Lost!

Part of our household practice is not having a television set. This prevents us (especially me) from mindlessly channel-hopping and watching trashy TV just because it’s on. We do watch DVDs and often buy boxed sets of TV shows, and this helps keep our TV watching in the realms of intentionality. It drives me crazy when I visit someone and they have the TV on all the time. I feel like my brain’s going to rip in two because of my attention being split.

One of the other advantages of watching only DVDs is that we’re not exposed to television advertising!

We just finished watching Season Three of Lost. In fact we watched the two hour finale twice. And tonight we’re doing something unusual — going round to my father-in-law’s place to watch the first episode of Season Four of Lost, at the same time as the rest of the world.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the story unfold. Being exposed to 30 minutes of advertising in a two hour period, less so.

While we’re at it, if you’re a Lost fan you may appreciate this Cracked.com article on “Five Questions Lost Writers Need to Answer and Why They Won’t.” I enjoyed it. My wife didn’t. It’s a wee bit cruel and sarcastic, so I guess that says something about our respective personalities!

2 Responses to “Lost!”

1. Starfire says:

   February 2, 2008 at 12:50 am

   Heya Bodhipaksa

   We’re kind of the same here. We actually *do* have a TV set, but we live in an area where we get almost no terrestrial reception, This means we don’t have a TV, so much as a large, non-portal DVD viewing device

   We’ve frequently had friends ask why we don’t just subscribe to one of the Cable or Sky services, and our answer doesn’t change: if we paid for it, we’d end up watching it – and both of us already have challenges fitting all the stuff we want to do into a 24 hour day!

   We do watch a fair number of DVDs – but at least it’s *our* choice what we watch this way. And, as you say – this way we don’t have to suffer all the advertising. I suspect even when we move to a place that does have reception, we’ll probably continue to just have a large, non-portable DVD-viewer, rather than a TV…

   Blessings

   Starfire
2. bodhipaksa says:

   February 2, 2008 at 10:54 am

   Yes, I sometimes wonder where people find the time, but then last night I stayed up after my wife went to bed and watched four episodes of Frasier back to back! I guess that was less than two hours, however, and without ads.

   The “Lost” two-hour special was a bit of a bust. None of the publicity had mentioned that it wouldn’t be two episodes (or a double-length episode) but it turned out that the first “episode” was actually a recap of the previous three seasons. I’d rather have watched the Democratic presidential primary debate between Hillary and Barack. Man, but I feel conned!

   And the advertising seemed to be particularly intense, especially for the fake episode. That’s another part of the con — the Lost so-called “Two Hour Special” is actually less than 90 minutes of actual programming, with a little over 30 minutes of ads.

   The constant and frequent interruptions and the abrupt changes of tone really seriously interfered with my ability to enjoy Lost as drama. The mood of the program was constantly being shattered and the momentum being lost. Much as I enjoy visiting my father in law and having the opportunity to watch a large-screen TV I much prefer watching an iTunes download or a DVD, so I think that’s what we’ll be doing in future.