"I'll see you again in 25 years," indeed. This time on cable (Showtime), with nine episodes written by Frost and Lynch and directed -- yes, apparently, all of them -- by Lynch. Looks like they're taking their time with producing the show; the grind of the original show's wildly uneven second season was likely a factor in how uneven the show got.
And when that show was firing on all cylinders: holy crap. It was something special, something that still turns heads all these years after it aired. People (like
cleolinda) still see it for the first time and say Wait, this actually aired on network TV? And was watched by tens of millions of people? Yep. Including me. I "got" the show immediately. I was totally on board when Michael Anderson spoke distorted words and danced in a dream*. I even forgave the show for that bad episode that ended with the giant chess piece, because the next episode let the characters have a genuine emotional response to the craziness.As weird as Twin Peaks got, it (mostly) preserved an emotional core. (I say "mostly" because of how off-the-rails the finale went.) That sincerity remains one of the biggest reasons I love a show or a band or a film or a book. If the return of Twin Peaks can capture some of that, I will get back on board.
Now I wish Jack Nance had lived to see this. Of course, I wish Jack Nance had lived.
* No, in the dreams the characters didn't speak backward. It was more involved than that: Anderson and Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer, learned their lines phonetically backward, then acted out the scene backward, and THEN that footage was played back backwards. Voilá: speaking distorted words. That was one of the reasons the Saturday Night Live parody rubbed me the wrong way.
