All of Twin Peaks except for 3 books & a cassette tape

Introduction

As with many of life’s lessons, Homer Simpson taught me everything I needed to know about Twin Peaks.

A giant man dances with a horse to smooth jazz, lit by a traffic light hung from a nearby tree. This was my initial impression of Twin Peaks: melodrama wrapped in obtuse, art-house imagery. Soon I would learn of the backwards talking oddities, the red curtains and black and white stripes, and the fans who like it all a little too much.

snaf esoht fo eno won ma I.

TV: Season One (1990)

The music from Twin Peaks is iconic and, indeed, atmospheric. Not surprising really considering it is by – *checks Wikipedia* – Angelo Badalamenti. Here is a video of Angelo reminiscing how he and Twin Peaks creator David Lynch wrote Laura Palmer’s Theme. It is the story of two men encouraging each other to climax. Artistically speaking, of course.

Creative juices aside, the soundtrack is unique. A few episodes into Season One and I was in love with how damn quirky it is. Is this stock music? Royalty-free? So dumb, it’s genius? So tacky, it’s tasteful?

Case in point, Audrey’s Dance, with its finger snaps and wandering bass, hap hazard horn hits. This is the epitome of cheesy noir. The songs are often played to equally cheesy scenarios – I’m told the first season is a pastiche of US television melodramas. It certainly felt like a heightened reality, even within a fictional show.

I started writing this in 2018. It is now 2024. The world has moved on, but I still come back to thinking about Twin Peaks. I can see it clearly when I close my eyes, and hear it too.

The songs are repeated across the episodes many, many, many times, again and again and again. They became unforgetable and finally, comfortably familiar. There’s no other soundtrack like it. But, hey, that’s Stockholm Syndrome for you.

I really enjoyed watching the first season as a TV show. I wouldn’t have thought that worth pointing out when I started Twin Peaks. Season One seems quant and restrained compared to what followed. To summarise Season One in two words: oddly charming. Everything after: increasingly weird, increasingly brilliant.

But here in Season One is the murder mystery of who killed Laura Palmer. This central question is used to unveil more mysteries, more questions about the town’s cast of characters and their intriguing little lives. Everyone has something to hide, something to reveal. There are answers to some questions but never to who killed Laura Palmer. Not yet, anyway.

I watched an interview where David Lynch refers to the Laura Palmer mystery as “the goose that laid golden eggs”. In the very next season he would be forced into killing that goose on air by TV executives.

What I didn’t know was that they were already squeezing that goose real tight before Season Two and managed to plop out a few spin-off books and a cassette tape.

Book: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (1990)

The book’s wikipedia page scared me away from reading this one:

The novel is said to be “As seen by Jennifer Lynch,” and is written in a matter-of-fact tone from the point of view of Laura Palmer, a small-town teenager —a “good girl gone bad”— who is abused, terrorized and murdered by the demonic entity BOB. Lynch says she was told by her father and Mark Frost, co-creator of the series, to “be Laura Palmer,” and that she “knew Laura so well it was like automatic writing.”

Wikipedia – The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer

Mark Frost is the co-creator of Twin Peaks and is often omitted entirely in favour of David Lynch. The pair created the world and, in a way I see similar to how Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke co-conceived 2011: A Space Odyssey before going their separate ways to make the film and novel, it seems that Mark explores Twin Peaks through words and David Lynch explores it through images and sound.

Having read the later books by Mark Frost, I may read this book in time. But I’ve not read now so let’s move on.

Cassette Tape: “Diane…” The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper (1991)

Oh, this is embarrassing . Look, I have a cassette player because Lovers Turn To Monsters keeps putting out good music on cassette. However, I’m not in market to increase my tape collection, dude. This was another pass for me.

Hey, I was upfront in the title to this article. Moving on.

Book: The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (1991)

For God’s sake. Another miss, but a good time to talk about FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. He’s wonderful. Charming, endearing, principled; it’s all Kyle McLaughlin’s performance. I’m not going to recap any of the plot of the show because that’s all the fun of watching it. Even linking a video recap would rob the show of what its magic. Dale Cooper is your anchor, your surrogate into the world and the best damn agent there is.

Of the many Twin Peaks-focused YouTube videos out there, I recommend the following as the only good ones:

1. In Focus: The Broom Is Not What It Seems (Twin Peaks: The Return)
2. David Lynch: The Treachery of Language
3. Red Letter Media: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me – re:View
4. Red Letter Media: Twin Peaks: The Return – re:View (Part 1)
5. Red Letter Media: Twin Peaks: The Return – re:View (Part 2)

Book: Welcome to Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town (1991)

Ok, I promise I’ve actually watched and read Twin Peaks. I just didn’t bother with the early, early stuff.

TV: Season Two (1991)

If Season One is the shallow end of the pool, Season Two is the deep end that somehow ends up lost at sea.

Out of nowhere, in something like the third episode, the killer of Laura Palmer is revealed and my, oh my, the rest of Season Two just doesn’t know what to do with itself. The new central mystery of the show becomes “when will this get good again?”.

There’s a raft of b-stories that for me go nowhere. A lot of killing time before Dale Cooper gets a decent storyline with some direction. They ramp up the other-worldly entitles and introduce a serial killer, but my god, there’s some real wasted episodes in Season Two. The initial and final episodes are worth it though.

As sweet as cherry pie as the town of Twin Peaks is, I wanted more of the supernatural settings of the Red Room or the Black Lodge or whatever dimension exists. David Lynch’s visual storytelling is a real dichotomy to me. He clearly loves to present a sense of old Americana, like the old 50s diner that sees many of the shows characters congregating in.

Then there are the real surreal visuals. This is where Lynch really struck me as a bonafide artist painting in the medium of TV and film. The most striking visuals that will stay with me are all from the Red Room. The brilliant finale leaps effortlessly from suspense to comedy to pure terror of the final scenes. In particular this scream:

If you are never going to watch this show, then at least sample the madness:

I’m not just enamoured with the “wacky images”. They really do, in context, make me feel things that other shows haven’t made me feel. They communicate a feeling that simply would not work in any other medium. That’s my definition of “art”, plain and simple.

Movie: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Season Two ends on a cliffhanger. Then the show was cancelled. Years later, Lynch made a movie. I went into the Fire Walk With Me expecting the story to pick up from the cliffhanger and move things forward. Instead, it went backwards and sideways.

The movie is bleak as all hell. Think Dogtooth or The Lobster but less fun. Rather than resolve Season Two, the movie follows Laura Palmer’s final days before her murder. What I watched was a prequel every bit as bad and tragic as I’d been led to believe from Season One. The town’s sweetheart descending into the seedy shadow world of Twin Peaks. Her life is hell and then she is brutally murdered. It was rough to watch.

And yet, it’s kind of beautiful. There is beauty in the ugly, love in the heartbreak, pleasure in the pain. This is what I’ve come to associate David Lynch’s work: exploring positive in the negative.

By “sideways” I mean the opening section that takes place entirely away from Twin Peaks. We follow a new agent as they encounter a murder mystery not unlike Laura’s murder. We then have one of the most potently weird scenes with Cooper, Cole and a very panicked David Bowie.

At the time, this seemingly had very little to do with the Laura Palmer story. Turns out these scenes would become the central questions that would set up the incomparable achievement that is Season Three.

Book: The Secret History of Twin Peaks (2016)

But first, a book I actually read. As I wrote earlier, when it’s Twin Peaks in the books, it’s Mark Frost with the pen in hand. This book is a dossier of found interviews, clippings, documents and other scraps of evidence compiled together for review by the FBI. It’s an atmospheric read. There are huge revelations about character’s that are answered here in the pages, and not in Season Three. The underlying supernatural aspects of the worlds are probed here and given surprisingly concrete foundations.

Lynch talks in interviews about ensuring his stories have a solid ground in place for him to launch from in terms of abstract imagery. The book is a cornerstone for Season Three. A must read.

TV: Twin Peaks: The Return, Season Three (2017)

Season Three in two words: an experience. Where Seasons One and Two are tv shows, Season Three is… an experience. I have no other words for it.

Gone is 90s melodramatic framing where the world is fairly black and white. Instead, here, we have a very grim, very contemporary TV series. It’s an unflinching look at the greys of world of Twin Peaks- the dark greys that bleed into blackness. And maybe, once or twice, a white light.

The scene that encapsulates Season Three, I seem to remember appears in many episodes. You are looking out from between the headlights of a car driving in the dead of night. Pitch black. The headlights barely illuminate the road ahead, they’re so low to ground, and yet the car is pressing forward ever more into the darkness, onwards to its destination. The destination is unknown and the path unknowable, being only really understood after the journey is over. This is the constant feeling I had when watching The Return.

Now that I am a few years removed, I can retrace my steps and better understand what happened, at least emotionally.

It is a tough watch though. It’s not that Lynch made 30-plus hours of unwatchable cinema, but it sort of expects you to pay attention, sit still and feel things out. And it’s worth it. The seemingly disconnected storylines, the abundance of new characters, the achingly delayed return to the town of Twin Peaks and to the Dale Cooper we loved, it all eventually connects.

If the story of The Return is a jigsaw puzzle, it’s one where Lynch holds up one piece at a time and asks you to drink it in, reflect on this one piece, what does the piece make you feel? Feel the edges of the piece – rough, isn’t it? Ok, on to the next piece. Until finally, worryingly close to the end of the season, the sections slot together.

If it is a test of patience then it’s a test worth studying. It’s art, after all. I couldn’t explain the ins and outs of the world. But, damned if it doesn’t make me feel strong emotions, still to this day.

TV: Twin Peaks: The Return, Season Three, Episode 8 (2017)

This episode is wild. If you’ve made it this far, abandon the article and go watch this episode.

Book: Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (2017)

The Return puts back in the place the central mystery of Twin Peaks. It doesn’t tie things up, if anything things are left looser than before. The Final Dossier, however, filled in the details in some regards.

In many ways, reading the novels that book end The Return added to the overall experience. It put me in the role of detective myself, trying to connect the characters, their tales and where there trails seemingly end up. I don’t recall the details now, but I do remember finishing that final page and feeling satisfied. Not that I had a full set of answers, but rather that I had a strong grasp on the questions of Twin Peaks. And those questions linger in a pleasing way.

Conclusion

Mmm, That’s some damn good coffee.