OK, just remember you asked for this….

I make a habit of watching entire genre shows, (Buffy, Angel, Firefly etc) often years after they originally aired. It leaves me with lots to say and no one to say it to- I have revelations about them as if they were new, sometimes decades behind everyone else. Well just remember folks, you said publish and be damned…

My most recent TV revelation has been Twin Peaks, oh, only about 20 years after it originally aired.

Evil Laura Palmer as she looks in the Red Room. My sketch is based on Richard Beymer's fantastic photos from behind the scenes on the last episode.(link below)

Twin Peaks is like a weird dream of a TV show you imagined seeing as a kid, that looked cute but read as creepy and left you feeling like you didn’t want to be caught watching it. (Or maybe that was just me). With the most evocative theme tune and opening sequence of all time, it’s a series with a whole lot going on. Seemingly countless characters are introduced, none of them quite what they appear, and into this backwater town to investigate a dark and seedy murder comes the most naive FBI Agent (Cooper) with a penchant for ‘DAMN fine’ coffee, and an appreciation for the scent of Douglas firs. His investigative talents are rather left of field and esoteric, and informed by Tibetan philosophies. (A theme that reoccurs with abrasive fellow Agent Rosenfield, who unexpectedly delivers a very Buddhist speech about Love.)

It is a show filled with beautiful girls, plot twists, odd characters, deliberately bad acting, freakish camera angles and long lingering shots of symbolic items like dice, pie, a broken heart necklace and a diary, naming only a few. The contrast of schmaltz vs. sinister is personified in the somewhat all pervading soundtrack, without which the show would loose much of its atmosphere and enduring mystique. Twin Peaks is an interesting world where the inhabitants have strange visions, (like a horse in the living room), logs talk, and reality and the dream world intersect.

Sadly season 2, while gaining in episodes (22 as opposed to 8), lacks in the pacing and the ominous threat of the first. Laura’s murder is relatively quickly resolved and the murderer made known. The show looses the fantastic presence of Ray Wise as a result. The owls apparently, are not what they seem and by bringing the supernatural element of BOB to the fore, and appearances from the Giant, and the Little Man, the ‘Lodges’, and mention of Project Bluebook, Twin Peaks becomes progressively more fantastical. It’s more ‘X-files’ than murder mystery now, and while some of that has promise, the contrivance of new arch nemesis and master of disguise Windham Earle, gets evermore fanciful and silly.

More jarring slapstick makes it into the storylines too with Deputy Andy, Lucy’s dilemma, and Nadine’s super powered teen flashback. I won’t even mention Ben Horne’s short lived madness, where he imagines himself as a Civil War general.  However my personal bugbears are the new cast members, Billy Zane and Heather Graham added as love interests where none are needed. The show for me looses its ‘Sinister’ until the series finale, which is awesome, in a terrifying kind of way. A stunningly surreal episode where Agent Cooper finds the Black Lodge, a red curtained room in a parallel dimension where the Little Man dances and everyone speaks backwards. The victims of BOB’s murders are all there and Cooper both does and does not make it out alive….

I’ve tried not to spoil too much here, but it’s been 2 decades! It’s likely this is not news to you in the first place. I did enjoy Twin Peaks, despite the odd rubbish episode and dodgy effect, (Josie’s spirit goes into a drawer handle anyone?), simply because there is nothing else like it, then or now.  Twin Peaks has enough cult status, ambiguity and symbolism to keep curious viewers coming back for another 20 years or more.

I very much recommend checking out the photography on this site In the Trees: TWIN PEAKS 20th Anniversary Art Exhibition

And since perfumes are a joy of mine, I enjoyed this lady’s ideas on TWIN PEAKS inspired scents