If you put a loaded gun in the scene, make damn sure a character pulls the trigger.
Something along those lines anyway. More of that later.
It has been 25 years since Twin Peaks first aired. It has taken all those 25 years for something to happen. 25 years since Twin Peaks first aired and... I've watched it for the first time.
Why I've never watched it before is a question I can't rightly answer.
Partly a reason of being pretty young, more partly because my parents didn't watch it. They called it "weird" and "confusing". I looked at the font spelling out Twin Peaks - a green and black warning sign - and didn't argue. I think, also, it hasn't helped that media commentators continually struggle to describe it: "Surreal", "genre blurring" and "cult" and talk with bemusement about a "log lady". Worse still when the general criticism is half-way through the whole thing goes off the rails and the quality tail-spins, why would you bother?
Very few describe Twin Peaks as "Good".
Partly though, I never had the opportunity to watch it. Until now. So over the last month I watched the whole thing on DVD. It turned out to be my bag.
For those who haven't watched it, I will try and explain what Twin Peaks is, without spoilers.
That is tricky. It is almost certainly why TV critics have kept away from specifics. Everything in Twin Peaks is a potential spoiler. But more of that later.
Actually the plot is very mainstream, 100 afternoon TV movies have the same one. It is a classic, housewife pleasing whodunit.
A body of a local girl washes up on a lakeside and when an FBI agent called Cooper gets involved it becomes clear this is not the killer's first victim. The FBI agent quickly endears himself to the locals and uses a number of unconventional detection techniques which reveal a rather unconventional set of circumstances of the murder in this rather unconventional small town steeped in Americana.
Stylistically Twin Peaks throws itself to the cult-kiddies.
With the advantage of seeing the shows it inspired, you can see Twin Peak DNA especially in shows like Eerie Indiana and the X-Files and, I would proffer, even in True Blood. An apparently simple, hokey set of characters and locations where strange mysteries are accepted parts of everyday life to deal with.
Yes, just a charming programme about a town's hokey inhabitants with drugs, domestic violence, a whore house and a lot of far more bizarre activities going on. And a murderer on the loose. It is not all dark, either, there are several twisty moments of humour and lightness to be found.
Where Twin Peaks changes from a straightforward poor Stephen King short story adaptation is in the layering. Twin Peaks has so many layers, it is internet forum heaven.
From the theme tune to the incidental, the music adds a sense of homely and strange. It is a sort imperfect facsimile of the music it is attempting to replicate. The main characters each have their leitmotif theme tune and the viewer can be directed to where the action is headed or who is to be taken notice of with this well executed technique.
But it is not just orally viewers are given reminder signs. Visually there are a number of motifs used to keep the tone of Twin Peaks percolating. Logs, owls, cherry pies and coffee are all used to ground the scenes in this town.
OK, the acting by the young, attractive cast plays out like the afternoon soap-opera which most of the TV sets in Twin Peaks are tuned into. More of that later. Sometimes the acting is really awful. The actor who plays James - and this is no spoiler, at least no more than his sweet ventriloquist dummy face of every scene he's in - plays the character as a teenage Terminator trying to deal with hormones.
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| James being... discontented?? Contented?? |
But they were also fashion icons. None more so than Audrey Horn, the gorgeous teenager with pin-up good looks and a line in 50's cuts made knitwear.
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| Audrey sporting part of her Smokin' collection |
The older cast fairs a little better in the acting stakes, although maintains the cringe style particularly when raw emotion is called for.
The dialogue, too, is unnatural often. The conversations are deliberate and short. And eminently quotable like catchphrases for fans.
"That's a damn fine cup of coffee"
If anything, though, the acting style and dialogue fits Twin Peaks perfectly and keeps things off-kilter.
The soap opera the characters tune into gives a hyper-reality version of events to come. And this is a great example of the technique used to keep the audience part of the show.
In David Finch and Mark Frost's writing, the storyline is driven by clues in plain view, and - yes - surreal deviations. Notably and most famously of these are the dream sequences which keep FBI Agent Cooper on the case with oblique paths to follow.
The plotting is so tight within it's own Twin Peaks universe, the puzzles so well developed and solved it should make Whovians (yes, Doctor Who fans, I'm going there) physically wretch. There is no 'get out of jail free' sonic screwdrivers. There is no free added lives. No "wait is that cannon? Did they forget?" Twin Peaks operates quite superbly within its own logic. In Twin Peaks no loaded gun goes unfired.
The result is everything is a clue. Everything is a lead. Everything there for a reason and more than it seems.
The soap opera, the logs, the diary, left arms, clicking fingers.
It is exhilarating, investing television. There is no concession, if you miss something once as a viewer you might not understand an action 3 episodes later. There is no coming late to this party. It gripped its audience because they had no choice.
It was a significant mainstream cult success. Twin Peaks was even gently and caringly parodied in a Satuday Night Live sketch which, typically you wish wasn't done live. A show which demanded so much, which took its own sweet time and played with the boundaries of "para"-normal in a detective TV using a soap opera genre was truly ground breaking in its success.
True, famously there was a concession where - mild spoiler - the killer is revealed far earlier than what was planned. One cannot help but wonder just where the story would have gone without this network interference. Would the killer have been someone else for a start? Someone least suspected of all? Is there a character who fits the whole if they were missing piece?
Perhaps this was why David Lynch began to lose interest. The tightness loosened and the oddness cranked up just a notch in Twin Peaks. The audience dropped. Another series was not commissioned. I feel this is doing the second part of the show a disservice. Tension builds admirably and the action quickens pace. But, for a show used to cauterising every loose end, there are a few cliff hangers left hanging on by their fingertips by the rolling final credits.
David Lynch did create a time bending prequel film to Twin Peaks. Called Fire Walk With Me (I've not seen it) it is said to be more the vision Finch had tonally for Twin Peaks but couldn't get away with on network TV. The scenes were harder, more violent, the sex less chaste. It was given a mixed response.
[Now there are some skirting spoilers coming...]
However, going back to the main show, there is so much to ponder over even as the plot points began to entangle. There could be theses written on the themes in Twin Peaks.
Note the number of times Black and White / Brunette and Blonde / Good and Evil are used. Are the puzzles representing the show's own puzzle? Or, consider how each character goes through some form of transformation of opposites at some stage. Or, ask just how cheap was it to employ the guy who played James?
It is testament to the plotting and the immersive environment created by all the elements which made Twin Peaks that, a full 25 years later, Twin Peaks fans began to get excited all at the same time.
You see, in the final episode a character said: "I'll see you again in 25 years".
The fans had been waiting ever since.
And they have been rewarded. They knew Twin Peaks wouldn't just have someone say that. Especially when it was said backwards.
Indeed it is happening again.
Weirdly and this is Gospel truth, I watched the final episode on the DVD the night before the announcement a new 9 part series would be broadcast. From quietly watching an old show to correct a long term anomaly on my CV, suddenly Twin Peaks was trending on my Twitter feed! I couldn't have had any better synchronicity if I tried. And, because I had watched 30 episodes of Twin Peaks in a very short time, there was a part of me genuinely thinking this was no coincidence. This was planned. And I was OK with that.
My advice is get ready for 2016, watch the original series: It's damn fine TV.
