LIKE the homecoming queen who was its resident ghost, “Twin Peaks” died young and left a ravaged but still beautiful corpse. Both demises are now inextricably linked: When David Lynch’s hit series revealed who killed Laura Palmer in the fall of 1990, it also committed a kind of symbolic suicide.
Kyle MacLachlan on David Lynch’s short-lived but fondly remembered television series “Twin Peaks.”
At least that’s how the lore goes. A more complete account of why the show went from pilot to finale in a mere 14 months would factor in the meddlesome dictates of the network, ABC, and the tricky contradictions of a cult phenomenon that briefly achieved mass popularity. (At its height the media hurricane landed Mr. Lynch on the cover of Time and Laura Palmer on the cover of Esquire, a distinctly necrophilic choice for Woman of the Year.)
The long-awaited DVD release of the second and final season — in a six-disc set spanning Episodes 8 through 29 and totaling more than 18 hours — is something of an event: an occasion to revive the coffee-and-cherry-pie viewing parties and a challenge to the received wisdom that the show’s second half was a prolonged free fall.
Responding to the overwhelming public demand for answers, ABC pressured the creators to show their hand. (The notion that a mystery should wrap up in less than a season will seem quaint to audiences who have endured the serial teasing of “Lost.”) Viewers learned the identity of Laura’s killer in Episode 14, two installments before the crime was solved by the F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and much earlier than Mr. Lynch and Mark Frost, his writing and producing partner, had intended.
The whodunit climaxes in a memorable set piece. While most of the cast gathers at the local biker bar, some reduced to tears as Julee Cruise croons an ethereal serenade, Laura’s father, Leland (Ray Wise), becomes possessed again by the straggly-haired demon Bob (Frank Silva) and kills Laura’s doppelgänger cousin, Maddy (Sheryl Lee, who also played Laura). It remains one of the most shockingly violent murders ever shown on network TV.
Mr. Lynch, who loves mysteries but is not a fan of resolutions, was ill-prepared for the aftermath. The DVD includes “Log Lady intros,” gnomic salutations written by Mr. Lynch and delivered by the actress Catherine E. Coulson before each episode. (They were originally made when the series was rerun on Bravo.) The Log Lady’s thoughts on closure, introducing Episode 16, are especially pointed: “There is a depression after an answer is given.”
Sure enough, the half-dozen or so episodes that followed were dominated by desultory subplots. ABC continued to shuttle the show around the schedule. Only devotees were watching by then, but “Twin Peaks” picked up a second wind in its home stretch. The (literal) chess game between Cooper and his psychotic ex-partner, Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh), builds toward the Miss Twin Peaks contest and an interdimensional visit to the Red Room, the strobe-lighted site of a cosmic showdown between good and evil — or, in Mr. Lynch’s preferred formulation, between love and fear.
It’s critical boilerplate to say that the best narrative art creates a world. But the world of “Twin Peaks” is a truly rich and commodious one, attentive both to narrative mythology and to character back story, suited equally to the scrutiny of fanzines and dissertations. At its best the show achieved a crazy, cosmic harmony, setting the comforts of the everyday against the terror of the void. The great unifying element is Mr. MacLachlan’s superbly unflappable performance, a witty distillation of the Eagle Scout qualities often ascribed to Mr. Lynch (whose cameos as Cooper’s hearing-impaired boss provide some of the funniest scenes).
The handful of episodes that Mr. Lynch directed are standouts. Notably oblivious to the rules of prime time, they are characterized by longer scenes, stranger moods, more intense emotions — nowhere more apparent than in the chilling cliffhanger finale.
Mr. Lynch’s latest movie, “Inland Empire,” asserts that stories have a life of their own. Viewed that way, the inconclusive last episode is less a source of frustration than a thing of beauty. Its open-endedness fuels the ultimate fan’s fantasy: namely that “Twin Peaks,” in one of the parallel realities that make up the Lynchian universe, continues to unspool.
