One Second from Each Episode of Twin Peaks: Experience David Lynch’s Groundbreaking TV Drama in Less than a Minute

Even if you watched Twin Peaks dur­ing its orig­i­nal broad­cast on ABC in 1990 and 1991 and have nev­er revis­it­ed the show since, you’ll vivid­ly remem­ber a great many moments from it: some because of their emo­tion­al impact, some because of their aes­thet­ic impact, and some because you had no idea what to make of them. But despite the incom­pre­hen­sion it famous­ly caused its view­ers, Twin Peaks nev­er­the­less slow­ly and inex­orably drew them into its real­i­ty: the real­i­ty of the epony­mous small Wash­ing­ton log­ging town whose home­com­ing queen has been mur­dered and in which FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er has arrived to inves­ti­gate.

David Lynch and Mark Frost planned it that way: peo­ple who tuned in week after week to find out who killed Lau­ra Palmer would, in the­o­ry, keep watch­ing even after that unsolved part of the sto­ry had long since fad­ed into the back­ground. But pres­sure from ABC even­tu­al­ly forced the cre­ators to resolve that mys­tery, at which point even many die-hard Peaks-heads won­dered whether the show had lost its way.

You’ll see that peri­od, as well as every every oth­er, rep­re­sent­ed in the video above, which com­press­es the entire run of Twin Peaks — the thir­ty episodes of the orig­i­nal two sea­sons plus the eigh­teen episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired last year on Show­time — into less than a minute, draw­ing one sec­ond from each episode.

Oth­er respect­ed tele­vi­sion shows, like Sein­feld and Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, have under­gone this treat­ment before. But to watch Lynch and Frost’s ground­break­ing dra­ma as an assem­bly of par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful indi­vid­ual sec­onds pro­vides an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence, one that may well bring back mem­o­ries of sur­prise, con­fu­sion, hilar­i­ty, and even a kind of awe. Per­haps it does­n’t allow you to inhab­it the dis­tinc­tive long-form Lynchi­an (and Fros­t­ian) vision in the way that the series itself does, but this con­densed, sin­gle-shot ver­sion may well get you want­i­ng to vis­it Twin Peaks again, whether you last vis­it­ed 27 years ago or just yes­ter­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

The Late Alan Thicke Hosts a Twin Peaks Behind-the-Scenes Spe­cial (1990)

David Lynch Falls in Love: A Clas­sic Scene From Twin Peaks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.