‘Twin Peaks’ Finds Its Way Back
At the start of the second season of “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch and Mark Frost’s feverish, paranoid murder mystery, a man’s hair goes white overnight.
Granted, this man, Leland Palmer, has had a rough time of it lately: He can’t stop singing songs from 1950s musicals; his teenage daughter, Laura, was raped, murdered and found washed up on a river bank; his wife is stricken with visions of a greasy, feral man hiding behind their furniture.
Such swings between absurdity and horror turned “Twin Peaks” into a hit for the ABC network. In 1990, there was little precedent for a series that probed so graphically and enigmatically into the darkest corners of the American psyche.
By bringing an auteur like Mr. Lynch, a best- director Oscar nominee for “Blue Velvet” ( 1986), into the world of serials, the network ultimately seeded a revolution: The show used the devices of popular television to subvert it.
Its early episodes became appointment television, but once its quintessential problem was solved — “Who killed Laura Palmer?” — the series got bogged down in a web of increasingly esoteric plotlines. “It got very stupid and goofy in the second season; it got ridiculous,” Mr. Lynch said in a phone interview, explaining that his work on the film “Wild at Heart” pulled him away from the show after the first season. “I stopped watching that show because it got so bad.”
On May 21, a new, 18-hour chapter of “Twin Peaks” began on Showtime, this time with only Mr. Lynch in the director’s seat and much of the cast returning. Production for the revival, which took eight months, has been tightly wrapped, but Mr. Lynch described it as “exactly like a feature film.”
The world of “Twin Peaks” in 2017 is, for Showtime, a gamble. The television world it paved the way for has evolved profoundly — not only have the show’s offspring raised viewers’ expectations, but connecting with deluged audiences has also become exponentially harder in the era of Peak TV.
“I can’t wait to see what ‘ Twin Peaks’ is like in a social media universe, because quite honestly, I sort of remember it as if it was a social media phenomenon,” said Gary Levine, the president for programming at Showtime, who was the vice president for drama development at ABC when the show first aired. “It sort of felt like it was viral in some way back then.”
When the two-hour “Twin Peaks” pilot debuted on April 8, 1990, it garnered nearly 35 million viewers, becoming the highest-rated TV movie for that season and drawing critical praise. Centered on the murder of a homecoming queen, the first season’s eight episodes introduced viewers to a small town plagued by secrets and a charismatic F. B.I. agent (played by Kyle MacLachlan) obsessed with food.
The first season didn’t resolve the murder but ended with a huge tease, as Mr. MacLachlan’s Agent Cooper was shot by an unknown assailant.
A 22- episode second season opened with a riddle- spouting giant from another dimension and an octogenarian room- service waiter lecturing Agent Cooper about milk’s optimal drinking temperature. The plot lines that emerged did not endear fans or attract new viewers: Benjamin Horne, the town’s proper-
After 26 years, a trendsetting TV show tries again.
ty mogul, had a nervous breakdown and started compulsively eating carrots; a 35-year- old woman with amnesia turned into a high school men’s wrestling champion; an endangered weasel became fodder for corporate subterfuge.
By Episode 15, the show was rated 85th out of 89 shows.
Over time, “Twin Peaks” has acquired a certain cachet for ushering the avant- garde into mainstream television, and its DNA — the supernatural, the macabre and the quotidian, filtered through unconventional cinematography and set direction — has gradually found a home on networks and streaming services: “Lost,” “The X- Files,” “Stranger Things” and, most recently, “Riverdale.”
Mädchen Amick, who played Shelly Johnson, the often- battered wife of a man who was involved in Laura Palmer’s death, found a new lens to view the show: her high- school-aged children.
“‘ Mom, why didn’t you tell us that you were in the best TV show ever made?’ And it was like, ‘Well, I kind of did, but you just didn’t understand,’ ” Ms. Amick recalled. “There were moments when they were like: ‘Mom, this is freaky! This is frightening! Like how was this on television?’ ”
Mr. MacLachlan is the only actor who got a chance to read the entire script in advance.
Mr. Lynch is happy to have returned to a world he loves, even if it is one that dipped into rape, incest and murder. But he shrugs off any idea that “Twin Peaks” ever held any deeper meanings for an American culture — that there’s something sinister lurking in those doughnuts.
“No, no, no — it’s a regular town, with a mystery, and mysteries within the mystery,” he explained. “It’s a real place, mentally, but it’s not a real place.”