FEATURE: How “Twin Peaks” Changed Television
WRITTEN BY: Maya Sade Eberlin
The year is 1990. It’s Thursday. You’re in your early twenties. You’re on your way home from a long day at work, looking forward to turning on the television and playing a couple of reruns as background noise as you and your partner put the finishing touches on the roast that’s been simmering in the crockpot for the entirety of your shift. You’re a Norman Rockwell-esque picture of suburban America, right down to the heteronormativity and implied social conservatism.
You sit down on the living room couch for a late dinner. You begin channel surfing, kitschy music and blown-out dialogue hitting you in slightly different tones and volumes as you pass “The Simpsons,” “The Golden Girls,” “Baywatch,” “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and “Full House” before you land on catching the tail end of a “Father Dowling Mysteries” rerun.
For the first time, you hear the light, haunting notes of Angelo Badalamenti’s theme instrumental. You don’t recognize the name of any cast members, unless you were a fan of “Dune” (unlikely) or “Blue Velvet” (more likely). Three names flash across the screen to close the opening credits:
MARK FROST
&
DAVID LYNCH
TWIN PEAKS
Prior to “Twin Peaks,” television programming was strictly controlled by network executives who expected writers and directors to adhere to strict guidelines. Episodes were formulaic, with defined, timed arcs designed to align with commercial breaks. Characters were predictable, intended to fulfill an expected archetype for audiences, ultimately flattening any potential character development.
In the mid-century era, a vast majority of television programming was designed to be watched at random: you could jump into a series for the first time through a midafternoon rerun of S4E18 and still successfully follow the plot and gain a general understanding of character dynamics and relationships.
By the time “Twin Peaks” aired, David Lynch was already a familiar name in cinephile circles: his debut feature film, “Eraserhead,” quickly became a cult classic in the midnight-movie screening circuit. The film’s haunting atmosphere was inspired by his time spent in Philadelphia studying film at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
His interest in bringing the greasy cogs of society to light began here: he described living and working in the city as constantly feeling like something haunting was always happening nearby.
Lynch’s rejection of linear storytelling and affinity for dream logic– the vague, abstract, and absurd– earned him an adjective of his own. Often, modern avant-garde filmographic work, particularly if dreams are a central theme, is described as “Lynchian.”
Much of his filmography examines the tar-black seedy underbelly of suburban America. This fascination with the macabre within the mundane was able to take on a longer, more complex form in “Twin Peaks.” On top of being an exploration on how grief grips a community, the series was a commentary on humanity; it investigated suburban life, the American dream, and the people who fall through the cracks.
Aside from the subject matter being entirely unfamiliar to your average consumer at the dawn of the 1990s, Lynch’s stylistic and writing choices were entirely new to television networks. Each episode was related– often, if you missed one, you missed key plot points that drove central themes for the remainder of the series. “Twin Peaks” aired prior to VCRs becoming widely accessible, which proved challenging for consumers and pushed people to shape their schedules around each episode’s release.
The series was genre-bending: blending elements of mystery, fantasy and the supernatural with cheesy soap opera dialogue and relationship drama. Many audience members were drawn to the central mystery– people were dying to know who killed Laura Palmer!– and were frustrated with Lynch’s disinterest in spoon-feeding audiences straightforward, digestible, satisfactory answers.
Lynch employed surrealism and dream sequences liberally, goading the audience into creating their own theories to explain questions seemingly left unanswered. This theorizing created a cult following– a pre-internet fandom, whose members were obsessed solving the mysteries of this moody Pacific Northwestern town.
In creating “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch fundamentally shifted the way audiences and network executives viewed television, opening the door for more creative pursuits getting greenlit. Now, it is not uncommon for even children’s shows to meld dreams with reality, or employ abstract storytelling methods– most recently, “Yellowjackets” developed a cult following of young teens enthralled by the very narrative details that alienated so many from “Twin Peaks” when it aired.
