I suspect that part of it may be that at least some people haven’t forgotten the lesson of Twin Peaks, which started out as one of the most astonishing things that TV had ever done up to that point, then devolved into a parody of itself, then started to refocus… but not in time to prevent its cancellation. Vince Gilligan got his start on The X-Files, which always seemed to me to have benefited at least a little from Twin Peaks (at least in proving that a weird series could get a foothold, if not in direct inspiration), and although the temptation (both from within and probably from AMC in terms of money) must have been tremendous to extend BB further than it really needed to go, he resisted.
