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Twin Peaks Collection          review by Bobby Blakey

There are some shows that air and despite their great reviews just can’t find the audience they are hoping for, but still end up being major cult hits over time. In 1990 David Lynch and Mark Frost debuted their crime dram Twin Peaks on ABC and while the show managed to get a second season it never found the audience it hoped for. Despite this it has gone on to cult status and even spawned a feature film and upcoming revival series on Showtime in 2017. Now Paramount and CBS are bringing the series home with Twin Peaks: The Original Series/Fire Walk With Me/Missing Pieces collection.

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Twin Peaks follows FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper who  is called in to investigate the strange demise of a young girl who washes up on a beach near the small Washington state town of Twin Peaks only to uncover a web of mystery that ultimately leads him deep into the heart of the surrounding woodland and his very own soul. The series features a great cast including Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Michael Ontkean, Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Everett McGill, Piper Laurie, Ray Wise and more as well as some now familiar faces that are sure to make fans smile. I will admit I am late to the party on this show as I had never seen a single episode prior to this release and had a completely different vision of what this show was. From the first episode you can tell that this is going to be a strange show, but of course if you know anything about David Lynch that shouldn’t be all that surprising. The show reminds me of “The Killing” in its format of trying to solve the case, but with a wide variety of strange characters and quirky moments that are entertaining, but laughable at times. I can see why the show struggled to find an audience as it moves slow at times, but is so unique that some just didn’t get it.

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The cast all do an interesting job with some of them being really good like MacLachlan whose agent Cooper is great fun to watch. The simple things like him  talking about pie all the way to his more serious moments showcase a multilayered character that you are interested in seeing. Some of the cast are average at best, some not so great and others just plain weird, but with Lynch involved I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all by design. The show feels very dated and while holds up as an interesting series to watch, it doesn’t hold up visually all that great offering up a very soap opera vibe that is kind of cheap at times, but again that could have been on purpose with the shows design. This is a show that just keeps getting weirder and weirder as it moves forward. Sometimes this is good and others tends to take you out of what it seemed like they were trying to do, but it manages to be interesting and entertaining enough throughout that you will either be all in or ready to move on from it completely.

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Every time you think it veers off course it manages to find its way back into the murder mystery that is the most interesting part of the series. I hesitate to say much more about the direction of the show because it is something that should be experience with fresh eyes if you have never done so and not ruined. In addition to the two season of the TV series this collection also includes the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me that serves as both a prologue and epilogue to the original series with much of the original cast returning. As if having all 30 episodes of the series and feature film were not enough this collection also includes The Missing Pieces which is a standalone feature edited together with the deleted scenes by David Lynch as well as high definition Log Lady introductions for each episode, picture upgrades to many shots in the TV series and hours of material about the fascinating story behind the celebrated pop culture classic.

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Prepare for the new series in 2017 and return to the case when Twin Peaks: The Original Series/Fire Walk With Me/Missing Pieces collection comes to Blu-ray on September 20th from Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS Video.

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