stuff is cool

Well, really this post doesn’t deal entirely with Lost but it’s what inspired me to get on this train of thought.

About 2 years ago I basically never watched any TV. All the TV was really used for, other than collecting dust, was to watch the occasional DVD (which was also fairly rare since I had canceled my Netflix subscription at the time) and play the occasional Gamecube game. In fact, I couldn’t even watch local channels on my TV without going through an interesting ritual involving hooking up a coaxial cable to the cable input, and holding the pin on the connector against a metal portion on my coffee table because that was the only way I’d get any reception since I didn’t have a real TV antenna.

One of the few exceptions to my “no TV” habit was 24, as I’ve stated here. And really at that point (which would have been either the 3rd or 4th season of 24) I only really watched it because it provided an opportunity to hang out with my family for an evening each week. Oh and a free meal didn’t hurt However, one thing that started making even the somewhat predictable and often outlandish plot twists on 24 more fun again was participating in what are called “live watching threads”. Basically, over on the Something Awful forums, there are 24 fans that will all watch the show and comment on it in a thread on the discussion forum as things happen. A lot of the time it’s pretty simple reaction stuff like “HOLY CRAP!!” or “awesome!”, but the people who post there are also pretty clever and funny, so there are often lots of funny little comments. Since I follow along in each thread (and sometimes post my own comments), I’m often cracking up during even the most tense of episodes. Of course, when somebody’s cracking up at something you have to know what it is, so now I have to share what I find to be the funniest remarks with my mom and Meg since I watch along with them. The best part is that instead of sitting there with someone who is actually saying these things, it’s all on my laptop screen, so it doesn’t make me miss any of the dialog/action (though with DVRs these days that’s almost a moot point). I dare say that if I had to watch a show with 20 people actually shouting out things trying to be clever (or other things like “what did he say? my cable went out for a second!”), I wouldn’t watch it for very long.

But what does this have to do with Lost? Well, Lost has live watching threads as well and although these threads aren’t often as funny as the 24 ones (probably because Lost has a more tenuous relationship with reality than 24 does, so something glaringly other-worldly or flat-out unbelievable isn’t as ridiculous on Lost) the Lost threads are often full of interesting speculation and/or ideas. In fact, I became one of the folks who was chomping at the bit trying to figure out what everything said on the Swan Bunker blast door and what it all meant in relation to the larger mysteries involved with the show. I started listening to the Lost podcasts to hear the teaser information from the producers. Though my interest waned somewhat with the end of last season, it’s picked up again a little bit with the little 6-pack of episodes (the “mini-season” if you will) that they’re airing now before going on a long break until February. I dare say the show is addicting, but it’s really something different than that to me, which I’ll explain here once I tie things back to my introduction.

So is Lost just a show that I finally deemed worthy enough to break my general “no TV” habit? No, I figured out that it’s not the programming itself that makes the TV I watch appealing to me, it’s the shared experience. It’s the fact that the shows sort of live outside of the TV itself. Try and get me to watch a new TV show and I’m still most likely to balk at it, honestly. Very few shows have I found to be good enough to watch just because I enjoyed the shows themselves (I’m looking at you, Arrested Development).

The only reason I started watching Lost at all wasn’t at someone’s recommendation, it was because I saw so many people chattering about Lost on the forums that I thought I’d watch through the first few episodes and see what I thought. Well, the show itself was good enough for me to watch the entire first season (25 hour-long episodes) in about a day and a half, but I still watch it every week now because there’s a community of folks that I can chat with about the show.

So to any of you who have tried to recommend a TV show to me and I’ve turned my nose up at it, now you know why