TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (EP. 9-10)

The premiere of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN on Showtime in 2017 was a moment of anticipation—and some trepidation—for admirers of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s two-season cult series. Was it going to be a return to form of the show’s first season on ABC, the Lynch-directed finale episodes, and the terrifying deathwatch that was 1992’s prequel Fire Walk with Me? Or would there be more of the dead-end subplots and general sense of diminishing returns that marred swaths of season two? The answer, as it happened, was neither: The third series was an all-of-a-piece Gesamtkunstwerk, totally disinterested in playing games of “fan service,” impossible to anticipate from one episode to the next, a devastating meditation on death and aging, and perhaps the apotheosis of Lynch’s genius for blighted Americana and far-out spiritual exploration. Lynch and Frost thought of the work as a continuing movie and, not ones to second guess them, we’re playing the whole thing on the big screen, in all its baleful and beautiful splendor.