(Photo Courtesy of CBS Television)A quarter of a century after David Lynch first pulled back the velvet curtain on the mysterious town of Twin Peaks for unprepared network television audiences, we’re going back to that not-so-quiet town — and I’m kind of bummed about it.
Way back in 1990, the show premiered on ABC — only to run for two seasons. Twenty-four years after its debut, show creators Mark Frost and Lynch broke their silence on the cult TV series. On Monday, the two announced they'd revisit the series for a nine-episode stint on Showtime in 2016, according to Variety.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I will greedily watch every single one of the promised episodes, read every cultural think piece I can get my mitts on and probably love what Lynch delivers. I think that’s the case for all Lynch devotees, even those who are a little irked that he suddenly decided to return to the mysteries of Twin Peaks, Washington, after all this time. I just thought Lynch was above the realm of Revival Mania.
https://twitter.com/DAVID_LYNCH/status/519147574381379584
Maybe it’s selfish of me to want to keep “Twin Peaks” untouched. “Twin Peaks” was the first DVD box set my father ordered on eBay (he accidentally ordered the French version, which made the show seem even more exotic). To a teenager living in a vanilla suburb, Lynch was a godsend; a sign that the avant-garde was, you know, a real thing. Half the joy of that show came from the ultimate cliffhanger — the fate of Agent Dale Cooper — at the end of season two.
A great deal of the magnetism of the show’s original run came from that sense of incompleteness. The wild tangle of surreal happenings never resolved itself with a nice narrative bow; Lynch only delved deeper and deeper into the dream. That’s a big reason why “Twin Peaks” came to redirect the course of television, and everything from “The Sopranos” to “Desperate Housewives” owes something to Lynch’s handiwork.
“Twin Peaks” casts a long shadow, and in our age of the infinite pop culture feedback loop, that aura only grows. GIFs of "The Man from Another Place" are reblogged 1,000 a minute, and collaged stars like Lana Del Rey regurgitate a Lynchian America. Its revival, however, will be competing with the cultural landscape it helped erect.
At the moment, the Internet is rejoicing about Lynch’s decision to revive the show from the dead. “Twin Peaks,” though, never really died with its cancellation (or even after that messy “Fire Walk With Me” business). Its allure has only grown in the cultural imagination. Who knows how the trolls of the Internet will treat the new episodes when they (inevitably) don’t live up to the incredible mythology and aura that “Twin Peaks” has generated in the past 25 years, though? Why is everyone so on board to revive everything from the '90s?
I say all of this knowing I’ll consume every episode gleefully. We just can’t seem to get enough, but with the show’s revival, we might get more than we really want. Lynch probably knows this is the case. But, hey, if Kyle MacLachlan is coming back as Dale Cooper, I guess you can sign me up.
Reach the reporter at Zachariah.Webb@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter at @zachariahkaylar
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