Monday, Feb. 1. Sadly for me, I'm the Jin to your Sun, stuck 48 hours in the past and 24 hours before the ""Lost"" season six premiere. I've got my web browser open to an article that has been mocking me for at least 12 hours. I check back periodically, hoping that some legal power has demanded that it be banished from the visible realm of the Internet, but alas, to no avail.
The page in question? ""Part of the ‘Lost' premiere leaks online."" Damn you AV Club, damn you DarkUFO, damn you all for tempting me with wonderful ""Lost""-y goodness.
Here's the dilemma for most fans of the adventure-turned-sci-fi mind-bender drama: If I had my own Orchid Station, I would have used it to move Madison's Isthmus ahead to tomorrow night way back in May, when the brain-melting finale of season five left me clawing my TV screen for any trace of answers.
What happened after Juliet threw a rock at a nuclear warhead on top of a fountain of electro-magnetic energy? Who was that dude in black? How does Sawyer stay so pretty in the jungle? Seriously, I look gross after walking up Bascom in April. What is his secret?
Anyway, the point is that my unhealthy addiction to ""Lost"" mysteries could make me do something stupid. Back in May, I would have moved islands or isthmuses for a fix, for a scrap of information on what would happen in this season premiere. Now I have mere hours to wait —giving in to the black soullessness of Internet spoilers will completely undermine my eight months of spoiler sobriety.
I've faced this beast before. I ruined the discovery of 1970s Dharmaville for myself last year, and before that I looked up who the Oceanic Six were before I even knew that someone would be getting off the Island.
But now I'm on the mend—until today. I took a cold shower and thought about baseball, but that damn spoiler video is still up on my screen.
Others have miraculously made it work. My roommate, a devoted fan, managed to stay six episodes behind last season and still never had anything ruined for him. All he had to do was yell ""HAVEN'T SEEN IT"" any time someone started talking about ""Lost"" and ran frantically out of the room—easy.
I suppose I could have helped by keeping my theories to myself, but ""Lost"" is just too big to keep to yourself. Hell, for anyone reading this who's never seen it, I'm spoiling the hell out of the show with each new word.
""Lost"" fans seem fairly divided over how to handle spoilers and leaks like this. While the offending DarkUFO is famous for calling out twists far before they air, fan database Lostpedia is coded by time zone to make sure U.S. watchers don't ruin it for the rest of the world without warning.
For every fan itching to see what happens next, there is another who would claw the first's eyes out for ruining it for everyone.
I think I'm going to stay on the straight and narrow this time around. The browser window is closed and the spoiler is a distant memory. It's probably better for my cholesterol or something anyway. I'm sure I'll get my fill when I catch up to the rest of you on Wednesday morning.
Shit, I wonder if that page is still in my browser history.....
Mark is still in spoiler rehab, so don't ask him about how the fourth season of Dexter was if you haven't seen it. Send sponsor offers or your hate for spoiling Lost Seasons 1-5 to mriechers@wisc.edu.
