The biggest complaint about TV revivals is that they do little more than pander to
an existing fan base that doesn’t want any innovation or change.
But the far more challenging "Twin Peaks: The Return" does more than just avoid the
pitfalls of most TV revivals.
it also investigates what a revival is and why we’re driven to return to shows we once
loved.
The original series explored the form of the soap opera,
wholeheartedly enjoying the love triangles, crime and melodrama of that genre.
In the latest season, creators David Lynch and Mark Frost turn instead to the form of
the revival,
to look more deeply at our nostalgia-driven culture and the audience’s desire to relive
a familiar past.
"What the hell?"
Before the premiere of "The Return," Lynch insisted that next to no new footage be revealed
to the public.
So Showtime built its promotional campaign around repurposed footage from the original
"Twin Peaks."
This played on the audience’s attachment towards the original series.
While the promotion mirrored how other revivals are often marketed,
Lynch never fully cashes in on nostalgia within the season itself.
He teases the audience by allowing elements of the original show to appear,
but limits them to only a handful of moments per episode.
"Diane, I'm holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies."
"Is it about the bunny?"
He refuses to satisfy our desire to immediately know what each of our favorite characters
has been up to.
In this choice, Lynch seems to be shining a light on the nature of pandering entertainment,
which seeks to please fans above all.
Lynch designed "The Return" more than a simple continuation of "Twin Peaks."
The opening episodes play out almost like a series of Lumiere vignettes,
static and disconnected from each other,
whereas the original was based on a tight episodic structure.
Despite its experimental reputation, the original show still largely adhered to the soap opera’s
demands for form.
Each episode had a distinct beginning, middle, and end, culminating in a cliffhanger
that needed to be resolved in the next episode.
But "The Return" feels like an extended movie,
bouncing between its settings and stories with more regard for the overall journey
instead of its individual self-contained parts.
The contrast between the Return’s marketing and its actual tone and style
makes us think of the dual nature of the town of Twin Peaks itself,
where an alternate reality lies beneath the wholesome image initially presented to the
audience.
"What is it with all the secret relationships in this town?
It's like 'General Hospital.'"
It’s easier to get an audience to revisit the familiar,
but watching something new forces us to invest, work and take a risk --
and that’s exactly what Lynch wants the audience to do.
Because of "The Return"’s restraint, when we do get encounters with the old, they feel
earned.
In the fourth part of the series, the now-grown Bobby Briggs
sees a photo of his high school girlfriend, Laura Palmer.
He erupts into tears, immeasurably moved by the sight of her after so long.
"Laura Palmer."
As he expresses his emotions for us, this tender moment is punctuated by Laura’s theme,
and it’s the first time that we hear a musical cue from the original series outside of the
opening credits.
"Man.
Brings back some memories."
After several hours with little to no music, the scene acts like an adrenaline shot for
the viewer.
By denying us this pleasure for four episodes and combining it with the original series’
melodrama,
the show uses our pent-up anticipation to generate a raw, new response in us out of
old material.
We have the same reaction when Cooper finally wakes up in Part 16.
In a moment that feels directly lifted from the original series,
Cooper gets dressed and exits the hospital,
beginning to drive away as the series’ theme song accompanies him.
"What about the FBI?"
"I am the FBI."
Suddenly, he’s Cooper again.
"Is the coffee on?"
It’s as if he never left.
In fact, the decision to use the show’s theme song conveys the idea that
this is the true beginning of the series and what we as an audience have been waiting for.
But because Lynch took 16 hours to get to this point, it's a massive payoff
for fans who had to invest this time and wait impatiently for Cooper’s reemergence.
"Hello!"
Throughout "The Return," this is Lynch’s general approach towards nostalgic elements,
denying the viewer of what they want or heavily recontextualizing what had came before
in search of creating something different or greater.
Some of the callbacks even become inversions of what they originally were.
Audrey visits the Roadhouse in Part 16 and she's invited to perform her character-defining
“Audrey’s dance,”
"Ladies and gentlemen -- Audrey's dance."
We remember this dance as a sultry, self-assured moment that perfectly expressed her romantic
character.
The request for Audrey to perform her dance represents the audience’s desire
for moments from the original series to return.
But halfway through the dance Audrey breaks down, unable to give us this easy pleasure,
just as the show feels unable to answer our expectations of facile repetition.
"Get me out of here!"
Audrey’s dance was originally a peek into the dreamy atmosphere of Twin Peaks,
but now it’s a nightmarish reminder that those days had passed and those moments can’t
fully be recaptured.
This sequence leads into the final episodes, which begin as the perfect continuation of
"Twin Peaks,"
only to spiral into Lynch’s most extreme case of recontextualization.
In the later half of Part 17, Lynch goes as far as to have Cooper literally revisit the
original series,
inserting actor Kyle MacLachlan into footage from 1992’s "Fire Walk With Me."
Cooper arrives at a pivotal point of the film, the night before Laura Palmer is murdered.
Lynch has Cooper undo the inciting incident of the entire series through preventing Laura
Palmer’s death.
Without Laura’s murder to investigate, Cooper would have never ventured into Twin Peaks,
and the show that the audience knows and loves would have never happened.
It’s as if Lynch is erasing the show that we’ve long dreamt of coming back to.
The moment could suggest to us that, by being so desperate to return,
we're destroying the thing we loved in the first place.
When speaking about his approach to the original show, Lynch said,
“...The murder of Laura Palmer was never supposed to be solved.
And the reason is, that is this beautiful little goose.
And that beautiful little goose is laying golden eggs.”
He goes on to say that this unsolved mystery had the potential
to keep leading to other mysteries that could be solved in its place.
25 years later, Palmer’s murder is long-solved.
The new metaphorical goose laying golden eggs at the center of "The Return"
is the show "Twin Peaks" itself and the act of revisiting it.
Just as the original Palmer murder spawned an ever-growing number of mysteries,
in "The Return," new plots are constantly being introduced
while the series teases us with partial, delayed answers to its overarching question,
“Will Cooper return to Twin Peaks?”
This question also ultimately doubles as the question of “Will Twin Peaks work in 2017?”
When a show returns after any time away, writers and producers have to ask themselves
how their project will look in the modern world.
Many of these shows saw massive popularity at a very specific point in time.
New episodes could feel dated, and some revivals suffer from an identity crisis,
betraying the spirit of the original programming by trying to update themselves into something
they’re not.
But Lynch shows that he’s mostly indifferent towards being relevant or successful.
He alludes to this in Part 13 when we meet Norma’s romantic and business partner Walter
Lawford.
In a scene that the passionate fan community immediately interpreted to have meta-connotations,
Lawford begins to suggest that Norma’s now-franchised Double R diner make a few changes
to her pie recipe in order to generate higher revenue.
"It's just about tweaking the formula to ensure consistency and profitability."
The main takeaway is that the Double R, representing The Return,
is uninterested in monetary success if it means breaking away from its founding principles.
For "The Return," this founding principle is Lynch’s “golden goose” philosophy
--
never really solving the source mystery or fully giving us the thing that we’re seeking
most of all.
Audiences and networks want revivals to just regurgitate the same old material,
but they’re often unfulfilled when they get only that.
A safer continuation of "Twin Peaks" would have likely fallen flat and petered out.
"Twin Peaks" proves that, for a revival to have enduring artistic success,
it has to be willing both to evolve and to remain faithful to the deeper place it came
from --
not just to superficially repeat and self-imitate.
Cooper summarizes this sentiment perfectly in Part 17 when he says,
“And that’s what’s brought us to where we are today.
Now, there are some things that will change.
The past dictates the future.”
Cooper and Laura are back, but the Twin Peaks they end up at is completely unlike their
expectations.
Lynch and Frost seemingly convey doubt over whether any show can be relevant after time
away,
because the world they return to will always be different from the one we left.
But their approach to the hurdle of relevance is to avoid it entirely.
Instead, he makes it his duty to tap into the spirit that fueled the original "Twin
Peaks."
and after all this time, to continue to follow where it leads.
"What year is this?"
"[Screams]"