on a Sunday night in 1990, I sat down to watch a new TV
series, which I initially thought was an ordinary serialised murder
mystery. I should really have known better, in the knowledge that the
series was created by David Lynch & Mark Frost, who don’t do
‘ordinary’. Initially, it concerned home-coming queen Laura Palmer,
whose body, wrapped in a plastic bag, washed up on the shore of a river
in Twin Peaks, Washington, and also Ronette Pulaski, discovered badly
injured just across the State border.
FBI
Special Agent Dale Cooper is sent to investigate and he believes that
Laura’s death is similar to another from the previous year in
Washington. He firmly believes that the killer is from Twin Peaks.
Like others, Laura had been living a complex life. Via her diaries,
Agent Cooper discovers she was cheating on her boyfriend Bobby Briggs,
prostituting herself with the help of truck driver Leo Johnson, and a
dreadful drug dealer called Jacques Renault. In addition she was a
cocaine addict.
Inexplicably, Cooper has a vivid
dream about being in a red room with a one-armed man called Mike, who
claims that he knows that Laura’s killer is BOB, a feral denim wearing
man. Cooper finds himself decades older in the dream, in which a dwarf
in a red suit plus Laura Palmer appear. The dwarf has the ability to
talk backwards and in coded dialect. After the dream, it is discovered
that her father Leland Palmer looks in the mirror and sees himself as
Bob, and kills his own daughter. This is no longer just a murder
mystery, and the whole thing morphs into a complex web of surrealism,
intrigue, and psychological undertone. The series meanders into a
plethora of eccentric people, supernatural elements and dark secrets.
Many residents talk of “The evil in the woods” and its two entrances
The White Lodge & The Black Lodge, and the surrealism that is
thrust upon the viewer is a typical trait of creators Lynch and Frost.
The atmosphere, at best is eerie, and the red room scenes illustrate
the programme’s ability to blur the lines between reality and the
subconscious. The ending to the series is dramatic, when Cooper looks at
himself in the mirror and sees BOB.
‘Twin
Peaks’ was incredibly revolutionary in its approach to television
telling a tale. It divorced itself from conventional episode formats,
and it was extremely influential when one thinks of ‘The X Factor’ or
‘Lost’. It explored how the inhabitants of a small town had peculiar
habits, hidden sins, and how the themes of good & evil were
explored. Perhaps, for those of us who watched Lynch’s 1986 film ‘Blue
Velvet’ with intrigue, we knew in our heart of hearts, that a
complete series of intrigue and surrealism would follow just a few
years later......the town of Twin Peaks is anything but ordinary!
Series
1 & 2 aired 28 episodes, and I must confess to having not seen
Series 3, called ‘The Return’. This was shown a quarter of a century
later. Interestingly, in 1992 Lynch’s film ‘Fire walk with me’ although
filmed after ‘Twin Peaks’, was in fact set as the prequel
film.....this is also worth a look in my opinion. I have chosen a track
from Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack to the series and have requested
lex to play this, which can be found here.