Not sure if you'd heard, but that gum you like is going to come back in style. If you have no idea what that means, friend, you need to get yourself acquainted with Twin Peaks. The early '90s TV series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost is one of the most important and influential ever aired, and it's coming back for a limited series revival on Showtime. Of course, if you have seen Twin Peaks, then you already know all this and are presumably half-dead from cardiac arrest in anticipation.
In May 2017, when the new Twin Peaks premieres, the original series will have been off the air for 26 years, and 25 years since the prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I'm willing to bet a huge chunk of the fans awaiting the new season not only didn't watch the show when it first aired, but probably weren't even alive yet. What's more, it's been a few years since the show was last released on home video, and it's not even available on Netflix at the moment. That means that there are large swaths of TV-watching population who may have heard about the revival, and who'd love to watch 18 hours of David Lynch-directed madness, but either haven't dived back into the world Twin Peaks in quite a while, or never did to begin with.
There are a lot of ways to handle this situation, each one depending on whether or not you've seen the show before, and just how experimental you'd like to get with it. This is a David Lynch series, after all. There's plenty of room to play around with the experience.
The Entire Mystery, As It Was Told
There is only one "correct" way to watch Twin Peaks, for both fans and newbies alike. That is: watch it all in the order it was put out. The pilot (American version), followed by Season One, followed by Season Two, followed by the prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. This is the viewing order I'd advocate, especially for newcomers, for a variety of reasons.
First off, the pilot for the series is incredible, and the best way to get introduced to the series. As it progresses, the show will get stranger and stranger. And while Season Two does get quite bad in places, its departures from reality and especially its finale are a perfect lead into the feature film, which is far more adult and also as strange as the series ever gets. That slow build into full Lynchian weirdness will surely be beneficial heading into the new series given that Lynch has directed the whole thing—this time for a premium cable channel where anything goes.
Recommended for: Fans and newbies.
The Entire Mystery, In Chronological Order
Mixing it up a little, you might want to watch the series in chronological order—which is to say almost exactly the same as the previous method—but watching the prequel film before the series. For fans, this is definitely an interesting experience. The tonal comedown from the movie into the pilot is huge, but having the movie first gives a sharp reminder of the strangeness to come throughout the series.
It also foregrounds the events leading up to Laura Palmer's murder, giving a different sort of urgency to the hunt for her killer. And while newbies should ideally be watching everything in production order, the chronological method could certainly be a worthwhile experiment. After all, spoilers shouldn't ruin the greatness of a series, provided it is actually great.
Recommended for: Fans and newbies who like to mix it up.
The Mystery, Partially, and Chronologically
Most reasonable people will agree that the second season of Twin Peaks went off the rails. They will also agree that it specifically went off the rails when the identity of Laura Palmer's killer was revealed in the season's seventh episode. That's not to say there isn't greatness left in the show after that point, but certainly its sense of forward drive became stalled, and the increasing weirdness sometimes got a little too indulgent and drawn out.
The answer to that problem, then, is to start with Fire Walk With Me, then the pilot and Season One, and then watch only the first seven episodes, until the reveal of Laura's killer. Now, you might be tempted to stop there, but that would be wrong. You must—I repeat, you MUST—watch the series finale. Just skip to it. That's 14 whole episodes you can skip, saving you some time and some of the worst moments of the show, but without missing the truly bonkers final episode, directed by Lynch. And don't worry about not understanding everything that happens in it, because it's so weird you probably wouldn't understand it all anyway.
Recommended for: Fans, and newbies who like to mix it up and just don't have the time.
The Entire Mystery, or Partially, with a Flashback
Similar to previous methods, but this time using a trick stolen from some recommended Star Wars viewing orders. They would tell you to watch Episodes IV and V of Star Wars, and then the prequel trilogy once you know the Darth Vader's true identity, followed by Episode VI to cap it all off. With Twin Peaks, you can do something similar by watching the series in order until Season Two, Episode Seven. Then, after Laura's killer is revealed, skip to Fire Walk With Me for a great extended flashback. You can then follow it up with the rest of Season Two, or just skip forward to the series finale if you'd like to save the trouble and/or time.
Recommended for: Fans and newbies who like to mix it up, spoiler-free.
The Mystery, as Directed by David Lynch
Maybe you don't want to watch the whole series. Maybe you just haven't get the time. Or maybe all you want is that Lynchian brilliance, to get you on the right wavelength ahead of the new season, which Lynch directed in its entirety. Well, the best option in that scenario is to skip around, only watching those Twin Peaks episodes directed by Lynch. You can start with Fire Walk With Me, because why not do it out of order if we're already doing this. Then the pilot, but this time watch the international version, which is 20 minutes longer and features an alternate reveal of who Laura's killer is. Much of that footage was then used two episodes later in Agent Cooper's famous dream sequence. Skip to that episode, also directed by Lynch. Follow that with Episodes One, Two, Seven, and 22 of Season Two for the rest of that Lynch-directed goodness. After all that, you should be fully ready to re-immerse yourself in Lynch's world when it finally returns next month.
Recommended for: Fans only.
