She’s Dead – Wrapped in Plastic

Those were the words that launched perhaps the most creative TV series ever, “Twin Peaks,” 20 years ago today (available on DVD!).  Who would have thought that David Lynch could ever make the transition to TV? 

Thank goodness ABC’s livelihood was hanging by a thread so they took a chance on this most unusual project.  Otherwise, we would be missing out on so much!  Particularly, watching Lara Flynn Boyle reinvent her face between crash diets in the years to come.  “Twin Peaks” was so unlike anything else television at that time and almost everything ever since.  (“Lost,” schmost.) It was like Lynch’s film “Blue Velvet,” but without the extra-added girlfriend beatings. 

The murder mystery of Laura Palmer and the reactions of the quirky residents in that Washington town turned  “Twin Peaks” into a pop culture phenomenon overnight, and its music made our cat’s fur stand on end and sent her frantically running around the apartment for bonus viewing pleasure.  Peaks was one of the few projects to put little people front and center (not as Leprechauns) since “The Wizard of Oz,” and now they even get to be sidekicks on late night TV talk shows.  It gave Kyle MacLachlan his greatest role ever in Agent Dale Cooper, but I’m not sure how that paved the way for him to play emasculated toads for the rest of his career.  It gave us David Duchovny as a cross-dresser!  If he had kept it up,  I could have gotten through “Californication” season one by now.  And let us not forget about the “Log Lady,” who carried around her lil' log as if it was a child.  If only people that shouldn't reproduce to begin with would follow her lead, then we wouldn't have so much child abuse. 

Unfortunately, the show jumped the shark all too quickly in season two.  That’s really too bad, because if it had remained popular, Laura Palmer might have even gotten her own action figure that looked something like this: