Well, it has taken long and long (over five years), but Paramount has finally come through with the second season of Twin Peaks, streeting this week. Many people are pleased by this, not least of them Doc, who now will hopefully stop gnawing on the furniture in anticipation.
This show was David Lynch‘s foray into series television, and I think Lynch is a brilliant director. He’s able to take anything, no matter how random and weird, and inject into the semblance of meaning. In other words, I think his stuff, especially his feature films (apart from, say, Straight Story) are a whole bunch of symbols thrown together into a gumbo that damn well ought to mean something but in the end, means nothing at all intrinsically. Thus people can have such a good time wrapping their own theories around What Things Mean. A lot like life, really.
Anyway, the first season is held up as a pinnacle of wonderfully odd television. The second season, as with so many brilliant shows, tries to hang on but can’t. It’s like a band’s second album…the first is something they’ve had in mind for years and years, honing to perfection. The second album is something that the label wanted them to throw together quickly with less polish. I wonder what this second season would have been had American television been ready for the British system, in which you do a small series of episodes, then break for however long, then come back and do the next small series of episodes. Or even if it came out today, when shows like Sopranos can take however long it feels like between seasons.
But I digress. Fans of the show are going to appreciate the treatment the set has gotten here. It’s never enough–no commentaries are here, for example–but it will have to do for now. There are interviews on each disc, with directors and editors and such, and a grid of interviews featuring twelve members of the cast. There’s also introductions from the Log Lady, which are as odd as you might suspect.
It’s a terrible shame that the first season is out of print. This coming out now is nice, but it’s a lot like having a trilogy of books where Book 3 streets after Book 1 is out of print. People who would want to check it out now are sort of stuck. But the fans who snatched up the first boxed set are going to want to snag this for certain.
