The gum I like has come back in style... Doc here, a man who some say knows the owls are not what they seem.
It's been 26 years since Twin Peaks disappeared almost as quickly as Phillip Jeffries from the ABC network in 1991. I am old enough to not only have watched it in it's original run, I also taped every episode on my VHS VCR. It's first season was about as perfect a TV show in the pre-streaming era could be.
I enter this clip of a season 1 scene as Exhibit "A" to the record...
It's second season was uneven...Varying between season one perfection and an unmitigated mess. And after 29 episodes, it was gone like a pale horse in the Palmer living room.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm a David Lynch junkie. As an undergraduate student back in NY, I was first exposed to David Lynch in a student screening of "Eraserhead". It struck a chord with the young Lizardo, and changed the way I looked at both still and moving images to this day.
The next David Lynch project had even more of an impact on the then maturing Lizardo... "Blue Velvet". It was possibly my first ah-ha moment where the dark underbelly of society, the feared and the fearful, the breakers and the broken, living underneath an idyllic small town was shown. Just beyond the white picket fences, a bleak and dangerous industrial area where bad things just happen.
I enter this clip of Blue Velvet's opening sequence as Exhibit "B" to the record...
The seedy, the dangerous, the unexpected. All keyed into my fascination with the wrong side of town, the sketchy area where you would find an adult theater or bookstore. David Lynch made it OK.
Then came Twin Peaks in 1990, and it had a similar ring to it's narrative: Things are not what they seem. Secret societies, a remote bordello named "One Eyed Jack's", illicit relationships, a girl who could tie a cherry stem into a knot in her mouth, a girl wrapped in plastic, and one fuck of a dream sequence that might never be matched.
I enter this clip of Twin Peak's season 1 episode 2 "Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer" as Exhibit "C" to the record:
And all of this aired on network TV.
And tonight dear readers, "Twin Peaks: The Return" makes it's debut on the Showtime Network at 9ET/8CT. Tonight features 2 episodes back to back, and will be followed by 16 more, all directed by Lynch. Lynch himself has said that it views as an 18-hour movie.
My last clip is Exhibit "D", a tasty tease of the upcoming season, and I would like to enter it into the record:
Revel in this time of television, where you have Twin Peaks returning, "Westworld" bending your mind and challenging you, and "American Gods" (on Starz) carving new ground on storytelling and imagery.
Let's rock...
Thanks,
Doc
