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Gosh. Okay.

When I got done with Twin Peaks about a month ago, I remember feeling a genuine sense of confusion. Season two of two, in particular, brought into the fray a slew of new stuff to chew on, and as each episode went by, things seemed to get more and more complicated.

To season two’s credit, however, about midway through it fleshed out a tangible villain, Windom Earle, who at minimum afforded the program some focus. He didn’t encompass total evil (Bob, whatever he might be, and despite less screen time, was still a central figure) but among men, we’ll say, Windom was the evil one.

And as season two continued forth, the show seemed to suggest to me that the mythology behind Laura Palmer (when she died, how she died, who killed her, and so on) didn’t matter so much anymore. Her killer’s identity was revealed in a rather anticlimactic way, and then her killer died, and then Windom assumed the role of the big bad. As if Laura’s story, more or less resolved, wrapped itself in a metaphoric bow, and Windom’s deadly chess game with Agent Cooper displaced it.

Around the time that transition set in, I came to the idea that the show had always intended, or at least had decided to intend, to be presented in chunks. (Think Heroes and its Volumes. That’s probably a fair comparison). The end of a “volume” on Twin Peaks wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of its storylines until then. What it would mean, however, is that what was important then wouldn’t necessarily be important now. There would be bigger issues to confront - like in the case of Windom Earle, a new villain.

And then, and I don’t think I’m spoiling here, the show was abruptly canceled. While I don’t have in front of me the time when ABC execs informed the Twin Peaks writers, what I can surmise is the writers were clearly given some notice because there was obvious intentionality in the final episodes to try and make sense of everything that came before. Not every storyline got touched up, but enough to suggest an end.

What saddened me most of all was that because Windom Earle was our bad guy at the time Twin Peaks had to conclude itself, his character became the bad guy that we were supposed to believe was the mastermind behind everything. He was, in a sense, the intended final villain.

The thing is, I can’t believe that. I’m pretty confident about my “volumes” theory, and in that sense, Windom would then be just the second of X number of villains. And yet, because he was the villain at the time Twin Peaks ended, he would have to be – reluctantly - that supposed mastermind.

Anyway, if Twin Peaks had its way, it wouldn’t have run just two seasons. So being annoyed by how things ended, from a writing standpoint, doesn’t seem to make sense here.

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