Twin Peaks/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Is the Man From Another place legitimately trying to stop BOB to prevent a catastrophe from happening, or is he an evil spirit attempting to take control of BOB for his own purposes? Due to the show's cancellation, we may never know for sure.
  • Base Breaker: Annie Blackburn. While she isn't without her fans, she still gets flack from Cooper/Audrey shippers.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Season 2 episode 8 has a flashback of Ben and Jerry remembering a girl dancing around with a flashlight in their room as children. It's wordless, 4 frames per second, and goes on for over a minute. Hold on, Ben & Jerry?... Oh lord.
    • The singing scene with James, Donna and Maddy. Helped heaping them all onto the scrappy heap if they weren't there already.
  • Characterization Marches On: When Cooper first meets the Twin Peaks police, he tells Harry rather standoffishly that "Once the Bureau gets involved, we run the show." Then later Cooper defends Harry against Albert, and later still when Harry tells Cooper he wants to prosecute Ben Horne for Laura's murder, Cooper says "All right, this is your operation."
  • The Chris Carter Effect
  • Commitment Anxiety
  • Complete Monster: BOB, all but literally.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The entire soundtrack, really. Good thing too, because most of it consists of a few tracks played over and over in each episode, and if it weren't so good it would drive people crazy. Now has it's own page.
  • Cult Classic
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Audrey is one of, if probably not THE most popular character aside from ol' Coop.
    • Gordon Cole, Albert Rosnefield, and Maddie Ferguson all have pretty big fanbases despite not appearing that much.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: The Cooper and Audrey pairing was preferred not only by fans, but by Lynch himself; explicit references were written out of the script at Kyle MacLachlan's objection to their relationship. Both were later given other (and fan-reviled) love interests in the second season.
    • It's rumoured that the decision not to move forward with the Cooper and Audrey romance was down to Lara Flynn Boyle (who was involved with Kyle at the time). It was confirmed by the producer-writer Robert Engels.
  • Holy Shit Quotient: Extremely high.
  • Japanese Love Twin Peaks: While Twin Peaks is more along the lines of a Cult Classic in the U.S., it was VERY popular when it aired in Japan. It even influenced the creators of a popular Nintendo game you may have heard of.
    • Lynch even filmed a series of Japanese coffee commercials, starring Agent Cooper and the rest of the gang. Can be seen here
  • Jerkass Woobie: Leo arguably becomes this over the course of his captivity in Windom Earle's cabin, during which he comes to understand firsthand the sort of horrifying abuse he inflicted upon Shelly. See Redemption Equals Death below.
  • Jumping the Shark: Episode 9 of the second season.
  • Memetic Mutation: "She's dead... wrapped in plastic."
  • Nightmare Fuel: And The Movie, Fire Walk with Me, is even scarier than the series, which is to be expected because it's about the final days of Laura Palmer. BOB is at his most terrifying, the Black Lodge is even more disturbing, and if you're faint of heart, it's probably a good idea to close your eyes during the scene where Laura climbs on top of Harold Smith and says "Fire...Walk...With...Me. ME!!!" Seriously.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Annie Blackburn, who was wheeled in out of nowhere purely to supplant Audrey as Cooper's love interest.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Almost. After spending Season One as a weak-willed pawn being manipulated by Catherine and Ben Horne before running crying to Sheriff Truman, it is revealed that Josie has secretly been working with Ben to frame Catherine for the mill fire, and also had a hand in her husband's death, which gave her the mill in the first place. Then, in the following season, it is discovered that Josie did all this at the behest of another person, turning her back into the easily manipulated victim. One step forwards, two steps back.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Several. Primarily to blame for the general consensus that the second season would've been much better if it had been half as long.
  • The Scrappy: James Hurley (for being monumentally stupid, even by the standards of Twin Peaks teenagers) and Josie Packard (for being a hysterical victim and nothing else); take your pick. Or Nadine. Don't forget Annie and John Justice Wheeler, especially if you're a Cooper/Audrey fan.
    • Lana Budding Milford also gets a lot of flack.
    • Arguably the series' biggest Scrappy is Evelyn Marsh, who served no purpose to the main storyline and was probably only added to write James off the show.
  • Seasonal Rot: It is generally agreed that the series loses focus after the main story arc is resolved in episode 8 of season 2. A new, related story arc emerges in the rest of the second season, but much of it suffers from having been neglected by Lynch and left to less competent writers and directors, causing a vast drop in quality and major inconsistencies in characterization. Kyle MacLachlan became impatient with Lynch's non-involvement and even cast member Kimmy Robertson admits to having stopped watching due to Seasonal Rot.
  • Signature Scene: The Red Room scene at the end of the third episode.
  • Tear Jerker: The last scene of Fire Walk With Me.
    • Don't forget Leland's death.
  • Too Good to Last
  • Uncanny Valley: Just about everything about the Black Lodge.
  • Villain Decay: Ben.
  • Wangst: Done intentionally with Leland in season 1.
  • What an Idiot!: Laura is a tragic example, Andy is a comic one, and Maddy, James and Bobby are just dumb.
  • The Woobie: A good chunk of the characters, actually.
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