SNEAK `PEAKS`
Small town revisited
For “Twin Peaks” fans, we may finally get some answers — or maybe not.
After all, we’re talking about David Lynch — a filmmaker about whom novelist David Foster Wallace once said, “It’s hard to tell if he’s a genius or an idiot,” after seeing the director at work on the set of the 1997 film “Lost Highway.”
For months now, Lynch has been promoting the revival of his seminal ABC TV series “Twin Peaks” on Showtime. Starting tonight, there will be 18 new episodes of the cult show — all directed by Lynch, who has made movies like “Mulholland Drive,” “Blue Velvet” and “The Elephant Man.”
It’s been more than 25 years since “Twin Peaks,” created by Lynch and Mark Frost, went off the air on ABC in 1991. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the series explored a darkness that infects the seemingly idyllic town of the title.
The story pivoted on the question of who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a local teenager who washed up on a riverbank wrapped in plastic. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) of the FBI comes to town to investigate, believing there is a connection between Palmer’s death and the death of another girl.
When the series debuted in April 1990, there was nothing approaching its weirdness on television. It was still years before cable would come into its own with shows like “The Sopranos” and networks were still rarely venturing outside their comfort zones.
Showtime has been touting the idea that “Twin Peaks” paved the way for groundbreaking TV, undoubtedly true, but the series itself is best remembered for its surreal, twisted tone.
“Twin Peaks” initially drew big ratings (about 20 million viewers). The eight episodes that ran that spring and the beginning of the following fall season were mustsee TV. But the audience began to want some answers to the mysteries, growing frustrated by the direction of the series, which seemed to pile on the strangeness without heading anywhere.
By the end of its 22-episode second season, viewership was down to a quarter of what it had been, and the show was canceled.
Some felt Lynch had written himself into a corner. Other felt he was upset when ABC told him to reveal the killer.
In 1992, the filmmaker released “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” as a gift to the series fans, telling more or less the same story but rejiggered and R-rated.
“Originally, who killed Laura Palmer was a question that we did not ever really want to answer,” Lynch told television critics at their bi-annual meeting in January. “That Laura Palmer mystery was like the goose that laid these little golden eggs. And then at a certain point, we were told we needed to wrap that up, and it never really got going again after that.”
Lynch tried to return to TV and ABC at the end of the decade with “Mulholland Drive,” but the network ultimately didn’t want to turn it into a series. They were going to air it as a two-part television movie before the director got it back. “Mulholland Drive” turned out to be a critical and boxoffice success, and helped launch the career of actress Naomi Watts. She will be one of the new cast members on the revival.
The filmmaker says he missed the world of “Twin Peaks.” “I often thought about what might be happening there.” So when Frost asked him if he wanted to go back to it over a meal at Hollywood’s Musso & Frank in 2012, he said yes.
So what should fans expect on the new “Twin Peaks”?
“This word ‘expect’ is a magical word, and people expect things, and their expectations are met, hopefully, when they see the thing,” says Lynch cryptically. Got that? Maybe not, but that’s about all you’re going to get from the filmmaker. Nor will you get anything from the cast of the new series. The actors weren’t given full scripts, except MacLachlan, who is back to reprise his role as Cooper.
“I am not at liberty to