Twin Peaks, Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost
Reviewed by Daria Topchii
The clues are all there for a correct interpretation, and I keep saying that, in a lot of ways, it’s a straight-ahead story. There are only a few things that are a hair off. —David Lynch
Twin Peaks is a TV show that sometimes leaves viewers astonished and confused about what is happening on-screen and why. The action is broken up with surreal shots, such as a room full of people speaking in reverse, or an odd dwarf who breaks into a jerky, robotic dance—followed by a close-up of his mouth nastily chewing corn.
Without some familiarity with Lynch’s style, it’s easy to conclude that the series is full of weird stuff simply because Lynch is strange, that the show is purely sensational “modern” art, and that, therefore, one needn’t dig deeper into its ideas. To understand why that’s wrong, it’s necessary to consider the context in which the show was made.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, American TV crackled with violence and murder. Many shows featured storylines in which gruesome crimes were investigated and resolved within a single episode. But what set this era apart was not just the prevalence of such content—it was the distinct tone, style, and cultural context in which it was presented.
Unlike earlier decades, such as the 1950s and 1960s, which saw the rise of episodic crime dramas, ’80s and ’90s TV embraced a darker, more visceral approach to storytelling. These shows delved into graphic details of violence, often lingering on gore and psychological trauma that pushed the boundaries of what previously had been socially acceptable on TV.
Shows from this era also lacked the serial storytelling that would define television from the late 1990s and 2000s. They featured stand-alone episodes rather than longer narratives and character arcs that would later become popular, meaning that the long-term consequences of the on-screen violence were rarely portrayed.
Lynch commented on the consumable violence of the time: “Dark things have always existed, but they used to be in a proper balance with good, and life was slower. . . . Now it’s accelerated to where the anxiety level of people is in the stratosphere.”1 More and more people were readily consuming such depictions of cruelty as entertainment. Consequently, directors and studios were producing more (and more elaborate) depictions of brutality and murder.
Because of this trend, parents, educators, and advocacy groups became increasingly concerned about the impact of violent content on children and on society more broadly. Some began to push for regulation. As a result, the government intervened via the 1990 Television Violence Act, which forced TV studios to limit the amount of violence and gore in their shows—though it did not extend to film. (Although the government properly has no role in regulating media, the Act indicates the extent to which people were concerned about violence on television.)
Lynch didn’t want to stand still and observe the growing trend away from empathy and toward depictions of violence being regarded as entertaining in and of themselves. He felt an intense and unrelenting urgency to “restore balance” in the film industry—to tell more stories that used dark or negative subjects to emphasize positive ideas. He chose to make a show that, unlike many of the one-episode murder stories, illustrated that each killing isn’t forgotten after it’s resolved—it leaves an irreversible mark on the survivors.
And so Twin Peaks was born. From the first shot of victim Laura Palmer’s corpse until the beginning of season 2, no one knows who the killer is or how Laura was killed. Lynch shifted the emphasis from the question of “Who killed Laura Palmer?” to “Who was Laura Palmer?”
Twin Peaks portrayed emotional reactions rarely seen on television at the time: a police officer bawling at a murder scene, grieving parents going insane, and a whole town devastated by the loss of a girl they all knew. One of the main characters, FBI Agent Cooper, says to his colleague,
Murder is not a faceless event here. It is not a statistic to be tallied up at the end of the day. Laura Palmer’s death has affected each and every man, woman, and child because life has meaning here—every life. That’s a way of living that I thought had vanished from the earth, but it hasn’t, Albert. It’s right here in Twin Peaks.
TV that focuses on darkness without a positive purpose is likely to be unhealthy for viewers because it normalizes despair and impotence rather than highlighting rational values. Exploring evil in art can be healthy and life serving if the goal is to think, write, or speak about it toward positive ends. An artwork can use negative elements to convey a life-serving theme by demonstrating the inefficacy of evil (evil is fueled by irrationality and often force, which along with the importance of positive values, makes it inefficacious in the long run). Twin Peaks is just that kind of show.
Lynch makes extensive use of metaphor and symbolism. Although these elements don’t always move the story forward, they add depth and spice, inviting viewers to look for hidden meanings. For instance, owls play a significant role. An attentive viewer will likely notice not only the repeated phrase “owls are not what they seem” but also several references to these birds of prey.
The frequent references to owls in Twin Peaks trace back to a pylon that Lynch once saw that he thought looked like an owl. Because pylons distribute power, owls became a symbol to him of the studios’ ability to distribute glamorized TV violence.
This is just one example of the show’s extensive use of symbolism. With at least a basic knowledge of the initial idea and details to look for, the viewer can discover new layers of meaning in each episode.
Lynch also chose to use the electrical insulator Formica in the series, deliberately drawing attention to it. In one scene, the Man from Another Place (the dancing dwarf) sits at a table and abruptly declares that it’s made of Formica. The material’s nonconductive nature makes it a suitable choice for environments where electrical safety is a concern. In Twin Peaks, people’s safety from the dangers of TV—expressed through the metaphor of electrical power—is a key idea in the series.
The show’s main villain, Bob, embodies TV that is thoughtlessly or excessively dark, as does the God of TV Darkness, personified by a dwarf. Both characters represent negative voltage and are the foil to the Giant, who represents cinema’s illuminating force—the positive voltage (+V) that brings light to the dark screen (see figure 2).
One could write a book explaining all the nuances of Twin Peaks (and several people have). Every major element of the series is there for a reason. All the relationships between the characters and even many seemingly mundane background items convey meaning and hint at one or more of Lynch’s ideas about television programming.
Unfortunately, but quite expectedly, the studio didn’t share Lynch’s intentions. They were primarily interested in satisfying their customers’ clear demand: a resolution to the mystery.
This aggravated Lynch to the extent that he left his own show midway through season two, believing that the network’s insistence on revealing Laura Palmer’s killer compromised the show’s integrity. Lynch thought that unmasking the killer would “kill the goose that laid the golden eggs,” because, in his view, the fact that the mystery was unsolved was pivotal to the show’s moral idea. This decision diluted the series’ unique appeal and led to a decline in viewership.
Lynch was ultimately convinced to return to oversee the final episodes of the second season, after which he wrote the spin-off movie Fire Walk With Me. But he never got to continue the show in line with his original vision—that was, until twenty-five years later when Showtime revived it for a third season, promising Lynch complete creative control. Featuring most of the same actors as the earlier seasons, season three is the show’s pinnacle. Its superiority to the earlier seasons stems not only from Lynch’s freedom but largely from the additional life experience he gained during his absence from the show.
The moral, socially relevant themes; brilliant directorial work; rich cinematography; and plentiful, thought-provoking symbols, along with the intriguing plot, make Twin Peaks one of a kind. Lynch succeeded in creating a strong opposition to the destructive zeitgeist of American television. Leveraging the initial mystery, he presented a world that was coherent and intelligible within its historical context and that, even at its most surreal, never lost sight of what is important: the sanctity of life.
This article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.
Twin Perfect, “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really),” YouTube, October 21, 2019, https://youtu.be/7AYnF5hOhuM.