What is it about this time of year, Valentine's Day, that makes me so desperately want to watch Twin Peaks? Literally every year, it's me, bags of cinnamon hearts and the show downloaded on my laptop just marathoning it out for a few nights. Maybe it's the way all the red things (red room, red knitwear, the Log Lady's glasses, the cherry pie filling) contrast so dramatically with all that dreariness? Or maybe it's Laura and Donna's rad heart shaped friendship necklaces? Who knows, but what I can say for sure is that I've loved everything about that town since day one.
My obsession with the show began when it first aired in 1990 — I was 8 years old. Watching Twin Peaks was something my dad and I did together — it was “our show”. My mom didn’t join us because she found the characters “too creepy” and my younger brother just didn’t care (or maybe he wasn’t allowed to watch because he was too young? Ha!) But yeah, there I was, not yet of a double digit age, not yet obsessed with Kris Kross, not yet allowed to walk home from school alone, but man, did I have a crush on Special Agent Dale Cooper.
My love of that show ran deep — I remember taking a black permanent marker to a t-shirt I had tie-dyed at a friend’s birthday party and making my very Twin Peaks shirt. The front featured a one-eyed jack of clubs and scrawled across the back in the shaky capitalized handwriting of a child “WHO KILLED LAURA PALMER?” I so wish I had that shirt today — not just because I’d still enjoy having a Twin Peaks shirt in my wardrobe, or even because I still think tie dye is pretty cool, but because I can only imagine how amazingly terrible my first go at DIY shirt design was.
There are a few reasons that show still rings so true with me. First is that song — THAT SONG!!! Sure, the soundtracks to most everything David Lynch does are incredible, but few have ever evoked emotion in me like Angelo Badalamenti’s Falling does.
The second is Bob — that dude has been terrifying me for over 20 years. Still to this day, the thought of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing his face creeping out from the foot of my bed scares me more than Freddy Krueger killing me in my sleep does (also something I still kind of live in fear of though).
Third is Shelly — yeah, yeah, I know, Audrey is cool as fuck, but there’s something about Mädchen Amick, man. I think she may have been my first girl crush.
Fourth are the Red Room scenes — I can still convince myself that maybe, if I just watch one more time, I'll finally be able to understand what that little Man From Another Place is saying.
The final and the real reason why I have mad love for that show is because everytime I watch it I hope/pray/dream/wish that maybe this time, it won’t just end on a cliffhanger. I mean surely, SURELY my crush, Special Agent Dale Cooper, isn’t Bob and really, the show won’t just end that way again, right?
Sure, it bums me out that we'll never get more Twin Peaks, but the feeling of disappointment I feel at the end of that last episode is quickly replaced by a love that's been burning in my heart for such a long time – those characters are just so weird that it's impossible (at least for me) not to love them!
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Allison Hall loves to hate and hates to love, but mostly she’s just grappling with the daily comings and goings of being an adult girl.
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