At my high school if you didn't watch this every week the next day you could forget about understanding any conversation that went on during break time.

The soundtrack still rates as my all-time favorite.

Second best thing ever put on television (or "tee vee" as all the kids are saying).

From Entertainment Weekly, 20 years ago: "The high point of the new television season thus far was the moment during the Oct. 6 episode of Twin Peaks when, ever so briefly, there were no giants mumbling about owls, no tuxedoed boy-magicians making creamed corn disappear."

I have never once watched that show. Nothing against it, I just never got around to it.

I liked it, although I remember very little about it considering I was around 12 then. I do remember that it became pretty stupid towards the end, and if I thought it was stupid at that age... it must have been BAD. =p

I also remember annoying family by saying "the owls are not what they seem" all the damn time.

Man I am getting old. I was out of college and living in a studio apartment in the East Village in NYC when Twin Peaks debuted. My sort of boyfriend and I used to watch it religiously with a six pack of Busch and a notebook to put down any pertinent details. We were obsessed.

mgl, me too, only I was in Chicago, and I used to watch it religiously with my boyfriend too, and we'd draw things. I think I still have the caged crow and the creamed corn somewhere.

I mentioned this at MeFi, too; forgive the the repetition.

When "Twin Peaks" was first broadcast, my friend S (who didn't have a tv in her tiny rented room) used to come over to my big empty house on a rambling village road to watch the show with me. We would make popcorn or, one happy night, cherry pie and coffee, and gasp with delight and horror as we watched. We were, what, 19, 20? Just the right age to be totally enveloped in that baroque, silly, scary world, to feel fellowship with Laura and Donna and even thick-headed James.

Every week, she would get so spooked that she'd put off walking home in the dark by herself for as long as she could, until --- every week --- suddenly it was midnight, and now the streets would be even darker and completely deserted.

So, every week, I walked S home after midnight, down long winding roads lined with old trees creaking in the breeze, few streetlights, and deep pockets of shadow looming everywhere. We'd chatter in a subdued way, mocking our ridiculous fear even as we drove it off with titters of laughter.

And every week, I would leave S at her brightly lit doorstep, take a deep breath as if I could breathe in that bright light, and step off into the dark to start walking home.

Alone.

More than any of the spooky motifs, the sudden twists, the dreamy vignettes, or the in-jokes, I remember those walks home in the dark, where the mundane landscape of my youth suddenly loomed so menacingly, where the perfectly normal things of daytime became imbued with mystery and danger. It seems to me that's what "Twin Peaks" is all about.

Elsa, I wish Frost & Lynch could read that!

The 'dude and I watched this show fairly recently, as we had just watched Blue Velvet and were shocked that any TV studio would green-light a pilot from Lynch. (For reference, 20 years ago I had just turned 6)

I think it's almost impossible not to fall in to the mythology of that sleepy little town. There's something particularly compelling about the high school students in the first season, who are so adult and yet so fragile at the same time. There is something so fresh-faced about a young Kyle MacLachlan (and it's something I loved about Blue Velvet), that we want to preserve him and corrupt him at the same time.

I could go on, and I think that's the ultimate charm of the show. There were no flat characters (save for, in my opinion, Heather Graham as a very shoe-horned love interest and plot device).

On a completely unrelated note, we've had Wild at Heart on our netflix queue for a while now, and as it's creeped to the top of the list it's moved from "Long Wait" to "Unavailable".

Whoever lost the Wild at Heart DVD, return it ASAP!

BoringPostcards, I am only lately realizing what a powerful early influence Lynch was on my young self, and especially in shaping what I find frightening, what I find dramatically effective, how little I trust a narrator.

I used to think of Lynch as someone I discovered in my twenties, but when I stopped and thought that through, it's all wrong: Blue Velvet came out when I was seventeen, and I was already so taken with Lynch that I insisted my boyfriend and I make the hour drive to a cinema that was showing it. When it became that cinema's weekly Midnight Movie, we started making that two-hour round trip every Saturday.

Whoever lost the Wild at Heart DVD, return it ASAP!

I'd love to hear your impression when you do get your hands on it. I recently re-watched Wild at Heart* and decided: either this is a little beyond my ken, or I just plain don't like it. I re-watched Lost Highway, too, and found myself completely turned around: usually I start to hate it halfway through, but this time, I found it more and more compelling as it got more and more incoherent. Maybe someday I'll turn around on Wild at Heart, too.

*I am not your Netflix disc-loser; I rented it from locally owned World's Coolest Videostore. One of these days, I'll break down and buy most of the films on DVD.

Great story about your walks, Elsa!