I was recently on Boston public transportation wearing a “Twin Peaks” T-shirt when a middle-aged man approached me. His forwardness was a bit jarring, as the stranger came up to me with the self-assurance of a great salesman. The man introduced himself as a former Emerson professor after recognizing my friend’s purple lanyard. He told me he was a fan of the “Twin Peaks” creator David Lynch. I initially thought we were going to engage in a discussion about our mutual love for the show, but he proceeded to say that despite his feelings on Lynch, he has no appreciation for “Twin Peaks.” He told me with great confidence—and great pleasure—that episodic television is not art.

The ideologue then waited patiently for me to ask him why he felt that way. When I did, he explained that because television was invented solely for profit (running commercials, selling home TVs, etc.), he could not consider it a form of art. Film, however, was entirely different. Like many, he attributed the creation of movies to Auguste and Louis Lumière. The brothers invented the Cinématographe, which could record, develop, and project film. They additionally popularized the concept of watching film video. He believed that despite the Lumière brothers eventually selling tickets to their movies, film was invented merely for the sake of artistic innovation.

But the thought that not a single television show could be art baffled me. My brain scrambled to think of a perfect piece of television for a rebuttal. I landed on the first season of “True Detective,” as its tight eight-episode run seemed like a safe bet.

“Haven’t seen it,” he responded, “That’s a television show and I don’t watch television.” 

This response, my loss of interest in the conversation, and the moment the train reached his stop all occurred almost instantaneously. Perhaps it was a sign of fate.

While I initially found it easy to write off the man’s opinion as ludicrous, my mind kept wandering back to the show that started the conversation. With early 1990s television being defined by soap operas and 20-minute sitcoms, the cinematic nature of “Twin Peaks” was revolutionary. The first season and a half of “Twin Peaks,” follows the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer. Halfway through season two, the show reaches its climax when Palmer’s killer is revealed. While “Twin Peaks” had plenty of additional storylines up to this point, the central focus was the investigation into the killing. After the killer was revealed, season two proceeded with seven straight episodes of filler scenes and incoherent subplots. 

What viewers may not have known at the time is that Lynch (link contains spoilers) did not want to reveal Palmer’s killer that early, if at all. Despite season two’s high ratings and general success, ABC felt that viewers needed to know the mystery that was the heart of the show. After Lynch was forced to reveal the killer, he temporarily parted ways with the network and gave up creative control. When the show spun out of control without Lynch to contribute, ABC asked him to return. But by the time he was back, many fans agreed his involvement in the final six episodes was not enough to salvage the season. 

With “Twin Peaks” being a personal favorite of mine, recalling ABC’s long-term destruction of something so dear to me started to give the ideologue’s argument a touch of validity. This need to maintain continuous consistency is somewhat exclusive to episodic storytelling. 

However, the film industry is equally plagued by studio intervention. While some may think this is a newer phenomenon that only exists in modern day capitalism, the Lumière brothers themselves were alive to see the 1942 Orson Welles classic “The Magnificent Ambersons” get cut to pieces by RKO Pictures. The studio thought the ending of the film was too morbid and pushed Welles off the project. The ending was rewritten to be more uplifting, altering the cold realism that was meant to define the film. Even a name as big as Welles could not sway the studio in the right direction. 

While it is a somewhat bleak thought, revenue has always been inseparable from both film and television. The argument that television is not cultured or artful may be part of a discussion about more than just its economic aspect. Until American viewers were convinced of the legitimacy of television through shows like “The Sopranos” or “The Wire,” it was quite common to not take TV seriously. Aside from the generally lower quality of writing and production that was common before the current age of television, many believed that TV was based on an addictive, unsatisfactory model of entertainment. And in eras when movies were more likely to be seen in theaters, the casual, noncommittal setting of home television was considered an unserious viewing experience. While the ideologue only argued that television is artless for economic reasons, it is hard not to wonder if there were other (perhaps even subconscious) thoughts behind his claim. 

 Again, it is painless to dismiss the man’s argument as pretentious or ignorant in the lens of today. But with a more precise mindset, perhaps a better word to describe his argument is outdated. Thirty or forty years ago his take would have been quite popular. As the popularity of movies has declined in recent years, a new class of television has been called for by audiences. People give television a level of respect like never before because television has never been like this before. Maybe the man on the T did not have a ridiculous opinion. Maybe it was just the opinion of someone who has not turned on a television since the release of “Twin Peaks.”