One problem for anyone trying to write about Twin Peaks: The Return, of which four episodes have already aired on Showtime, is that it’s impossible to predict where it will go next. This predicament was also somewhat true of Twin Peaks, the ABC TV show produced by Mark Frost and David Lynch that debuted in 1990, ran for two seasons (one consisting of eight episodes, the other an oddly weakened 22), and led to the feature-film prequel, written and directed by Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Jonathan Rosenbaum reviewed Twin Peaks for the Reader in 1990, after only two episodes had been broadcast, and while he correctly foretold some creative developments of the series—that the episodes not helmed by Lynch would resemble conventional network television, for one—he couldn’t have known that the murder-mystery premise of the first season would transform into a New Age spirit quest involving owls and alternate dimensions, which would in turn precede a deeply unsettling art-house movie about incest, prostitution, and patriarchal malevolence. In The Return, the only certainty is that no one other than Frost and Lynch could’ve made it.
If all that sounds confusing, well, it’s also about as much as I can “reveal” without “spoiling” anything. Most of The Return is so strange that it’s hard to imagine how plot points could be construed as spoilers. But it’s still best to go in knowing as little as possible, because part of what makes the show so captivating is its unexpected and imaginative nature. This is why the horror elements of The Return are so horrific, the science-fiction aspects so unusual, and the comedic scenes so humorous.
Sundays at 8 PM on Showtime
