Did the first two episodes of the David Lynch series live up to expectations?
Expectations were impossible for the new “Twin Peaks,” which arrived on Showtime Sunday night with the first two of its 18 episodes. (Hours three and four were immediately made available on demand and streaming.)
David Lynch, creator with Mark Frost, hates spoilers and put such a tight lid on the sequel, even captions on photos on the Showtime press site had only the actor’s name.
But spoilers would have been pretty much impossible anyway, and you’ll find only minor ones here. If you plan to watch and are as spoiler-phobic as Lynch, however, better stop reading.
The major framework for the sequel has FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) still in the Red Room with the Chevron Floor at the Black Lodge, where people (and a brain in a tree) choke out cryptic comments to him.
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Meanwhile, Cooper’s Killer Bob doppelganger, with long hair and leather jacket, roams free, doing murderous work.
In New York, a young man watches a glass box. In Buckhorn, S.D., a gruesome murder puzzles police and a goofy neighbor is intended to provide comic relief.
And in Twin Peaks, Wash.? There, fans see familiar faces, most fleeting, but welcome nonetheless.
Particularly poignant were two appearances by a frail Catherine E. Coulson as the Log Lady, sharing information from her log with Deputy Sheriff Hawk (Michael Horse), who takes her and her log seriously. Coulson died in 2015, shortly after filming her scenes.
Mainly, though, “Twin Peaks” doesn’t spend significant premiere time in Twin Peaks, and that results in a slow, scattered setup that has barely begun to come together by the end of Episode 2.
Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s “Lynchian.” But there’s a lot more weirdness on TV than there was in 1990.
Lynch clearly delivers exactly what he and Frost intended to deliver in the premiere, and will continue to do just that. The question is whether the result will be worth spending 18 hours to puzzle out.
Obviously, that will depend not only on how big a fan of the original you were (I can’t imagine newbies starting from square one here), but also on how eager you are to plunge into analysis and dissection and debate over the next months.
I’m not sure my patience will hold out.