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Tonight marks the return of Twin Peaks to our screens. The original show and its question of “who killed Laura Palmer?” were some of the biggest TV mysteries of all time. It’s approach to world building and blending high concept mysticism with potboiler mystery is still the gold standard all others strive for today. Unfortunately, Twin Peaks is also one of those groundbreaking shows that’s already been dissected and explained to death, so instead I'm going to focus on one of its sister mysteries of TV, the Simpsons two-part episode “Who Shot Mister Burns?”
Produced near the closing of the show’s so-called Golden Age, ‘Who Shot Mister Burns’ may be the largest the show ever loomed in the broad, pop-cultural eye and its approach to audience interaction and mystery has had almost as much impact on TV and movies as Twin Peaks or their shared predecessor Dallas. I’m not at all kidding when I say ‘Who Shot Mr. Burns’ paved the way for modern cultural darlings like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and new classics of animation like Gravity Falls- let’s dive in.
