Twin Peaks

Back in the day, the late 80s, early 90s, I wasn't what you would call a David Lynch fan.  I suffered through Eraserhead, I was massively bored by Dune, I enjoyed (if that's the right word) Blue Velvet, & I liked Wild At Heart enough, especially because I felt like it encapsulated the themes Lynch was interested in & would return to in his later works.  But nothing knocked me out as much as Twin Peaks*.  It was funny, it was weird, it was terrifying.  There was nothing like it on television, & even in my twenties I knew that meant it was doomed.

My friend Kevin at work turned me on to it - I didn't watch much television in those, my college days.  But I devoured it.  I have the first six episodes memorized.

Of course, the show lost its audience (I remember even some members of my family watched the first few episodes) & the cliffhanger at the end of season two was infuriating.  I was amazed & excited when a revival - a "return" - was announced.

& gosh, was it great!  The past few Sundays have been a joy because of that magical show.  & then last night, the final episode.  Well.  Here's what I said on Facebook:

There are very few television shows that end as strong as they begin.  One of the failings of the first version of Twin Peaks was that it wanted to be a regular weekly television show, which meant it had to add uninteresting plot points to pad episodes.  If American television had the same tradition British television has, we could have had three or four satisfying "series" of Twin Peaks in the nineties, some twenty-four episodes, all strong.  But that's not how it works here.

Some television shows end weakly because they lose popularity.  Some end because they run out of ideas.  & some of them end in such a way they completely invalidate what made them great or captivating in the first place (I'm looking at you, Dexter & Sons Of Anarchy).  None of these really apply to Twin Peaks.

It's been utterly extraordinary how much of a singular (or dual, if you count Mark Front, the series' co-creator) vision this season of Twin Peaks has been.  That's why I can't hate how the show ended.  But I can feel a little betrayed, &, like I said above, resentful.  & this is what I said on Twitter:

That actually doesn't make any sense, but I think I was trying to make the point that no one is really going to understand the series' ending as well as those who made it, although there's a lotta discussion today on the interwebs about that.  Which is fine, discuss away.  I just wish there had been some resolution, instead of an open-ended, open-to-interpretation fade to black.  I am very unhappy about it, although I again stress it hasn't affected the overall experience enough for me to change my love to disgust.

What I am going to do is pretend it ended somewhere in the middle of the 17th episode & the rest doesn't really count.  It's kind of like the comic book Daredevil at the end of the "Born Again" storyline, or the comic Swamp Thing after Alan Moore left.  The endings of those were so satisfying that the comics should've stopped there, or at least been allowed to rest for a few years.  But nope.  Lesser writers & artists took over, & I left.  I'm just going to say I left when Cooper returned to save the day & imagine that the rest of the journey was something some fanboy told me he read about on the internet & I said, "Gee, that's interesting, but also, you must admit, kinda dumb."

Also, David Lynch & I share a birthday.  Just thought I should mention that.

* For the record, my favorite David Lynch film is The Straight Story.