Twin Peaks: Season 1

I've been putting this one off for a while. Beloved '90s shows from Seinfeld to The X-Files have had a track record of disappointing me, and Sween's review a few years back wasn't exactly glowing, and for as much as I loved Mulholland Drive I worried that David Lynch wouldn't really be, you know, full blown David Lynch on network television in 1990.

But, here I am, through the first season of Twin Peaks - the good one, the short one - and, okay, yeah, I can see why everyone loved this so much. It's... weird. Delightfully weird, and unapologetically soapy. It's simultaneously about twenty years ahead of its time (only recently have even cable TV shows been allowed to be so strange and off-putting) and about twenty years younger than it looks in so many places - lily-white and set in the rural Pacific Northwest in some sort of alt-1990 still stuck the '50s. The dream sequences are what the show's most known for, but it's the little moments that really sold me on how weird and surreal this show is. Music plays and a guy breaks down crying in a crowded room then starts dancing all alone. A professional detective says goodbye to another one and then grabs his nose. A father, mourning for his dead daughter, grabs a photograph of her and just starts spinning in circles. It's all so wonderfully Lynchian, as is the recurring theme that plays nearly constantly in the background - the smooth, jazzy, film noir riff that really underliens what a goddamn mystery the whole thing is.

Who killed Laura Palmer? I've got no ideas, but frankly, I don't even care. What amazes me about this show is how unique it is today, let alone back in 1990. It is a treat to look at and to listen to, no matter how much or how little sense it's making. Rumor has it that things go downhill quickly in the second (and final) season, but with a revival slated for later this year on Showtime I'm interested in seeing it through. Hey, worst case, this becomes another X-Files experience that I throw on in the background and pay half attention to. I can swing that for 22 episodes, no question.