Critic Reviews

What comes across most potently is Lynch’s liberated artistry and style, allowed free reign and immediately making even the most bold of other TV series, from American Gods to The Americans, look timid and compromised in comparison to Lynch’s latest moondrunk flourish.

If you, like me, had heard whispers that this revival was going to be Lynch’s vision almost entirely unconstrained by network notes--if you, like me, were buckled in for two hours of uncompromising surrealism and horror, this premiere delivered.

But the best stuff easily reminded true blue fans--and only true blue fans--why they loved this so deeply to begin with.

It was slow and strange in ways that felt like Lynch was deliberately baiting his audience to see how much they would tolerate--and how much they actually remembered about the old show--after so much time away. ... And yet I loved every plodding, baffling minute of it. ... I went into the night terrified that all the usual TV revival problems would become exponentially worse when filtered through Lynch’s own storytelling eccentricities, and I came out of it exhilarated. Baffled at times, but exhilarated.

God what a good show this is. Who cares who killed who?

I was riveted--I highly recommend watching this show on the largest screen possible, in dark room, with no interruptions. But I didn’t see much evidence that the new Twin Peaks is going to pivot anytime soon and turn into the show that people remember, or think they remember.

These episodes scattered a lot of fascinating imagery, disconnected story ideas, and inter-dimensional nightmare antics in front of its audience; it’s up to viewers to try and put the pieces together, or (my preferred method) simply soak in every bizarre tableau with glee. ... Twin Peaks (subtitled The Return) is a worthy new entry in his canon.

Its power comes from its electric inventiveness and gleeful inscrutability. An inimitable stew of the romantic and the demonic, the cartoonish and the crazy, it is, in the purest sense of the term, Lynchian. Peak TV, indeed.

The violence against women in the first two episodes, especially in comparison to what was experienced by men, stands out as perhaps the most antiquated element of the new series--a series we’re looking forward to following, but hoping that it remembers women deserve as much a chance to be heroes as men.

It is a splendid, focused and wholly assured resurrection.