"Twin Peaks" Review: The Town Outlives the Mystery

Both seasons have finished, and all I have to say is hats off to Mr Lynch. This is a true masterpiece. A sheer gem.

I Stopped Caring Who Killed Laura Palmer

It revolves around a murdered girl, and I lost interest in that thread very quickly. I mean that as a compliment.

The satisfying part is that Lynch agreed with me. He and Mark Frost never wanted to answer the question and hoped to keep it open indefinitely, because the not-knowing was the thing people talked about on Monday mornings. ABC disagreed. Once the ratings slipped, the network pushed them to name the killer, and the answer landed in "Lonely Souls" on 10 November 1990: Leland Palmer, possessed by BOB. Lynch directed that one himself, and it's extraordinary.

It was also the wrong call commercially, which proves the point better than any argument could. The audience didn't stay once the question closed, because the question was never what held them. Something else was.

The Town Is the Thing

That something else is Twin Peaks itself.

The world feels alive, and it's the town I care about, along with everyone in it. This isn't a standard mystery procedural wearing a quirky coat. It's a Lynchian world with a beating heart and real substance, and it makes a small town feel vividly colourful, true to its form, alive.

Lynch pitched it to his composer as "Blue Velvet gone Peyton Place", which is exactly right. It has soap-opera bones: gossip, affairs, business feuds, a teenage social order, all played with total sincerity rather than a wink. The firs, the waterfall, and the diner aren't set dressing; they're why you keep watching. The Great Northern is the Salish Lodge at Snoqualmie Falls, and the show shoots it like somewhere you could actually check into.

Every character has something to offer. I found myself caring more about tritagonists than about Laura, whose death only exists to bring Cooper to town in the first place.

Caricature, Used Properly

The characters are almost caricatures, with exaggerated features standing in for personality, and that's a choice, not a failure. It gives everyone a clear silhouette in a cast this size, and it lets you pick a person to resonate with. Nearly everyone who watches this comes away with a favourite, and the favourites differ wildly.

It's also a trap. Spend enough time with these exaggerations, and they stop being funny and turn sad, because the show keeps showing you what each one is covering for.

Lynch's Orchestration

The plots are complicated and deep, in perfect harmony. Things happen that leave you wondering what they meant, then later you realise it was all part of Lynch's orchestration, and you're in complete awe.

Everything happens for a reason here. It flirts with the supernatural in a charming, controlled way, crossing the blurred boundary between police drama and existential thriller without losing its footing in either. More than a show: a masterclass in world and character building, a place that breathes, grows, and evolves organically.

The Accident That Made BOB

The best illustration of how this thing was actually built.

Frank Silva was a set dresser on the pilot, not a cast member. Lynch overheard someone warning him not to trap himself behind the furniture he was shifting in Laura's bedroom, and the image of Silva stuck in that room lodged in his head, so he shot a couple of panning takes of him with no idea what they were for. Later that day, while filming Sarah Palmer's vision, the camera operator told Lynch the take was ruined because Silva's reflection had caught in a mirror.

Lynch kept it. That reflection became BOB, and the set dresser became the most frightening thing in the series. Lynch's own summary is the key to the whole show: things like that happen and make you start dreaming, and one thing leads to another, and if you let it, a whole other thing opens up.

Almost nothing here feels engineered, and that's why.

The Music

The music is charming and, at times, imposing. It sets the scene and tone perfectly, flattering the spectacle that is this show.

How it was written is as good as the show itself. Lynch sat beside Angelo Badalamenti at a Fender Rhodes and talked him through a scene in real time: dark woods, a lonely girl coming out from behind a tree, her name is Laura Palmer, keep building it. Badalamenti played to the description. Twenty minutes later Lynch told him not to change a single note, because he could see Twin Peaks in it. That's "Laura Palmer's Theme", and it won Badalamenti a Grammy.

You can hear the method in it. The score wasn't written to finished footage; it was dreamed up alongside the thing itself.

The Verdict

I'm honestly out of words.

My heart and soul will reside at the Great Northern from now on.