Parenting & Family Quote by David Lynch

Lynch pulls off a neat piece of contrarian candor here: he shrugs at television as a medium, then immediately swerves into the one thing he actually envies about it. The opening - the almost puritanical "I didn't watch much TV" - functions as both biography and branding. It’s a way of establishing aesthetic distance from the mass household glow, the realm of default settings and passive consumption. In Lynch-speak, TV isn’t evil; it’s just rarely dreamlike.

The subtext is less "television is bad" than "television is usually used timidly". He’s not arguing that the screen size or broadcast format can’t be art. He’s arguing that TV seldom earns his attention because it rarely offers what he values: atmosphere, mystery, sustained mood, the kind of sensory strangeness film can trap like an insect in amber. When he says he can’t find "anything beautiful or unique to the medium", it’s a provocation aimed at TV’s habits, not its potential.

Then he identifies the loophole: seriality. The “only thing” TV can do that film can’t is a continuing story - and he’s right to be excited. Long-form narrative isn’t just plot stretched out; it’s time as a creative instrument. You can plant dread, let it ferment, let characters accrue contradictions. Coming from the director who turned Twin Peaks into a national fever dream and later used premium TV to make The Return feel like an 18-hour art film, the line reads like a manifesto disguised as a shrug: most television doesn’t interest him, but the one thing it does best is exactly what he can weaponize.