Subject: Twin Peaks -- Moon and Renewal Thoughts
From: pa1029@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (pa1029)
Date: 1990-05-21, 16:12
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks,rec.arts.tv

There's been some discussion of the miraculous ability of the moon over
Twin Peaks to go from full to half overnight between the last two
episodes, and someone reported that it was basically a continuity
glitch resulting from the change in directors from show to show.  It
occurred to me, although I haven't been watching carefully enough to be
sure, that they seem to have been pretty sloppy all along.  After all,
it only takes about a week for the moon to go through one phase, and
there's a quite noticeable difference over a two-day span.  I seem to recall
someone mentioning a full moon showing up in the pilot, which
means that by the 5/10 episode it should have been approaching a waning
half moon.  But basically I think most people don't notice the moon
often enough to have a really intuitive grasp of the way it goes
through its paces.  That is, on any given day, most people have no idea
where the moon currently is in its phases, so whatever phase they see
that night will be equally unsurprising.

For my part I didn't notice the glitch.

As for the renewal, I agree with those who feel there's little hope
for the series to maintain its quality, especially given that the
episodes are supposed to be "more self-contained".  But even if
they weren't, I wouldn't expect too much.  To begin with, there's
the fundamental _Murder, She Wrote_ problem -- small towns, or even
fairly large towns (you get much larger than 50,000 and people
start calling you a small city) don't on a weekly basis have
mysterious murders that require the FBI and open up multiple scandals
among a cross section of the community.  I can believe weekly
adventures for small crime units in large cities, I can believe
weekly adventures for spacecraft on 5-year missions basically
seeking to have weekly adventures, and I can believe weekly humorous
incidents happening to well- or poorly-adjusted families.  (Well,
I may be using "believe" a little loosely here.)  But the events
in Twin Peaks have the feel of something that would stand out in
the local history of a town, not just another week in the lives of
a certain group of people.

And besides, you just can't expect the creative energy that shows up in
TP to be sustainable indefinately.  That is why even the best TV series
are, in my opinion, pretty bad.  They've gotta come out every week, 
and, considering that, a lot of them are pretty good.