21 pop culture moments in 2017 that spoke to the zeitgeist

Twin Peaks: The Return

TV has never been a stranger to weirdness. Way back in the ‘50s, Rod Serling invited viewers into the fifth dimension with his anthology series The Twilight Zone, which merged sci-fi/horror pulp with social commentary. In the ‘90s, The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer gave the procedural format a paranormal twist, while The Sopranos punctuated its psychological study of a mobster with fanciful detours. The 2000s gave us Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Six Feet Under and Pushing Daisies.

Still, Brian Tallerico’s assertion that the medium reached new heights of WTF-ery in 2017 rings true. This was the year of Legion and The Young Pope, American Gods and The Leftovers, Mr. Robot and Riverdale. On the comedy side, Bojack Horseman staged a miniature apocalypse, and The Good Place extracted mirth from ethical dilemmas. And to top it off, David Lynch returned to the small screen.

Almost three decades after it first vaporized the boundaries of television, Twin Peaks was at it again, twisting minds into knots for 18 episodes (albeit now on Showtime, rather than ABC). The trappings are familiar: the secluded Pacific Northwest town; the quirky characters, led by Kyle McLachlan’s FBI Agent Dale Cooper; the hip soundtrack; the damn good coffee. But The Return refuses to settle for its former self, trapping its audience in a rabbit hole full of doppelgängers, monsters, apparitions, and symbolism. Long gone are the days when “who killed Laura Palmer?” was the show’s most pressing question.

For some, the sedate tempo and convoluted plot (not to mention the callous treatment of women) proved too frustrating. Others were bewitched, discerning in Lynch and Mark Frost’s ramblings a kernel of profound truth that could only be satisfyingly articulated through heightened emotion and dream logic. Somehow, with reality spiraling increasingly out of control, this — and only this — made sense. Because, despite its cryptic presentation, Twin Peaks: The Return is a morality play at heart. It peers into the murky soul of America and discovers darkness within darkness — a nightmare within a nightmare. And there’s no way out.