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Press conference: The Oceanic Six from Lost

Last night I went online and watched the latest episode of Lost to screen in the USA. It’s an episode called “There’s No Place Like Home (1)”, the first of a three part season finale dealing largely with revealing how the “Oceanic Six” get off the island. The picture above is from the press conference that Oceanic Airlines holds upon their safe return to U.S. soil.

It’s not a spoiler to say they get off the island; the show has been using flashbacks and flash-forwards for some time now. And I’m not going to spill the beans on any other aspect of the plot or say where I watched it. We’re about to see it on New Zealand television screens pretty soon anyway — next week if I’m not mistaken. If you’re interested enough, you may have already seen it. Or if not, you’ll at least know where to look online.

When a popular series is heading for its season finale, it’s really tempting to jump ahead and watch it online. I admit doing just that with the final season of The Sopranos. Except, in the name of “shared experience”, I waited and watched the last episode on TV. I wanted that shared experience. After all, I grew up with shared experience on a local level, right down to enjoying the debut of a pop song on Saturday afternoon’s Ready To Roll.

Whether it’s hearing a regular radio show or watching an exciting new TV series, the notion that you experience a show at the same time as your colleagues gives us all something to talk about, whether around the coffee machine, water cooler or in the school playground.

When I was 10 years old — we’re talking 1975 — I was so desperate to be part of the shared experience surrounding the NZ debut of The Six Million Dollar Man that I sat in front of a black and white TV that had no picture. The TV had lost its picture earlier that day — distraught but hyped by the futuristic concept, I sat and listened to the whole episode instead. Sounds a little pathetic and it probably was, but at least I knew the basics of the plot and what the sound effects were doing.

Today the idea of shared experience has shifted. While I dutifully waited for the final Sopranos episode to screen, many friends — the ones who I could discuss the episodes with — had already watched it online. So when I did want that water cooler chat, it was too late.

The “water cooler” for discussing TV shows is online these days, in forums. There are many out there — for Lost you can start with Lostpedia, which has a discussion going for each episode. They’re careful not to reveal spoilers and they even alert people when bloggers or other forums go too far with spoiler info. There’s always someone adding to the conversation, so you don’t have to be there the moment it starts.

The shows we watch these days are far more complex than The Six Million Dollar Man. We watch large ensemble casts in shows like Lost, the sorely missed Sopranos, and even silly old Desperate Housewives. Each character in a modern drama has their own storyline and the script jumps through all manner of complex plot device, leaving some threads hanging for months before picking them up again. (Lost and Alias creator J.J. Abrams has come up with another new, equally complex TV show called Fringe — watch the trailer at Slashfilm.com — which appears to be very X-Files-like.)

How on Earth can we sift through and recap all the theories and character back stories in a five minute face to face conversation anyway? These shows need and encourage feedback from viewers via online forums, so all the little references, clues and trivia can be found in one place.

So my shared experience is still out there, but it no longer has the same geographic limitations. Like the island in Lost, the conversation doesn’t adhere to the old rules of time and place. Sadly, the traditional localised shared viewing experience is left to the likes of Dancing With The Stars and Stars In Their Eyes, shows which leave me cold. And that alone is enough to drive me back to discovering what’s new online.