Cheap Twin Peaks - The First Season (Special Edition) (DVD) (Kyle Maclachlan) (David Lynch) Price

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Customer Reviews of Twin Peaks - The First Season (Special Edition)

art collides with television
Twin Peaks rates as one of the most singularly innovative additions to network telelvision. David Lynch's obsession with making the everyday middle-american world beautifully strange (the word "awe" with its horrific element intact is useful here) and Mark Frost 's (St Elsewhere) quirky writing meld seamlessly in this soap opera that exposes to much beneath its surface. The episodic nature of television often strains to create new episodes that maintain sturdy characters while repeatedly playing the same scenario over and over. In this case the characters are superficial, common and quirky. But rather than falling into the dull routine of love triangles and deceit (although TP has these in abundance) Lynch and Frost immediately disrupt quiet american life with a murder--a dead prom queen, Laura Palmer, floats up to Pete Marshall shattering his early morning fishing routine. The town is cast into chaos. FBI agent Dale Cooper, played perfectly by Kyle MacLachlan, enters the town wide-eyed and appreciative of its tranquil simplicity. Using holistic methods, Cooper unravels the black underbelly that provides the illusion of innocence. Playing between superficial soap opera moments and some of the most horrific and surreal moment ever shown on TV, Lynch and Frost use the weekly format to delve deeply into the dark forces and evils which exists within beauty. And the show is ultimately beautiful in its raw exploration that reveals fear is always obliterated by love--not justice or truth. The show's inteligence survived its first season by hiding behind the murder mysery of Laura Palmer. Lynch and Frost planned to leave this mystery unsolved indefinitely in order to explore all corners of Twin Peaks. Unfortunately, the network forced the team to rush towards a solution in the second season fearing that ratings were dropping because viewers needed closure (actually Twin Peaks was losing the soap opera element as they realized the world of Twin Peaks was more complex and real than most prime time viewers were prepared to patiently stomach). Without its central nexus and Lynch leaving to complete Wild at Heart, the show floundered until Lynch's return. However, the show snapped back into brilliance following Lynch's return. But it was too late. The show met the same fate of all brilliant American network shows that shined too brightly before its time--it was cancelled. The team put together a final TV movie that "ended" the show in the manner it began. Lynch followed it with a dreamlike prequel in the theaters called Fire Walk With Me (a creepy mantra pulled from Laura's phantom killer). All of this if assembled adds up to a work of visual art that was way ahead of its time and dismissed as quirky and silly--but its rough end was probably caused by people expecting to be entertained by quirkines, but kept safe from the show's more awesome yet brutal spectacles. Still the entire work (if one can find it all and watch it in order) stands as a challenge to network programming need for dumbed-down product. First time viewers and skeptical fans should bravely revisit this fragmented masterpiece.

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Television for Film Geeks (But Where's the Pilot?)
Ever since David Lynch and Mark Frost (the oft-forgotten co-creator) introduced "Twin Peaks" in the spring of 1990, television programmers have striven to duplicate its idiosyncratic qualities, but with little success. Confining the series to one particular genre is impossible: it is part murder mystery, part comedy, part supernatural horror...a flurry of hyphens are needed to accurately classify this television masterpiece. Lynch expands upon his idea of a small American town seething with dark secrets--a central theme found in his 1986 film, Blue Velvet; Frost uses his previous TV experience on "Hill Street Blues" to create a concrete blueprint from which Lynch can unleash his cache of eccentric townspeople. Laura Palmer's death has an unsettling effect on the good people of Twin Peaks and the outrageous plot twists used during the murder investigation keep viewers guessing and compelled to keep watching further episodes. This boxed set collects the first seven episodes--minus the two-hour pilot--which comprise the first season. Laura's murder isn't solved at the conclusion of the first season (much to the chagrine of the casual viewer in 1990), so viewers interested in the labyrinthine mystery will have to wait for the second season boxed set (The second season slowly, intricately solves Laura's murder, falters and sputters for several episodes and finally gets back on track with the Agent Cooper/Windom Earle "chess match."). I sincerely plead to whomever owns the rights to the pilot that they release it on DVD soon (and keep the "European ending" on a deleted scenes menu). Inspiring a succession of eccentric, if somewhat more mundane, dramas ("Picket Fences," "The X-Files," "American Gothic" etc.), "Twin Peaks" is long overdue to be preserved on the DVD medium.

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Greatest Television series ever made.
I have only recently seen the majority of Twin Peaks (three final episodes + fire walk with me to come! - Don't you wish you were me?) on a friend's English video version (much better than the current American video boxset, I am led to understand) but still substandard for a series shot on film.

I don't even own a DVD player but I would buy one just to watch the whole series in a high-resolution, sharp and permanent format. However, apparently there are a few problems with the upcoming version, which I will probably end up investing in.

1) No pilot episode. This in itself is not necessarily a problem, according to my friend who owns an early European version of the pilot on video - he recommends watching series, fire walk with me, then pilot episode - so it would make sense to release the last two on individual dvds, once the copyright problems are sorted out, I guess. Especially since the "new" version of pilot episode available in U.S. has additional footage from later in the series added.

2) Only episodes 1 - 7. Does that mean that there will or will not be a completist boxset in future. Will the second series be divided into two sets of, what, 11 and 12 each? Or will the other episodes all be released together? Somehow I think water and testing come to mind.

This is a natural series for the DVD format. Like the Prisoner it is a series that works by word of mouth & is easy to become addicted to. The more copies that are out there, the bigger the market will get. It is also a series which benefits from multiple viewing.

Please. The whole series on DVD, in seperate installments if you must, but do let us know in advance.