To grasp the seismic effect of Twin Peaks, it helps to understand the landscape into which the show emerged. The TV terrain of the 1980s was a smaller, safer place. This was at least a decade before the term “showrunner” became common pop-culture parlance, before we came to associate hit shows with their creators: David Chase’s The Sopranos, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, David Simon’s The Wire.
