2021 | TWIN PEAKS UNWRAPPED | NONFictioN
WHEN Twin Peaks first aired, I was a kid. Something of a media-savvy kid. The phenomenon definitely caught my attention — I remember the all-black newspaper ads, and Homer pretending to understand the show on The Simpsons. My parents watched Twin Peaks, at least during its first season, and I distinctly recall being told to leave the room when it came on. Because I was devoted to video stores, it wasn’t long before I found David Lynch that way: Eraserhead, Dune. And when the collected Twin Peaks came out on VHS, that was it. I was wholly, utterly in love. That VHS set began with the European version of the pilot, whose extra ending was strange, beautiful, melancholy, somber — solving the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death without providing any kind of concrete answer, setting up the template for what followed. It opened up worlds to me. In the many years since, I’ve watched Twin Peaks and Fire Walk with Me countless times. Each time, it feels like going home. This is one reason I’m grateful for Twin Peaks: The Return — in addition to the sheer brilliance of its making, it shows us that home was always more complicated than we ever understood.
Buy the Twin Peaks Unwrapped book.
Listen to the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast.
Text copyright Andrew Blossom. All rights reserved.