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.