Twin Peaks: The Return – how the reboot of David Lynch’s bizarre masterpiece improved on the original | Culture

WWhen Twin Peaks debuted in 1990, it was a cultural phenomenon. On the surface, it was a classic whodunnit: prom queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is found dead and charming, FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) shows up in town to investigate.

Despite the often violent content, entire families sat down to watch, and groups of friends had viewing parties where they ate cherry pie, drank damn good coffee, and dressed up as characters – including wrapped in plastic like poor Laura. The broad appeal was due to the compelling style of writer-director David Lynch and writer-producer Mark Frost, who transformed a small-town murder mystery into a bizarre drama, filled with deep tragedy, supernatural forces and complex relationships .

Across two seasons and a previous film (1992’s Fire Walk with Me), Lynch and Frost’s unique, uncompromising vision and pastiche of genres and tones – from soap opera to film noir to comedy zany, tragedy and horror – forever changed what television could look like. .

Fast forward 25 years and Twin Peaks: The Return landed in 2017 – a third season, comprising 18 episodes, all directed by Lynch. No longer subject to the constraints of the network, Lynch and Frost used all of their creative autonomy to execute a vision that was entirely their own — and the result is strange, sometimes excruciating, but always compelling television.

In the third season, Agent Cooper is trapped in the supernatural Black Lodge 25 years after the cliffhanger ending of the original series. He works to get out and eventually return to Twin Peaks, while his doppelganger, host of the evil spirit Bob, plots in the real world to prevent Bob’s return to the Lodge.

The Return has more subplots than can be summarized here – even surpassing the original – from the dying Log Lady (Catherine E Coulson) urging the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department to reopen the investigation into the Laura’s death, until a brutal murder in Buckhorn, South Dakota, attracts the attention of FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole (played by Lynch) and his colleagues.

It moves indiscriminately between story arcs, and sometimes between timelines and dimensions, and features surreal visual and aural sequences that raise many more questions than they offer answers. This can seem vexing, even infuriating – particularly in episode eight, AKA Gotta Light?, which particularly pushes the boundaries of Lynchian cinematography with a sonically and visually audacious sequence showing Bob’s birth.

And then, love him or hate him, there’s Dougie, Cooper’s double (Hello oo oo!).

All this eccentricity and boldness works – better than season two, which suffered from silly plots and narrative inconsistency after the mid-season reveal of Laura’s killer (a decision forced by the network) . The result is bold television that leaves you frustrated, saddened and amused, often all at once.

There’s a lot to enjoy: MacLachlan’s performance is phenomenal, and a whole host of returning characters scratch a nostalgic itch. New characters enrich the world, including Robert Forster as Sheriff Frank Truman, Naomi Watts as Dougie’s abrasive wife Janey-E Jones, and Matthew Lillard as the hapless high school principal, William Hastings.

As always with Twin Peaks, the appeal is not the plot, but rather its emotional resonance. Often, it’s not the dramatic scenes that are most striking, but the small, simple moments where a character’s fear, sadness or joy are clearly represented.

For example, when Ed is sitting apart from his beloved Norma at the Double R Diner; when the Log Lady dies; when we see Bobby crying at the sight of Laura’s photo. It also features scenes of indescribable violence, banal cruelty and zany humor. Lynch gives some characters happy endings, but others are simply stifled — or, like Audrey Horne, stuck in spaces of torturous liminality. Despite all its surrealism, the show is thus faithful to the unpredictable vicissitudes of life.

All seasons of Twin Peaks have heartbreaking final episodes with ambiguous endings in common. Even though it is devastating, there is something satisfying about this narrative ending. Still, I’m tempted to rewatch everything in reverse order, starting with The Return and ending at the very beginning: with baby-faced Cooper telling Diane over dictaphone that he’s entering the town of Twin Peaks – and that ‘From there, everything will happen. could happen.