I FIND MYSELF TRULY SORRY TO SEE TWIN PEAKS GO.

That’s what good TV is all about — and it’s the very experience that we happy few get by sitting still and letting Twin Peaks patiently insert its epic strangeness into our minds. By the time Part 8 aired in July, Lynch took viewers on a hypervisual (and hyper-aural), hour-long trip back to 1945 and the first detonation of an atomic bomb, in New Mexico. As the camera delves into the split atom, the viewer senses, through sound and image, an unleashing of evil that personifies itself in the elusive Bob, who now occupies the corporeal form of one of two Dale Coopers; followed by the suggestion that other forces can temper such occurrences by creating virtuous creatures (Laura Palmer, perhaps?). Confounding, marvellous, unforgettable: That episode alone would be a hit as a video installation in a contemporary art museum, played on a constant loop.

I realize that doesn’t sound like everyone’s idea of a swell time (are there dragons? Battle scenes? Rapey incest?), but Twin Peaks actually did what Game of Thrones used to do: It took us somewhere entirely new, on its own creative terms and using its own visual language. Like Game of Thrones, it required that we pay attention and even do our homework (“Siri, who is Tycho Nestoris?” “Never mind, Siri — who is Phillip Jeffries?”). It rewarded expertise while rewarding a more casual viewer with a thrill ride.

This season, Game of Thrones abandoned those traits and became just another TV show — some colour-coded index cards arranged on a bulletin board in a writers’ room, each card representing its own holycrap moment in a season overburdened with holy-crap moments, rather than honouring the whole of the work.

And yet, despite this muddying of the brand, this summer was the where we showed up in droves for Game of Thrones — stood in lines to get into Game of Thrones pop-up bars, spoke in Game of Thrones shorthand, tweeted up a storm and aggravated uninterested colleagues to the point where they started penning backlash