Red curtains and black and white floors. Coffee, cherry pies, a dead prom queen, and quirky FBI agents that use Tibetan spiritual teachings to solve their mysteries. Strange dreams and cryptic messages. A sleepy, cozy small town with a few secrets. If you’ve ever watched Twin Peaks (or even if you haven’t), these might be the first images that spring to mind upon hearing the name. The original series, a perfect watch for the fall season, follows Special Agent Dale Cooper and the denizens of the quiet town of Twin Peaks as they investigate the death of Laura Palmer, embedding itself in the soap opera qualities of television at the time and piquing the interest of the country (and the world) until ending with the second season on a horrific cliffhanger. The next time the quirky townspeople returned in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, things had changed. A prequel, the story briefly follows the FBI’s investigation into a string of murders, then quickly shifts gears towards the life of “perfect girl” Laura Palmer before her death.

As I recommend experiencing all of Twin Peaks for yourself, I will refrain from dropping major spoilers, but it’s important to note that the intoxicating yet quiet nostalgic small town feeling is only one layer of the world. The perfect, beautiful prom queen Laura Palmer is plagued by abuse, drugs, and supernatural terror. The mountainous, breezy town is filled with murder, heartbreak, and criminal organizations. Even in the idyllic woods surrounding the town awaits the entrance to the Black Lodge, the home of bizarre unnatural entities that feed on pain and suffering. Fire Walk with Me takes the veil from the show and rips it off, revealing the darkness just under the surface. What ensues is something truly terrifying, even despite the often funny and idiosyncratic content, popping the bubble of the dream. The movie’s tagline lets the viewers down early, with the quirky cast of characters judged as “in a town like Twin Peaks, no one is innocent.”

At its face, this Americana dream is emblematic of American society as a whole, a front with a rotten interior that no one wants to look at. Consider the “How are yous?” with no real answer actually expected, or the smiling faces of cashiers who moments before were being belittled by their managers. Within every gold mine is a canary waiting to die, every town a graveyard, and every diner a lover estranged. This is only part of what Twin Peaks confronts, the oft-ignored truth of a reality behind what we want to see. 

That’s not to say you shouldn’t curl up under your covers with a cup of coffee and settle into the kind parts of the show. Twin Peaks has its fair share of genuine goodness, and the goofy melodrama the show fronts with is not something to be ignored or not enjoyed. Twin Peaks is complex, fun, mysterious, and even frightening, and I’ll always insist that it’s the perfect show for the fall season. So, when you see the leaves change colors and when you notice night starts to come just a little bit earlier, set some time aside to watch the first few episodes of Twin Peaks if you haven’t already, and let yourself get swept up in the comfortable mountain town and immediately familiar characters. While you’re there, maybe take a peek behind the curtain too, just to see what’s there.