The Repair Shop

[eyeboogers]

In the years between "Twin Peaks" and "Buddy Faro" there were several Mark Frost projects that almost made it to network television. One was the spy drama "The Repair Shop". And apparently they had shot several episodes before the network decided to drop the project entirely.

In this Interview with Philip Noyce the director of the pilot tells a bit about what happened:

AVC: There was one pilot you worked on that never got aired—The Repair Shop. It was a show created by Mark Frost, who did Twin Peaks and On The Air.

PN: Anthony Lapaglia played an operative working for a division of the CIA that was off the map. They had turned on him, and killed his family, and the story was about him tracking down all of the members of this clandestine CIA operation and seeking revenge.

The problem with it is that they decided to make the second episode the pilot. For whatever reason. So when it test-screened, [the audience] hadn’t seen the set-up. I don’t think they’ve repeated that experiment since. It’s hard to get someone excited about a guy who’s seeking revenge when you don’t what’s motivating him.

 

[Jordan Cole]

The same thing happened to Firefly. Fox didn't air or rejected the pilot, where basically all of the characters meet each other, so they had to really quickly retool the second episode (or possibly create it from scratch?) to put in some exposition to explain who the hell everybody is. It's pretty impressively efficiently done. But I don't understand network decisions like that.

 

[eyeboogers]

The same thing happened to Firefly.

and "Dollhouse".

 

[Cappy]

I've never heard of Repair Shop until this post -- Sounds almost like the Mark Frost version of the Punisher.

 

[Cappy]

Mark had a lot of bad luck with TV after Twin Peaks. Its a shame he was done with the industry before the age of Sopranos and everything that came after. He could've potentially gotten a series greenlit for HBO/Showtime/streaming, or at the very least been in the writer's room for something like Mad Men or the Wire.

 

[Jordan Cole]

and "Dollhouse".

I actually wrote a whole thing about that but then deleted it cause it was a little bit different and maybe more understandable. Fox rejected the entire pilot that Whedon made and told him to do another one more dumber and action packed, as opposed to quiet, slow and cerebral. I feel like both pilots are two extremes in both directions though and both don't quite work, but I think I'd pick the original pilot just because it's more interesting and shows far more potential.