Nah, it's pronounced "Coop", not "Co-op".

I know, I know.

It's Lynch, half of his films are great when he has a point to them (Blue velvet, etc) and the other half (Eraserhead/Inland, etc) are just testaments that if you make someone complicated for the sole purpose of being complicated you can make people still like it.
I loved Twin Peaks, REALLY wish they made another season to it to flesh out what happens. It's like Firefly in that regard, axed way too soon.
SAd that the one guy passed away shortly after the show too.

I'll echo many of the sentiments already stated in this thread. Twin Peaks is/was one of my all-time favorite shows.
It helps to put the show in some historical context... I believe the show was Lynch's next project after Blue Velvet and I see a lot of similarities in them, most especially the notion that even the most "normal" town has its skeletons. When it came out in the early '90's, TV had really never seen anything like it. The show was a big cultural phenomenon. I remember the CBS TV critic pointing out that he had rarely seen men crying on TV (poor Deputy Andy who seemed to cry at the drop of a hat).
I think the Carnivale comparison is a good one and not just because Michael J. Anderson was in both. They both dealt with the battle of good vs. evil and had a lot of mystical stuff. Wonderfully quirky and interesting.
I've read that Lynch really never intended for Laura Palmer's murder to be solved. Instead, he wanted it to be more of a thread connecting the townspeople together. I've always thought that the differing tones between season 1 and 2 reflected Lynch's annoyance at ABC for insisting that he solve the murder in season 2. I agree that the movie was important but was disappointing considering Lynch's other work...
The gold box edition (with the pilot and both seasons) is fantastic, not only because of the single set elements but because it also includes the Twin Peaks sketches from Kyle MacLachlan's SNL show. Absolutely hysterical. That being said, I'll buy a BR edition in a second if it's made.
BTW, some of you may or may not know this - Mulholland Drive was originally slated to be a TV pilot :-).
Sorry for another essay...
- Jim -

The last third of Mulholland Drive is particularly difficult to comprehend... I have no idea how he could make that into a TV show. Even now, I have no real clue what it was supposed to be about.
Now, if he could have been given the time and money to turn Dune into a TV show, that would have been awesome.

The Twin Peaks SNL sketch is great. It's a spot-on parody... and honestly, (as much as I love the show) they have enough material to draw from XD
I have vague memories of seeing a teaser ad for the Mullholland Dr. TV series. Of course it didn't have any clips or anything besides a flash of the title and "coming soon", but I was pretty disappointed that it never did. In hindsight, it probably worked better as a film than it would have as a TV series.

And both had a poorly written ending . . . =(

Yep - both had cliffhangers. I don't know about Lynch's plans for Twin Peaks but I saw on the DVD set that Carnivale had a story arc set for 4 more seasons.
Ooops...

But it wasn't the ending. they ran out of funding on TP.

I agree although it seemed like an ending. With a potential for four more seasons it was one of the few shows which the cancellation was a disappointment to me. Unless they are planning to revive the story in the future?? . . . I think they could have had a better non-ending . . . so many loose ends . . . so many questions because of the ending . . .
See Cancellation amd future
Like Twin Peaks . . .=)

Don't know about Carnivale, i was talking about TP. That series has no ending at all.

My bad . . . =)

Neither had an actual ending. They were canceled without getting the chance to wrap things up.

The first season is really where it's at, in terms of pacing and quality. Lynch was involved throughout, the story was kept under control pretty well. I don't know that the story really "speeds" up though before the 7th or 8th episode, right at the end of the first season. The season finale certainly has lots happen ;).
"Slow" is best used to describe the middle of the second season, when things just kind of putter around aimlessly. Tons of random side stories are forced to the foreground, and James....dammit I could tolerate him before but in the second season I just need him off the screen so badly.