Twin Peaks: The First Season (1990).
Various directors. Fullscreen (1.33:1), Color, DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1. Commentaries, documentary, etc. 4-disc. Artisan.

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The brainchild of TV-writer Mark Frost and filmmaker David Lynch, Twin Peaks hit American TV on April 8, 1990, with a pilot directed and co-written by Lynch. This Artisan set offers the seven episodes, only one directed by Lynch, that followed. Twenty-two more episodes would ensue in 1990 and 1991 before ABC canceled the series. But Lynch returned to the subject in 1992 with a theatrical prequel entitled Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Not surprisingly for Lynch, Twin Peaks is filled with multiple contradictions that, in a manner fully supporting the particular brand of Zen espoused by series hero FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), must be accepted as such. Is Twin Peaks a closed-ended murder mystery or an open-ended soap opera? The answer must remain simply "yes." Does the somewhat politically conservative Lynch give us a loving vision of small-town, quasi-fifties, northwest America, with its Douglas firs, its lumber and dead-animal artifacts, its cherry pie, its ducks? Or does he relish blowing the top off of the family-values façade to reveal its darkest and ugliest secrets? Again, "yes." Some of these secrets are fairly visible in Twin Peaks—the scheming within scheming of capitalist land-grabbing, abuse of women, a den of gambling and almost-underage prostitution—while others, and one in particular—father-daughter incest—lie deep beneath the surface, although hinted at throughout the series. As one example, the new arrival waiting to be "broken in" by Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) at the den of iniquity of which he is the proprietor is none other than his own daughter (Sherilyn Fenn) in disguise.

And so, moving through these episodes, one becomes both consciously and unconsciously aware of three interacting kinds of mystery suggested in almost every scene. The first is the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and its potential solution (revealed to the audience as of episode fourteen, directed by Lynch). The second is the deeper secret of father-daughter incest, which, in relationship to the murder, defines a ferocious misogyny that courses through many of Twin Peaks' narrative strains, all of which, like so many works of Western narrative fiction, are built around the image—in the case of Twin Peaks constantly recurring—of a dead woman. But the series also suggests, in a half supernatural, half oneiric context not all that far from Stephen King, the existence of "a sort of evil out there," as Twin Peaks Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) puts it. "Something very, very strange in these old woodsa darkness, a presence. But it's been out there for as long as anyone can remember." Is this to be taken literally, or does it represent an attempt to understand the cruel and horrible things taking place in what should be the warm and comforting bosom of the small-town family? Is the monster man Bob (Frank Silva) the evilly possessed other side of Laura's father (Ray Wise) or has he been invented by Laura's mind to put the overwhelming pain of incest one remove away? Once again, "yes."

Beyond all that, Twin Peaks is also astonishingly effective drama, and on all levels—visual, narrative, musical, acting. The Washington state locations become a strong character that itself often seems possessed—a red stoplight hanging in the dark, wind blowing through those Douglas firs at night—by whatever that force is. Many of the characters can be divided into one or the other of two groups: intensely likable (with Sheriff Truman perhaps at the top of the list), or intensely dislikable, the latter group containing a fair number of abusive males. Yet at either end—and in the middle as well—the characters are both drawn and played somewhat over the top, a solid Lynch characteristic with a comic edge that also constantly leaves the viewer uncomfortable. While generating snickers, for instance, Agent Cooper's glowing enthusiasm for the town's coffee and home-made pies seems to come from an almost hysterical need to buy into the family-values façade. And let's not forget Angelo Badalamenti's musical score, which, as of the title theme's opening notes, creates a heavy layer of nostalgic affect, totally appropriate to the drama, that leaves one just wanting to go back—to wherever. Particularly devastating are those moments when Badalamenti's synthesizers, growling in low, minor-mode chords, suddenly rise into a heartbreaking theme in the piano that instantly evokes the dead Laura.

Those disappointed with the faded, fuzzy transfers of Twin Peaks on four laserdisc sets will be hugely relieved to find extremely sharp images here in richly saturated colors, with green and orange dominating throughout. The reproduction of Badalamenti's score packs such a wallop that it sometimes dwarfs the images. The extras range from arcane to nerdy-groupie, but with an excellent documentary featuring wonderful insights from the actors, in particular Michael J. Anderson, the little man in the red room. But where is the original TV pilot, directed by Lynch, essential for setting up these seven episodes?