Granted, David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” was radical from its surreal opening seconds: a dream-like montage of rusted lumber saws being sharpened, the steady flow of opaque brown water, titles appearing in some batshit font — letters outlined in neon green and filled with a dull brown, creating a sort of unfocusable optical illusion — all set to the hazy and hollow late-’80s theme music of Angelo Badalamenti.
Yet, to the untrained eye, the true nature of this infected soap didn’t become clear until Lynch really pulled the rug out from underneath. Haunting images outstayed their typically allotted welcome. Characters’ fears and fever dreams were at times almost unbearably frightening. And what was with the log lady? The television was obviously very sick.
Simply by virtue of its idiosyncrasies, “Peaks’” cult status was inevitable, and practically every fan has his or her own reasons for loving the show. And because it’s simultaneously familiar and alien, many would instinctually assume the show’s primary intentions were to satirize the American soap opera, in the tradition of Norman Lear’s great “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” But this would be far too shallow and dismissive a conclusion. Just what is Bob a parody of? Or the wise and spectral log lady who speaks only in cryptic verse? Or the astoundingly sincere Major Garland Briggs who drops nuggets of profound cosmic knowledge upon his absent rebel son? “Twin Peaks” feels like a soap opera precisely because it is one — albeit an exceptionally strange and beautiful one.
In fact, it’s more than one.
Once we are cast abruptly into the restless, anarchic and much weirder second season (no longer anchored by the deliberate continuity of Lynch’s direction), the plot tendrils at the perimeter of Laura Palmer’s death begin to split, multiply and mutate — many growing out of control, and many others trailing off and dissolving an episode after they were birthed. The cancer has slowly been introduced. In season two, mitosis begins.
Murder number two sets off the most glaring (and literal) detour, when clay-faced and ever-pouting James Hurley finally gets fed up with this shit town and all of its stupid melodrama and love triangles and parasitic demons killing everyone he’s ever loved. He’s got to leave this place. Don’t you understand, Donna? He’s got get on his bike and ride as far away from Twin Peaks as it will take him. So after leaving a weeping Donna in the dust of his Harley, James “drifts” to another backwater town — practically identical to Twin Peaks — whose only inhabitants seem to be a wealthy cougar, her abusive husband and her morally ambiguous secret lover that she keeps chained up in a basement or something.
What black hole has James fallen into? Despite his best efforts to escape, he’s now found himself trapped in an entirely new soap opera — this one filled with even more scheming, cheating and oozing melodrama. It’s Lynch reminding us that Twin Peaks is indeed a part of TV’s self-contained alterniverse — it isn’t a parody of “General Hospital,” it’s just up the road from it.
Meanwhile, “Peaks’” shimmering beacon of innocence and naivete, Deputy Andy, and effeminate a-hole Dick Tremayne (once the most awkward of enemies, now the most unlikely of allies) try to get to the bottom of yet another small town mystery: is the little boy that Dick adopted as part of a big brother program really possessed by Satan? Stay tuned!
Of course, these mutant Brady Bunch shenanigans go nowhere in particular (filed alongside Nadine’s super-strength, Audrey’s fling with that pilot, Ben’s epic civil war delusion and basically anything having to do with Josie), but they are absolutely crucial in creating the essence that is Twin Peaks. In these caricatures, and their dismembered subplots, we find Lynch’s key driving force: pure love. It’s a love for film and television that prevents the bisecting storylines from sitting still. It’s also a love for his characters, as well as a more universal compassion, that makes “Twin Peaks” so endlessly rewatchable.
This manifests itself most notably in Lynch’s relationship with the abominable Leo Johnson. Anyone who’s seen interviews with Lynch knows that the filmmaker is a Boy Scout — polite, eloquent and dorky. He speaks of abstraction and surrealism the way your uncle might describe the best method for catching trout. Leo Johnson is Lynch’s (and Cooper’s) foil: senselessly vulgar, mean-spirited, seedy and wildly abusive to his faithful wife Shelly. So Lynch, as divine creator of the “Twin Peaks” world, sets about punishing Leo in every way, shape and form, entering Leo into a season-long walk through hell beginning with his vegetative coma (which essentially turns Leo into a comical prop) and ending with his becoming Windom Earle’s dancing monkey. If this weren’t enough, Lynch seals Leo’s fate by stealing a kiss from Shelly in his own walk-on role as Gordon Cole (who, it seems important to note, is everyone’s benevolent superior and no one’s oppressor in “Twin Peaks”).
But despite the meandering, all roads do eventually lead to the black lodge. Darkness remains, and must be confronted eventually. However, Lynch poses that it is only with this love — for people, for emotion, for horror and comedy and unbridled zaniness — that we can fight against it.
Fitting, then, that Lynch’s only true fear lies not in the nightmare visions he conjures, but in — as revealed by “Twin Peaks’” legendary orator Major Garland Briggs — “the possibility that love is not enough.”
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I’d like to dedicate this first column to artist, activist and family friend Aaron Blazer, who passed away unexpectedly this summer after suffering a heart attack. Thank you for reading my stuff, and for engaging. I was truly grateful for that. The last we chatted, it was about Lynch, so here’s to you. R.I.P.
