Lost

I don’t really watch “regular” TV.  A lot of people say that.  I’m not sure why.  But what most of them really mean is “I don’t always watch all my favorite shows and sit on the couch hours waiting for them to come on”  Most of the popular shows like American Idle or Dancing with the Stars or  . . . . I have never seen.  Perhaps a few min while someone else was watching but never even 1 whole episode.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why most people watch.  It’s like standing in line at the grocery store and not reading the tabloid covers, it’s almost impossible.  TV can suck you in with the gravitational pull of a black hole.  I suspect even blind people who are standing in the room with Oprah playing on the tube are at first distracted then enthralled by the pseudo reality show.

So why am I watching Lost?  Lost is one of those shows that everyone was watching that I had never seen for the first 5 years of it’s existence.  Even the other members of my household weren’t regular viewers (I am the only one with the no-TV gene in my family), I am not sure why.  Well, this past Christmas my wife of 78 years gave us a box set of Lost seasons 1-5.  She though we could watch them together and catch up with the rest of the world on Lost pop culture.  Since they came on DVD maybe she thought I could accept them as movies with sequels, because I like movies.

Over the Christmas break we started watching them.  All of us, but not together.  The episodes were in 40 min chunks, no commercials and we could watch as many or as few as we liked.  Linda and I would watch 2-4 episodes per sitting and we might do this once or twice a week.  Katie was on a more accelerated schedule.  Sarah was watching so many at a time we were concerned about a Lost induced coma.  When the kids went back to school they had to feed their habit online, Hulu and ABC.

One of the downsides to us all watching at different times was, we couldn’t talk about it.  We were all at different points in the story, so inter-family Lost discussions were taboo.  But the problem was bigger than that.  The new and final season was about to start, Lost was everywhere!  We wern’t ready.  Shield your eyes!  Hold your ears!  We now lived in fear, not that the Others would take us but that a spoiler would jump out in front of us.

Sarah is completely caught up, Katie is somewhere in season 6, Linda and I are almost caught up and watching them on Tivo.  We don’t want to fully catch up because we enjoy watching more than one at a time so we must live in the danger zone a little longer.  If I mention to someone I am watching Lost, do you know what the first thing they say is?  “Want to hear my theory on what is really happening?”  Everyone has one.  Now days I say “sure” because I am mostly caught up, they are going to tell me anyway and it makes them happy.  But it’s all for entertainment value because I know what is really going on.