Some of you (oh man) may be too young to remember this, but this thing a bunch of us are gonna do tonight, sit in front of a TV while Lost comes on?
PEOPLE USED TO DO THAT ALL THE TIME.
You’d have to watch a show at the precise time it aired. And you’d watch with family, or with friends. The next day you’d talk to everyone you could about it, because, most likely, they’d watched it, too.
And yeah, it’s just TV, but it was also everyone doing the same thing at the very same time, and how that bound us together in a very specific way. We had a lot of differences, but everybody watched ER. Everybody watched Moonlighting. I wonder…maybe this is crazy, but maybe all of us having so many viewing options…maybe that’s helped split this country up into so many social pieces, so many segments that don’t really seem to understand each other, anymore.
Sure, it was for shows like MASH, or the Cosby Show, or Cheers, none of them Citizen Kane (or The Wire!!), but, really, it wasn’t about quality. It was about connection. Shared experience. Maybe we didn’t have the same views of the world, but we could all understand Murphy Brown.
So I’ll be glad to share this with y’all, tonight.
Also, I’ve been a Terry O’ Quinn fan since he was in The Rocketeer. I LOVE LOCKE!!!
