The Series:

One of the most original and unusual television shows to ever air on a major network, Twin Peaks didn't stick around too long - twenty-nine episodes over two seasons to be exact - but its impact was huge and its influence still felt. Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, they deceptively made the series look like a standard murder mystery, albeit one peppered with a cast of rather quirky characters. Once the premise was firmly established and the players setup, however, Lynch and company took us into increasingly more unusual and considerably darker territory then we'd seen on television before. Not since The Prisoner had a major television series flirted with surrealism as heavily as Twin Peaks.

The series begins in the small northwestern mill town of Twin Peaks where a man named Peter Martell (Jack Nance of Eraserhead) finds the body of a young woman named Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) washed up on the shore near the sawmill where he works. The local sheriff, Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), is called in to investigate the scene and the townsfolk are soon shocked to find out that the late prom queen was murdered.

From there, the F.B.I. becomes involved in the case. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan of Blue Velvet) arrives in the small town and is immediately won over by its charm, taking note of the spruce trees and enjoying the local coffee and the odd slice of cherry pie. Constantly making audio recordings to send back to his office, Cooper gets down to business and soon ties Laura's murder into a couple of other killings that have taken place over the years. He and Harry work together to try and solve the case and find out who her true killer is, though there are a multitude of suspects including her boyfriend Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), and a local wife beating dope dealer named Leo (Eric Da Re). Adding to the mystery are the facts that come out about Laura's secret life. Her best friend, Donna (Laura Flynn Boyle) is at first hesitant to talk about it but the local schoolgirl vamp, poor little rich girl Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) has no qualms about talking to Agent Cooper about anything he'd like. And then there's the sinister man known only as Bob (Frank Silva) and his friend, a strange one-armed man (Al Strobel).

To complicate matters further, there are subplots revolving around the sale of the local sawmill, a few steamy clandestine love affairs, and the increasingly strange lives of grieving parents of Laura Palmer, Leland (Ray Wise) and Sarah (Grace Zabriskie). The local gas station owner, Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) has to deal with his one-eyed wife, Nadine (Wendy Robie), and her fixation on the noise level of her curtain rods while his nephew, James Hurley (James Marshall), turns out to know more about this case than he first let on. A lady who cradles a log, known only as The Log Lady (Catherine Coulson), drops vague hints about the crime. As Cooper and Truman get closer to solving the case, Cooper starts seeing things in his dreams - he continually goes to a red room where a strange dwarf drops hints to him and where a dead ringer for Laura Palmer sits and waits.

The mystery surrounding Laura's death and the various subplots that the event revealed made up the first season but once the second season began, the show went in a different direction with many of the same characters. Audrey's career moves at One Eyed Jack's weren't working out so well and the conflict between Bobby and James had come to a head as had the problems with Shelly and her husband Leo. Sawmill owner Josie Packard (Jean Chen) has disappeared, and Dale Cooper has been injured. The show gets mired under its own subplots for the first part of the second season but soon gets back on track despite laying on the quirk a little too thick for the show's own good. As the show returns to the resolution of Laura's murder and then explains why it happened in the first place, we're introduced to a few more interesting supporting characters such as D.E.A. Agent Dennis (David Duchovney) and John Justice Wheeler (Billy Zane). We also get to learn more about the characters and their lives as we see what really makes them tick. All the while, the mystery continues to unfold...

While it's pretty much universally agreed upon that the first season of the series is brilliant while the second season is merely adequate, when watching the series in its entirety as it's presented in this set the division doesn't seem quite as strong. While it's true that the later episodes feel like they're simply weird for the sake of weird (contrasted to the first batch where the strange events happen for a reason) and that the second half of the show relied on guest stars and celebrity cameos a little too heavily (look for a young Heather Graham to show up as well as a bit part played by Lynch himself), seen as a whole Twin Peaks holds up remarkably well. Yes, there are certainly elements in the show that go so far out of the realm of possibility that it all becomes completely unrealistic (the black and white lodges and Cooper's chess game for example) but this doesn't tarnish the series enough to harm it as a single piece of entertainment. Obviously certain episodes are stronger than others, this is true for both seasons of the show, but the series remains one of the strongest, most creative shows of the nineties.

One of the recurring themes in David Lynch's work is that small town America may look wholesome on the surface but really, underneath it all, it's got issues. We saw this in Blue Velvet and we definitely see it in Twin Peaks. The series blends his love of Americana and old Hollywood production values with fifties wardrobe and oddball jazz music and comes out as something akin to a very skewed version of old cliffhanger serial. Aside from the quirk, however, there are some key characteristics of the series, exceptional ones, that make it stand out.

The ensemble cast that was put together for the series is fantastic. Kyle MacLachlan is perfect as the straight laced and eccentric F.B.I. agent with a penchant for coffee and pie and he contrasts really well with the down-to-earth small-town sensibilities of Michael Ontkean as Harry S. Truman. Heading up the trio of youthful femme fatales in the cast is Laura Flynn Boyle who has the right kind of doe-eyed charm to play nice girl Donna. Sheryl Lee is great as the homecoming queen with a secret while Sherilyn Fenn is the perfect seductive vamp - when she tied that cherry stem into a bow with her tongue, an entire nation of heterosexual men took notice! Quirky performances from Joan Chen, Ray Wise and especially Catherine Coulson ensure that as bizarre as the series got, it was always well acted by a very capable cast of performers.

Then there's the whole 'look' of the series. Shot by Frank Byers (who would shoot Sherilyn Fenn again a few years later for Boxing Helena), Twin Peaks would turn out to be one of the most visually haunting shows in television history. From the opening moments where Laura Palmer is found dead, wrapped in plastic, to the later soap opera style drama surrounding the saw mill and the hotel or even later material like the One Eyed Jacks episodes, everything looks slick and polished. The show remains incredibly colorful and the camera captures all manner of strange details even during darker scenes. On top of the great visuals is a truly haunting and instantly recognizable score from long time Lynch collaborator, Angelo Badalamenti, the music may initially sound melodramatic and over done but in keeping with the 'serial' nature of the series it couldn't be more suitable.

While it wasn't with us long, the show would span a theatrical follow up (technically a prequel) in the form of Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me, that would actually tie up quite a few loose ends. Sadly that film has not been included in this set, but the cultural impact of the series has been felt in plenty of television shows that have come since like The X-Files and other shows with a supernatural twist. Fan conventions continue to happen every year or so and soundtrack albums remain in print. The series had a healthy second run on Bravo! once it was finished and has remained popular on home video for years with each re-release seeming to garner the series more fans. In many ways the series is timeless, it rarely feels dated or like a product of the early nineties, rather it seems to take place in its own time and in its own world.

Video:

The series was shot and composed for television so the 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio that each one of the episodes in this set is presented in is definitely correct. For the most part, the material looks great in this set. Color reproduction is first rate and although there are a few spots in the pilot where the black levels fluctuate a bit, for the most part the darker scenes are nice and strong. Detail is excellent in both the foreground and the background and there aren't any problems with compression artifacts. Only a slight trace of edge enhancement is apparent and aside from the odd speck or two, print damage is all but eliminated.

Those of us who get really anal retentive about such things may notice that for some strange reason, the fourth chapter of the Pilot Episode is not flagged for progressive scan. This occurs in both versions (Paramount has included the North American version and the International Version of the pilot). The rest of the episode is properly flagged, so it's an unusual anomaly to say the least, but nevertheless, for a few minutes you may just see some of those ugly saw tooth artifacts. The rest of the episodes are properly flagged. Odd.

That one unusual (and minor) complaint aside, however, Twin Peaks really does look damn good on DVD here.