Was ‘Twin Peaks’ Ahead of Its Time? Let’s Look Back and See

“Twin Peaks” is coming back. Maybe you’ve heard? Or have you been trapped in an other-dimensional waiting room with a dancing dwarf?

David Lynch and Mark Frost, the creators of the profoundly strange and influential 1990-91 series on ABC, have made an 18-episode sequel that begins Sunday, May 21, on Showtime. The New York Times television critics James Poniewozik and Mike Hale, using torn stationery and letters pulled from beneath their fingernails, discussed the show’s far-reaching legacy.

MIKE HALE The last time we did this, Jim, it was for the reboot of “The X-Files,” another icon of spookiness and dread. “The X-Files” debuted in 1993, just three and a half years after “Twin Peaks.” But in memory, the gap seems greater, because it was already living in the television world “Twin Peaks” had created. So many things were revolutionary about “Twin Peaks,” and its DNA saturates the TV gene pool: Every serialized mystery, teenage melodrama, quirky dramedy and surreal supernatural thriller owes something to it.

OPEN Interactive Feature

Watching the entire run of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s series for the first time since its original broadcast (yes, I’m that old), I’ve recalibrated my judgment. I used to be in the camp that considered the first season and select episodes of the second season to be on the same high level, but now I see a more clear falloff immediately after the brilliant (and largely straightforward) two-hour pilot. The humor becomes more arch, the melodrama less evocative, and the surreality (seismic in its time) isn’t organic to the story the way it had been in Mr. Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” and would be in his “Mulholland Drive.” Did your estimation of the show shift this time around?

JAMES PONIEWOZIK Welcome back to the lodge, Mike! Help yourself to cherry pie and creamed corn.

I agree and disagree about the pilot. When people today ask, “How did this show even get on the air?” that pilot is essentially the answer: It’s accomplished, mesmerizing and within the accepted universe of TV genres. (Basically, it’s moody oddball noir.)

Had the series continued in that vein, it might have been more satisfying. But would we be talking about it today? “Twin Peaks” doesn’t really become “Twin Peaks” until Episode 3, where we get Tibet and the reverse-speech and the sense that not everything in these woods will be explained rationally, or at all. ABC might have passed on that show, just as it did, a decade later, on “Mulholland Drive.”

There are absolutely flaws on rewatch (the extended teenage-Nadine subplot; Catherine’s Japanese-businessman drag). But I even found new respect for the later episodes — at least the very end, which goes full phantasmagoria. What makes “Twin Peaks” unstable, the mainline to Mr. Lynch’s subconscious, also makes it sui generis. Sometimes, maybe, a show has to become “worse” to become great.

Frank Silva, left, and Mr. MacLachlan in the original series. Credit ABC Foto de: ABC

HALE I think you’re exactly right, for better or worse, when you ask whether we’d still be talking about the show. Post-pilot “Twin Peaks” is the template for Peak TV: The stylization and self-consciousness of shows from “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men” to “Fargo” and “Atlanta” start there. Whereas the pilot, in which the classicism and the phantasmagoria perfectly coexist, hasn’t really been equaled (except perhaps in the early episodes of “The X-Files,” which, paradoxically, are heavily indebted to the later, spookshow “Twin Peaks”).

It was interesting to see what had held up and what hadn’t. The Cooper dream sequences have the same power — when the little man says “Let’s rock” in Episode 3, it’s just as creepy as I remember it. But, some of the things the show is remembered for, because they seemed so loopy at the time — the log lady, the one-armed man, the damn good cup of coffee — feel contrived now.

PONIEWOZIK Partly, maybe, because that loopiness was the easiest thing for TV to co-opt. “Northern Exposure,” with its Alaskan goofball shamanism, debuted the summer after the first “Twin Peaks” season.

“Twin Peaks” changed TV in bigger ways — eventually. It helped establish a figurative dream-language that you see in series like “Legion.” It introduced the idea of a serial drama as a puzzle (“Lost,” “Westworld”). It showed viewers that a TV show could be the work of an auteur — even Louis C.K.’s comedy “Louie,” on which Mr. Lynch memorably guest-starred, owes something to that. But those shows came much later. I’m old enough to remember when “Twin Peaks” was treated, for years, as a TV cautionary tale — a warning against seriality, experimentation and writing a mystery check your narrative can’t cash.

Rob Morrow in “Northern Exposure.” Credit CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images Foto de: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

HALE What did attract a lot of attention at the time was sex and violence. A younger audience might not appreciate just how unusual “Twin Peaks” was in its openness about rape, incest and prostitution. It was consciously overstuffed with victimized femmes fatales, but at the same time, Mr. Lynch extrapolated from daytime soap opera in a way that gave some of his female characters more sexual curiosity and agency and made stars of a whole group of unknown young actresses.

PONIEWOZIK Here’s another tidbit for the youngsters: “Twin Peaks” debuted just four months after “The Simpsons.” Two landmarks in drama and comedy; two creators who brought an indie sensibility mainstream (Matt Groening drew the alt-comic “Life in Hell”); and two TV shows that were very much about the pop culture that preceded them. “Twin Peaks” drew on soaps (remember the show-within-the-show “Invitation to Love”), teen melodrama, detective procedurals — but while it twisted them, it didn’t mock them. Mr. Lynch unearths nightmares, but he has genuine affection for Americana, and the show’s lack of smirkiness may be a surprise to a new audience. Mr. Lynch was a filmmaker first, but he never seemed to feel superior to TV.

HALE Another eerily contemporary thing that was unheard-of then: a noted film director doing TV. Not just any film director, but the director of “Blue Velvet” and “Wild at Heart.”

PONIEWOZIK From where I’m sitting, “Twin Peaks” refutes the argument — which we heard around “Lost” ad infinitum — that an audience deserves neat “answers” for everything. Two episodes after Leland is exposed, the series addresses an unspoken question: How literally should we take this whole story about Bob and spirits of the woods? Sheriff Truman suggests there must be a more rational answer — Leland must have been insane. “Harry, is it easier to believe that a man would rape and murder his own daughter?” Agent Cooper asks. “Any more comforting?”

A scene from the series “Lost.” Credit Mario Perez/ABC Foto de: Mario Perez/ABC

In the end, Cooper says that the real explanation does matter, “because it’s our job to stop it.” But Mr. Lynch, I suspect, cares less about the answer than the wondering.

HALE “Twin Peaks” left a lot of its characters in uncomfortable situations — Ed, Nadine and Norma; everyone involved in the Ghostwood development battle; and of course Cooper himself. There’s plenty there for a sequel to tackle, but if Mr. Lynch just ties up loose ends in the familiar style, is that something that needed to be done?

PONIEWOZIK Honestly? Before the reboot was announced, it never occurred to me to want more “Twin Peaks.” It felt like a complete story, maybe overcomplete in the end.

But: Showtime wants to give David Lynch 18 hours and carte blanche to execute an idea he’s excited about? Sign me up. So I’m glad if he ditches the loose ends and goes into hallucinatory overdrive. Either way, I can’t get over the fact that I just set up a DVR season pass, in 2017, for new episodes of “Twin Peaks.” It seems like something out of a dream, which I guess is perfectly appropriate.

© 2017 The New York Times Company.

The content you have chosen to save (w