Surprisingly, I only follow a few current shows on TV. First and foremost of those shows is Lost. To say that I am a regular watcher of the show is an understatement. I make any arrangements necessary to be sure that I will be in front of my TV at 9 p.m. on Wednesday nights, and if they decided to air the show five nights a week, I would be forced to quit my job.
Now, I know there is a lot of hype about the show. Some people are fanatics, and others can't stand the series. ABC has not done a very good job of attracting new viewers with its awkward methods of splitting up seasons and changing the show time.
Two weeks ago marked the continuation of season 3 of the show on ABC. I jumped on the Lost bandwagon a little late, during the second season. After seeing a re-run episode during the second season, I promptly coerced my roommate to go buy the first season on DVD, which I finished off in under a week and then caught up with the second season by watching episodes on line.
If you have not yet been initiated to the Lost habit, you have literally dozens of hours of work to do to play catch up. You see, Lost is much more than just a TV show. If you can recite "the numbers" by memory, you know you have already been afflicted.
J.J. Abrams and the other show producers have come up with a brilliant method of keeping followers entertained. They have developed an intricate and seemingly endless puzzle (aka, "The Lost Experience") that plays out online as well as through television commercials such as this:
Some of this puzzle is entwined with advertisement campaigns, which is a clever way of making some money. Regardless, the extra curricular content is not necessary to follow the show plots, but it makes for a whole lot of frustrating entertainment.
I have been sucked deep enough into the Lost world to even read the novel "Bad Twin," which was inconspicuously released last year with no announcement from the show, but sporting a "Lost on ABC" decal. The author of the novel is a fictional writer who is actually mentioned briefly on the show. It has been rumored that the actual writer of the book is none other than Stephen King, who has been named as a big inspiration for the show's writing team. The novel, like the online elements, helps to decipher some of the show's mystery, but mostly adds to the questions and intrigue of the show.
It is really difficult to explain the plot and happenings of the show to someone who hasn't seen it, and is incredibly frustrating to try to answer all the questions a casual viewer might have. I believe Lost is leading the way in a new breed of TV programming that requires it's watchers to be more than just passive viewers, on both a investigative and intellectual level-the show subtly ties in multiple philosophical perspectives with characters as representations of historical theorists (John Locke, Rousseau, David Hume, etc.)
As a journalist, and just someone who needs to figure things out that interest me, Lost extremely addictive, and is in fact better described as an "experience" rather than just a show.
For those who do follow the show and wish to figure out more than you could ever want to know, Lostpedia is a vast and encompassing wiki fan site that is constantly updated with new information. Enter at your own risk.
And at of sounding like an advertising whore, I strongly encourage anyone who has not yet seen the show to find somewhere online (you know where to find these things, folks), or legitimately obtain the DVD's and tune in to ABC on Wednesday night so that the network does not decide to make the mistake of canceling this show.
(Tune in next week when I look at the top 10 worst TV cancellation mistakes of all time.)
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