Has Lost REALLY Changed The Way We Watch Television?
If you watched any of the two hours of fan wankery that was the Lost recap show Sunday night, you might have noticed at least one assertion crop up a few times: That Lost has changed television. And lying tangent to that assertion, wrapped up in all those tender fan farewells (and other commentaries), was the notion that Lost also changed The Way We Watch Television. That, like nothing before it, Lost has rallied us out of our little nerd hideouts to the Internet (or wherever) to theorize, commiserate, fawn or flame. That somehow, before Lost, we didn't realize the rhetorical power of the medium and were only passive TV watchers.
So on this, the day we used to crowd around our laptops to visit The Fuselage or Live Journal or, I don't know, Fanfiction.net, I say, "Oh, come on. Let's give ourselves more credit here."
Disclaimer: I like Lost. And I like it when complex TV shows achieve huge followings, because it gives me hope that TV isn't going to simply devolve into a bunch of American Idol-inspired reality shows.
Lost has been a friend to a lot of us nerds for the last six years -- an unparalleled amount of nerds, perhaps excluding the audience of The X-Files. Its ratings are pretty consistently the stuff of Top-20 rankings, unlike other cult hits like Battlestar Galactica or Buffy The Vampire Slayer (and especially those short-lived knockoffs like Invasion and Surface -- remember those?). But here's what I wonder. A couple things:
First, can the many people who really Watched Lost -- the people who, through blogs and message boards and whatnot may or may not have helped shape the series' trajectory -- ascribe that heightened participation to just Lost? Or was Lost just mainstream-y enough to capture the interest of a lot of people who had already begun to watch TV, but who had found fandom already in other places? In other words, was it Lost that did the changing, or did Lost just provide an opportunity for coalescence of a lot of people who had already changed?
A lot of ground-breaking, twisty, mythological and fierce sci-fi has come before Lost, but, unlike Lost, that sci-fi that wasn't lucky enough to air at a time when the exploration and development of social networking was at a peak -- when a grassroots Facebook movement, for example, could land Betty White a SNL hosting gig (but not really do all that much for Conan O'Brien). It might be irrelevant, because ultimately Lost did air during this time and did receive the benefit of a lot of inspired fans all trolling their message boards, but consider the still-active fan bases of shows like Star Trek, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Babylon 5: Wouldn't those shows be capable of the same sort of rally?
But say Lost did change the Way We Watch. Change -- trend -- can't be observed in a single occurrence. For change to have occurred, something has to maintain it, which is where the notion that Lost has changed us becomes hard to swallow. What form has this change taken? Are droves of people going to upgrade to get BBC America and watch Doctor Who now? It seems to me that the success Lost has seen is not any sort of catalyst for change, but probably just another manifestation of the change brought about by Internet and social networking proliferation.
As a Lostie myself, and qualms about the finale aside, I'd like to believe that something as complex, fan-indulgent and fully realized as Lost might herald a blindingly bright future for TV, but then -- a step back. What's wrong with the way TV is right now? Lost doesn't really need to change anything, aside from maybe forcing a few Idol knockoffs out of the lineup. There are many swings and many misses, but occasionally, little golden nuggets like Lost turn up, stick with us for six or more years, touch our lives and unite us in maddening debate. Lost isn't the first time that's happened, and it won't be the last. And furthermore, what's wrong with the Way We Watch TV? We love loving characters, we're desperate for the end and the answers that come with it, and we're probably highly overly critical finale viewers. (Purgatory. Facepalm.) Again, Lost isn't the first time that's happened, and it won't be the last.
The question now is what's next? What will soothe the sting of either finale disappointment or loss and, like Lost and the cult threads before it, draw us from our nerd hideouts to our TV sets and our laptops? I highly doubt it's going to be Bad Robot's next adventure Undercovers, but that's just me.
Anyway, that's how it looks from where I'm sitting -- which is at my desk surrounded by Lost-inspired, tear-stained tissues (just kidding, though?). If Lost has changed The Way You Watch TV, let's hear about it.
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In addition, I'd add it was one of the early shows to start putting entire seasons on DVD. Which allowed people who didn't watch it from the beginning to catch up after hearing all of the social networking buzz.
As a Lost devotee, I would argue that Lost didn't change the way we watch TV, if only because not enough people actually watched it. You can't really compare television ratings between eras -- it's like trying to compare Keith Hernandez to Mark Teixeira -- but that Lost could barely top the Betty White episode of SNL and the 2009 season finale of Desperate Housewives is an indictment.
The thing with Lost, ultimately, is that it's true fans were loyal to the end. Everyone else just shrugged. That the true fans were a very active and vocal minority speaks to the success of Lost within it's narrow parameters. Lost wasn't the first niche smash, but it was the first one (as far as I can tell) on a big-three network.
In the end, that might be the ultimate legacy of this series: Playing to the base. Giving fans what they want. Creating a community. You look at Glee now and see something similar: Gleeks are RABID about that show, and they will be until the bitter end -- or until Cory Monteith starts showing grey hairs.
Anyway, those are my cents.
Lost was the new Twin Peaks.
No, it wasn't. It lasted six seasons, made ABC millions of dollars in DVD/ad sales and actually had viewers. That isn't a knock on the creative success of Twin Peaks, just financial.
LOST actually didn't change the way I watch TV. I've always been able to commit to shows provided I find them entertaining. I think what set LOST apart was it was actually better done than most and the producers knew when to pull the plug, unlike say the X-files, which lasted about five seasons too long.
I wasn't talking financial, i was talking conceptual.
Oh, please. Mark Texeira would kick Keith Hernandez's ass in any era.
But the defense, STV! And the cocaine!
if anything, lost and this finale, kinda put me off tv shows of this kind. i guess i'll rather have them end and be on the dvd before i can watch it. i was so disappointed how they strung us along and how they never answered anything and ruined important and believable story-lines for the sake of a WTF moment.
Yes, the same here. I won't follow another show with a similar theme ever again. Total long-con.
LOST did two key things that had not occurred on TV before, other than as incidentals. One, was it encouraged scholarship to appreciate key themes. (Yes, Star Trek TOS did use some of the great mid-century sci-fi writers, but they were at the time just interested in the paycheck.) Heck, there have been college courses about the literary and philosophical underpinnings of LOST. This was a conscious decisions of the creators. (For example, Salman Rushdie's book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and it's appearance via Desmond on the Sideways O815 could not have been more pungent foreshadowing.) Second, its spiderweb of web fandom is far deeper than any other show before it, with the arguable exceptions of Star Wars and Star Trek, both of which occurred before the web became what it is now. So it showed us what a show CAN do with web-literate fan base, including all those times the writers winked at the fourth wall on our behalf. On all your other points, I think you nail it. But as an avowed Trekkie (or Trekker), I feel pretty confident that I will never watch a show this dense again the same way. And the fact that it was able to do this with a conscious idea of how tell the story to its ending allowed it to avoid the fates of once-great shows like the X-Files that withered away in it's post-Mulder years.
1. Star Trek TNG- PWN!
2. Battlestar Galactica (2004)- DOUBLE PWN!
3. Lost- MEH!
Did it change the way "WE" watch television????
Here's what I think...
YOUR COLLECTIVE AND RETARDATION IS OBSOLETE.
You should put forth the effort to think for yourself and quit littering the internet with headlines from the fucking Borg.
Lost was a sci-fi show hidden behind the facade of a traditional drama. People who would never have watched a sci-fi show watched Lost. (Consider: if the pilot had been about a spaceship crashing on a distant planet how many non sci-fi viewers would have tuned it?) Those non sci-fi geeks don't get it the way we real geeks do. We marvel at the possibilities that Lost has offered us. Lost has the chance now to live for generations the way Star Trek and Star Wars does. I believe we'll see Lost: The Expanded Universe novels and video games and comics. With so many stories left to tell it's impossible to think this is over. All the sci-fi shows mentioned in this article are still going strong in book or comic form and that's because sci-fi geeks love it and appreciate it and enjoy the further adventures of the world created in that show or movie. I can't wait to do the same thing with Lost. Non sci-fi fans don't do that and don't why we do. We don't want it all summed up nicely in a neat little package with a bow on it at the end of the hour. We want the story to go on. Lost has done that the way Star Trek did that. But by forcing the non sci-fi fan to confront that notion then yes, maybe Lost did change the way we watch TV,
Does the author of this article actually think that because of "social networking sites" that "Lost" changed the way we watch television? I'd point out that many t.v. shows in the past ten years have had VERY BIG fan sites that were not reliant on Social Networking, and things for those shows turned out fine, if not better than "Lost."
"Lost" lost over half of its viewers since its launch because the smarter viewers realized that the writers were just making up shit as they went along and it quickly became apparent that there was no way that the writers were going to be able to EVER bring the story to a conclusion that wasn't stupid, hackneyed, or forced.
Then there's just a flat out idiotic remark by the author:
"What form has this change taken? Are droves of people going to upgrade to get BBC America and watch Doctor Who now? It seems to me that the success Lost has seen is not any sort of catalyst for change, but probably just another manifestation of the change brought about by Internet and social networking proliferation."
Doctor Who has been around since 1963 and was voted the most popular sci-fi series of all time by TV guide (long before it was rebooted). To say that interest in the show is because of "social networking" and "Lost" is absurd. Doctor Who (the original series) is still 100x better than ANYTHING "Lost" did in it's six years, and was written by some of the best sci-fi writers of all time, including Douglas Adams.
In defense of The X-Files: it was the network's fault, and not the writers', that the show went on too long. Chris Carter wanted to end the series by the 7th season but Fox saw that ratings were still decent and wanted to continue milking the cash cow for all it was worth.
Regarding the article: i don't think Lost changed the way we watch television, and the fan fervor for the show is definitely not unprecedented. I never saw Buffy or Star Trek so i can't comment on those. But speaking from the experience of being both a Lostie and an X-phile, i would actually argue that The X-Files had a much larger fan base. It had more mainstream appeal than Lost does (did?), and its narrative structure was less hostile to people who just wanted to be "casual" fans. Lost was just lucky enough to premiere in time to catch the internet/social networking wave, and lucky enough that the ABC execs had seen what happened to The X-Files and thus allowed Darlton to set the end date for their series.
In a nutshell: everything is progress, as Jacob said to MiB. In a couple of years another show will come along to sweep us off our feet, and Lost will be a memory just like The X-Files, Buffy and Star Trek are now.
Good for you, Neil, for finding an outlet to vent about LOST - you obviously needed it. It seems to me, though, that you misinterpreted the author's statement that you quoted in your comment: she wasn't saying that the success of Doctor Who has anything to do with the internet, she was merely wondering if LOST has influenced the viewing habits of another group of people - apart from the sci-fi nerds, if you will - so that they might be interested in discovering other sci-fi shows like Doctor Who. Which is unlikely.
@Saint Huck - 'Lost was a sci-fi show hidden behind the facade of a tradional drama' - I'm getting a little annoyed by the sci-fi geeks' trying to appropriate the show. Yes, the sci-fi elements were an important part and I loved the pseudo-science aspects (as opposed to the magical and mythological elements pushed to the forefront in the final season) but the creators have stated repeatedly that the characters and their redemptive story arcs are at the heart of the show; LOST succeded in creating interesting, complex characters that people became invested in, so traditional drama obviously wasn't a 'facade,' it was the core of the story.
Not to mention all the literary and philosophical references. I agree with Elizabeth that the combination of these things made LOST unique and set it apart from the sci-fi shows mentioned in the article.
I dunno, I still sit on my couch when I'm watch TV.