I remember Twin Peaks being on TV when I was growing up but didn't watch it; I decided recently to give it a shot, mainly because of the many references made to it in other shows, or in reviews of other shows. I assumed that for a thirty-year-old show to still be referenced so heavily it must have been of considerable quality. I have watched so many recent lazy, unoriginal, formulaic TV shows that I figured going back in time might provide more entertaining viewing. I was right, but it was not all GOOD entertainment. The first few episodes had me intrigued; the feel of the show and some of the characters was just so refreshingly "off" that it was oddly fascinating. It was really the bizarre grieving of the Palmer parents that did the trick for me; the mother and her stop-start wailing and the father sob-dancing, it was just so off-the-wall I loved it. You also had Agent Cooper coming to town and being awestruck by the natural beauty, staring in childlike wonder at the trees, overly appreciative of every little thing in every interaction he had with the local folk, not the standard big-shot FBI character that has been done to death. The first dream scene with the dancing dwarf was entrancing, watching the little guy move in such mysterious ways, I was sold. I thought that the show would be saturated with off-beat touches like this throughout the two seasons and kept watching each episode, hoping to not be disappointed. It was like Lynch had taken the standard soap opera, pushed it down a flight of stairs and when it stumbled back to its feet it was never quite the same, permanently touched in the head.
However, I found that the spell cast upon me in the first few episodes quickly wore off. I start like this to establish that I initially LIKED the show; I didn't come into it wanting to slam it and tear it down, which is what the 10-star reviewers tend to dismiss any negative reviewers as being guilty of. Unfortunately, those genuinely fascinating moments are very few and far between. If the creators had had an off-the-wall, fully formed, single season show in mind and executed it efficiently, it would've really worked for me. The plot would have been tighter, the characters would've remained fresh and the story would've been more cohesive and engaging. Instead, they had this half-formed, quirky spin on a soap opera-slash-murder mystery and dragged it out over two seasons and thirty episodes. By doing so, the refreshingly quirky characters become tired and varying degrees of annoying; it would be like taking some of the bit-part Seinfeld characters like The Wiz or Kenny Bania and giving them hours of dedicated screen time over a two year period, essentially draining them of any comic value through over-saturation. And THAT applies to the few GOOD characters; ones like James, Donna, Josie (to name but a few) become sickeningly irritating. James Marshall plays James Hurley and brings a whole new level to the term "wooden"; he makes Keanu Reeves look animated and layered. Lara-Flynn Boyle plays his girlfriend Donna and was also relatively lifeless, yet these two had massive chunks of screen time over the two seasons, despite bringing virtually nothing to the plot. This was filler of the worst kind. Marshall was inexplicably given a dedicated "road trip" story line which made for truly nauseating viewing. It shows the inadequacies of the creators of the show, incapable of recognizing that they had cast someone with zero charisma or screen presence and then giving him MORE screen time the deeper they went into the show. He should've been killed off as quickly as possible. Much of the casting was truly dire. Eric Da Re as Leo Johnson was terrible, one of the least menacing bad guys of all time. The only satisfying thing about his involvement was when he became a spoon-fed, Frankenstein-like idiot after a shooting. I'm still confused by Harry Goaz's acting as Deputy Andy; I have no idea if this was entirely intentional bad-acting or not. If it was, it became incredibly annoying and distracting extremely quickly. Joan Chen as Josie Packard was comparable to James Marshall in her lack of screen presence and charisma and to Goaz in her total lack of acting ability, to the point where you wonder if it was an intentional gimmick in both cases. Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry was another dead-eyed fish of an actor; so many of the main characters were horribly miscast. On the flip side, there WERE some standouts. Piper Laurie as Catherine Martell, Laurie being a legitimate movie actor, most memorable to me in The Hustler opposite Newman. MacLachlan played his role to a T, like Paul Gross in Due South, examples of perfect casting, whether you like the shows or the characters or not. Madchen Amick lit up the screen every time she graced it. Sherilyn Fenn was fantastic; she was the femme fatale that all the men fall for and was entirely believable, whereas Marshall was supposed to be the male equivalent, the ladies' man and was utterly implausible in such a role. The casting was all over the place and added to the overall mess of the show as it inexorably wore on.
The longer it went on, the more it became apparent that Lynch was simply "winging it". He clearly had only a loose semblance of an underlying plot and this became painfully evident once it dragged its way into Season 2. TWENTY-TWO episodes, at least 90% of which was filler. When you have so much filler, you bury any of the good. The theme music that was initially catchy and something you looked forward to hearing becomes maddening when it is filtered heavily throughout every episode for THIRTY episodes. I'm not sure if the 10-star reviewers are writing reviews on a recent revisiting of the show or their memory of when they viewed it decades ago. I know from personal experience that such memories can be exceptionally deceiving. The mind filters out the best moments - for me it would be Leland grief-dancing - and puts a golden haze on the show. I strongly suspect that this is the case; many such reviewers simply refer to their favourite characters like Log Lady, the gimmickiest of characters. I urge 10-star reviewers who are reviewing based on old memories to go back and watch the series again, particularly the second season. Sit through the "plot" lines of thirty-five year old Nadine developing superhuman strength and believing she is a high school student after a head injury again and tell me that is great television. Relive James' road trip if you can. Watch episode after episode after episode of Harry Goaz's' bizarre and deeply confusing performance. For me, it all became sadly tragic that Lynch managed to turn the initial refreshing parody of a soap opera into the banal reality of one.
However, I found that the spell cast upon me in the first few episodes quickly wore off. I start like this to establish that I initially LIKED the show; I didn't come into it wanting to slam it and tear it down, which is what the 10-star reviewers tend to dismiss any negative reviewers as being guilty of. Unfortunately, those genuinely fascinating moments are very few and far between. If the creators had had an off-the-wall, fully formed, single season show in mind and executed it efficiently, it would've really worked for me. The plot would have been tighter, the characters would've remained fresh and the story would've been more cohesive and engaging. Instead, they had this half-formed, quirky spin on a soap opera-slash-murder mystery and dragged it out over two seasons and thirty episodes. By doing so, the refreshingly quirky characters become tired and varying degrees of annoying; it would be like taking some of the bit-part Seinfeld characters like The Wiz or Kenny Bania and giving them hours of dedicated screen time over a two year period, essentially draining them of any comic value through over-saturation. And THAT applies to the few GOOD characters; ones like James, Donna, Josie (to name but a few) become sickeningly irritating. James Marshall plays James Hurley and brings a whole new level to the term "wooden"; he makes Keanu Reeves look animated and layered. Lara-Flynn Boyle plays his girlfriend Donna and was also relatively lifeless, yet these two had massive chunks of screen time over the two seasons, despite bringing virtually nothing to the plot. This was filler of the worst kind. Marshall was inexplicably given a dedicated "road trip" story line which made for truly nauseating viewing. It shows the inadequacies of the creators of the show, incapable of recognizing that they had cast someone with zero charisma or screen presence and then giving him MORE screen time the deeper they went into the show. He should've been killed off as quickly as possible. Much of the casting was truly dire. Eric Da Re as Leo Johnson was terrible, one of the least menacing bad guys of all time. The only satisfying thing about his involvement was when he became a spoon-fed, Frankenstein-like idiot after a shooting. I'm still confused by Harry Goaz's acting as Deputy Andy; I have no idea if this was entirely intentional bad-acting or not. If it was, it became incredibly annoying and distracting extremely quickly. Joan Chen as Josie Packard was comparable to James Marshall in her lack of screen presence and charisma and to Goaz in her total lack of acting ability, to the point where you wonder if it was an intentional gimmick in both cases. Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry was another dead-eyed fish of an actor; so many of the main characters were horribly miscast. On the flip side, there WERE some standouts. Piper Laurie as Catherine Martell, Laurie being a legitimate movie actor, most memorable to me in The Hustler opposite Newman. MacLachlan played his role to a T, like Paul Gross in Due South, examples of perfect casting, whether you like the shows or the characters or not. Madchen Amick lit up the screen every time she graced it. Sherilyn Fenn was fantastic; she was the femme fatale that all the men fall for and was entirely believable, whereas Marshall was supposed to be the male equivalent, the ladies' man and was utterly implausible in such a role. The casting was all over the place and added to the overall mess of the show as it inexorably wore on.
The longer it went on, the more it became apparent that Lynch was simply "winging it". He clearly had only a loose semblance of an underlying plot and this became painfully evident once it dragged its way into Season 2. TWENTY-TWO episodes, at least 90% of which was filler. When you have so much filler, you bury any of the good. The theme music that was initially catchy and something you looked forward to hearing becomes maddening when it is filtered heavily throughout every episode for THIRTY episodes. I'm not sure if the 10-star reviewers are writing reviews on a recent revisiting of the show or their memory of when they viewed it decades ago. I know from personal experience that such memories can be exceptionally deceiving. The mind filters out the best moments - for me it would be Leland grief-dancing - and puts a golden haze on the show. I strongly suspect that this is the case; many such reviewers simply refer to their favourite characters like Log Lady, the gimmickiest of characters. I urge 10-star reviewers who are reviewing based on old memories to go back and watch the series again, particularly the second season. Sit through the "plot" lines of thirty-five year old Nadine developing superhuman strength and believing she is a high school student after a head injury again and tell me that is great television. Relive James' road trip if you can. Watch episode after episode after episode of Harry Goaz's' bizarre and deeply confusing performance. For me, it all became sadly tragic that Lynch managed to turn the initial refreshing parody of a soap opera into the banal reality of one.