At Home with John and Debbie

Debbie bought me the Twin Peaks Season 1 DVD boxed set for my birthday, and we finished watching it last night. It was fantastic.

I remember when it was first broadcast, people thought it was tremendously confusing. Strangely, it no longer seems complicated at all, nor even that weird. I wonder whether the series pioneered a storytelling language that has since become conventional. In 1990, it was unusual for a TV program to require all that much concentration. Nowadays series such as Lost or The Sopranos demand your attention if you’re to make sense of them. Nowadays we have the benefit of several repeats a week, on multiple channels; we record to TiVo or Sky+, or we buy DVDs so we can pause or review. In 1990, although we had a VCR, I remember watching Twin Peaks once on a Tuesday night, then again on the Sunday repeat, to look for details, and to make sure the episode was fresh in our minds when we watched the next one.

I did not remember quite how dark it is. As a 17 year old, perhaps the true horror of Laura Palmers secret life passed me by. It’s nasty stuff. Almost as nasty as those sweaters (which I remember being tighter).

I’m looking forward to season 2, which I think we’ll buy in America, because the prices here are outrageous.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 14:23 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.