A year ago, Mike Muncer, podcaster behind the excellent Evolution of Horror series launched a new show The Detective & The Log Lady, a Twin Peaks rewatch podcast. I decided to rewatch the series along with episodes of the podcast and my sweetie-wife came along for the ride as well.

This past Sunday we completed the voyage watching part 18 of the Twin Peaks‘ third season, also known as Twin Peaks: The Return which aired on the Showtime premium cable channel in 2017.

ABC Television

It has been quite a ride. I have not rewatched the original series in decades, watched the prequel film Fire Walk With Me only once in the theaters and retained very little of it, and did not even know of the existence of Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, a feature film length collection of deleted scenes from the prequel film. Watching it all week in, week out for a year, keeping the characters and story elements fresh in my mind as I experience the 27-year journey was an entertainment journey unlike anything I had experienced.

Twin Peaks when it aired in 1990 on ABC became a national and cultural phenomenon but the second season, adrift after the creators stepped back because the networked forced them to reveal the solution to mysteries they preferred not to, lost that grip on the nation’s imagination and the series ended on a cliffhanger that would not be resolved until 2017.

Freed from network constraints and interference the series’ third and final season presented almost nothing that the fan base demanded, instead diving deep into the abstract dream-logic that so defines the work of director and co-writer David Lynch. The entire series defies easy explanation or interpretation. Is it about the evil and corruption that lies just under the surface of American life? Is it about trans-dimension beings waging a war for humanity with entities such as ‘Bob’ and ‘The Fireman’? It is merely a strange dream held by television characters where some of them are actually aware of their nature as fictional constructs?

Arguments can be made for any and all of these premises, often with all of them playing a part in interpreting the program.

What is undeniable is that Twin Peaks had a massive impact on television going forward from the 1990s. Not only did programming become more experimental in their plots and conceptions but Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost showed that it was possible to bring feature film cinema quality to television, paving the way for today’s prestige TV.

I may not understand it all, but I admire it all just the same.