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@tvnerdaran
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Twin Peaks is a rare piece of fictional artistic media that is almost impossible to describe in words. Having recently re-watched the entire franchise in its entirety, including the original series, Fire Walk with Me, and The Return, have now overwhelmingly found Twin Peaks to be my favourite piece of fiction and work of art ever created. The show follows FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by the great Kyle MacLachlan) who travels to the small wooden industrial town of Twin Peaks, Washington to investigate the brutal murder of popular high school girl Laura Palmer (played by Sheryl Lee). What initially starts out as a simple murder investigation soon evolves into a mythical and cosmological battle between the forces of light vs. dark, good vs. evil, life and death, and almost everything else in between. Few pieces of written or visual media match the raw emotional AND intellectual power of Twin Peaks and with the franchise still fresh in my mind, I wanted to do a detailed analysis of arguably my favourite piece of media ever created.
Prior to 1990, mainstream television existed almost entirely in the form of mundane and
formulaic soap operas with horribly diched and predictable plotlines. David Lynch and Mark Frost's seminal TV masterpiece "Twin Peaks" changed TV forever. Paving the way for other TV masterpieces such as "The Sopranos" and many others, Twin Peaks' original run from 1990 to 1991 introduced us to countless odd and colourful characters, some good, others evil. The original series has an irresistible charm to it, from Kyle MacLachlan's eternally pure and loveable protagonist to the quirky small town mysteries and high school drama associated with it. Lynch and Frost also introduced several concepts of life and death, good and evil, and time and space explored through illustrious and transcendental dream sequences that were almost completely foreign to the medium of television at the time. The mystery of "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" captured the TV cultural zeitgeist like almost nothing else before or after it. Unfortunately, creative differences and butting of heads between Lynch and ABC network executives forced Laura's killer to be revealed halfway through the second season, setting the show on a slight decline in quality for much of Season 2. Fortunately, Lynch returned for the final episode of the original series, and gave a breathtaking finale which simultaneously left viewers in awe and hopelessly frustrated with the infamous "How's Annie?" cliffhanger, but by then, the damage was done. Twin Peaks was cancelled in 1991 after declining ratings. But fortunately, that was far from the last we would see of the Twin Peaks franchise.
Shortly after the original series was cancelled by ABC in 1991, a prequel movie to the Twin Peaks franchise, "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" was released in 1992. The film centres Laura Palmer as the main character in the final days of her life before she was tragically murdered. Sheryl Lee gives a tour-de-force performance as Laura, portraying her as both a sympathetic victim of male violence and sexual abuse, but also as a strong, independent, free-willed woman who chooses self-sacrifice over giving into the evil forces of BOB and her father Leland that have been plaguing her entire life. The film is a feminist masterpiece way ahead of its time. By centring the narrative entirely around Laura, the film gives Laura back her agency and humanity as a person, rather than just simply a lifeless female corpse to be studied and whose mystery to be solved by male detectives. The film also has an astoundingly empathetic depiction of female victims of sexual assault, centring the narrative entirely around Laura and how her lifelong abuse has damaged and affected her. So many films, even the great ones such as "A Clockwork Orange" and "Once Upon a Time in America" terribly mishandle the topic of rape and sexual assault, using such serious topics as merely a plot device to further the male character arcs, leaving the female assault victims as dispensable and their pain disregarded in service of the male character arcs. Not so with "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me". The abuse that Laura suffers is front and centre in the narrative of the film. The film only ever shows the abuse from Laura's perspective, showing how the pain and trauma affects her, while in no uncertain terms, completely condemning the demonic Killer BOB and her pedophile father Leland. There is no male perspective to the abuse in this movie, or sexual assault being used mechanically in favour of male character arcs. The film is 100% Laura's story, and through both that and Sheryl Lee giving one of the greatest performances I have ever seen, registers itself as a feminist masterpiece that was far ahead of its time, and shows as a stark reminder how to properly handle such traumatic and sensitive topics in film and TV.
Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired on Showtime in 2017, revived the series and picked up where the story left off 25 years after the original series ended. The Return is not only my favourite part of the Twin Peaks franchise, it is also arguably my favourite work of art and piece of fiction ever created. The Return takes what came before it in terms of transcendental imagery and mythical, cosmological and philosophical themes of the eternal everlasting struggle between light and dark, and good and evil, and ramps it up to eleven. The Return, with all of its thematic and plot density, is best described in its simplest terms by creator David Lynch as "Agent Cooper's odyssey back to Twin Peaks" The Return revolutionised television once again just as the original series did back in the early 90's, achieving the impossible yet again for the second time in a row. Kyle MacLachlan gives arguably the greatest performance I have ever seen in any medium in The Return, portraying a multitude of characters, including the evil, icy cold and ruthless doppelgänger of Cooper known as Mr.C, the loveable, childish and dumsy Dougie Jones, and finally at the end, the brave, heroic and idealistic regular FBI Agent Dale Cooper we all know and love from the original series. Playing three different characters with wildly different personalities is no easy task, but MacLachlan pulls it off easily and in spades. The Return very deeply examines the ghost of the past, and how the darkness and mistakes of the past burn their way into the future. The Return is layered with ambiguity, like a puzzle to be solved piece by piece. Cooper's inability to let go of what happened to Laura and move on is what ultimately proves to be his own downfall, mirroring how us viewers and Twin Peaks fans can't learn to let go and move on from our love of the franchise. The Return is genius and meta-textual on so many different levels, but also introduces social-political commentary on the decay of America and the American empire, as well as humanity's original sins, and the birth of evil.
Twin Peaks: The Return, having aired in the America of 2017, introduces a level of socio-political commentary rarely if ever seen before in the franchise. No longer the small, idyllic, quirky town of the original series, the Twin Peaks we see in The Return is now a decaying corporatised shell of its former self, heavily assimilated and folded into the heavily corporatised, capitalistic oligarchy of modern America. The Return covers various topics ranging from the corporatisation of American society, the plight of the working class, the prevalence of Big Pharma and the oil industry, the prevalence of drug addiction, and the drastic increase in mass shootings and gun violence in modern-day U.S. society. The plight of the working class is best showcased through the struggles of the residents of Deer Meadow Trailer Park and Harry Dean Stanton's character, living in rotting run-down trailer parks having to fend for their own way of living, being left behind by the government and the powers that be, mirroring how the working class has long been left behind by the mega-corporatisation of U.S. establishment politics, leaving the US working class in a state of alienation, which the fosters the conditions for a demagogue like Donald Trump to rise to power. The Return also showcases through the inability of many characters to afford their essential life-saving medical treatment and the depiction of the sinister Woodsmen characters, the prevalence of both Big Pharma and the oil industry, and how those destructive forces of corporatism rule large and supreme over the America of today, buying their way through most of the country's politicians, while ordinary people are left to fend for themselves with almost nowhere to go. The prevalence of drug addiction is also showcased through the drug-running gangs showcased in The Return and through Amanda Seyfried's Becky character and her extremely troubled relationship with her violent, abusive and drug-addicted boyfriend Steven, which chillingly mirrors the opioid epidemic in modern U.S. society, and how drugs have served as a temporary escape for poorer Americans from the troubles of their everyday lives, only to cause much more long-term damage. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, The Return also heavily depicts the drastic increase in open public violence in modern-day America. The horrifying scene in which Richard Horne, Audrey Horne's vile son, carelessly and remorselessly runs over a little boy in a hit-and-run, killing the child on instant impact, while the boy's crying mother and horrified onlookers look on in sorrow, is perhaps Lynch's answer to the drastic increase in gun violence and mass shootings across the country, whether it be in countless schools or at various LGBT nightclubs. The violence, the hate, the cruelty, the intolerance of the original series no longer occurs beneath the bubbling surface, but instead happens in open broad daylight for everyone to see. These social and political themes of the open decay of American society speaks volumes to the current state of the country today, with these themes remaining as chillingly relevant today as they did five years ago when The Return first aired.
One of the main themes, perhaps THE main theme at the core of the entire Twin Peaks franchise is the eternal everlasting struggle between the forces of light vs. dark, and good vs. evil. The show has various figures of pure unbridled good, such as Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer, and pure evil such as the demonic entity Killer BOB in the original series and Cooper's evil doppelgänger Mr.Cin The Return. Twin Peaks explores good vs. evil not in simple, but through vast philosophical, psychological mythological and cosmological terms. Cooper is the very beacon of hope, justice and goodness that all of humanity should strive for. He aims to do good wherever he goes, and to fight against all forms of evil, cruelty and injustice until his dying day. Laura is the innocence that Cooper aspires to protect, the victim of evil and abuse that Cooper and we the audience should strive to protect from the darkness and evils of the world. And Killer BOB, the demonic, mass murdering serial raping entity and the main antagonist of the entire franchise, is perhaps mainstream TV's answer to various powerful symbolic forces of pure evil most often found in literature such as Judge Holden in "Blood Meridian and Nyarlathotep from the Lovecraft mythos. He is a symbol for all that is wrong with the world, the injustice that plagues the innocent and is who most often unable to face true justice, accountability and punishment. The creation of BOB and the Black Lodge as shown in Part 8 of The Return, created through the atomic bomb and nuclear testing of 1945, is also reflective of humanity's original sin and the very unspeakable evil that the U.S. perpetrated onto the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To continue on this ever-occurring theme throughout the Twin Peaks franchise, both the original series and The Return brilliantly showcase how the struggle between good and evil will last forever. Evil cannot simply be defeated with good forever prevailing in one simple battle. As long as the world and humanity still exists, there will always be evil, cruelty and injustice in our world. But as long as evil still exists, so too will good. Twin Peaks also has an astounding level of empathy deeply ingrained in its heart for its characters. Just as it does with female assault vicdims for Laura, the franchise also has positive and respectful depictions of characters from various minorities, such as Deputy Hawk, a wise and gentle Native American policeman who plays a key role in rescuing Cooper from the Black Lodge in The Return, and Agent Denise Bryson, as transgender female FBI agent who is treated humanely and respectfully by both the narrative and other characters, making the show once again way ahead of its time in the 1990's, at a time when trans characters were often mocked, villainised and degraded in popular media. I am hard-pressed to find any other work of written or visual media that has as much empathy and kindness rooted so deeply in its heart as Twin Peaks does. The franchise itself, if ever to possibly be described in a single phrase, would be to me, as an encapsulation of the entire human experience. The eternal struggle between light and dark, good and evil, the great mysteries of life and death, time and space, and the injustices of the world and our job to step up and challenge them. Twin Peaks is perhaps the most layered and thematically rich piece of media I've ever seen, and will live on forever and have a special place in my heart.
Twin Peaks: The Return ends on arguably the most ambiguous, puzzling and haunting conclusion have ever seen in any work of fiction ever. Here, I will give my own personal interpretation of what happened. In the final episode, Cooper travels back in time to that fateful night to prevent Laura's brutal rape and murder. But as he guides her back to her home, her mother Sarah in the present who is possessed by the extreme negative entity JUDY, smashes her picture in rage-stricken grief, causing Laura to vanish and disappear in front of Cooper. Cooper remains headset in saving her though. He travels to the present and locates Laura, now Carrie Page with no memories of her former life, in Odessa, Texas and travels back to Twin Peaks to reunite her home with her mother. However, Cooper realises he has literally changed the course of history. Twin Peaks is now a ghost town, a haunted shell of its former self, and discovers the Palmer household is now owned by a completely different family of strangers. As Cooper walks around in confusion, he worryingly asks: "What year is this?" Laura then hears her mother's demonic chants from the house, and lets out a blood-curdling scream. Cooper looks on in panic and the house's lights go out. Cut to black, and end credits roll. Wha ar this? My interpretation of the ending is that no matter how hard he tried, Cooper truly failed to save Laura. His own virtuous goodness and determination to save her from her grisly fate led him to overlook her self-sacrifice and the peace she found in death. Cooper, albeit with the purest of intentions, destroyed the mythos of Twin Peaks and rewrote everything. Now Carrie Page has seemingly no memories of being Laura, and Twin Peaks is now an unrecognisable ghost town. The ending is once again a stark reminder that there will always be evil, injustice and suffering in our world. To think we can so easily put an end to it with a single or few actions would be ridiculous and utterly fanciful. Cooper's unintentional butchering of the timeline reminds us how we as a species can only combat evil and injustice piece by piece, and step by step. Evil, injustice and suffering will always exist in our world, and we are powerless to swiftly and easily overcome and defeat it. But we can make a difference through small individual acts of resilience and be as kind to each of our fellow humans as possible. Cooper may have failed, but that doesn't mean the fight is over. Making individual differences in the fight against injustice one step at a time will be a slow and gradual but essential pathway towards a better world, and as long as we still have good people like Dale Cooper in our world, then it is a cause worth fighting for.
Thank You to David Lynch, Mark Frost, Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, and everyone else involved in creating this masterpiece. You made a difference in my life and many others. You inspired me as a writer, as an artist, but most of all, as a human being. Thank you, all of you. Your work will forever hold a special place in my heart.
By @tvnerdaran
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