The upcoming Fox mini-series Wayward Pines (based on the novel by Blake Crouch) should, in theory, have plenty going for it. It's executive produced and partly directed by M. Night Shyamalan---not a reason to watch it, necessarily, but at least something that should pique viewer interest. It stars, among others, Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino, and Melissa Leo. It features Terrence Howard, fresh off his star turn as Lucious Lyon on the network's smash hit Empire. The first episode includes scenes set at a hospital that muscle in on American Horror Story: Asylum territory. Yet Wayward Pines is mostly being described as a ripoff of Twin Peaks.
That's not particularly surprising. David Lynch and Mark Frost's enormously successful ABC series---combining elements of noir, small-town soap, phantasmagoria, and a genre that is best described solely with the word "Lynchian"---is having a bit of a moment. Long after it ended in June of 1991, it's still a persistent cultural presence, so powerful that the announcement of a third season inspired fear, nervous anticipation, and out-and-out joy, all for a few episodes that will likely never materialize.
And Twin Peaks has been a touchstone of the TV development landscape practically since the moment it first incited mania over the identity of Laura Palmer's killer. The process of preparing new food for the hungry airwaves often feels like watching a group of drunk people trying to play Simon Says---every time something works, the rest of the players try to sloppily imitate it. Consider the spate of Mad Men copycats---one of them by Wayward Pines creator Chad Hodge---or series piggy-backing off Lost. So in the wake of Twin Peaks and its unusual success, several networks tried pushing out series replicating the supposed "formula" that made it so successful. The prime example of these---the similarly revived X-Files---took the "supernatural murder" element and ran with it, allowing for any number of bizarre settings in a monster-of-the-week episode. But most of the series in Twin Peaks' shadow weren't so lucky.
CBS tried its hand with Northern Exposure, which was on at the same time as Twin Peaks but substantially outlived it, Picket Fences, which ran for a few seasons starting a year later, and American Gothic, Sam Raimi's one-season supernatural murder drama. In 1991, NBC put out Eerie, Indiana, a light-hearted riff on the small-town show that explicitly referenced Twin Peaks. And ABC itself let Oliver Stone make mini-series Wild Palms, a show that executives ensured had an actual ending, and was subsequently favorably compared to the weirdo mothership. As recently as 2009, ABC swung and missed with mini-series Happy Town---a show that begins its promo with "from the network that brought you Twin Peaks," more than two decades after the fact.
So as much as Shyamalan protests that Wayward Pines is nothing like Twin Peaks, generating the comparisons is sufficient to create interest in the show. (He also, seemingly begrudgingly, admits its influence.) Besides, while Shyamalan's biggest gripe with the comparison---that Wayward Pines has a concrete explanation for the characters' actions---might be true, it's not the reason why the trailer screams, "Damn derivative cup of TV."
Pretty much every show to explicitly (or, at least, obviously) take after Twin Peaks does so in a way that is purely superficial, raiding the town for its creepy, boxed-in vibe, well-adorned, closets full of moth-eaten old sweaters, and its part-industrial, part-breathtakingly-natural vistas. The baroque, incongruous aesthetic has spiritual descendants ranging from Bates Motel to Hannibal to Veronica Mars to perhaps the most egregious offender, The Killing. Where Twin Peaks takes the Pacific Northwest and turns it into a relatable site of mystery, The Killing transforms it into a dreary watercolor that someone left out in the rain.
The Killing also took something else from Twin Peaks: the focus on one specific murder case. When Twin Peaks premiered, most police procedurals took the case-of-the-week structure exemplified by something like Law & Order, the original Hawaii 5-0, or current hit NCIS, which drag out individual crimes to at most two episodes. But now, self-serious (and cable-bound) murder shows like Broadchurch, Top of the Lake, and The Bridge focus explicitly on a single crime. Not only do they get viewers increasingly invested in the "darkness" and "grit" of the investigators, they also provide an excuse to dig in to the same kind of rich, lived-in setting as Twin Peaks (though usually with less rewarding results).
Because for all its weirdness, Twin Peaks is more human than any of these shows. As "off" and withholding as the actors' line readings are, and as removed as the setting is from most viewers' lives at times, their problems are all deeply felt. When Leland Palmer breaks down in tears, it's hilarious, but only in spite of (or maybe because of) the fact that it's also deeply unsettling and horrifying. The man has lost his daughter, and though he's expressing it against a background of cheery music, that doesn't change his loss.
None of the imitators have come close to establishing such compelling internal lives for their characters. And now that the proposed third season of Twin Peaks appears to have gone the way of Agent Cooper, trapped in the Black Lodge for all time, it doesn't seem like any will. Still, for all that Wayward Pines screams Twin Peaks, it may actually come closer than most to escaping the penumbra of that show---if only because its use of the standard tropes appears to be a smokescreen.
Twin Peaks didn't really care about the resolution of its "mythology"---the Lodges, various spirits, and supernatural forces doing battle were never as important as the people of the town itself. BOB was only introduced into the show's world by accident. David Lynch's creative process doesn't really lend itself to neatly tied-up narratives, anyway. But the producers of Wayward Pines (and fans of the novel on which it's based) claim that there will be a "big reveal" midway through the series, with the characters' actions proceeding from this knowledge. So that piece of information will be the fulcrum upon which the plot turns---or, put another way, Wayward Pines will feature that most M. Night of devices.
