On December 23^rd I finished the watching the movie "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" and come Christmas morning, my brother surprised me with the box set of the original 2 season run of Twin Peaks, along with the aforementioned film and The Missing Pieces (the latter being a complication of deleted and alternate scenes from Fire Walk with Me). He even bought me the new limited event of True Peaks that appeared on Showtime earlier in 2017 (which I have yet to see, I’m waiting for him to watch the original so we can watch it together).

Now I have a love/hate relationship with the show. Being a fan of True Detective, for some reason or another, I thought that Twin Peaks was going to be somewhat of a processor to the newer show (maybe I thought this given Laura Palmer’s death being the catalyst that ignites the show, as does the body found in the beginning of True Detective ignites the search for The Yellow King). With the David Lynch/Mark Frost collaboration premiering in 1990, I expected a touch of dated-ness, however, not for the show to be drenched in it.

And I came to learn that Twin Peaks actually is… a soap opera. That was a huge pill to swallow. I struggle enough with Excedrin when I have a headache; I nearly choked trying to handle the pill that is Twin Peaks. It was borderline, you know, who am I kidding, it was extremely painful to watch at times. When I was a child my mom watched General Hospital’s spinoff, Port Charles. I watch that with her on occasion. Aside from that and watching my dad’s favorite show Dallas, I have never watched a soap opera, and had no intention to.

And then around episode 4, I was able to look passed the offbeat humor, the over the top acting, the soap opera-isms and the fact that 90% of the characters are a waste of space. And in that, I was able to start appreciating the interesting and ever tangled web of stories that becomes more and more gripping as the show progresses. Getting to that point and accepting that only 5 characters, if that, have any real purpose of being on the screen, I slowly witnessed what is the undeniable creative genius that served as the groundwork of the show.

On paper, the show follows a small, eclectic and eccentric town of misfits surrounded and encapsulated in double life; everyone hides under their own façade, partaking in acts of the debauchery and degenerate. And that is ever true with the shows main entity, who is found dead in a lake, with signs of rape and lacerations covering her naked body as she is wrapped in plastic, floating on the water. And that happens within the first 10 minutes of a show that aired in 1990. You’re not going to find this show airing after Captain Planet Thursday nights. You can see why I thought this show was going to be like True Detective.

Dale Cooper is arguably the show's protagonist, and for all tense and purposes he is, but every character and every plot revolve around Laura Palmer, the girl found dead in the show’s opening. As mentioned she is the definition of a double life; everyone knows her as the homecoming queen, miss popular living in suburbia with her mother and father, having family dinner and tea for lunch. But as the show unfolds, we learn that she was prostituting herself, having sex with almost everyone in the show, and experimenting with drugs.

But all of this becomes convoluted with bad acting and characters that speak to logs, jokes that fly under the radar because A) they aren’t funny 90% of the time (hey, there’s that percentage again) and B) they’re placed entirely in the wrong time. And not to mention an eccentric FBI agent who is obsessed with Douglas Fir’s and the towns pie is our lead, Dale Cooper.

I fought the initially torture because I had an idea of where the show was heading. My brother and I used to watch a lot of the top ten lists channels found on Youtube, and many of those lists were film and TV orientated. We saw the mention of Twin Peaks numerous times for being one of the greatest shows of all time and we learned of the shows supernatural elements that eventually come into play. Now, these elements are virtually absent in season 1. And when the show started to explore these ideas in season 2, it took many viewers off guard because it was coming out of left field.

However, being aware of the supernatural presence, these elements do in fact occur in season 1, however, they are far and few in between and can be chalked up to a character hallucinating or going insane (I don’t want to say more as I don’t want to spoil anything. And before you get annoyed thinking I spoiled the supernatural part, I just did you a favor. Seriously, if I didn’t give you that much and you decided to watch the show, you’d want to do to yourself what Dale does in the shows series finale).

The amount of supernatural elements makes one wonder; did they have various ideas written on a board, throw a dart and whatever they hit they HAD to include, regardless of how insane it seems? But the funny thing is, all of their absurd ideas come together in a lore that makes sense. It doesn’t feel like writers taking a few concepts and running loose with the rules, even if that is what they did.

I’m not saying they did, but I am saying that there are plenty examples where this does occur (basically anything about hacking, you can’t just type fast and boom, hack, otherwise I’d be doing that instead of writing this) and the writers of Twin Peaks took so many different ideas and legends and mixed them together in cohesive way that they essentially invented their own form of supernatural. And that is one of the things that is really, really fun to watch. But you have to be willing to see as they unfold. Otherwise, when they occur, you’ll wonder “What am I watching? I thought this was Captain Planet?”

All of that being said, the show completely collapses on itself in season 2. As mentioned, unless you’re aware of the otherworldly, season 2 comes at a shock because its examples can’t be chalked up to hallucinations and they occur more frequently than the handful that could be ignored in season 1. And with that, the show began to lose ratings. As an attempt to reverse those effects, David Lynch and Mark Frost were forced by the producers to include something that they had no intention of ever making clear. This only hurt the show more, as it brought the show’s story to a halt, and it feels the writers had no idea where to take the show.

The next several episodes drop all supernatural elements (which makes no sense given how heavy their presence was becoming) and we follow characters that are possibly some of the most annoying to ever plagued a television set. We watch Nadine essentially become Super Woman where she’s throwing people around left and right and thinks she’s 18 (meanwhile she’s 35 or around that); We get to see James ride his motorcycle around like a douche and just be a douche, doing douche things. I seriously hate James. And I hate Nadine, and I hate Leo, who somehow is shot 486 times (that’s an exaggeration but he should be dead at this time with the number of bullets he has playing tag with him) and he is still on the show, quite literally taking up space.

His wife Shelly (whom he abused) was cheating on him with a high school student Bobby who was dating Laura, but she was cheating on him with James, who depending on which way the wind blows loves Donna or doesn’t (see how the soap opera shit comes into play. Who cares who loves who, this show is about Dale solving Laura’s murder. It’s a headache at times). Anyways, before I snapped keyboard in half like Nadine as I typed all of that, the point I was getting at was that Leo, being shot 842 times is refined to a wheelchair and has lost all ability of cognitive thought.

His wife Shelly and her lover Bobby spend most of season 2 taking care of him because they want the insurance money. But this all becomes a classic hijinks situation where Shelly and Bobby bicker like a married couple and raise their “baby” Leo. It’s all meant to be funny but it’s annoying and is clearly filler because, being forced by ABC to reveal a big secret, the writers found themselves in the middle of the woods with no clue as to how to come back (that’s an unintentional pun to the show, so I’m just going to pat myself on the back here for coming to that unintentionally).

By the time the show gets itself back on track, they use a plot device that is uninspired compared to most seen on the show and it becomes a “who cares” situation for the reaming several episodes. But then you get to the finale which is utterly amazing and one of the scariest, most unsettling things I’ve ever watched. The ending, reveals something that I don’t think has ever been done on television, before or after Twin Peaks, and the supernatural comes back full throttle. It’s awesome and since I had an idea (however, that idea wasn’t even the half of it and did not even remotely prepare me for how amazing it is) that this is where the show was going; I stayed through the bullshit and I am glad I did.

The point of all of this is that this is how I spent the end of 2017, becoming fully immersed in the town of Twin Peaks. And that brings me to the title of this article. While it is a phrase from the show that has its own connotation, it also describes the show’s theme of double life nicely. But it also does something else.

Since hearing this phrase, I’m seeing owl stuff constantly and its beginning to freak me out. When shopping for Christmas presents, I saw owl pillows and blankets, necklaces, earrings, rings and decorations, even cards with owls on them. While this is not out of the norm, the sheer plethora of owls was more than usual. I saw a customer in the beer distributor where I work wearing an owl shirt. I saw one of those bottle openers that you hang on the wall with carvings in it that looked like the owl symbol seen on the show. On Instagram this morning, a friend of mine posted a painting they did of a, you guessed it you smart and clever reader, an owl. I’m even seeing owl decorations in my house, things I didn’t know my mother had.

Before this, I had seen an owl one time. A friend of mine had a pet owl, and I it sat on my hand and let me pet it just before flying around the house (this friend was pretty eccentric in his own right and would have fit right in with the characters on Twin Peaks). Aside from that, I’ve never seen an owl again, and only the occasional decoration or necklace as mentioned. I’m having my own The Number 23 moment here. I’m half expecting to see Bob pop up at work or something (that will make sense if you watch the show).

So 2017 ended and as it came to a close, I have begun to go insane and see owls everywhere. Here’s to hoping that your 2018 goes smoother than mine is starting, and just forewarning, if you see an owl get the fuck out of there. And, hey give Twin Peaks a chance if you need a new show to binge. It’s on both Netflix and Hulu, but Hulu’s version is slightly clearer in quality. It’s in 4:3 aspect ratio, but the picture is clearer, so take with that what you will.

Honestly the show is worth watching just to see the ending. And the theme is pretty amazing too. It’s about the only song on the show that is good, as the rest of the music is unplaced jazz which adds to the offbeat feel of the show at times. If you are compelled to watch it after this half review, half owl warning, just don’t skip to the end cause you’ll rob yourself of how worth it the ending is after Clockwork Orange-ing yourself just to make it that far.