At long last, the wait is almost over. Twin Peaks will be back on television. I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THAT I CAN SAY THAT. Who would have thought, after all of David Lynch’s proclamations that the show was ‘as dead as a doornail’, that we would be firing up the percolator and sitting down to 18 HOURS (!!!) of new episodes in our favorite American town?
Since the announcement of the series’ return way back in October 2014, I have had a lot of time to think about my expectations for the new episodes. I am not one of those fans who wants this to be 1991 Revisited. I love surrealism and experimental art and I’m ready to go wherever Mr Lynch is going to take me. However, I can’t help but hope for a few things to happen in the new show.
BEHOLD, MY TWIN PEAKS 2017 WISH LIST:
1 — AMAZING MUSIC. One of the things I look forward to when I’m watching anything new by David Lynch is the music. The Angelo instrumentals, the pop songs (curiously absent from the original Twin Peaks), the ambient scores. I loved the Johnny Jewel song that was unearthed recently and Angelo is always excellent, so I am fairly confident that I won’t be disappointed in this area. The Eddie Vedder song…well, I have never been a huge Pearl Jam fan and the tune doesn’t seem very ‘Peaksy’ to me, but I am always open to being wrong. I just want new music that I will be listening to for the NEXT 25 years. Songs to drink coffee to, dream about, get lost inside. Songs that reach down into my being and make me feel alive. Songs that will become a part of me, like so much of the soundtrack of the original series and the movie. AM I ASKING FOR TOO MUCH? Probably, but this is an area where Lynch rarely disappoints. I just bought a top-notch stereo system. Let’s rock.
2 — HUMOR. Sometimes I forget just how damn hilarious Twin Peaks is: Dale Cooper, bleeding on the floor from a gunshot wound, begrudgingly giving a thumbs up to the room service waiter. Harry’s smile-and-nod after Andy’s declaration of ‘I’m a whole damn town!’. Jerry Horne circling the one-armed man and asking ‘Who’s BOB? Do we know a Bob?’. Almost anything Albert Rosenfield says.
David Lynch makes me laugh. He GETS me. Very few articles about the man talk about just how maddeningly funny he can be. He is an expert at detailing the tiny, ridiculous moments that make life worth living. It’s not an ‘obvious’ type of humor. Instead, it’s an absurdist, dry, surreal humor and it is EXACTLY what I love. I hope that the new episodes make me laugh so hard that I am in tears.
3 — THE DARKNESS. As much as I want Twin Peaks to be funny, I also want it to be as dark and disturbing as hell. In my opinion, the only time the series dipped in quality was during the stretch of episodes in season two after Laura’s murder case was wrapped up and most of the action was centered on the superfluous storylines: Nadine returning to high school, Little Nicky, Lana and her love affair with the Milford brothers. These stories had a chance to be entertaining if they had been intermingling with a good, creepy, intense main plot. Instead, they wore out their welcome and made the show (I hate to say) a little boring at times. Especially during rewatches when I knew that these bizarre subplots were not going to coalesce into some amazing, grand conspiracy relating to Cooper and the Black Lodge.
I am quite confident that the new Twin Peaks will not be lacking in exploring the darkness within the soul: David Lynch has said that the Fire Walk With Me film is very important to the new season. The recently released trailer is effectively foreboding as hell. MY PREDICTION: PREPARE TO HIDE BEHIND YOUR COUCH.
4 — RESOLVING A FEW STORYLINES FROM SEASON TWO. I realize that it’s 25 years later. I realize that this is a brand new world of Twin Peaks. I realize that this is not a ‘fan service’ reunion. That being said, I will be a little disappointed if some characters and situations are entirely forgotten about, especially since these same characters and plots were featured very prominently at the end of season two.
What became of the Ghostwood development after the explosion at the bank, and how did Catherine react to it all? Is Ben Horne really Donna’s father? What really did happen to Josie? Will we find out the fates of the characters who aren’t returning like Major Briggs, Harry Truman, Lana Milford, Catherine Martell, Donna Hayward? Damn it; I even want to know what became of Dick Tremayne (I realize he is not one of the more popular characters in the show’s fandom, but I just love Ian Buchanan in everything he does!).
I don’t reasonably expect all of my questions to be answered, especially since most of these characters and subplots will probably have nothing to do with what is going on in Twin Peaks all these years later. Still, it would be nice to know that I didn’t watch all of these stories build up to cliffhangers that I will never get a resolution to. On the flip side of that coin though, sometimes in life you don’t get resolution — ‘I wonder whatever happened to that woman whose husband died in that bank explosion…’
Every small town, no matter how connected and close a community may be, will have its mysteries. As much as I would love to know the fates of all of these people, I am also perfectly fine with wondering about what happened for the rest of my life. So it’s a win-win for me on this one.
5 — SURPRISE CAST MEMBERS. We have all pored over the list of actors for the new show. We have seen who will be returning and who the newcomers will be. Still, I am holding out hope (and have heard more than a few rumors from reliable sources) that we will see some actors and characters that we will surprise us with their return and KNOCK OUR SOCKS OFF.
Imagine the possibility of seeing Harry Truman again! Or Agent Jeffries (hey, you never know). Josie Packard. Agent Desmond. Catherine Martell. Donna Hayward. And how about Annie?!? There could be so many potential cameos and surprises in store for us. And one thing we know about David Lynch is that he loves to surprise us. I hope that he has at least a couple of casting tricks up his sleeve this summer for us.
6 — GOOD COOPER, BAD COOPER. When we last saw Dale Cooper, he was trapped in the Black Lodge. BOB had possessed his body in the real world. I will be extremely upset if this storyline is somehow all wrapped up when the new episodes start. Judging by the promos, it won’t be.
Conversely, I hope the new episodes won’t solely feature the BOB-possessed version of Agent Cooper. I want our favorite FBI man back in town. I want to hear more about Tibet, cherry pie, coffee, and snowshoe rabbits. I want to see that warm, goofy grin. I don’t want my favorite television show to return after 25 years, against all odds, and not have my favorite character return with it even though the actor who plays him will be there onscreen. That doesn’t seem fair.
But how will Lynch pull it all off? Keeping Cooper in the Black Lodge for the majority of the season wouldn’t be very satisfying, even from a storyline perspective. Maybe Cooper can escape from the Lodge and we can have two Coopers running around, one of them evil and murderous? That could make for a very interesting season. However Lynch intends to play this one out, I’m behind him 100%. I just hope that we haven’t lost our special agent for the majority of the episodes.
7 — TIME TRAVEL. Ok, I know this is a longshot. But I personally love time travel stories if they are done well. Lynch had already flirted with time travel in the Twin Peaks universe by having Annie relay information to Laura about Dale being in the Black Lodge, as well as Laura and Dale’s dreams about the Red Room before they were ever there. Also, not to get too spoilery, but there were some leaked set photos early on in filming the new episodes that may suggest a Twin Peaks universe that is slightly off-kilter from what we perceive as ‘normal’.
All I can say is that if David Lynch can work some sort of intelligent time travel into the mix, I’ll be as happy as a small Mexican chihuahua.
So that’s it. Just a few more days until Super Sunday. I am taking that day off work and stocking up on pie, doughnuts, and coffee and joining all my friends and fellow fans to welcome back David Lynch, Mark Frost, and the greatest television show of all time. Until then, I will be in the shadows if you need me.
You might also enjoy:
The Owls Are Not What They Seem & The Arm…