LIKE A TURKEY IN THE CORN

by Tori on April 12, 2012

“She’s dead…wrapped in plastic.”

It’s been over twenty years since Laura Palmer was killed, and Twin Peaks still remains one of the funniest, most interesting, and most terrifying shows in television history—in my opinion.

Quotes from the series float to my mind all the time. While parts of the show have aged horribly, other parts hold up in more important ways—namely the bold story and the hard-to-duplicate sinister atmosphere. Within the same episode, I can catch myself both rolling my eyes at the cheesiness and holding my breath because I’m scared.

I’ll be honest: Twin Peaks isn’t for everyone. Some people find it too silly. Some find it too dark. Others find it too campy, and then others think it’s too bizarre. I say if a show has all those elements, it’s probably doing something right.

Part of my admiration of Twin Peaks revolves around David Lynch. There’s just something about the way he interprets evil that fascinates me. He has a quality of portraying the sinister that I’ve never seen in anything else. He can make a simple scene in a sunny living room pulse with the darkest of emotions. What’s lying just under the storylines of many of his films is both disturbing and truthful, and it’s a real gift to be able to make that kind of atmosphere come alive through a lens. Many filmmakers try to copy his style in this area, but no one else can do it just right. He’s one of a kind.

With Twin Peaks, I think David Lynch had to mix a bit of light-heartedness in with the black core of the series in order to get the show on TV. That’s where some of the so-called silliness comes in, and that’s also why the show’s more frightening scenes are so alarming. I was blindsided by certain scenes in Twin Peaks, and I was even further shocked to find what the story was actually all about—what really happened to Laura Palmer.