There’s no other man audacious enough to begin a television series with an hour and a half pilot that includes a dead girl washing up on a beach, an FBI agent that continuously talks into a dictaphone and a bevy of cops that admittedly love donuts. And that’s probably why David Lynch is respected in the way that he is. Its common knowledge that his background in the visual arts heavily influences each and every project that the director and writer has been involved with. Bits and pieces of it show through in The Elephant Man and of course Eraserhead, but just as prominent are the photographic impulses in the Twin Peaks’ pilot.

Beyond the simple fact that the pilot comes in at feature film length, it looks drastically different than other stuffs on television at the time. During the 1990 television season, shows like Cheers and Seinfeld aped a sort of commonality while Lynch and company attempted to create a hazy setting in which to figure out who the murderer of Laura Palmer actually is. And while the genesis of the series is this girl who doesn’t ever appear in real time – apart from when her body’s discovered – the reoccurring inclusions of the character in dreams and film footage are a testament to the actress’s ability, although I’d be hard pressed to name something else that she worked in.

Despite that fact, the enormous cast that populates Twin Peaks, Washington is comprised of a variety of confusingly dense characters who each display enough quirky individuality to warrant individual shows for all. The focus, though, is on Special Agent Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, who is first seen driving into town while checking his notebook and simultaneously giving details to some off screen secretary via a recording device. He’s instantly recognizable as an eccentric and delving into the specifics of his lust for various kinds of pie only cements the fact.

The high school that the agent eventually finds himself working around is populated by more freaks than could have been imagined in a small town. There’re salacious football players and even a biker gang. But all of these disparate characters that inhabit the small town point to Lynch’s manipulation of time – or the lack of it. Much the same as in Blue Velvet there’s a vague hint of ‘50s style, but enough trappings of modern life to create some non-existent middle ground.

The Twin Peaks’ pilot includes enough random violence, sex and intrigue to have attracted an enormous following. And it did. The remaining seven episodes that make up the first season apparently did well even when set up against some other highly rated shows of the time. Of course, a plot revolving around the murder of a single high school student was only able to sustain the show for so long. And while it wound up being a movie after its cancellation, Twin Peaks was soon overtaken by network honchos and the show’s creators were forced to reveal the killers identity mid way through the second season. That announced the demise of the show. But the fact that Lynch’s creation was so bizarre has created a cult around the over cast town of Twin Peaks.