David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, which originally aired from 1990-1991, is a weird time. I first watched the series in 2011, when I’d just graduated college and was about to embark on a grad school journey while living in a tiny studio apartment that didn’t have a kitchen. I felt isolated then because I couldn’t have anyone over (this is funny to think about now, as we’re all self-isolating), so I spent hours upon hours blasting through TV shows I’d never seen that everyone loves. After Arrested Development, I moved on to Twin Peaks, and the captivating weirdness of small town life hooked me immediately. 

Twin Peaks, for the uninitiated, is a series about a small, sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest that seems normal on the surface, but has an intricate web of lies, murder, and conspiracy just below the surface. The show is notorious for having a critically acclaimed first season that follows the investigation into the murder of Laura Palmer, a local teenager. However, the second season kind of goes off the rails by solving the murder and then descending into an increasingly complicated set of subplots. 

Despite its fizzling end, Twin Peaks has been a steady influence on television and film, amassing a cult following and touching almost every dark, gritty TV show that followed it. Without Twin Peaks, there’s no Riverdale. Even Sesame Street has a parody. 

Recently, Showtime released a third season of Twin Peaks, The Return. Admittedly, I haven’t finished this new season yet. School got in the way, as well as an increasingly short attention span for David Lynch’s lingering shots.

However, I recently rewatched the series for a second time, and the weirdness is still just as engaging. Here are the top 5 most delightful weird things in the famously less-good second season of Twin Peaks. 

Some spoilers for Twin Peaks to follow. 

5. Ben Horne’s Civil War Obsession

In the second season, Great Northern hotel owner Ben Horne falls into a dissociative fugue state that makes him believe he’s Robert E. Lee. Yes, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Ben spends several episodes crafting tiny model soldiers and recreating battles in his office at the hotel. Eventually, Ben’s nearest and dearest (and his therapist, who’s suspect all his own) have to dress up as soldiers to help Ben live out his fantasy of Lee winning the Civil War. 

None of this really makes sense. Ben Horne does not previously express an interest in the Civil War and I’m not sure why he’d fantasize about being Robert E. Lee after growing up in the Pacific Northwest (really, I’m not sure why anyone would fantasize about that at all). We could read into the situation and note that perhaps Ben wants to exercise some control over the uncontrollable; by the time he begins being Lee, Ben’s best friend Leland Palmer has been carted away for the murder of Laura Palmer, his daughter, and Ben is powerless to change it or help him. The Civil War is over and the outcome is unchangeable, but Ben believes he can change it through his fantasies, and perhaps that helps him cope with the loss of his friend. Men on Twin Peaks have issues expressing their emotions. In some ways, Ben’s dip into the past is one of the less destructive methods of dealing with trauma. At least he’s not trying to kill anyone! 

4. James’s Second Season Plot

James Hurley sort of sucks. Sure, I guess he was cute by 90s standards, but he’s about as interesting as a bowl of unseasoned grits. But everyone seems to love James because he’s a perpetual bad boy loner who plays music of questionable quality and wears leather jackets. *sigh* 

However, in season 2 of the show, James goes completely off the rails. He flees Twin Peaks and ends up a couple of hours outside of town, at a mysterious estate owned by a beautiful woman and her absent, abusive husband. Of course, the whole thing is a plot to frame James for murder. James is chased by the police for a couple of episodes and then eventually just sort of...rides off into the sunset? It’s all weird and boring, but in the context of the show the move to introduce this strange murder plot makes perfect since. After the death of Laura Palmer is solved, the show needs something to keep momentum going. Enter all these weird plots, including James’s stint as a live-in mechanic. At its heart, Twin Peaks is a soap opera, and the wild plots are typical of the genre. These plotlines burn bright and brief; James is out of hot water and off the show a few short episodes later. 

3. Nadine Hurley

When Big Ed’s wife Nadine gets hit on the head, she inexplicably gains superhuman strength. She also believes she’s in high school, forgets her marriage, and falls in love with an actual high school boy, Mike. Nadine even forgets that she’s missing an eye (which she lost before the series starts, in a hunting accident with Ed). Nadine goes to school, joins the cheerleading squad, and later the wrestling team. She also saves Big Ed from Hank, who is just a whole other story.  

Mike eventually is charmed by Nadine’s ways. When asked what he sees in her, Mike counters with another question: “Do you know what the combination of sexual maturity and superhuman strength means?” Mike, for one, has found out. 

2. Everything about Catherine Martell and Josie

In the first season, Josie is a beautiful widow who has inherited her late husband’s lumber mill. She’s rich, she’s dating the sheriff, and she’s got a weird, strained relationship with her sister-in-law, Catherine. In the second season, we discover that Catherine has been hiding her supposed-dead brother Andrew in a secret room, and that Josie worked for a man in Hong Kong as a prostitute and assassin for many years before coming to Twin Peaks and settling down. These reveals are rapid, without much previous development to help viewers make sense of them. While the Martells and Josie know several of these twists long before they’re revealed to the viewer, other characters don’t. For one, Sheriff Harry is shook by the revelation of Josie’s past. 

He’s even more shook when her soul is transferred into the drawer knob on a nightstand, but some mysteries we’re not meant to know. 

Also, Catherine spends a lot of the season disguising herself as a Japanese man. I’m still not sure why, really. 

1. The Black Lodge

Nothing makes less sense than The Black Lodge, a mysterious and otherworldly place where Special Agent Dale Cooper goes to uncover the secrets of Bob, the...well...what is Bob, exactly? A spirit? A demon? We don’t get any clear answers in the original run of the show, and, knowing Lynch, I won’t get any clear answers in The Return either. 

The Black Lodge is moody and dark, with red velvet curtains and a chevron striped black and white floor. There’s a man with dwarfism, and a very tall man, and Laura Palmer, all just hanging out in this liminal space together. In the Red Room, Laura (or is it Laura?) tells Dale that she’ll see him in twenty five years. Dale doesn’t know what this means, and neither did viewers in 1991, when the show was cancelled before the finale aired. Here, a little over twenty-five years later, the Red Room is still an iconic set that’s immediately recognizable. 

Without Twin Peaks, television wouldn’t be what it is now, but it’s also a sign that TV, as a genre, can be just as mold-breaking and genre defining as movies. TV shows can tell stories just as well, if not better, by injecting a bit of weirdness into the norm. Twin Peaks is just a soap opera, but it’s a weird soap opera, and that’s what sets it apart. If you haven’t seen the show, there’s no better time to go back and watch.

Twin Peaks is currently available to stream on Netflix; The Return is available through Showtime.