Twin Peaks

_****

Laura Palmer is found on the shore line. She's dead. Wrapped in plastic. The small town of Twin Peaks is shaken as news spreads amongst the locals, but the killer's identity isn't the only mystery this town has to offer.

Twin Peaks is a series that I first heard about while watching the Simpsons; Homer watches as a giant and a unicorn slow dance under a lamp post. "Brilliant," he exclaims, "...I have no idea what's going on," and I told myself then that I needed to see this series to see how exaggerated that scene was. Instead I learned how accurate it seems to have been, and I'm forever grateful that a cartoon could lead me to such a wonderful thriller.

The reactions of Leland and Sarah Palmer (Ray Wise and Grace Zabriskie) when they receive word of their daughter's death is heart-breaking. Sarah's agonized wailing over the phone as Leland breaks down in tears is an incredibly true to life depiction of parental grief and couldn't have been handled any better.

Kyle MacLachlan's Dale Cooper has such a great attention to detail and a mad love for all kinds of information that he's like a kid in a candy store, awe-inspired by every new experience he encounters, but at the same time he is the wizened sage who has lived enough life to know things that no one else seems to. It's his love of gathering and spreading knowledge that makes Cooper so endearing as a character, and where the information he already has can make him can make him seem far beyond the capacity of the average man, the things he doesn't know, and is so eager to learn, are what makes him to human.

Twin Peaks is a town that is far too over-sexed; there is always a place for a romantic subplot in a television series, but over half of this cast of characters appears to be having affairs with one another, as though the writers felt that each character needed to have their own passionate story but neglected to create enough variety in the cast's gender to even things out. The people of this town seem unable to break off previous relationships and instead begin to collect them.

The pacing in this episode seems off, as though too much has been crammed into one day; it's possibly a reaction to the numerous and unrelated plot threads presented to the audience, but the actions depicted in this story appear to have taken far longer than the single day we're shown.

The entire speaking cast gives fairly good performances in this episode with the exception of Dana Ashbrook as Bobby Briggs; he's so wooden it's unbelievable that he made it beyond the audition, and when he does finally show an appropriate degree of humanity it's an emotion ill-fitting to the situation. The non-speaking roles in this episode seem to have taken Ashbrook's lead and choose to show zero reaction or emotion at any given time.

David Lynch directs this episode in such an off-putting manner, with long pauses, intentionally awkward moments, and an almost inspired tedium that it truly encapsulates the grief that this town has sunken into. The characters are made to feel as though their lives have ended with Laura's, and with nothing to look forward to, their day has become almost aggressively boring, as though the world truly has stopped. There are a few moments that may not be necessary to the overall plot of the episode, but they certainly lend to the mood of the people involved, and it all works very organically to the final product.

Lynch teams up with Mark Frost to write this feature-length pilot, and they seem to play off of one another quite well. While the exchange between Bobby and Shelly (Mädchen Amick) was awkward, the moment with Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) and her father (Warren Frost) is so beautifully done that it truly encapsulates the joys of the father-daughter relationship in less than two minutes. In contrast to Donna's relationship with her father is Audrey Horne's (Sherilyn Fenn) desperate attempts to get her father's (Richard Beymer) attention, delighting in destroying everything that diverts his gaze from her and despairing when her plans only create a further distance between herself and her daddy.

The mysteries of Twin Peaks continue adding up with every passing minute, and it's absolutely enthralling. The characters each have their own thing going on, and they're each equally interesting, so it's no shock to me that this series became as iconic as it is today.

Twin Peaks is in the running to become the feature for Thursdays. The series ran from 1990 to 1991 on ABC with a total of 30 episodes.