Twin Peaks' latest season is nothing short of TV hell on earth
Warning - some spoilers ahead (if you can get your head around what constitutes a spoiler on Twin Peaks)
OPINION: I have a confession to make.
I love coffee, I love cherry pie, but hot damn, I'm not loving the third and potentially final ever season of Twin Peaks.
Yep, that's right - there is another show that transmits on a Monday that melts down the internet and forces me to hide from any potential spoilers online.
And it's not Game Of Thrones.
It's been 27 years (give or take) since the murder of high school prom queen Laura Palmer shattered my world - and those of a fictional Washington town. I didn't know her personally, but thanks to David Lynch and Mark Frost's iconic Twin Peaks it became a late teenage obsession of mine.
Meshing supernatural, melodrama, horror and in an attempt to lighten the tone, soap opera, Twin Peaks was a triumph of style and idiosyncracy. Giving Kyle MacLachlan the role that effectively has defined his career as quirky but pure-of-heart FBI Agent Dale Cooper, the show's mix of murder investigation and vision of small town deceit and darkness enthralled me for 30 episodes.
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And it left me terrified, depressed and frustrated in its cliff-hanger ending, wherein Cooper was seemingly possessed by the embodiment of evil in an ultimate middle finger to those expecting a neat wrap up of the series' multi-faceted and convoluted loose ends.
Co-creator and auteur David Lynch said he's not a fan of neatly tying up stories - and that was proven when the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me launched to a critical mauling exactly 25 years ago. The film preferred to be a prequel to the series rather than answering baying fans who were left bereft by the 1990 ending.
So, it's fair to say I had great expectations for the third series of Twin Peaks (now titled Twin Peaks: The Return) to provide some answers when it began in May this year.
None of the returning cast or the wider troupe revealed any spoilers for the show's return and nobody actually had a clue what it would be about until it aired. Imagine that in the world of spoilers we now live in - practically unheard of.
Now, with 15 of the 18 episodes having been aired, we're nearing the final strait of Twin Peaks.
And I cannot wait for it to finish.
I'm sleep-deprived having viewed every episode on a Monday night after other commitments through fear of having a revelation spoiled the next day by people not talking about dragons.
Last week, due to other commitments, I had to wait 6 days to watch the show which transmits on Soho and Neon here. 6 days - do you know how carefully I had to curate my Twitter feed to ensure radio silence?
And did I get given the rich TV rewards during the past 15 weeks or after that 6 day wait?
Not in the slightest - and I'm frustrated (and dog-tired) to say the least. Showtime, who transmit the show in the USA, have hinted there's been no conversations yet with Lynch, who directed all 18 hours of this latest series, about continuing it.
To that I say "Good."
But, having endured (yep, I said endured as that's my weekly overriding feeling) 15 hours of Lynch's vision, I'm not sure I want anymore. Granted, the series couldn't have returned and simply carried on, and it's to their credit those involved didn't do that but I'm not feeling the mojo of the show at all.
It's depressing.
Described as "Lynch on pure heroin", I feel like it would have only been fair for those of us viewing it to have had access to the narcotic to share in the experience as well.
Non-sequitur scenes take place, things happen and then abruptly cut before the logical follow-up can give you either more context or a sense of narrative. Most of the action for the 15 episodes has taken place outside of Twin Peaks itself, making me even wonder why it's called Twin Peaks in the first place.
The central character Dale Cooper, so integral to proceedings, has spent the last 15 episodes inhabiting another human and walking around as if in a coma. To compound matters, the show's spent so much of its time teasing the fact that the original Cooper will break through, having escaped the confines of the mystical Black Lodge's waiting room, the apparent embodiment of evil, but has yet to deliver.
In last night's episode, (SPOILER WARNING and also a guarantee that I'm not off my head on the wacky-baccy) David Bowie returned to the show of sorts, after his role as missing FBI Agent Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
He came back as a giant Liberty tower style bell cum cross with a kettle, puffing out smoke and passing on clues in a series of numbers.
The long comatose Dale Cooper heard the words "Gordon Cole" on a rerun on Sunset Boulevard, sparking something behind his eyes. (Cole is the FBI boss in the series, a hearing-aids wearing shouting G-man played by David Lynch himself and whose partnership with Coop was integral in the original run).
Upon hearing this, crawling in a vegetative state across the floor, he stuck his fork in a plug socket, apparently electrocuting himself before Lynch once again cut to black and went onto another scene, without revealing what had happened or whether this was the moment many, myself included, had been waiting since May for.
My immediate reaction was "God, I really feel like doing that right now too."
There are now just 3 episodes left.
Three - that's 180 minutes at best.
Given Lynch has spent the last 15 hours widening the canvas, indulging his artier edges (most episodes end with a performance from a band - we've even had Moby and the Nine Inch Nails play; one even contended in a long sequence that the launch of the nuclear bomb allowed evil to enter this world - and introducing a whole heap of new characters and storylines that I don't even remotely care about, as well as avoiding spending much time in Twin Peaks or with its inhabitants, I strongly doubt the conclusion will wrap everything in a nice bow, blow me a kiss and go on its merry way.
It probably shouldn't - and that's one of the greatest learnings I got from the original series.
Primarily, that life is not fair, neat or easily resolved.
But Twin Peaks: The Return is a frustrating experience, as a viewer, a critic and foremost, as a fan. The reasons I loved the original show feel tenuous at best now, and I feel deprived of the hero I had hoped would return since he shows no sign of coming back.
It pains me to say this but I'm now hate-watching it given I'm 83% of the way through and I have a TV viewing OCD. Every week, I fire it up, in the hope that something will propel the narrative on more than a glorified tidbit, only to be disappointed by Lynch's commitment to his singular vision.
Yet every week after it ends, I read rave reviews of the episode I've just viewed. Fans and critics ecstatic that Lynch made a character say some iconic words they said 25 years ago, fans theorising over nods that are sprinkled too liberally in the 18-episode indulgence and sustained belief that that show they love is coming back. Clawing at every moment, calling for MacLachlan to win all the awards, poring over every singular choice of word and indulging in the arty edges is fine - but at some point, I'm sorry, you have to have some sense of fulfillment and narrative to make you believe.
I just don't get it.
I can't recommend this to non-fans of the series, and I can't even begin to tell old fans who've yet to view what they're about to start watching.
Personally, it's the viewing equivalent of purgatory. Nothing happens and yet everyone applauds.
I want to get it as I've loved Lynch's oblique ways in the past, and yet at the same time, I want to feel more satisfied as well as salute the fact such a unique vision was allowed to flourish and be broadcast, but I fear the final 3 hours of the show are hardly going to win me back and have me feeling like I did about the original series.
For that reason alone, I'm devastated - and I'm not alone, surely?
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