Twin Peaks — A Love Letter
Promo image from IMDb
At the beginning of the 1990s, television drama was a stagnant art form. Most dramas were standard mystery shows like Murder, She Wrote, science fiction like Quantum Leap, and cop dramas like Miami Vice. While these shows had a following and were loved, television was falling behind the burgeoning indie film revolution that would take over the nineties.
Gen X was getting older and didn’t want to watch the same tired dramas. They wanted creative, challenging shows like the films they watched. So, on April 8, 1990, ABC took a chance on a surrealistic drama-horror mystery show inspired by the waning nighttime soap operas of the time, like Dallas.
Twin Peaks was a heavily-hyped mid-season replacement nighttime drama that created a world-wide phenomenon that has a robust fandom that survives to this day.
How was Twin Peaks Developed?
Twin Peaks is the kind of television show that most people have heard of, but many have not seen. They’ve heard the rumors or seen the endless parodies of the famous “Red Room” dream sequence and are trepidatious to watch it out of fear they won’t understand it.
This is a legitimate concern as Twin Peaks is notoriously obtuse with complicated characters and the creators are tight lipped about their intentions. While this show did debut in 1990, I know there are always new generations of cult fans waiting to discover this show, so I’ll attempt to only reveal well known facts and keep it spoiler-free of plot points and twists.
Co-created by David Lynch, notorious artsy film director, and Mark Frost, novelist and former Hill Street Blues writer, the story was inspired by the real life cold case murder of Hazel Drew, a case that fascinated them both. You can read more about this case, which was finally solved in 2008, in a Bushman and Givens book Murder at Teal’s Pond released in 2022.
With this as a starting point, they merged their fascination with nighttime soap operas that were popular in the 1980s, like Dynasty and Falcon Crest. They loved the melodrama and high camp associated with these shows and decided they’d make an homage to these shows, with similar themes, but focused on regular people instead of the small, elite groups in most of these shows.
What is Twin Peaks About?
ABC did a campaign blitz for the premiere of Twin Peaks. They banked this on the pre-conceived notions people had of David Lynch — best know for his bizarre premier film, Eraserhead and his 1986 Blue Velvet.
For fans of Lynch, Twin Peaks seemed like a continuation of the themes he had critiqued in Blue Velvet. There are fan arguments that they take place in the same universe.
While this was never confirmed, it is understandable with the similarities, however, where Blue Velvet was limited by a smaller cast and a shorter running time, Twin Peaks was 48 minutes each week with longer seasons and more time to develop story and characters.
When Twin Peaks premiered in 1990, the audience tuned in to see what the hype was about. 34.6 million people experienced an event that would change television forever.
Highly praised by critics and scholars as one of the best pilot episodes of all time, it was two parts provincial and one part horrifying. We begin our journey by meeting the Martells, the local bigwig owners of the Packard Mill that processes all the lumber in the logging town.
Pete, the ever suffering husband of Catherine Martell discovered a young girl’s dead body wrapped in plastic on the beach by his home. As we begin to learn more about the town, we discover a small, Washington town with a population 51,201. The place appears idyllic with a quaint 1950s nuclear family vibe.
The girl turns out to be Laura Palmer, an eighteen-year-old high school senior with a reputation for helping others and living a clean life.The entire town goes into shock when her murder is announced. No one could have expected the homecoming queen to end up like that.
This is when the suspects, family, and friends of Laura become our focus. The police round up her friends and family. Immediately, we see cracks in the veneer. Laura was dating the quarterback at school, Bobby Briggs, but she was also dating a boy, James Hurley, in secret. This is just the tip of the iceberg of Laura’s other life.
Another teenager is soon found wandering on the railroad tracks across state lines, beaten and in shock. She is tied to the Palmer murder and there is a second crime that is cross state and requires the FBI to investigate.
This is when we meet to the central character of the show, Special Agent Dale Cooper of the FBI, played iconically by Kyle MacLachlen, a long-time collaborator with Lynch.
What follows is two glorious seasons of bizarre, endearing, and ultimately genuine characters that make up this town. We enter the town and experience the tragedy with all of them. We see how a brutal crime can affect each member of the town. We can also see how callous some people can be as well.
No one is perfect in this small town. There is a web of lies, infidelity, sabotage, and organized crime. We also experience the good things in a small town, like annual events that bring the town together. Twin Peaks is not just a drama — it is an experience. And you are left to interpret it how you please.
Why Does Twin Peaks Endure All These Years Later?
I watched Twin Peaks in 1990, at the ripe old age of 14. I was a lonely kid, really into books and movies, but not the most social kid. When I watched the pilot episode, I was transported to another world. A place where everyone seemed to be a little odd. A place I would fit in and probably not even be noticed.
The cozy feeling I got every time I watched my favorite character lifted me out of a depressive fog. I related to Audrey and her feeling of isolation. Agent Cooper’s strange behaviors and spiritually led investigation style made me feel happy. I felt like for an hour a week, I could live in Twin Peaks, a town of outcasts.
This is probably the best description of a Peaks fan, outcast. We are a merry band of weirdos who, 35 years later, love to discuss our theories about the show. And the theories are as numbered as the fans — no one sees the show the same way.
When I met my partner 20 years ago, we had an instant connection when we realized that we were both Twin Peaks fans. We bonded over the teenage experience of watching it every week, taking notes on the events, and trying to shape our theories. We both even had dedicated notebooks for observations. It was the first reason, of many, I fell in love with them.
Twin Peaks has been with me since 9th grade. When they finally made a third season in 2017, we were both overjoyed. Twin Peaks finally had a proper ending after ABC cancelled the show on a cliffhanger.
Although truly, for a fan, the show never ends. It changes with you and your observations of the world. When you are given the gift of an unendingly interpretable show, you will always find something new to change your view. Is that not the greatest gift a television show can give you?
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Gretchen Wallett
Gretchen Wallett has a Bachelors in English from Indiana University and a masters in Library and Information Science from Drexel University. A life-long reader, they are passionate about spreading the love of reading and access to information. They also enjoy writing about books and researching topics of interest to them. They live in a cozy little cottage in Indiana with her partner, Steven, and their two cats, Simon and Lil Bit.
