Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Parody of David Lynch’s Iconic TV Show (1990)

Who killed Lau­ra Palmer?

If the answer comes unbid­den to your lips, you’re no doubt old enough to have spent much of 1990 glued to Twin Peaks, cult direc­tor David Lynch’s supreme­ly creepy series. (Note: US-based view­ers can watch the show for free on Hulu.)

The name prob­a­bly won’t mean much to those who entered the noughties with a wob­bly tod­dle, and why would it?  Mur­der vic­tim Palmer may have dri­ven the orig­i­nal series, but she did­n’t rank so much as a men­tion in Sesame Street’s 1991 par­o­dy, Twin Beaks, above.

The Mup­pets also steered clear of Sher­i­lyn Fenn’s teen vix­en cher­ry stem trick…

No Lynchi­an dream sequences…

No one armed men…

No scary owls…

What teth­ers this G‑rated kid­die ver­sion to the orig­i­nal, you may ask?

Hint: it car­ries a log.

Of course! The log lady is a sta­ple of Twin Peaks par­o­dies, show­ing up every­where from a Sat­ur­day Night Live skit star­ring Twin Peaks’ Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan) to a 2.5 minute Lego homage that man­ages to pre­serve the sex, the vio­lence, and seem­ing­ly all of the char­ac­ters.

The Cook­ie Monster’s Spe­cial Agent Cook­ie does eat some “darn” fine pie, but ulti­mate­ly, his fix­a­tion on why the town was named “Twin Beaks” is far less com­pelling than his take on Mon­ster­piece Theatre’s host Alis­tair Cooke.

Mas­ter­piece Theatre’s icon­ic pre­sen­ter has proved even more irre­sistible to par­o­dists than the Log Lady.

(In Sesame Street’s case, it worked. There are 35 more Mon­ster­pieces, includ­ing num­ber-cen­tric spoofs of The 400 Blows and (gulp) The Post­man Always Rings Twice.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday