Toward the end of its life on network TV, Twin Peaks suffered from innumerable hiatuses, bouts of near-cancellation and other unexplained absences. Today's Lost fans might empathize. I thought I had it rough back in the early '90s when I had to wait weeks for a cliffhanger to resolve itself; pity the poor folks who started with the (now out-of-print) first season of Peaks upon its release way back in 2001. They've had to wait until now to plunge back into the show's various mysteries, not the least of which is: who killed Laura Palmer?
Paramount's essential new set conveniently packs the second season's worthy episodes onto its first two discs. To remember Peaks at its brilliant best, proceed no further than episode fourteen, where the killer's identity is revealed in a scary yet strangely moving climax. This would have been a perfect end for the series, explaining just enough to answer the main question of the show, but leaving enough elusive murk to preserve the richly enigmatic quality that is the show's lasting impression. The whole reason to subject yourself to David Lynch's aesthetic is to bypass your sense-making instinct and just let the images flow over you. These first few shows accomplish this admirably, allowing a glimpse of a weird little world before yanking the curtain closed.
Unfortunately, ABC was determined to turn the fading show into the ratings magnet it had been in its early days, and forged ahead, producing a subsequent dozen wretched episodes that attempted to explain an obviously impossible mystery. The quirky factor was cranked up to an irritating degree, giving the home audience a cross-dressing FBI agent, a dopey subplot about a paternity suit and the Miss Twin Peaks competition.
The whole thing wraps up with one final Lynch-directed show, in which Agent Cooper chases a rogue agent into another dimension, encountering a midget who speaks only in riddles and. . . oh, never mind. Watch this set in as close to a marathon as you can muster, simply to marvel at its progression from absolute brilliance to a puerile, boring mess in a matter of about two episodes. It's bewildering, but perhaps we'd be better to follow Lynch's own example and not think about it too much.
— Dan Erdman