​Did Twin Peaks Solve Its Central Mystery Too Soon?
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Twin Peaks
I think they're both right:
Price: Okay let's be real: the post-reveal episodes of Twin Peaks' second season are not the favorite of many fans. Without the central driving force of Agent Cooper's investigation, things focus on meandering mysticism and arbitrary character turns. But let's be realer: even thatstretch of Twin Peaks is superior to almost everything else on TV today. That being said, in retrospect Twin Peaks certainly should have drawn out the mystery for six seasons, Lost-style, by generating new questions for each one answered. Its triumph in revealing Laura's murderer in such a huge, grand Guignol set piece of abject horror was also its biggest error: where exactly could the show have gone from there? It's this shark-jumping issue that has haunted all of Twin Peaks' progeny: Lost, Desperate Housewives, The X-Files and especially The Killing. Audiences might demand answers, but that doesn't mean they actually need them.
Lily: Twin Peaks is maybe my favorite show of all time. But when I settle down for a rewatch, I start from the pilot and stop immediately after the killer is revealed and for a reason you might not expect: it's because the climax of that central arc also coincides with the dissolution of Audrey and Agent Cooper's relationship, effectively ending both of the most compelling threads at the same time. When Kyle MacLachlan vetoed the planned romance between the leads — admirably (as he explained in the 2007 DVD commentary for the show), he objected to sexualizing a high-school girl — both characters were hastily written into the arms of new characters. What was the rush with all that bad romance? I'd argue fans would have been happy with 18-year-old Audrey and Cooper sharing more screen time platonically. They had enough chemistry that they could have served as a pro-Mulder and Scully within the Twin Peaksuniverse and extended the small-town mystery-solving indefinitely.
Lynch was pushed to wrap it up ;) The show got moved to a bad time slot, and the 2nd season lost direction and wandered. I still liked it :)
"Lynch blames network pressure for the decision to resolve the Palmer storyline prematurely."
Wikipedia:
Declining ratings
As the series' ratings started to decline, the producers added Heather Graham (seen here in 2009) to the cast
With the resolution of Twin Peaks' main drawing point (Laura Palmer's murder) in the middle of the second season, and with subsequent story lines becoming more obscure and drawn out, public interest began to wane, and interest in the program seemed over. This discontent, coupled with ABC changing its timeslot on a number of occasions, led to a huge drop in ratings after being one of the most-watched television programs in the United States in 1990. A week after the season's 15th episode placed 85th in the ratings out of 89 shows, ABC put Twin Peaks on indefinite hiatus,[44] a move which usually leads to cancellation.[8]
An organized letter-writing campaign, dubbed COOP (Citizens Opposed to the Offing of Peaks), started in an attempt to save the show from cancellation.[45] The campaign was successful, and ABC agreed to air the remaining six episodes to finish the season.[45] However, due to the Gulf War, Twin Peaks was taken off its usual time slot "for six weeks out of eight" in early 1991, according to Frost, preventing the show from maintaining audience interest.[46] In the final episodes, Agent Cooper was given a love interest, Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham), to replace the intended story arc with Audrey Horne. According to Frost, a female cast member (Lara Flynn Boyle) who was romantically involved with Kyle MacLachlan at the time had effectively vetoed the Audrey-Cooper relationship, forcing the writers to come up with an alternative.[47] [48] Sherilyn Fenn supported this claim in 2014 interview, stating, "[Boyle] was mad that my character was getting more attention, so then Kyle started saying that his character shouldn’t be with my character because it doesn’t look good, ’cause I’m too young. ... I was not happy about it. It was stupid."[49] The series finale did not sufficiently boost interest, despite being written to end on a deliberate audience-baiting cliffhanger, and the show was not renewed for a third season, leaving the new cliffhanger unresolved.
Lynch expressed his regret at having resolved the Laura Palmer murder, stating he and Frost had never intended for the series to answer the question and that doing so "killed the goose that laid the golden eggs". Lynch blames network pressure for the decision to resolve the Palmer storyline prematurely.[50] Frost agreed, noting that people at the network had in fact wanted the killer to be revealed by the end of season one.[51]
In 1993, cable channel Bravo acquired the license to rerun the entire series, which began airing in June 1993.[52] These reruns included Lynch's addition of introductions to each episode by the Log Lady and her cryptic musings.[53]
Looking back, Frost has admitted that he wished he and Lynch had "worked out a smoother transition" between storylines and that the Laura Palmer story was a "tough act to follow".[18] Regarding the second season, Frost felt that "perhaps the storytelling wasn't quite as taut or as fraught with emotion".[18]
In May 2013, cast member Ray Wise stated what Lynch had said to him regarding a possible reboot: "Well, Ray, you know, the town is still there. And I suppose it's possible that we could revisit it. Of course, you're already dead...but we could maybe work around that."[74] It has also been reported that Netflix is interested in rebooting the show.[75]
The main problem with the second season was all the crazy supernatural stuff.
They had so many good human characters. They didn't need the weirdness.
I would love it if they rebooted the show. Twin Peaks 2.0.
Coming to Showtime in 2016:
http://pandawhale.com/post/51671/twin-peaks-is-coming-to-showtime-in-2016
9:15 PM May 02 2014