28 years ago a series that completely changed television was released; I'm talking about Twin Peaks, a story of two seasons and a film forced by its early cancellation, this series directed by David Lynch became a full icon of the television of the 90s.
The series returned last year with a third season, with the intention of revealing the mysteries that remain unsolved.
This weekend I intend to see the third season of Twin Peaks, so I decided to write this post to refresh my memory. I must add that I did not see this series 28 years ago, but I saw it for the first time about 3 years ago, before they announced that they would film the third season. Then, I was surprised when they announced that they would premiere a third season, it was unreal for me. However, I did not see it when it was broadcast, but I will see it now.
Twin Peaks was a different and unclassifiable series that broke all the television schemes at the time of its premiere. David Lynch created a special and very personal product, which got many viewers obsessed with his particular vision of a lost town in the mountains of the state of Washington, looking for answers to the central enigma of the series, Who Killed Laura Palmer ?, a phrase that has passed to posterity.
What makes it all start is the brutal murder of the most popular girl in the Village Institute of Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer, so the peculiar FBI agent, Dale Cooper, must come to town to investigate the case.
The series revolves around the investigation of the murder of Laura Palmer, the queen of the Institute, who appears dead at the edge of the lake. Slowly we discover that Laura Palmer had a double life, of which some characters of the town were knowledgeable, complicating the plot more and more.
The true protagonist of the series is the Twin Peaks people themselves, where they live a series of very particular characters that are presented in the first episodes, and that evolve when we discover their secrets and relationships with other members of the community, with continuous surprises and 180 degree turns in the argument.
The locals are not archetypes of classic characters of the series, on the contrary, they are eccentric and particular characters, the whole series seems a strange dream; a lady who always carries a log with her, the owner of a place of food with a dark past, unusual young people and with a different behavior than usual in other series, and many more.
Probably the most common in the series is that it uses the narrative resource that consists of the arrival of a stranger to be able to show all the interiorities of the town. The arrival of federal agent Dale Cooper in the town allows us to enter the lives of people from an original and novel perspective, since he records his impressions continuously and is surprised by any unimportant element of the people, such as a tree, a coffee or a cake. This particular way of seeing things is the main feature of the series, continuously dislodging the viewer for his unexpected behavior and touches of black humor with which he conducts his investigations and interrogations of the suspects.
Agent Cooper has a series of strange dreams in which a series of fantasy characters, a dwarf, a giant and Bob the one-armed, appeared and revealed to him secrets and keys in a cryptic way in a red room, which gave rise to to the most outlandish interpretations by the followers of the series, in the pre-Internet era.
The greatness of Twin Peaks lies in its unclassifiable nature and its mixture of different genres.
In the second season the chain forced the writers to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer, revealing the basic secret of the series, the directors refused because they considered it was killing the chicken that lays the golden eggs for a dish of beans, but the chain pressed and finally the directors revealed who was the murderer, precipitating the end of the series.
The cast has a multitude of main and secondary actors, which we will not mention so as not to extend the post too much, but they worked very well, although the vast majority of them did not have any success after the series.
The revelation of the main secret of the series, was as its directors feared, the beginning of a fulminating end, its intention had been to use the mystery to present the characters, to be diluted in the plot of the town, but the spectators did not want that, they just wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer.
At the end of the second season the series was canceled, but David Lynch decided to close some loose ends of the series by making a movie Twin Peaks, called Fire Walk with me, prequel to the series, set in the seven days before the death of Laura Palmer, the film had a certain success among the followers of the series, but it was totally incomprehensible for the rest of the spectators, which has led it to be cataloged as another of the rarities of David Lynch.
Twin Peaks is a series that marked an era, and of which many spectators still remember and revere for their great quality and originality, especially in the first chapters. In my opinion it was not a perfect series due to some mistakes made at the end of its journey, but its first season and part of the second was masterful and one of the best examples of using the television medium as a vehicle for innovation and openness, and of the new narrative paths, in this case taken by the hand by a genius like David Lynch.
