“I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us: LOST.” And I was wrong. This week, Jake strands the co-hosts and listeners on a small, dangerous island, and dissects the ‘LOST’ alternate reality game from 2006. In an effort to steer the show away from politics and conspiracy theories in these trying times, Jake has inadvertently uncovered the inconvenient truth that TV shows and their advertisers may have primed us for Qanon.
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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
https://qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, Premium Episode 267, The Lost Experience.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakatansky, Julian Field, Liv Acar, and Travis View.
Dear listeners, in light of the steady stream of horrifying news coming out of Washington, D.C. and social media platforms all over the World Wide Web, I figured for this week's premium, it might be nice to have a classic Coke.
Full sugar.
You know, and if you don't like Coca-Cola, maybe a Mountain Dew or a Dr.
Pepper.
Whatever you choose, I want you to make sure it's ice cold.
Because we're going to be diving into a personal interest of mine, TV. That's right, folks.
I'm talking about shows.
We've all got our shows, and right now, mine is lost.
The J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindloff, Jeffrey Lieber hour-long sci-fi drama that aired on ABC Television Network from 2004 to 2010.
And I have to ask, Julian, Liv, Travis, are you familiar with this show?
Haven't watched a minute.
I understand its reputation as they set up a lot of things and they didn't know where to go with it.
My dad was, I think, an avid watcher and he was very not happy with how it was wrapped up.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, it's like, what's happening on the island?
And then seasons later...
Yeah, if you talk to most fans who watched it as it aired, I think the consensus is kind of the same.
I know that just amongst, like, my family and friends who are really into it.
My dad was really into it, too.
That, yeah, by the final seasons, it sort of gets a little bit wild.
My understanding of the plot is that it's like there's a guy in a hut and he has to poop every hour and if he doesn't poop, the island explodes.
He's dedicated his life to eating laxatives.
So basically the show was an ice-cold Coca-Cola and by the end it was a flat, syrupy, warm concoction.
Left out in the sun.
It's like isolated.
Travis, did you ever watch Lost?
I never watched it.
I remember the Lost Mania in the 2000s when it was just very, very popular.
I had a lot going on in my life at that time period.
So I didn't.
But I remember it was very, very popular.
I remember people talking.
I remember there was a guy named John Locke, like the political philosopher.
Oh my god.
I remember some people talking about a smoke monster.
And I remember people being disappointed in the ending.
I know I picked up, you know, bits and drabs through osmosis.
But no, I never watched it.
And also, just to be clear, smoke monster does not refer to me two weeks ago.
Now, I'm with you.
I did not watch the show when it first aired.
I had a lot of friends and family who were into it, and they would talk about it when we saw each other.
But at the time, I didn't have the patience or life management skills to set aside the same time every week to watch a show.
So a couple of years ago, when Lost first came to Netflix, my partner and I watched it together.
She was an OG Losthead.
And I made it to almost the last season.
Light spoilers ahead.
Lost ran for six seasons, and the final two where they really get into the science fiction-y stuff were hard for me to follow, and I never finished the series.
Cut to present day.
This year is Lost's 30th anniversary, and so there's been a little bit of a Lost revival, and I decided, you know, I want to see the show through to the end.
Give it a fair shake.
Wait, so Lost is older than Liv?
I thought it was 2004.
Yeah, 2004, it started.
20th anniversary?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, what did I say?
30th?
30th.
Hmm, do I go back and take the whole thing again, or do I? No, no, no.
No, we leave it.
We leave it.
It's the 20th, just to correct, so no misinformation gets disseminated on this podcast.
20th anniversary.
Everyone can remember 1994 when I was 11 and I watched Lost.
My favorite show.
So it's slightly younger than Liv.
Slightly younger than Liv.
I was six when it started, I think.
You were six.
Too mature.
This is a mature show.
Very confusing.
I don't think a six-year-old would be into it at all.
I watched Jurassic Park and it scared me a lot when I was six.
So I think this would have been too much.
And this kind of gets into my next segment.
You know, Lost is a show that I would categorize as a ship show.
Maybe the original ship show.
And for those unfamiliar with the term, which is everyone because I made it up, a ship show is a very specific kind of television show, okay?
They typically use a dark or muted color palette, so they're easy to watch in the dark instead of sleeping.
Ahem.
You know, Jake, you're not even the first person to come up with this because Jim Watkins' show on his, like, shitty streaming platform was called The Ship Show.
Okay, but it's different.
It's totally different things.
He's doing ship for a different reason.
Let me get into my explanation.
So...
The ship show, it's gotta contain some sort of high-concept science fiction premise or twist, and I initially coined the term while watching 1899 because it took place on a ship and I could never remember the title.
Hence, I started calling it My Ship Show.
So other examples of ship shows are Dark, the German Netflix series, The Leftovers on HBO, Three Body Problem also contains a ship, and The OA. Now if you've seen one or more of these types of shows, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Lots of browns, lots of grays, time travel, religion versus science themes, ship shows.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Okay, so you decided to use the word ship based on the first TV show that you saw that fell into an aesthetic category.
Yes.
And yet ship does not describe the aesthetic category at all, and the ship does not appear in any of these other shows.
Sometimes a ship appears.
Sometimes a ship appears.
But it's coincidental.
It's not related to that.
Yes, exactly.
You have an integrated This Is Not That, huh?
It's just an incredible brain.
Because a ship show for me would be like, essentially like a bottle episode where it's like, okay, there's a certain amount of actors, there's not more than that, and they're all stuck in a place together.
But no, no, no, it's about the color palette.
Yeah, this is a vibe.
A ship show is all about vibe.
And to give you another example, The Prestige is a really good example of a ship show movie, but Interstellar is not.
Make sense?
Oh my god!
No!
No, I'm confused now.
The Interstellar.
Oh, no.
Yeah, you're losing me now.
This is so fucked.
I wish you...
You should do the taxonomy for everything.
It would be so awesome.
There's mystery in it.
It's got the color palette.
There's light science fiction elements.
But Interstellar, it's not.
It's like too aggressively science fiction, and it's kind of bright.
It's just...
It's not a ship show.
By applying it to a movie, you haven't just made the word ship useless.
You've also made the word show useless.
I'm just...
I'm just trying to give another example of the vibes.
People will know what I'm talking about.
I guarantee you there's going to be somebody in my Twitter that's like, dude, I know exactly what you're talking about when you say ship show.
And then they'll give me an example and they'll be like, uh, like this show.
I'll be like, yes, that's a ship show.
Anyways, I look forward to hearing from all of you.
Based on your description, I watched a pretty crappy ship show recently called Silo.
The Silo or Silo, I can't remember.
Okay, is it on Apple TV? Yeah, it's Apple TV. Okay, Apple TV has been trying to do a lot of ship shows lately.
You know what's that one?
I didn't love it, but a lot of people were really into it for a while.
Station 13 or something like that.
It was about the Troop of Act.
I don't know.
Something like that's kind of a ship show.
People know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, they definitely do.
They definitely do.
They know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA Podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA Podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion.
