and then they found out it was the baby… *cough*

No, actually I’ve been watching a DVD box set, season one of Twin Peaks. I had never seen it before, and actually, my only exposure to it had been through the Simpsons. One episode Homer was reportedly watching it, and it showed a man dancing with a Unicorn under a tree with a traffic light under it… hmm, okaaay. And then there was the who shot Mr. Burns episode with Lisa and the backwards dream with the flaming cards (um, I’ll drive) which I knew from the commentary was a reference (or rather, blatant ripoff) of a scene in Twin Peaks… so my interest was somewhat, ah, peaked, as the show involved David Lynch, so I figured there would be some strangeness.

It is actually sort of a comedy that’s too good to be funny, heh. Well, it’s like a soap opera, where some of the plot elements are so nuts that it’s like a parody of soap operas, to the point that the characters in the show follow a soap opera in the show itself called Invitation to Love.

The whole show centers around an FBI agent trying to solve murder of Laura Palmer, who is as much of a saint as she is a devil. Homecoming queen, and druggie, english-tutor and whore. And of course, in the show there is the Very Obvious Person who you think did it, sort of like when we thought Snape from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the evil factor in the story, since he was basically painted as such. Also, there seem to be any number of reasons for everyone else in the town to have killed anyone else (and they threaten each other daily) but not many motives in her death.

Unfortunately, the experience with the box set wasn’t great, for two reasons. There was no pilot episode included! There was a pilot, and it aired, and had the whole first part of the story, but there was some rights issue, so the first box set was released without it, what the hell? So the “first” episode has a “last time on Twin Peaks”, all the episodes do… I thought for the first one having that was an interesting narrative device, but no, there was a pilot, just not in the box set, alas.

Secondly, the second, and last season, doesn’t seem likely to ever make it to DVD. They apparently solved the murder (which in the first concept of the show, was going to be made unsolved forever) halfway through the season, and then no one watched anymore, so the show wrapped up in two seasons.

Fortunately, a movie was also made, called Fire Walk With Me, that is a prequel showing the last week or Laura Palmer’s life, and then her murder, revealing the killer. Since David Lynch was heavily involved with it, it is very very odd indeed, the series itself was less so. The movie also had frequent references to the dream seen in the second episode of the first season and which is the one the simpsons referenced. No burning cards, but most of the rest of it was there.

In fact, there’s a weird bit in that dream with Wiggam and Lisa where a shadow passes over the drapes. I always wondered what that was supposed to be.. a glitch, a reference?, something about Burns’ shooter? Turns out it was taken as seen from the dream sequence in Twin Peaks itself, of course, what it means there is even more baffling. The best I was able to come up with is that it’s sort of bird shaped, and a bird, oddly, does play an important role in the murder of Laura Palmer.

The show itself is pretty good, strange but not overly so (movie is another matter), has really nifty lounge music that reminded me of 7th Guest, and also, unfortunately, has a Dragon Ball approach to rising action, where it could take a season for one of the characters to build up the energy to release their attack

Anyway, so that’s another show that is in the public collective consciousness that I now have caught up on.