Who killed Laura Palmer?
It was the hot question in 1990 when David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” was the hottest prime-time show on TV, debuting as a brilliant two-hour pilot that began with the discovery of the cold and dead body of Palmer (Sheryl Lee) wrapped in a sheet of plastic and washed up on the riverbank.
It’s a question that is being asked again – and celebrated, even – because of last week’s release of “Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition,” a 10-DVD set that is the first collection of “Twin Peaks” in its entirety. Because of complex rights issues involving Lynch selling the pilot to alternate distributor Warner Home Video for sale in Europe, no previous box set has included the landmark pilot attached to the series. And as anyone familiar with the show knows, the pilot episode sets up the entire dysfunctional, wacky and quotable microcosm that is the town of Twin Peaks, Wash., starting with Palmer’s murder.
She was beautiful and blond, the popular homecoming queen who was known and adored throughout the cloistered town. In life and death – and especially in her secret life as a prostitute, two-timer and cokehead – Palmer was representative of the dark underbelly that exists in rural, small-town life. Her unsolved murder was the captivating crime that had America tuned to ABC.
But after the question was answered at the beginning of the show’s second season, we began to lose interest. We weren’t fulfilled by the resolution of Palmer’s death. And neither was auteur Lynch, who says in a documentary included with the set that ABC had been pressuring him to resolve that part of the storyline – and that he and series co-creator Mark Wolf weren’t ever planning on divulging the identity of Palmer’s killer.
This stunner comes amid “A Slice of Lynch,” the documentary’s roundtable that seats Lynch, Kyle MacLachlan (special agent Dale Cooper), Madchen Amick (diner waitress Shelly Johnson) and crew member John Wentworth. And it’s especially nice to hear for fans of the show who’d thought all along that while season two was pretty good, season one was as great as television gets.
The DVD set is a true gift for all fans of the show, and it’s the ideal entrée for people who have always been curious about Lynch’s spooky foray into television. In addition to the original U.S. pilot, the first disc also includes the European version of the pilot, which was meant to be a stand- alone film for European distribution.
It’s a fascinating trip, watching Lynch and his excellent cast try to wrap things up somewhat neatly in a program that is only about a half-hour longer than the U.S. pilot, which left a viewer with a million questions and suspicions. The European version is harried and clumsy in its attempt to wrangle Palmer’s killer, but that actually fits the bill for Lynch and his career-making feature films that don’t always make perfect, linear sense.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
