Twin Peaks: Fire Blog With Me

As soon as the internet heard flickers of rumor that Showtime and David Lynch were making new episodes of Twin Peaks, you could see the same thought pass through thousands of people’s minds.

I mean, it was the first thing I thought of, too.

“I wonder if I should liveblog/podcast/review/draw webcomics of the original Twin Peaks series.”

There are a lot of good reasons to re-watch the original Twin Peaks and to turn it into a blog or podcast project. First, there are only 30 episodes, which means that although you won’t be able to get through it in a month like you might, say, with Firefly, it’s still a short-term project with a visible finish line.

Also, since the original Twin Peaks aired in 1990 before many of us in the Buzzfeed nostalgia demographic were old enough to watch it, the show doesn’t feel overdone. It’s not like you’re planning to live-tweet Jurassic Park or do podcasts about Full House. It fits into this strange cultural space where we’re old enough to know what Twin Peaks is — “It’s David Lynch! There’s a murder mystery! David Duchovny was in it, right?” — but have never actually seen it. (I was nine years old when it aired.)

So this project also has the potential to introduce an entire new generation to Twin Peaks. That’s some serious opportunity right there, and we on the internet are nothing if not aware of serious opportunity.

When you think of something like, say, Hank and John Green sending vlogs to each other, building an audience, and quickly becoming leaders in their respective fields, or Alan Sepinwall happily writing TV reviews on his personal blog until he grew his own audience and became one of the most respected reviewers in the genre, you often think “well, if I do my own thing really really well and build my audience, maybe I can be a leader too.”

But the internet’s signal-vs-noise ratio also means that it’s not as simple as “doing your own thing really well;” you also have to do something that is novel enough to capture people’s attention.

Which meant that when they announced the new Twin Peaks season, it was as if an alarm went off: JOB OPPORTUNITY AVAILABLE. WORK FOR FREE BUT BUILD AUDIENCE AND FANS. POTENTIAL FOR PROMOTION IF WORK IS GOOD.

So I’m really interested to see who takes this opportunity and turns it into a truly great project. I’m curious if new voices will emerge simply because we have a focal point around which to find them.

And yes, I’ll be keeping my eyes out. I’ve never seen Twin Peaks, after all, and I’ll want a series of reviews to read — as well as a community of people with whom to discuss it — after I watch every episode.

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