The following contains spoilers for seasons 1-2 of Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Twin Peaks: The Return
Thirty years ago on 10th June, Dale Cooper entered the Black Lodge and did not come out the same man. While viewers now know that he does emerge in the 2017 Showtime revival, the harrowing image of a Killer BOB-possessed FBI agent slamming his head against a broken, bloodied mirror was Twin Peaks’ parting image for twenty-five in-universe years.
“Beyond Life and Death” saw the return of David Lynch to the directorial chair after some absences, and the episode is generally considered a saving grace of an otherwise uneven season.
Yes, the second season of Twin Peaks was bloated from eight episodes to twenty-two at ABC’s behest, and network pressure to reveal Laura Palmer’s killer seven episodes in sends characters off on disunified missions during the season’s back half. The subservience of the central BOB quest to a host of soap opera-esque subplots is inarguable.
However, it is not the misstep it is often painted as. Letting the show develop in its own weird, personal, at times farcical focus gives the audience time to breathe after the disturbing revelations in episodes 7-9 and before an equally shocking, universe-altering tragedy at its end.
The ability to switch between an examination of essential, universal evil and a chronicle of small-town hijinks has always lent Twin Peaks its charm; perhaps the two are not as seamlessly melded in the second season as they are in the first, but their highs are higher and bolder.
Twin Peaks is a show operating in the extremes – of genre, scenario, and of the darkness and ridiculousness innate in humanity. As such, performances are fully committed even in the most unbelievable or seemingly trivial situations. The Donna-James-Maddy love triangle often reads as comedic but aches with over-earnestness of teenage infatuation. The case of a cartoonishly troublesome nephew proves no less important an exploration than recovering Laura’s secret diary.
Mundanity can be a poor artistic cipher for reality; humans often act irrationally, with their current problems – whether they be planted drugs, paternity, or a puzzle box – taking absolute, if momentary, precedence. These absurdities and petty troubles prove just how human the residents of Twin Peaks are, giving a window into the town’s heart as the darkness hibernates.
Perhaps the finest moment of season two sits directly at the intersection between high tragedy and farce. Episode 9, “Arbitrary Law,” concludes the Laura Palmer mystery with the arrest and confession of the BOB-possessed Leland Palmer. But before this moment, the action moves upstairs in the sheriff’s office, where Lucy Moran is sitting Andy Brennan and Dick Tremayne down for a chat about what she expects from the two possible fathers of her child – both of whom have been behaving laughably immaturely up to this point. Dick smokes a cigarette cartoonishly, and the camera tracks the smoke rising towards the precinct’s detector.
The sprinklers are set off, alarming the demon downstairs who flees, mortally wounding Leland and returning his memories in the process. In almost unspeakable agony, Leland reckons with having raped and killed his daughter, and Cooper tries his best to comfort him in his last moments. All the while, the fake rain continues to fall. The visual poignancy of this moment is only brought about through some soapy B-plot shenanigans, lending an almost mythic pathos to the Palmer tragedy.
The second season finale is remembered for its dizzying walk through the Black Lodge but is not without its comedic moments – Nadine’s memory returns as fast as it disappeared, and Thomas Eckhardt gets the last brutal laugh. These moments, however, are tinged with the macabre. Lynch maintains the farce woven through the first two seasons of his show while warning viewers that the mess and rot cannot neatly be wrapped up with truth – not in Twin Peaks, not in the world outside.
Fire Walk With Me and Twin Peaks: The Return are darker, deeper pieces. Despite a couple of laugh-out-loud moments of absurdity in each, they largely eschew idiosyncratic diversions to look broken families and elemental evil head-on.
Seen back through what came after, Twin Peaks’ second season thus feels less like an aimless diversion and more like a needed storytelling step, setting the audience up for a bleaker, more frightening dive into the world beneath the cherry pie and coffee.
Lynch may not agree with this assessment: “the second season sucked,” he said in a 2017 interview with TVLine. But the art he created with Mark Frost takes on a life beyond them, and writing off season two based on one creator’s thoughts – however refreshingly blunt – diminishes the show’s multi-dimensional appeal.
Twin Peaks never divided its scenes or character arcs between supernatural crime show and small-town soap opera. The result was a show that gave weight to all proceedings no matter how silly or serious, perhaps nowhere as perfectly exemplified as by a pine weasel run loose at a fashion show fundraiser.
The second season develops and refines the offbeat comedy, melodrama, and pathos first seen in season one, setting the stage for the artistic highs of Fire Walk with Me and the Showtime revival. Even if the narrative wandered, the show’s commitment to the human heart – in its inexplicability, mad capacity for wickedness, and equally defiant capacity for love – never did.