For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

FLASHBACK: 'Twin Peaks,' 20 years later

Hard to believe it's been two decades since TV's weirdest show hit the screen.

Hard.

Twin Peaks still looks mondo bizarro, so you can only imagine (or maybe remember) how truly warped this serial surreality seemed in the network midst of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote.

But on April 8, 1990, TV drama grew up, into something truly exciting and mind-blowing, when ABC premiered David Lynch's hallucinatory murder mystery Twin Peaks. Bodies wrapped in plastic. "Who killed Laura Palmer?" The Log Lady. The backwards-talking dwarf. Cherry pie and damn fine cups of coffee. Hair turning white overnight. Small towns would never look so serene again.

It's late in the day, but I wanted to hit the 20-year anniversary on this one, so I'll leave the rest of the writing up to you.

What did you make of Twin Peaks? Have you watched it since? Does it hold up? And what about its lasting impact?

(Twin Peaks can be seen today on Chiller cable/satellite, or on DVD. It's also streaming at CBS.com.)

1 Comments

Marlark said:

I was riveted from the first shot through the last of Season 1. And nothing terrified me more on TV, even to this day as I watch it now, than this moment of TV Worth Watching during Season 2:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B5pE1DEHyk)

Though Season 2 petered out in terms of story telling, there was always the hint of something deeper, more compelling and more unnerving just around the corner. Though the show never explicitly delivered on that implied promise, what a ride.

And an actor from another show with bizarre mythology never looked more appealing than the genderbending David Duchovny as Denise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1JRC2oDlJk -- en espanol). What's up with that?

I suppose this and Soap were the only soap operas I liked.

April 9, 2010 2:08 PM

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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