I did not know that that visit would in many ways change my life.
He had MTV on and they had a brief segment about a new show premiering that Sunday night. They showed the clip where Agent Cooper extracted the "R" from under Laura Palmer's fingernail.
"What is this?" I asked.
"A new show on ABC. It's supposed to be unlike anything ever aired on TV".
Of course many shows had made this claim before, but it always turned out to be more of the same. So I did not have high hopes. But I decided to watch anyway.
A little background...
I was 19 years old and had never heard of David Lynch. I considered myself bookish and looked down my nose at television. (Maybe it was not unreasonable to condescend to television in 1990; I'm not sure.) In short, I did not expect to like it.
But then that opening credit sequence. And the music. Wow, I was hooked immediately. I won't waste your time with a scene by scene account, but I will mention one scene that really stuck out to me: Sarah Palmer discovers Laura is not home and then soon learns that she is dead. I remember how clever it seemed to me that the audience was shown what happened to Laura and then we see the reaction of the parents and other characters. So the structure of the show itself impressed me.
But back to the scene.
I remember being creeped out by the now iconic shot of the ceiling fan. Of course I didn't know why I was creeped out. The shot didn't even really make sense to me, but it made an impression. And then of course Sarah's endless screams as the camera pans down the phone cord to the soaring music.
The next day...
Scott Ryan of the Red Room Podcast tells the story of going to school the next day at a college in Ohio (I think). He describes how everyone was talking about the show and how subsequent episodes became big viewing events. His experience is how I expected mine to be.
It wasn't.
I remember thinking this was my big chance to fit in. Everybody would be discussing this amazing show and I had watched it too! I would be in on the conversation. I went to school that Monday with great excitement and...
...NOBODY was talking about it. Nobody. (Of course I wasn't privy to every conversation, but you get the idea.) I couldn't believe it. And when I say nobody that's exactly what I mean. I could not find anybody who had seen it. So much for fitting in.
Twin Peaks briefly became a national sensation, but that was not my experience at all. While I eventually got a couple of friends into the show, I for the most part always felt like it was just me watching. I'm sure a lot of fans felt that way mid-season two, but that was my season one experience!!
