Customer Reviews

Twin Peaks: The Complete Series (The Definitive Gold Box Edition)

5 star:		(160)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

It's great to see that both seasons and the pilot are finally in one package. "Twin Peaks" was a fantastic show that was quite experimental for its time (1990-1991) that at it's worst was better than most everything else on TV. I wish the show could have survived longer, but with an awful second season time slot - Saturday at 10pm - it had no chance. The revelation of Laura Palmer's killer took the wind out of the sails somewhat just nine shows into the second season, but the true theme of Twin Peaks was about the evil in the woods that took the form of the killer and the seamy underbelly of what appeared to be everyday small-town life. The murder of Laura Palmer was just the surface of that. Three somewhat pointless episodes followed the one that revealed Laura's killer, but then the show bounced back with the Windham Earle storyline. Unfortunately many viewers had stopped watching the show by then. Perhaps the lasting legacy of "Twin Peaks" is that it made series with weird subplots, long story arcs, and oddball characters more acceptable to the networks. For example, I don't think that "The X-Files" could have made it to the air in 1993 had it not been for "Twin Peaks" preceding it and succeeding. After all, after a show where there is a dwarf that materializes on a bed, dances, and talks backwards, an alternate reality where clones are created and sent out to the world, and creamed corn as a symbol of suffering, the adventures of Scully and Mulder look as thematically tame as Dragnet.

As for the extra features of each disc, that will probably eventually appear in the product description. Until it does, I have the information here:
Disc 1: Pilot
Log Lady Intro For Pilot
International Version With Alternate Ending

Discs 2 -8 : Episodes 1-26 with Log Lady intros for each episode.

Disc 9: Episodes 27-29
Log Lady intros for each episode.
Deleted Scenes (4 scenes)
Production Documentary

Disc 10: Special Features
A Slice of Lynch
Northwest Passage: Creating The Pilot
Freshly Squeezed: Creating Season 1
Where We're From: Creating The Music
Into The Night: Creating Season 2
Saturday Night Live Featuring Kyle MacLachlan (Monologue and Twin Peaks Sketch)
Return To Twin Peaks
Interactive Map (8 Pods)
"Falling" Music Video
Georgia Coffee Commercials (5 Spots)
Image Galleries
The Richard Beymer Gallery
Unit Photography
Twin Peaks Trading Cards
TV spots
Premiere Spots (8 Spots)
There's No Place Like Home Spot
1-900 Promo Ad
T-Shirt Ad
Greetings

From CBS Home Entertainment's own website:


Co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost and a large number of the cast and crew have returned to participate in this extraordinary new collection.

"Finally the pilot is together with the series. The picture looks clean with good color correction. The sound is really good," said David Lynch. "I think this is a great definitive Twin Peaks Gold Set - the Gold represents the highest quality. A lot of work has gone in to this, and in my opinion it has really paid off."

"Working closely with David Lynch, I believe we've put together the ultimate Twin Peaks DVD box set with the most unique, interesting and comprehensive collection of content possible that will more than excite the ardent fan and engage new ones," commented Ken Ross, Executive Vice President and General Manager, CBS Home Entertainment. "And we drank some damn good cups of coffee along the way.'"

This 10-disc set includes "Greetings from Twin Peaks" collectable postcards and a plethora of special features, including hours of newly-minted bonus content, featuring exclusive cast and crew interviews and rare footage never before released on DVD, produced by award-winning DVD producer Charles de Lauzirika ("Alien Quadrilogy," "Spider-Man 2: Special Edition," "Blade Runner: The Final Cut.")

"Secrets from Another Place: Creating Twin Peaks" is a collection of four new documentaries exploring the origins, production and impact of the show. The cast and crew, including co-creator Mark Frost, composer Angelo Badalamenti, singer Julee Cruise, actors Kyle MacLachlan, Joan Chen, Piper Laurie, Ray Wise, Sheryl Lee, Kenneth Welsh, Maedchen Amick, Miguel Ferrer and many others share their memories of creating the show in this in-depth piece covering the sensational and tumultuous evolution of TWIN PEAKS in four parts: "Northwest Passage: Creating the Pilot," "Freshly Squeezed: Creating Season One," "Where We're From: Creating the Music" and "Into the Night: Creating Season Two."

Co-creator and four-time Academy Award(R) nominee David Lynch, Kyle MacLachlan and Maedchen Amick take an amusing look back at the series in "A Slice of Lynch," an all-new get-together of friends over piping hot coffee and sweet cherry pie.

"Return to Twin Peaks" follows a group of devoted fans to the 2006 Twin Peaks Festival, where the show's faithful have been regularly gathering for costume contests, celebrity sightings, trivia games and other wildness in the woods outside of Seattle. And an Interactive Map allows viewers to revisit the show's unforgettable locations as they appear today...and how to find them in real life.

Thought to have been lost forever, a selection of deleted scenes has been unearthed for this collection and approved by David Lynch, offering viewers additional clues and background on some of their favorite characters and locations in the series.

The collection showcases the phenomenon that was TWIN PEAKS with such archival nuggets as the "Saturday Night Live" opening monologue and "Twin Peaks" sketch featuring Kyle MacLachlan, the "Falling" music video featuring Julee Cruise, the Richard Beymer behind-the-scenes photo gallery, original network promo spots and many more rare gems!

Newly remastered from the original negative and personally approved by David Lynch, the episodes have never looked better. Moreover, viewers will have the option of enjoying the episodes in either new 5.1 Surround Sound or the original 2.0 network television audio.

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So, um...there you go. Now grab a cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie and order this baby!

Sure, everyone has his/hers favorite TV shows, and preferences shift with seasonal mood, age and experiences. However, THIS IS TELEVISION AT HER BEST! The frivolity of the 80's gave way to the seriousness of the 90's - all painted in 50's Americana nostalgia of innocence lost.

Atmospheric, mysterious, intriguing, smart,...Words are just not capable to describe this prematurely terminated series! Every time I watch it I discover another moment, another gem I treasure. Too bad the network executives decided to, first, meddle with the plot and, when this backfired, they treated this masterpiece as filler material. No wonder ratings floundered resulting in the series eventual cancellation.

True, the 25 years are not up yet. However, I think that Agent Cooper has remained trapped in the Waiting Area long enough. Let's all petition David Lynch for a long-awaited movie or TV mini-series to tidy things up.

This particular BoxSet is everything Season 2 was not: excellent picture and sound quality AND all the missing Extras! Commercials, trailers and product spin-offs...
My advice: if you already own Season 1, sell it, avoid Season 2, and buy this one.

Own it and make weekends out of it. Once in a blue moon a certain magic manifests amongst us. One that never fades.
And there is always music in the air.

How do I know? A gentle giant told me.

The best way to measure the greatness of a work of art is this: if the world were destroyed tomorrow, and all that remained was the work of art, how much of the human universe - known and unknown - could be recreated from it? How much pain and sadness and madness and ecstasy - how much guilt and glory and evil - could be recovered? If all you had were the 28 episodes of Twin Peaks, I believe the answer would be "all of it". Like Shakespeare, Dante, Proust, and the Bible, this show - masquerading as a murder mystery masquerading as a soap opera masquerading as a supernatural fantasy - is a panoptic document of the makes-your-mind-melt wonder, the contradictory and infinite diversity, of our world.

Obviously, the show is - foremost but superficially - a 'whodunnit' mystery. As it progresses, new characters are brought in, new connections are established, and new questions are raised. With each new character (there end up being well over 50, at least 25 of them "main" characters) what immediately smacks against your brain like a cold, hard handshake is how well-crafted, how unique, how **interesting** each one of them is. All of them are very "real" people -- moreso than most "real" people are. First impressions give way to second impressions, which give way to third impressions mirroring first ones. In the end, to know more is to love more. No two fans have the same favorite character, because each character embodies some different, equally appealing, facet of life; sometimes, more than that: the show's main characters are, to varying degrees, the entire human universe inside a single being.

But why stop there? By the end of the show you will feel - to attempt to get meaning from a cliche - that you have actually BEEN to the show's distinctive, intriguing, and haunting milieus. The sense of mood, of atmosphere, of sound (the soundtrack is a punch-your-fist-against-the-desk-cause-you-can't-describe-it miracle) are so hilariously superior to anything that's ever been shown on TV before (and, when I really think about it, on cinema screens and 99% of books) that it's like comparing "Hot Cross Buns" to Beethoven's 9th. Watching it will ruin almost every other thing you see, since nothing can compare to it.

After all that, it doesn't need to be said that it's the greatest TV show I've ever seen, but I'll say it anyway, because it's the only thing I can think to say that even approximates my ineffable gratitude for, and fascination with, something which has scarred my memory with so much wonder and laughter and heartbreak, above all with beauty, a sense that every life - and even every place and every thing - has intrinsic interest and value.

There's hardly anything at all to say about Twin Peaks that hasn't already been said since the show's premiere and demise; both of which occured in what seems like an eternity ago. For those unfamiliar with the cult show from David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks is the story of murdered homecoming queen Laura Palmer (the gorgeous Sheryl Lee), whose body is discovered washed ashore and wrapped in plastic. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Lynch favorite Kyle MacLachlan) is assigned to the case, and what follows is a dizzying, mistifying trip that literally must be seen to be believed. Featuring an incredibly oddball cast of characters and a dark, sinister tone that underlines the series from beginning to end, Twin Peaks still ranks today as one of the most original, and influential, shows to ever grace network television. There's no easy answers to be found, and there are plenty of confusing moments, but in the end, everything comes together in an incredibly strange way that is simply beautiful; even if the ending of the series is left unresolved (but picked up upon in the feature film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, released after the series' demise from New Line, and hence is not featured in this set). Everyone that populates Twin Peaks leaves their mark, especially MacLachlan as the black coffee and cherry pie loving fed; while the rest of the cast includes Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry S. Truman, and features familiar faces like Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Ray Wise, Joan Chen, Lynch favorite Jack "Eraserhead" Nance, Miguel Ferrer, a young Heather Graham, Billy Zane, Michael J. Anderson, a pre X-Files David Duchovny (as a trannie FBI Agent no less), and even Lynch himself. This Definitive Gold Box Edition collects both seasons of the series and a horde of extras (although none of the ones included with the single released second season), as well as Lynch's breathtaking pilot. The first season is by far the better of the two, with the second season making the big revelation that will either have you with your jaw hanging to the floor or swearing at your television. Either way you look at it, whether you are a new to town or a returning visitor, Twin Peaks will astound you like no modern network TV show can ever hope to do today. If you doubt these words, or the words of the other reviews here, take a trip to Twin Peaks and see for yourself.

Finally, finally, finally - Twin Peaks is available on DVD and not only that, but it has been remastered and it looks amazing. Most of us hardcore fans were used to watching the horrible VHS version with his unprecedented lack of clarity and color balance. This is truly Twin Peaks like you've never seen it before.

In this ten-disc set, you get all the episodes, the pilot, and a nice selection of extras. The pilot is available in both the domestic version, and the extended international version. The Log Lady intros are available, but they don't seem to have been remastered and are somewhat fuzzy.

I've heard a number of complains about the sound, usually regarding the music covering dialogue. Lynch is absolutely meticulous with his sound design, which leads me to believe that the balance is no accident. In Twin Peaks, the music is almost another character itself. While it IS more forward in the mix than what we're used to, Lynch clearly feels that it's important enough to put it in the foreground at times.

The extras are all pretty decent and informative, but I would have liked some episode commentaries and other features that we usually find on TV show DVDs. Lynch is no fan of commentary tracks, but seeing as his involvement with the entirety of Twin Peaks is, at times, periphery, I thought there might have been a chance for some of the other directors involved to step in and tell a few stories.

Overall, it's an essential purchase for all Lynch fans, and probably for anyone who likes weird, but great television.

I remember the excitement when I learned that the first season was being released on DVD. I'd been waiting for that moment for a really long time. Then, I heard that the pilot wasn't included, the thrill was gone and I decided I wouldn't be getting it after all. I then started looking into the possibility of just buying the series on VHS. Around that same time, I started to hear a few rumblings of a complete set being released some time in the future. I decided to wait and see because I would rather have a complete set.

Fortunately, as I was clicking through the bestsellers list, my jaw dropped as my dream finally came true ... the complete and beautiful series that is Twin Peaks. I've already pre-ordered it and I can't wait for October 30th to roll around.

As for the extras, as much as I would like to see 10 discs worth of extras, I will happily settle for having the entire series on DVD. It's still worth it to me (especially since this gold box set costs less than the two seasons bought together ... with the added bonus of the pilot!!!).

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance of TWIN PEAKS in the history of television. Although the eighties saw enormous strides in Quality Television, beginning with HILL STREET BLUES and continuing with series like CHINA BEACH, ST. ELSEWHERE, and L.A. LAW, none of these series took television took TV to the next level. To be honest, neither did TWIN PEAKS, since Season Two failed to deliver on the almost dizzying potential shown in Season One, but it clearly revealed television as a medium with more potential than anyone had ever imagined.

In my own take on the history of television, the full maturation of serial narrative television comes in four stages, each one represented by four key television series. Stage One was the debut of HILL STREET BLUES, with its intertwining of multiple story arcs. Previous to HSB, there had been no critically acclaimed series to leave conflict unresolved each week. Series worked exclusively in episodic format, wrapping up every major plot detail by the end of each episode, and with all the characters magically forgetting everything that had happened in the week before. There were multiple reasons for this, one of them being that the pure episodic format allowed networks to repeat episodes in any order, since together they did not tell a story. But HILL STREET BLUES, while it did not tell very long stories, always had multiple arcs that took 3 to 6 episodes to resolve. It was a dramatic improvement on previous television narrative. Stage Two came with TWIN PEAKS and the idea that you could use a series to tell a very, very long story over the course of one or more seasons. Unfortunately, despite an inconceivably exciting and very short Season One, TWIN PEAKS fell apart in its second season as unresolved mystery was piled on top of a series of other unresolved mysteries. By the end of Season Two viewers had been given few answers but had been presented with a staggering number of questions. More on the consequences of this in a bit. Stage Three was represented by THE X-FILES, which like TWIN PEAKS took a very long story arc over the course of several seasons, as over six years the series told a story of alien colonization and government collusion. Unlike TWIN PEAKS, the series provided answers, but like TWIN PEAKS it succumbed to internal contradictions and narrative confusions. As X-FILES creator Chris Carter admitted, they were more or less making up the mythology episodes as they went along. Also, while Mulder and Scully were riveting characters, the series was insufficiently concerned with character development and more concerned with plot. The correct blend had not yet been found. Stage Four came with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which perfectly blended long-term character development with very long story arcs. In developing the series LOST, Damon Lindelhof has stated that their writers would watch TWIN PEAKS and THE X-FILES in order to be aware of the pitfalls befalling long narrative serial dramas and BUFFY to observe the correct balance between narrative and character development.

[Usually at this point a BABYLON 5 fan will interject that B5 also introduced a long, character-based narrative into television. My reply is always that B5 took place in its own little universe, no pun intended. While THE X-FILES and BUFFY were changing the way TV envisioned the way to handle narrative, B5 was on, but it apparently had little or no influence on any other shows. I've never been able to discover another series that seems to have been indebted to B5, not even FARSCAPE, which seems to owe far more to BUFFY. So B5 aside, my point stands.]

TWIN PEAKS represented both TV at its best and its worst. Season One of TWIN PEAKS might be the most perfect season in the history of television. It was only a few episodes long, but each episode was more exciting than watching most movies. Prior to TWIN PEAKS all television was about talk. The focus of every show was on people standing around talking. Ironically for a visual medium, the visual was curiously unimportant. MIAMI VICE had anticipated many of the achievements of TWIN PEAKS by bringing the purely visual and aural elements of television to the forefront and by making silence -- mainly through the long, pregnant, almost overwhelming pauses of Edward James Olmos -- a significant part of the surface of television. But TWIN PEAKS made the specifically visual and aural elements of the show critically important in a way never before seen on TV. It was more like watching ballet than viewing anything else that had ever before appeared on the small screen. Unfortunately, all the magnificence of Season One was rapidly destroyed by the increasingly incoherent and self-indulgent second season. Not that there were not some wonderful moments in the second season, but more and more as the season went on, at least toward the end when Lynch and Frost seem to have realized that things had gone too far, the show devolved into chaos. Still, the genie was out of the bottle. Regardless of what the show became in Season Two, Season One had already altered the history of television.

TWIN PEAKS is also, more than any other series, responsible for introducing surrealism into prime time. Although NORTHERN EXPOSURE (which was filmed only a few miles away from where TWIN PEAKS was -- the two series in fact featured opposite sides of the same mountain range in their background shots -- NORTHERN EXPOSURE also made an explicit shout out to TWIN PEAKS near the end of its first season) started off odd, it didn't become truly surreal until after TWIN PEAKS enormous success. Without the magnificent strangeness of TWIN PEAKS we might never have gotten the oddity that we found in shows like ALLY McBEAL.

Famously, the reason we have never seen a complete collection of TWIN PEAKS before was that the rights to the pilot was held by a different production company. An oddly truncated edition of Season One was briefly available, but without the initial, and utterly glorious, pilot, it just didn't seem right. The pilot was available separately, but the quality was so low as to be more irritating than satisfying. Now we will finally get the entire series together in one wonderful set.

I recently purchased this Gold edition of Twin Peaks. I have watched the entire series many times, but each time I watch it again, it always seems fresh and original. Maybe I'm watching the wrong shows on TV these days, but I simply don't think anything that has been produced before Twin Peaks or after it comes close to its multi-layered effect. I simply can't recall another show that can achieve intense levels of humor, mystery, intrigue, horror, innocence, elements of the supernatural, and an uncanny ability to turn your stomach at certain points. This show was cut short early for a reason - mainstream TV watchers simply can't handle it. It was revolutionary when it aired and still would be today. If you haven't seen it, you just don't know what you're missing.

A cultural phenomenon during its 1990-92 run, "Twin Peaks" holds up wonderfully well almost 20 years later. The gold box edition offers both the original pilot and the international version, as well as all the episodes from "Twin Peaks" all-too-brief two season run. After reading of some viewers' problems with discs, I was concerned that I might run into some of the same. Happily, that was not the case. The set that I ordered from Amazon was perfect. The episodes themselves have beautiful clarity, perhaps more so than when they originally aired, and I found the extras to be both informative and entertaining.

For those not familiar with "Twin Peaks", it was a strange and exhilerating television experience, the likes of which I had never seen when it first aired. Conceived by David Lynch and Mark Frost, it is a dark and deeply disturbing journey into the psyche of a seemingly normal, all-American town. The sudden bursts of violence were shocking for a network television show in the early '90's, and those images still pack a punch today; there is an unsettling eeriness that prevails through most of the episodes, leavened by quirky, sometimes oddball humor supplied by the eccentric inhabitants of Twin Peaks.

The brilliant David Lynch has stated that Twin Peaks belongs to the same universe as his underrated "Lost Highway", and there is a certain similarity of themes that are constant, I think, through not only "Highway", but "Mulholland Drive", and the earlier "Blue Velvet". They all seem to be part of a macabre world that looks familiar, but is, somehow, not our own.

The cast of "Twin Peaks" is enormous and everyone seems to inhabit their characters to an impressive degree. I can't think of a villain in television history who is more terrifying than the diabolical Bob; the very sight of him slithering and cackling makes one want to scream. As played by Frank Silva, he is the essence of unending horror and the stuff that nightmares are made of. Even the madman Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh)can't hold a candle to Bob's demonic presence.

On the flip side of the coin, the series' lawmen--FBI agent Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman--are wonderful, stalwart, brave men, vividly brought to life by, respectively, Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Ontkean. "Twin Peaks" was, perhaps, the finest hour for both actors. MacLachlan has gone on to lesser (I think), husbandly roles in "Desperate Housewives" and "Sex and the City", but I'll always remember him chiefly for this turn as Dale Cooper. Of the many other cast members, the great Piper Laurie is deliciously malicious as scheming Catherine Martell, with Jack "Eraserhead" Nance on hand as her clueless, cuckholded husband, Pete; Joan Chen is convincingly demur and devious as the traitorous Josie; and Richard Beymer is both touching and amusing as nutty, rich hotelier/bordello owner, Benjamin Horne. Ray Wise and Grace Zabriskie offer a touching and, ultimately, chilling portrait of a grief-stricken married couple. The younger cast members are also compelling, especially Madchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Sheryl Lee, who plays both the ill-fated Laura Palmer (whose murder sets the series in motion) and her lookalike cousin, Maddy Ferguson. In fact, it would be difficult to single out any performer in the series who isn't dead-on with their characterizations.

While the pilot and Season 1 are pretty much flawless, Season 2 almost sinks a few times, due to some seemingly superfluous plot developments that do nothing to advance the plot. In fact, getting through episodes 17-22 may require some patience and a certain level of tolerance for out-and-out inanity. It's worth hanging in there for the remaining episodes because they come close to recapturing the essence of the earlier shows, and, in some cases, surpass the exhuberance and sheer weirdness that was displayed in the first season. Anyone expecting everything to be neatly wrapped up in the finale will be sorely unamused, although, for me, "Twin Peaks" is more a case of the journey being more important than the destination. I think "Twin Peaks" is as close to a television series masterpiece as has ever been produced for American television.