First Reactions From New ‘Twin Peaks’ Are In And Everyone Still Has No Idea WTF Is Going On
No spoilers!
Happy Twin Peaks Day! After 25 years off-air, the master of mystery David Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost have premiered new episodes of their short-lived cult classic Twin Peaks. The show captured the minds of viewers over two (tbh uneven) series and one dastardly prequel film in the early 1990s.
True to his Lynchian desire to test the viewer, Lynch, Showtime (which owns the new series) and Stan (which is broadcasting the series in Australia) have kept the new episodes totally under wraps to ensure that the entire world experiences the show simultaneously. In the lead-up to the event, the internet has been lusting after every small morsel of information about the enigmatic series’ closely guarded new secrets.
Now, thankfully, the days of wondering how the new series will play out are over: the first four episodes just dropped online. This. Is. Huge. There’s even a brand-new opening sequence, set to the signature (oddly soothing) theme music composed by the wonderful Angelo Badalamenti.
People are reacting accordingly:
Me when the #TwinPeaks theme started playing pic.twitter.com/RRntyx133U
— Brian (@BriNott) May 22, 2017
My guess — apart from the distinct feeling I have that Lynch and Frost are reminding me that I should go to the toilet before the show starts (all that running water!) — is this new opening is teasing that A LOT of time will be spent in the infamous Black Lodge. The Lodge is the liminal space in Twin Peaks where good and evil chill together in a velvet-red cocktail lounge, which can be found behind a set of disappearing theatre curtains in the Ghostwood Forest.
So, you know, strap in for a season’s worth of lines recorded backwards and played forwards:
With so many reboots and revivals and sequels and prequels — some wonderful, others disastrous — the fear is that a new Twin Peaks would tarnish the attraction of the original series (however maligned its muddled second season and maudlin prequel film were when they premiered). So, now the opening episodes have landed, what’s the verdict on the revival? (No spoilers, promise!)
Because the internet is a crazy machine that never stops running (never. NEVER.), some US outlets have already dropped their recaps of the new episodes.
The Hollywood Reporter calls the new series “unsettling, weird, funny and basically impossible to review”, which sounds fairly promising imho. And most outlets, The Guardian included, have spent a lot of time picking apart exactly how the new series compares to the original. The Guardian‘s Mark Lawson writes, “At least the original series had the viewer-friendly structure of a whodunnit to glue the peculiarities together. The start of the new run is more of a what-is-it?”
A “What-Is-It” is possibly the most orgasmic description Lynch, determined to bamboozle, will ever receive about his show.
On a slightly more cynical note, The New York Times‘ James Poniewozik is sceptical about the series’ ability to recapture the magic of the original run. “The Twin Peaks of 1990-91 was a creature of its time,” he writes. “To watch its new iteration is to be reminded of what TV has done in its absence.”
Mfw told a friend about the plot of #TwinPeaks somebody then tells me that its the plot of #Riverdale pic.twitter.com/5DGGt3Pclk
— Chaim (@Schlomo22) May 22, 2017
Poniewozik’s point is a salient one. Not only has television moved on since Twin Peaks redirected the medium with its premiere in 1990, TV culture (and, perhaps more importantly, fan culture) has moved on as well. How will a show that relies on a hive mind’s perennial confusion, which demands viewers are swept up in the narrative without pulling apart the mystery, contend with the live-tweeting, overnight-recapping, obsessively guessing audience of 2017?
If you live tweet #TwinPeaks, red curtains will appear and David Lynch will step out as Gordon Cole to shout at you: "JUST WATCH THE SHOW!!" pic.twitter.com/J0KknYvRuo
— Nate?Ruegger (@NateRuegger) May 22, 2017
This joke still works!! #TwinPeaks pic.twitter.com/VCbcjR9nPH
— Ramon Rocha (@nomar1978) May 22, 2017
I guess the litmus test for this new Twin Peaks against our new media is to look at how Twitter (society’s macabre, hyperactive, obsessive, possibly evil Jiminy Cricket) is handling the premiere of the new eps. The answer is: we still don’t know WTF is going on at any point during a Twin Peaks episode. Cool! *smiling sunglasses emoji*
me at 9:00 vs me thirty minutes into #twinpeaks pic.twitter.com/VdPDeVEVg9
— mehera bonner (@meherbear) May 22, 2017
Me after the first hour of the new #TwinPeaks pic.twitter.com/QyE6etUsda
— Sarah Vazquez (@sarahmvazquez) May 22, 2017
Wow… it's even more disturbing than I thought it was going to be. #TwinPeaks pic.twitter.com/lO6f6lR4an
— Ben Worcester (@benworcester) May 22, 2017
Everyone right now #twinpeaks #TwinPeaksPremiere pic.twitter.com/KmteKPv5EF
— V. Cadaverini (@East_) May 22, 2017
The jury may be out on how this new series plays with audiences over its (pretty epic) 18-episode run (though you’ll hear more from us on that front in our official Junkee recaps of the new eps). But one thing, at least, seems certain: the show is still its signature kooky self.
One of the characters listed as "???????" #TwinPeaks pic.twitter.com/WFluOh06ZJ
— HarpuaDC (@HarpuaDC) May 22, 2017
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The first four episodes of the new Twin Peaks are on Stan now. They’ll be released weekly from now on.