What people say is good television can be divided into two categories. The first is television that is not actually good but which people have spent a lot of time watching because a show has some tempting narrative device and can be justified as “art” or “the new novel” or “the new film” through mention of its “gorgeous cinematography.” The second category is television that is actually good. Television that is actually good owes much to Twin Peaks, the beloved and short-lived series by David Lynch that is being revived by Showtime this weekend. Though its cinematography is often nice—that forest-y mist combined with off-kilter nostalgia and bursts of derangement—a lot of that goodness comes from Lynch’s characters, which are many and strange and kookily elaborate. They manage to transcend a willfully tangled plot and increasingly bizarre motivations and the fact that most of the women are hysterical lunatics, sultry manipulators, and/or victimized/dead.
Read more: ‘Twin Peaks’ Star Mädchen Amick on Graduating from the School of David Lynch
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I was born the year Twin Peaks debuted, which is embarrassing but not my fault, so it’s not like I experienced it the first time, but as the names of unfamiliar but apparently wildly popular new television series swirl around me, I can’t help but feel a little sad about the revival. It was nice to enjoy the specific benefits of good television—investment over time, connection with characters, anticipation of what will happen—separate from the flurry of tweets and thinkpieces and takes that is invested in turning every mediocre drama into a longevity-possessing representation of “what it means to be human.” But anyway, what can you do? To drive a nail in the coffin, I ranked all or almost all of the Twin Peaks characters, from worst to best, based mostly on my whims but also on a loose and inconsistent feminist morality. If some of the names seem weird, it’s because I fact-checked many of them against the Twin Peaks wiki, which is for nerds. For additional commentary, I devised an asterisk system:
*Seems like a person you might actually meet in real life
**A person of color
******Looks like Drake
84. Hank Jennings*
The worst character
83. Bob
He is very bad, but he is not of this world, so he’s not as bad as Hank.
82. Cappy (Bookhouse Boy)
More like the Bad-House Boys
81. Joey Paulsen (Bookhouse Boy)
While I acknowledge that straight men need structures of camaraderie and pathways to friendship, the Bookhouse Boys concept is very cheesy.
80. Emory Battis (Horne’s Department Store manager)
Emory Bad-is! He’s a sex trafficker.
79. Jean Renault
The worst of the French Canadians, a true villain
78. Bernard Renault
77. Jacques Renault
A buffoon
76. Nancy O’Reilly (Blackie’s sister, works at One-Eyed Jack’s)**
Many of the female characters in Twin Peaks demonstrate a lack of resolve that could be interpreted as moral turmoil, an attempt to do what’s best in a given situation, but Nancy’s motivations are largely self-interested without the follow-through of an actual villain. In general, even when the female characters do succeed in hatching their schemes, they are later foiled in some way, or otherwise proven short-sighted.
75. Ernie Niles (Norma’s mom’s new husband)
74. Jeffrey Marsh* (abusive husband of James’s older fling)
Cars aren’t cool.
73. Leo Johnson
Where Hank maintains a sociopathic capacity for deceit, Leo is obviously simply stupid, violent, and easily manipulated. In another life he might have become a Trump voter sympathetically portrayed by East Coast media elites. What’s more, men with ponytails are funny.
72. Donna Hayward in Fire Walk with Me*
Lara Flynn Boyle was replaced by some nerdier actress for the prequel, and she was just intolerable.
71. Betty Briggs (Bobby’s mom)*
70. Teresa Banks (Initial murder victim)
69. Malcolm Sloan* (Evelyn Marsh’s secret lover)
I like secret lovers, but he doesn’t really have anything to offer, except run-of-the-mill scheming.
68. Thomas Eckhardt
I never really understood what was going on with this guy.
67. Miss Jones (Eckhardt’s assistant)
She attempts to strangle Sheriff Truman so her boss can get Josie back. It doesn’t work. The girls’ schemes never work in this show.
66. James Hurley*
How did this dork who seems like he would listen to John Mayer date two hot girls and conduct a dangerous affair with an older married woman? Was he really worth the turmoil? Motorcycles are bad.
65. Mike Nelson*
A classic bad sports guy, less charming than Bobby
64. Blackie O’Reilly
A true villain
63. Gersten Hayward (Donna’s youngest sister)
A show-off goody-two-shoes with a weird name, Gersten is a prime candidate for a goth phase.
62. Evelyn Marsh (James’s brief married lover)
A vicious deceiver
61. Johnny Horne (Audrey’s mentally handicapped brother)
60. Bobby Briggs*
A hapless hairstyle in way too over his head.
59. Agent Roger Hardy* **
A fun-spoiler who doubts Agent Cooper
58. Doc Hayward*
57. Jonathan Kumagai (Thomas Eckhardt’s thug)**
56. Major Garland Briggs
He tries his best to keep Bobby in line, but parenting is not his true passion, which is his top-secret search for aliens or whatever. I like that he brings Bobby down a notch, but I find his military demeanor off-putting.
55. Agent Sam Stanley (Fire Walk with Me)
It’s Kiefer Sutherland.
54. Agent Phillip Jeffries (Fire Walk with Me)
It’s David Bowie.
53. Special Agent Chester Desmond (Fire Walk with Me)
It’s Chris Isaak, who is extremely hot.
52. Judy Swain (case worker for Nicky)
It’s Molly Shannon.
51. Eolani (Dr. Jacoby’s Hawaiian wife)**
50. Ben Horne*
This is what Donald Trump would be like if he were kind of hot and lived in the woods.
49. Sarah Palmer
Hysterical lunatic
48. Leland Palmer
He’s bad.
47. Laura Palmer
She’s bad, but also victimized/dead.
46. Sylvia Horne (Audrey’s mom/Ben’s wife)*
She’s under a lot of pressure.
45. Elderly Bellhop
He didn’t know what was going on. According to the New York Times, the Giant is possibly incarnated in him? I didn’t get that. Reliable news sources are more important than ever.
44. Mayor Dwayne Milford
43. Dougie Milford
42. Dr. Lawrence Jacoby
41. Harriet Hayward* (Donna’s middle sister)
I like that she writes her poems in bed. Though Harriet did reveal to her father that Donna had snuck out past the town curfew, she did it with aplomb and cannot really be faulted, since Donna was really going to get murdered.
40. Windom Earle
A true villain and schemer
39. Ronette Pulaski*
Victimized/dead
38. Eileen Hayward* (Donna’s mom)
She maintains admirable restraint concerning the sexual drama of her past.
37. Shelly Johnson*
She is confused about her priorities and it leads her to make bad decisions, which, if you’re a woman, leads you to end up spoonfeeding your vegetative abusive ex-husband in a shack while your swoopy-haired boyfriend gallivants around botching crimes and cover-ups. If she were less beautiful she would probably make better decisions.
36. The Log Lady (Rest In Peace)
Bit obvious
35. Heidi (German waitress at the Double R who can never get her car to start)
34. Lucy Moran*
Many people let Lucy’s funny sweaters, wacky 90s hairstyle, and squeaky voice distract them from the fact that Lucy is a bad character. She totally mishandles her child’s paternity situation out of nerves and apparent youthful angst, dragging poor Andy along as he tries to support her.
33. Sheriff Harry S. Truman*
He is annoyingly wholesome and chauvinistically overprotective of the duplicitous Josie, and I like that he gets bamboozled by her.
32. Josie Packard**
Good outfits, good hairstyle, good makeup. Unfortunately her inability to commit to villainy or to wrench herself free from the clutches of evil into the arms of a willing and wide-eyed lover is again representative of the women on this show. Her soul’s confinement to a wooden knob on a bedside table is often called out as particularly odd, but I think it fits.
31. Norma*
Poor Norma.
30. Jerry Horne (Ben Horne’s brother)*
A classic cad and a real scamp
29. Dick Tremayne (dandy, potential father of Lucy’s baby)
Another cad and scamp
28. Nadine
Hysterical lunatic, but creative
27. Catherine Martell
A schemer
26. Andrew Packard
A schemer who also managed to successfully fake his own death to bamboozle Josie, which I appreciate
25. The Man from Another Place
The backwards talking has a pleasantly ambiguous tone.
24. Nicky Needleman (test orphan)
A rascal who, by being a brat, counteracts Dick Tremayne and Deputy Andy’s attempts to use him as a way to test their fitness as fathers
23. Mrs. Tremond’s grandson (creepy kid)
It’s David Lynch’s son.
22. Mrs. Tremond (creepy old lady)
Who knows what’s going on here!
21. Maddy Ferguson*
Intriguing without being over the top, Maddy effectively demonstrates Lynch’s recurring concern of DUALITY in her resemblance to her tragically murdered cousin, Laura Palmer, and this gives her an attractive endangered quality that is refreshingly unrelated to her being a woman. You can tell she’s smart because she wears glasses. Nevertheless, she lacks that wacky quality we want from characters on Twin Peaks.
20. Annie Blackburn* (Norma’s sister)
She has seen some things and lived and learned. She is slightly more with it than Maddy. I’m fine with her and her relationship with Agent Cooper is sweet.
19. Lana Budding Milford (redhead who marries the wealthy, very old Dougie Milford, brother of Mayor Milford)
A classic schemer
18. The bird with clues
There should have been more animals on this show.
17. Harold Smith (sensitive agoraphobe who is betrayed by Donna)
Poor Harold!
16. Agent Albert Rosenfield
One of the most fantastical aspects of this show is its portrayal of all law-enforcement officials as fundamentally good. Nevertheless, Albert Rosenfield, a no-nonsense city slicker who upends the sluggishly thoughtful pace of Cooper’s small-town operation, reveals himself as an asshole who is also good at contemplation. He also sees through Truman’s small-town nice-guy exterior to the dope he really is.
15. Hawk**
A good guy but not obnoxious about it like Harry
14. Big Ed*
He should dump Nadine.
13. Diane
I think she’s real.
12. The Giant
He tries to help.
11. Philip “Mike” Gerard (the one-armed man)
10. Pete Martell*
9. John Justice Wheeler ******
Such a good choice for Audrey’s virginity!
8. Deputy Andy Brennan
7. Agent Denise Bryson
It’s David Duchovny.
6. The Roadhouse Singer
5. Vivian Smythe Niles (Norma’s mom)*
She sacrifices her daughter’s business venture for her art, which I appreciate.
4. Donna Hayward*
Donna tries very hard to get to the bottom of Laura’s murder, but again because she is a woman her investigation is always two steps behind or very off base. She is also the only one of these high-school girls who seems emotionally capable of having a relationship with an older man, yet she is stuck with James.
3. Agent Dale Cooper
I think he gets worse as his number of love interests increases, which is true of all men. Sometimes he is a little daddish. Still, very good.
2. Audrey Horne
Everyone knows.
1. FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole
I think it is very much in keeping with David Lynch’s ethos to give himself the best character without seeming to do so. I would give myself the best character as well.