Suspense Is Killing ‘Peaks’ Fans

Some things are just too important to miss or enjoy alone. Like tonight’s season finale of the cult TV series “Twin Peaks,” which will screen for Cypress College student Julia Martin and 15 or so fellow addicts in her living room.

Party invitations depict “Twin Peaks” denizen Nadine--the one with the eye patch and an obsession for silent curtain runners--telling her husband: “Oh Ed, last episode! I guess I won’t finish the drapes!”

It’s “Twin Peaks” fever. Expect to find it in local pubs, living rooms and dormitories. At UC Irvine’s student center, dozens gather weekly around the 60-inch screen for the latest bizarre plot twist in film director David Lynch’s offbeat series on ABC.

Pre-show entertainment at Maria Germinario’s Costa Mesa apartment will include drinking some damn fine coffee--”black as midnight on a moonless night,” as series hero FBI Agent Dale Cooper would say. Just like Cooper, she and about half a dozen guests will spit some java on the porch. “That starts off our ritual before the show,” said the 26-year-old Orange County Performing Arts Center box office employee.

Oh yes, there’s the little matter of who killed Laura Palmer, the raison d’etre of this nine-hour soap opera cum whodunit.

Germinario’s guests will cast secret ballots naming the murderer. For those who may have a little trouble recalling the hordes who could have done it, had reason to do it, or just plain act suspicious, there’ll be a bulletin board with a sort of “Twin Peaks” family tree. Prize forthe winner: a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts and a bag of Viennese coffee beans.

Christopher Inserra, assistant manager of the Arts Center box office and “Twin Peaks” devotee, plans to arrive at Germinario’s pad as the Log Lady, a mystery woman who stalks the Northwest logging town with a hunk of wood. The log, we have learned in a previous episode, saw something the night Laura Palmer was murdered.

For noshing during the 10 p.m. main event, there’ll be cherry pie, cobbler and doughnuts, staples of “Twin Peaks” townsfolk and Agent Cooper. It’s too late to get chocolate Easter bunnies like the ones Cooper found in high school party girl Laura’s bedroom. Instead, they’ll serve chocolate dinosaurs.

“We had a spontaneous party last week,” Germinario said. “We had so much fun we decided it’d be fun to have one this week since it’ll be the last show.”

Even bureaucrats have the monkey.

Dan Wooldridge, press aide to Supervisor Don R. Roth, confesses to swapping “Twin Peaks” lines with other “mainliners” in the smoking lounge of the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana.

“I would establish it at about 10 serious hard-cores and a few maniacals,” Wooldridge said of the county’s smokehouse denizens. “I’m sort of in the mainline category: I don’t quite live and die by the show, but we always arrange to tape it--in case I fall asleep.

“However, I don’t like cherry pie.”

Wooldridge was relieved that the last episode was moved from its regular Thursday night slot. “We’re having a fund-raiser on Thursday, and I wouldn’t want to have to miss it.” The fund-raiser, that is.

Meanwhile, he guards his own theory about the murderer’s identity. “I couldn’t stand the embarrassment of being proven wrong.”

For a little mood music, many have been snapping up singer Julee Cruise’s album, “Into the Night,” a collaboration with Lynch and series composer Angelo Badalamenti, which includes the tune “Falling” from “Twin Peaks.” (Cruise, you’ll recall, was the Roadhouse chanteuse of white hair, baby face and eerie pipes in the two-hour premiere.)

“We’ve had a ton of inquiries about the album,” said Jef Fazekas, a buyer for Music Mart in Costa Mesa, one of the largest independent music stores in Orange County. “We only have one cassette left, but no CDs. That’s what everybody wants. . . .

“I heard Warner Bros. (Records) just couldn’t keep up with the demand.”

One group seems immune to “Twin Peaks” fever.

A special agent at the FBI’s Santa Ana office walked up and down the halls in search of series fans to no avail. “You have to understand, we don’t usually watch shows featuring FBI agents,” said the complaint officer, who declined to reveal his identity.

UCI students had to petition to get this season’s other runaway hit, “The Simpsons,” shown in the student lounge over televised sporting events. But TV lounge programmer Caroline Ashley Shin knew from all the advance hype that “Twin Peaks” would go over big. Each episode--except during recent midterms--has drawn a full house of more than 40 students.

“We have people bring in their dinners, or order pizza brought in,” said the senior psychology major. “I don’t watch much TV, but I usually bring my programming work in here on Thursday nights during ‘Twin Peaks.’ It’s like a soap opera, you get hooked.”

Shin, who admits to having a crush on “the FBI guy” played by actor Kyle MacLachlan, said she has missed one episode because she had to study for midterms a few weeks ago. “I paid my sister to tape it for me.”

Martin, a 20-year-old art and English major at Cypress College, also missed an episode. So, finals notwithstanding, she and a friend stayed up until 2 a.m. Tuesday to bone up on the last three episodes in advance of the finale.

“Twin Peaks really grabs you. . . . I had to watch all of ‘em before I returned the videotape,” she explained.”

The party tonight at her mom’s house won’t feature the kind of high-calorie eats Agent Cooper and “Twin Peaks” Sheriff Harry S. Truman prefer. “It’s a vegetarian potluck,” said invitation designer India Bergner, 21, of Seal Beach and a junior at Cal State Long Beach.

Asked who she thinks killed Laura Palmer, Martin hesitated.

“Well, I know Leo has something to do with it,” she said of character Leo Johnson, the wife-beating truck driver who last week murdered eyewitness Waldo, the myna bird, leaving the blood to drip on the ubiquitous tray of jelly doughnuts in the sheriff’s station.

“But I just know it’s going to be a cliffhanger and we won’t find out till next fall.”

CONTINUING QUEST

Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg sorts out clues. F12