Twin Peaks Review by John Keegan

Twin Peaks 3.01/3.02: The Return: Parts I-II

Twin Peaks 3.01/3.02: The Return: Parts I-II

Written By:
Mark Frost and David Lynch
Directed By:
David Lynch

Twin Peaks was, in many respects, my first true fandom.  I was obsessed with the dark and dreamy world that David Lynch brought to my television screen as a senior in high school, pouring over the details of Laura Palmer’s murder episode after episode.  I became enthralled by the chess match between Agent Dale Cooper and his insane former mentor Windom Earle.  I was one of the few people to venture out to an actual theater on the premiere weekend for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.  And so, when it was announced that the series would be coming back for a continuation, 25 years later, I didn’t dare believe that it would actually happen.  That I’m sitting here, writing a review for the first two installments, having seen the beginning of the third season less than 24 hours ago, is still mind-boggling on several levels.

 


 

One of the biggest question I had coming into this third season was one of style and tone.  Would it be more like the relatively network-friendly original two seasons of Twin Peaks on ABC, or would it be closer to the far more mature and dark incarnation that inhabited Fire Walk With Me?  They are clearly cut from the same cloth, but viewed through a different lens.  The answer, at least based on the first two hours, is that it is definitively an evolution of Fire Walk With Me.  It’s challenging on the same level, utterly unapologetic in its slow pacing and bizarre surrealistic storytelling.  This is not a broadly comic rendition of soap opera clichés with a layer of darkness beneath; this is peeling away that surface to dig into the abyss.

 

In that sense, this could deeply divide those who were looking forward to the return of the series.  I recently binge-watched the entire original run, and the tonal shift is palpable.  This is Twin Peaks by way of Lost Highway or Inland Empire.  And yet, for all that, this is definitively a continuation.  The opening two installments focus quite strongly on the beginning of the resolution to the second season’s infamous cliffhanger, in which Agent Cooper was replaced by a Killer Bob-possessed doppelganger.  As noted in Fire Walk With Me, the “good Dale” is still very much trapped within the Black Lodge.

 


 

At first, much of what happens in the premiere seems disconnected from the world we knew.  Very little of the premiere takes place in the titular town.  Instead, it revolves around three locations: the Red Room/Black Lodge, New York City, and Buckhorn, South Dakota.  As one would expect, by the end of the first two hours, the connections between these locations and the characters that inhabit them become more realized.

 

Most of the time is spent in Buckhorn, where a grotesque murder has taken place.  Prime suspect Bill Hastings, the local high school principal, seems to have no idea why his fingerprints are all over the murder scene.  But even as the audience begins to realize that his recollections are becoming more and more unsure, recalling how Leland Palmer would have no recollection of what happened was he was possessed, the darker and stranger elements emerge.  (Could the strange figure in the jail cell, close to where Bill is being held, hold a clue to the eventual “explanation”?)

 


 

Over time, the murder in Buckhorn begins to connect with the dealings of Dark Cooper (as I’ll call him), the doppelganger that has taken a firm command of the seedy underbelly of the northwest.  Watching Dark Cooper roam around with casual violence and malevolence fulfills one of the most necessary functions of the return: explaining what happened after the original series ended.  We don’t know exactly what happened after Cooper woke up in that room at the Great Northern, or how exactly he disappeared.  But we do know that Killer Bob has been around a very long time, and he usually knows how to lay low while satisfying his hungers.  Dark Cooper knows that he is destined to be pulled back into the Black Lodge, and he is doing everything possible to avoid that fate.

 

Meanwhile, in New York City, in a nondescript building, there is a strange experiment taking place.  A man is tasked with watching a seemingly empty glass box and maintaining the cameras that record it 24/7.  A lot of time is spent on this, in typical Lynchian fashion, and yet it seems fairly obvious from the start that this is connected to the ongoing post-Project Blue Book work that Major Briggs and his cohorts within the government had been conducting over the decades.  And sure enough, it is connected to the Black Lodge (or what lies beyond it, since it is a “waiting room” of sorts).  This is revealed in a moment of terror and violence that does more to underscore what kind of revival this is than anything up to that point in the narrative.

 


 

Of course, just when the audience is likely getting impatient for some sense of what is happening to the “good Dale”, the second half of the premiere (a good chunk of “Part II”) takes place within the Black Lodge itself.  It’s both more straightforward and more obtuse than anything we’ve seen within the Red Room before.  Take, as just one example, the scene with a talking tree-like being that is, apparently, the “evolution” of the dancing midget (aka, “the arm”).  References to potential time loops abound, as do numbers of unknown importance to the equally evolving narrative.

 

The upshot is that the first two hours clearly point to what many would like to see: exploration of how (or even if) Cooper escapes the Black Lodge and where the story might go from there.  Far from being just one of many ongoing storylines, it feels like the premiere makes the case that the story is centered on Cooper.  That makes a lot of sense, given that the project started with Lynch only having Kyle MacLachlan pinned down as a returning cast member, but it also means that those worried his fate wouldn’t be front and center have nothing to worry about.

 


 

For those concerned that there won’t be a return to the storylines that pertain to other characters from the original run, there is enough peppered into the premiere to give plenty of hope.  A number of returning characters get a moment or two to bring the audience up to speed.  Inevitably the story will center back on Twin Peaks itself, and these hints and seeds will become important. For now, it’s enough to remember that this is not an episodic series in the conventional sense, but rather, a complete work split into roughly 18 parts.

 

Circling back to my original comments, it’s also worth underscoring the fact that Lynch has made it abundantly clear that this is his ultimate expression of Twin Peaks, a vision unfettered by network interference.  Showtime has openly declared that they gave Lynch total creative freedom, and he hand-picked those involved with the original series that he wanted along for this seemingly-final ride.  And while this does appear to be one last season (the song at the end of the premiere being very apropos to this), it might be going too far to say this is the “conclusion”.  One of the hallmarks of Twin Peaks was always that it left much to the imagination of its devoted fandom, and I can’t imagine this incarnation would deliver anything less.




Our Grade:
A-
The Good:
  • Firmly establishes itself as a direct continuation from the original series and its prequel film
  • Clearly everyone involved in the production is highly invested in the work
The Bad:
  • Completely unfriendly to new viewers with little or no knowledge of the original

John Keegan aka "criticalmyth", is one of the hosts of the "Critical Myth" podcast heard here on VOG Network's radio feed Monday, Wednesday & Friday. You can follow him on twitter at @criticalmyth

Twin Peaks by - 5/22/2017 7:58 AM247 views

Your Responses

skie
skie
CONCURRING OPINION

Grade: A
soooo happy to have this back on television even if i was a *little* unprepared for how "r rated" this was going to be considering the original was on network television (though admittedly pushed the envelope there). don't want to say much more specifics as i've watched first 4 episodes now thanks to digital showtime, but definitely feels like one big work and not so much episodic. ... but can we talk about the AMAZING closing credits song that was so reminiscent of julee cruise?

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Comments

criticalmyth
criticalmyth
5/24/2017 10:50 AM

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Reply
I loved that song so much and have already found it for my current playlists!!!

I will be watching eps 3-4 this week, but will refrain from a review of them until they officially air ;)
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