Twin Peaks‘s eagerly awaited return proved as divisive as it was brilliant. Emmy smartly recognized director David Lynch and the gorgeous craft of this unique television event.
“This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.” — The Woodsman
Perhaps it was too much to expect that the entirety of the Television Academy would uniformly nominate the latest incarnation of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s iconic television series Twin Peaks. I remain disappointed that the series and the great Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern failed to receive hugely deserved nominations. Yet, as a fan of this bizarre and incredibly cinematic limited series, I still take comfort in the nominations it did receive.
Despite fan-based longing for a linear narrative, director David Lynch delivered exactly what he wanted in a return to Twin Peaks. Did it all make sense? No. Did I need it to make sense? That’s a more complicated question. As a Twin Peaks fan, sure I wanted a return to the 50s-inspired soap that Lynch constructed 25 years ago. And there are dabbles of that within the 18-episode limited series, such as the sweet and fan-servicing resolution to the Ed and Nadine storyline.
Yet, for that single moment, Lynch and Frost gave us hours of twisted narratives, dangling plot lines, and unsettling emotions. This is best evidenced by Twin Peaks: The Return‘s finest hour: the very controversial, divisive, confounding, frustrating and totally brilliant Episode 8. This is the one you’ve heard about. The one with the atomic bomb. The one with the floating orb. The one with the Woodsman brutally murdering innocent civilians. The one with the giant grasshopper crawling into a sleeping girl’s mouth. All captured in lush and terrifying black and white.
Episode 8 gives us pure cinematic joy. You’ve likely never seen anything like it on TV. Again, does it make sense? I’m not sure I could explain any of it, and I don’t care. Focus on the brilliance of the imagery. The subtle horrors in unexpected moments that veer in unexpected directions. Lynch washes his thoughts and ideas on the origins of Twin Peaks over us with a 1950s black and white sheen, and as an isolated episode of the much longer narrative, it completely works. Lynch received a best director in a limited series nomination specifically, I believe, for the audacity and brilliance of this episode. It was also responsible for the bulk of Twin Peaks: The Return‘s Emmy nominations: cinematography, single-camera picture editing, sound editing, and sound mixing. It deserves to win all of those (and more).
Disregard any pre-conceived notions you may have brought into this new season. Lynch delivered exactly what he wanted to deliver – a carefully crafted and cinematic television event. The kind of cinema that Hollywood won’t finance anymore. Yet, here, thanks to the artistically daring Showtime, Lynch flexes his directorial muscles in ways we just didn’t expect. You watch the episode believing that this is the sole reason Lynch wanted to return to Twin Peaks. And we are far better off having this in our television world than we are without it.
Television Academy, take notice and embrace this brilliant televised cinematic vision. It deserves to be recognized and encouraged.
I would strongly disagree with the idea that Twin Peaks: The Return made no sense eventually but rather would argue that it’s like an open area in which one’s interests can run around and from where one can find one’s own meaning for the narrative. Everything makes sense especially through Lynch’s (and Frost’s) understanding of dream logic but the thematic contemplation of the narrative is a question how do YOU create context for it in a way that gives it depth.
But to focus on part 8, it is the single most awe-inspiring experience I’ve ever had watching television (even though it’s not the best part of Twin Peaks: The Return in my opinion as the even more controversial part 18 manages to have even more of an emotional effect on me). Up until part 8, the narrative that has moved forward quite calmly and Lynch and Frost have basically made the viewers believe that they understand everything at play, even the full extent of the supernatural elements, But suddenly everything that we thought we knew is dropped, the equilibrium is shaken completely, and we’re left with a sense of bafflement that will continue throughout the movie.
The collection of imagery after this and the Nine Inch Nails (one of the better musical sequences in the show and that’s saying something) feels revolutionary even by Lynch’s standards. Not since Eraserhead has his filmmaking felt more like he just wanted to create individual images and that these images and sounds and the way these images and sounds are experienced are more important than anything else. The emotion, themes and ideas can be found in the experience rather than a blatant telling of what happened. Explaining it in a way that is too literal would be counter-productive and would probably lead to just getting individual crumbs of the ideas that can be found in the experience. Of course I have an interpretation of it that was blatantly obvious to me from the very first moment I watched the golden orb in Señorita Dido’s hands (I won’t go too deep into theory as I’ve tried to write about it before and it has led to a so far over 10-page essay that I’m a long way from finishing but let’s just say that it was related to Greek mythology) but then again, everyone had one and that is what is so beautiful about it. Who cares about the answers if there is the possibility to wonder, theorize, realize new things and be excited every single time you try to watch or even think about part 8?
Also, in my opinion this vagueness and non-conclusiveness is only good and isn’t that different from the original Twin Peaks as Lynch and Frost are trying to recreate the show that they created in the 90s, the kind of show that would have everyone theorizing about it for weeks, something that most people who watched it wanted to talk about. But the times have changed and a show like the original Twin Peaks wouldn’t have worked. Thus they created a puzzle that doesn’t have a singular answer. Everyone can build their own image and discuss and argue about it for years. This kind of discussion can’t be destroyed by ABC demanding them to reveal the killer but is rather eternal and never stops being interesting to someone who bothers to think about it.
It just occurred to me the reason that the awards shows from the Academy to the Emmys to Tonys don’t get audience anymore….less than half the nation has seen the movies and TV shows. Honestly, I haven’t seen practically ANY of the emmy shows. Esp.the ones on cable. Atlanta is the exception because I buy the series. I can count on one hand the number of movies I’ve seen this year. It’s either a) I’m getting old and don’t care; or b) the movies/TV shows are just not exciting or interesting; or c) I don’t know the players, or maybe a combination. But when you look at the “viewership” traffic of TV shows, few of them get pass the 1million views mark.
You make an interesting point. I end up seeing a lot of the nominated shows, but only long after the fact. I have a pretty good cable package but have to wait to see offerings from Hulu (not a subscriber), Showtime, and HBO.
Twin Peaks = AAAA+++++