Twin Peaks: Season 2

Received wisdom is a weird thing, because even when it's right in spirit there's always some catch or complication. The standard brief on Twin Peaks season 2 is either “the show loses track after Laura Palmer's killer is revealed”, which is not quite true for two reasons. For one thing, there's a gap of about three episodes after Laura Palmer's killer is revealed and when the killer is caught, and that gap (as well as the lead-up to it) contains probably the best run of episodes in the entire show – I'd go to bat and say that “Lonely Souls”, the episode that finally shows the audience who killed Laura Palmer, is Twin Peaks's finest hour. Even though the show stumbled a bit speeding up so that they could get to the point where that scene takes place, they certainly don't blow their one shot – they deliver a memorable, horrifying, astonishing sequence to reveal the killer.

It's also not quite true that the show loses track, or at least that's not quite the right word for what it does – it makes what the show does sound boring. And it is boring, with the latter part of the season being a big slog to get through, but it's not boring because nothing happens – rather, everything happens. Twin Peaks just throws itself at several ridiculous plot points and can't get any of them to stick. Nadine spends most of the season thinking she's a high-schooler, James ditches the town and gets framed for murder, Andy gets caught up in the behavior of an adopted child he thinks might be the devil.. these are all plot threads that act fine and dandy, having beginnings and climaxes and resolving, but they're not in any way derived from who the characters are. Is there any reason Pete Martell is a chess expert and we had no clue about it? It's certainly not baked into the character and not remotely foreshadowed. Ben Horne has a psychotic break and starts reenacting the Civil War, but what on Earth does the Civil War say about Ben Horne? He's never shown any interest in it in the past. The only compelling plot in the season is that of Bobby and Shelley, which sets itself up as a tragic tale of a relationship coming apart as a couple that has only ever been in its electric honeymoon phase starts getting in over its head and falling apart. But, of course, that's squared away and reset by the end of the season. A huge letdown.

The reason it's so disappointing is that it so clearly violates what Lynch and Frost started the series for – instead of having a show focused on the lives of the characters, in the last half of the season the characters start taking on frivolous and ridiculous subplots and become infinitely less interesting than the newly developing metaplot of Dale Cooper's power struggle with Windom Earle. And that part, at least, is something that can't be squarely laid at the feet of the network. The new overarching story is, frankly, great. I loved Windom Earle's character. The developing exposition about BOB and the White and Black Lodges was great, especially since the Laura Palmer plot opened those doors and left them unresolved. One can only chalk this up to Lynch and Frost having a much more hands-off approach this season because of other commitments. It shows every sign of the writers not having a firm guiding hand, approving plots that they only casually looked at and didn't realize how they would come across to viewers when filmed and transmitted.

It's not a bad season of television – the first half or so is quite propulsive and the final episode benefits greatly from having David Lynch back on board, including a cliffhanger ending that's so evidently one of the all-time greats that it still worked when Fringe essentially lifted it 20 years later. But, as I said with the first season, the elements contained in this show were such a volatile mixture that without its previously strict overseers, it spilled out and ended up focusing on the wrong things. One imagines that given a third season with tighter control and more hands-on management from Frost/Lynch, Twin Peaks could have pulled it together again. Fortunately, we are in the age of revivals and as soon as next year we could see the show done justice. Here's hoping.