To make an analogy: early in his career people assumed Miles Davis couldn't play because he played so few notes. But the people who came to terms with it eventually realized that he was just creating music in a different way. He was giving the listeners enough room to understand melody in a different way.

People tend to assume that movies and shows should just be about laying out a plot, telling a story. But there are so many other things that they can do. Lynch is defiantly and aggressively focusing on those other things.

The other side of this is that the plot is never really tied up in any conventional sense. People were SHOCKED (myself included) at how many loose ends he left by the time of the finale. But the point is he did so many other things so well that WE, the viewers, found ourselves lucky to be able to explore the remaining plot possibilities in our OWN minds. I initially thought there was something wrong with the finale, like Lynch was "obviously" planning on explaining the story somewhere else. But then I spent literally two weeks basically hypnotized by the things he never explained, unable to get the open questions out of my mind, and shocked at the unexpected connections that I was able to make for myself.

I'm not saying that what he's doing is revolutionary in the sense that Miles Davis was revolutionary. This kind of pacing and ephemeral plotting is pretty standard in the world of art films. But this is the first time I've ever seen anyone attempt it at this level in a long-form television series.