A Place Both Wonderful and Strange: The Extraordinary Untold History of Twin Peaks, Scott Meslow, Faber
Scott Meslow’s book whets the appetite for Twin Peaks nostalgia, even if, like me, forced to return to the original episodes, you don’t remember all the twists and turns and don’t always care. He is enthusiastic for the methods of ‘czar of bizarre’ David Lynch, even if not uncritical, and enamoured by the Twin Peaks characters. His enthusiasm is infectious.
Although now a cult favourite, recognised as one of the great TV shows, and a byword for pushing the boundaries, ABC, the network on which it aired, had an uphill battle trying to understand it, and seemingly tried to sabotage it, putting the increasingly bizarre second season on late on a Saturday night (when, pre-streaming, such scheduling mattered). To be kind, one could say it was ahead of its time; to be less kind, one could say that the wackiness of David Lynch is not for everyone.
The book benefits from the significant input of writer Mark Frost, who co-created the series with Lynch. Frost had worked on the likes of groundbreaking series Hill Street Blues; Lynch was already famously quirky, the director of Eraserhead and (the panned film adaptation of) Dune. It was his first go at TV, though he had pitched other, typically improbable projects.
Originally titled Northwest Passage, the show was saturated with the foreboding feel of Washington state’s cold pine forests. Like 90s grunge music from the same era (also originating, funnily enough, from Washington state), it is a contrast with the sun-drenched, glamourous 80s that preceded it, probably influencing the likes of X-Files, Fargo and Twilight. It was as if the towns east of Seattle where the series was filmed were, according to the crew, just waiting for them. (Lynch, apparently, was interested in the influence of trees, but in a malevolent sense.) Then there is the soundtrack, which has the presence of another character.
The title Twin Peaks came from the writers’ vision of the fictional town’s geography but could easily be a metaphor for the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the characters. The series revolved around the murder of a beautiful teenage girl, but that was something of an excuse for Lynch to create a sprawling cast of characters like something out of Dickens, allowing him to chase all manner of dark and odd storylines, while the murder continued to remain unsolved.
One thing the writers did that was different was make the victim, Laura Palmer, a central character and not a ‘nameless corpse’, as was often the case in detective shows. The story of her double life is horrific but giving her such a central role meant many viewers could sympathise with her tragedy. Meslow tells us that the actress Sheryl Lee became the recipient of letters from abuse survivors, whose letter-writing became a form of therapy.
Meslow steps into the moral woods of the series, asking, how possessed is the murderer? Is he responsible for the evil he perpetrates? Kyle MacLachlan thought that the series was ultimately about good versus evil, but Meslow draws out how for MacLachlan’s character Agent Cooper, seeking justice is not so straight-forward. We might also add that the series explores the effect of circumstances on character, though Meslow only goes so far down the path of moral analysis, concentrating more on the logistics of creating the series and the intricacies of the plot turns. Lynch was happy to leave the particulars of moral interpretation to the audience.
Lynch’s working method was to ask actors to stick to the script, but he gave cryptic, limited advice and used ‘happy accidents’, such as the eventually pivotal role of the character BOB, a violent being from another dimension with hints of the demonic, being created simply because the actor accidentally appeared in the background of a scene. Lynch liked to plant clues that even he didn’t yet understand; obsessive fans debated such details over the juvenile internet – even when the clues turned out to be mistakes, but the details weren’t meaningless either, adding to the quirkiness. Twin Peaks became a surreal world where the usual rules of probability and causality didn’t apply.
Lynch wanted to keep the identity of the murderer open-ended; the writers planned to work it out later, meaning they had to move forward as if any of the characters could have done the crime. There has been speculation; Meslow suggests that although Frost and Lynch didn’t have a killer in mind when they started the series, they began to suspect who it would end up being, though that became complicated too. The cast alternated between assuming the writers knew and assuming that the writers were yet to work it out.
Frost knew that both the audience and the network would want a reveal sooner rather than later. Such a reveal was dangled then withdrawn; the eventual disclosure in the second season ran into the problem that had been evident in series like Moonlighting and The Nanny – if there is tension between the characters which is continually put off, viewers keep tuning in; if the tension is resolved the series deflates. Lynch and Frost admitted later that they, under pressure, revealed the killer too soon.
The maligned film Fire Walk with Me, as a prequel to the series, had to rely on amping up the quirkiness and introducing new characters because the mystery was solved. (Meslow reminds us how badly the film was received but also tells us that Lynch was happy with it, and it is probably better judged now. One filmmaker said Lee’s turn in it was ‘one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema’.)
Meslow is enthusiastic, but he doesn’t dispel the original feeling that Twin Peaks was, by its second season, creaking under the weight of its weirdness, because of Lynch’s uncompromising but improvisational ways of working. Meslow points out jarring plotlines and even the actors’ puzzlement, even while he thinks it could’ve gone for another season in the 90s. Of the 2017 reboot, Meslow says it’s a ‘darker, harder world – the same one viewers were hoping to escape’. Although the third series was praised, it perhaps suffers from the perennial problem of reboots – fan expectations, loose ends, the ravages of time. Possibly it also suffers from David Lynch simply having too many ideas.
Nick Mattiske blogs on books at coburgreviewofbooks.wordpress.com and is the illustrator of Thoughts That Feel So Big.
