Twin Peaks: The [Deferred] Return
Spoilers Ahead!
Do you ever get one of those dreams where you could be anywhere, doing anything, but you are painfully aware that your existence is ruled by an overarching goal — something you have to achieve before the dream is out. It could be something as simple as getting to the airport to catch a plane. But each step you take, every where you turn, each new moment in the dream seems to be working against this goal. No matter how simple it might be to take the train that will get you to the airport, you fail. And it’s not like you can even understand why you’re failing. It’s as if the very world around you keeps shifting its goalposts — like a drunk person trying to find their keys. The experience is so infuriating that, as soon as you wake up, you have to complete the mission in your head as you lie awake. You imagine you made it to the airport, that the story has an ending, that it makes sense. Then, if you’re lucky, you go back to sleep.
I have these kinds of dreams all the time. And Twin Peaks: The Return feels perfectly at home in that collection.
Patience is a virtue but waiting can be a bore, right? Well no one has tested that quite as much as David Lynch and Mark Frost in the third series of their legendary television show Twin Peaks. Building on the reserves of goodwill harnessed from the exemplary first two series (and a slightly off-piste prequel film) of this groundbreaking show, Lynch and Frost plunged their audience into a total vortex with Twin Peaks: The Return. The show has thus far reached new heights of surrealism, bettering the weirdness of the first two series by mostly dispensing with anything remotely approaching the mainstream. Some queried how Twin Peaks’ return would fare in a televisual landscape where so much has changed since its 1990 premiere, not least in the number of echoes it produced that are still reverberating in the industry. Would it still stand out in an oversaturated menu featuring a chorus of derivative shows? The answer, of course, is a resounding yes. What Lynch and Frost have done is to upend the core structure and nature of television, how it’s shown and made. Most television is just very upmarket soap opera; episodes exist as single units designed to keep you watching. They usually hire a phalanx of directors, writers and designers presumably to accommodate full schedules and distribute the immensely heavy work load.
Twin Peaks: The Return is directed only by David Lynch. It makes its mark once again in 2017 with an 18-part third series that is probably best viewed in one sitting. In fact, the script was apparently written as a single entity before being edited into 18 parts (note: they are not referred to as episodes). The week-long breaks that accompany the release of these parts (Part 16 has just premiered this week) is rather agonising. The waiting creates a sense of the action moving very slowly — something that people have picked up on about this third series — when in actual fact a ton of things has happened. If you were to go back to the start and watch the whole thing again one after another, you would sense the through-line holding the whole thing together much more clearly. I know that sounds obvious but in a landscape where most television shows wrap up mini-storylines in each episode whilst seeding the next round of action, this approach is startlingly unique. It’s sort of ironic (and infuriating) that a show whose very structure encourages binge-watching is only available to us in the now out-dated model of one per week.
But it all feels like part of the fun. Lynch and Frost are toying with us in the most glorious way imaginable, making the pay-off more spectacular than even our dreams. But don’t be fooled, whether you’re watching someone sweep the floor of a bar for a solid minute or a woman slowly preparing to leave a room when clearly time is of the essence, there is an order at play. The deferral of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper’s return to his essential, virtuous Dale Cooper-ness has been teased for a full fifteen episodes. That’s fifteen hours of watching Twin Peaks where Dale Cooper has either been trapped in the Black and White Lodges, represented by his evil tulpa/doppelganger colloquially known as ‘Dark Coop’ or trapped in a type of coma inside the presentation of an unsuspecting insurance salesman known as Dougie Jones, who doesn’t truly exist but was rather a decoy made by Dark Coop. Only an actual coma seems to wake Cooper from inside the outer shell of Dougie Jones and become the man we know and love.
The show’s courage in deferring the return of Dale Cooper for three months makes the pay-off in Part 16 of The Return the most sweet-tasting and glorious punch-the-air moment. His defiant statement ‘I am the FBI’ is destined to live long in memes and gifs, where he is already quite the star. This third series has existed in a time all of its own creation. It has spun off into a thousand different directions, each leaving a little clue for you to piece together. Anecdotes and references abound. It’s an Easter Egg paradise. Characters will stay in one scene over multiple episodes. Things are happening spontaneously but being presented linearly. Fragments are out of sync with one another but somehow if you just held the binoculars the right way you might just find a clear picture. Who else is making stuff like this in 2017? In a time where every media outlet is just busting to describe any new TV show as ‘the next…’ Twin Peaks: The Return is like an alien ship that has deigned to grace us with its presence for 18 hours before it departs, perhaps forever. And I haven’t even touched upon the show’s obsession with electricity, its exploration of the Tibetan concept of the tulpa, the sound and art design, the obsession with dreams or the grander theories about the structure of the show and its characters. I’m not sure I really have the brain capacity!
I just merely wanted to say that, well, bring on the two-hour finale next week. If it has to be goodbye, I will so enjoy sending this great show off. Good things come to those who wait.
