The new incarnation of Twin Peaks will debut in just 16 days—not that I have a daily counter plugged to my phone or anything!—and Showtime is very slowly leaking videos that serve as breadcrumb clues to how the show will play out. Today’s video is called “Some familiar faces 25 years later.” And, wow, it looks like Laura Palmer’s mom is hitting THE SAUCE.
Other characters in this glimpse: Big Ed Hurley, Carl Rodd, Deputy Andy Brennan, Deputy Tommy “Hawk” Hill, and of course Special Agent Dale Cooper.
While there is good reason to be skeptical about reboots, particularly those continuing a prosaic storyline that must still account for almost three decades of technological and cultural advances—will Special Agent Dale Cooper have a cell phone?!—what makes this version so exciting is that David Lynch notoriously felt hemmed in at ABC, where the show previously aired. Network television wasn’t as experimental in 1990 as it tends to be in the age of prestige television, and you can see the exceedingly weird and delightful places he wanted to take it in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the 1992 film that served as the television show’s prequel after its cancellation. (The narrative is that the film was seen as too strange upon its release—perhaps a side effect of the toned-down ABC version, and it would still be another ten years before Lynch got really weird in Mulholland Drive. At any rate, it tanked at the box office before transforming into a cult classic.)
So with the freedom of a cable network like Showtime behind him—and a landscape in which TV, now a high art form, is expected to be challenging—the hope beyond hope is that Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost can spread their wings and create the show they really want… and the one that fans deserve. We’ve been waiting for this shit since the ’90s, bro!
