Veronica Mars, Lost and the Internet’s takeover of television

AA Much has been said about television in 2004. That it was the best year of television ever, the peak of the Golden Age of television. Or maybe it was the year that reality television became too much and was suddenly on every channel when we flipped the switch. But as famous Hollywood producer and UFO enthusiast Bryce Zabel wrote for Los Angeles Times 2004 was the end of television as we knew it. He attributed this to the proliferation of TiVo and DVR in American homes and predicted a disruption so severe that the entire advertising business would collapse – and he didn’t even know anything about streaming.

Many people felt the change in real time. For many, it was the show Lostwhich debuted in 2004 and generated enthusiasm among obsessives trying to understand the series’ central mysteries. For me it was a smaller but equally influential show: Veronica Mars.

For me, in true early childhood fashion, it was an AIM away message that started it all: “BRB Watching Veronica Mars.” It was the time when you could text or scroll while watching TV, and it was crucial leaving a clear out-of-office message while stepping away from the family computer to watch a show. Earlier that day at school, my friends and I had been excitedly discussing the previous episode, as we did every week, analyzing the storylines and coming up with our own theories about who did it (no spoilers – if you haven’t seen it yet have). it, look at it!). I came back to the computer during a commercial break and there was a message from my friend with a link to the latest Television Without Pity show Veronica Mars Summary, headed “Did you see this?” In this particular summary, author Couch Baron had made, almost word for word, the same joke I had made to her earlier in the day. I clicked.

The recap was long, thorough, and intended to inform fans without TiVo about what they had missed the previous week. However, as I read through it, I felt like the author was one of my friends who I’ve talked to about the show, except he was funnier than us and could go on for pages and pages of context, theories, and Easter eggs that we never would have thought of . I was addicted. I didn’t just have to watch Veronica Every Wednesday night at 9pm – my parents didn’t splurge on TiVo – but I had to read Couch Baron’s recap as soon as it went live. The TWoP recaps opened a window into a community I never knew existed. A world of comment sections and forums, fan theories, ships (before they were called ships), music credits (I see you, Tegan and Sara), and production gossip. Like Veronica Mars herself, the people of the Internet were detectives, investigating together and finding answers to the series’ biggest questions and mysteries.

And TWoP also summarizes virtually every other show on television. The biggest thing was Lostan instant network hit that featured its own selection of TWoP recaps and forum threads discussing the Smoke Monster, the meaning of “See you in another life, bro,” and other oddly specific breadcrumbs that delighted the show’s creators Fan had left base. Thanks to the Internet, I learned that “Make Your Own Kind of Music” was a 60s hit by Cass Elliot, so I was able to download it illegally on Kazaa. TWoP and The AV Club existed before 2004, but these two shows heralded the user-curated TV boom that would soon follow. Just a year later Lost Premiere, Lostpedia launched. For the 2006 season, TV wikis would become ubiquitous. When the finale aired in 2010, live tweeting was the order of the day and we all collectively held our breath as we watched together on social media.

As opposed to Lost, Veronica Mars was ultimately canceled after just three seasons. It aired on the CW and had poor ratings, but not because fans didn’t try. We called ourselves Marshmallows (a reference to the show’s pilot) and tirelessly pleaded with audiences and executives to keep the show alive. Even though our efforts to prevent the series from being canned were unsuccessful, it was the fan base built in 2004 that supported a sequel to the film on Kickstarter years later.

For me, television has always been about community, and in 2004 I found a community that was much larger than the people I saw every day. Back then – before streaming even existed and before there were Facebook statuses and tweets that allowed us to share our every thought – shared viewing on the Internet was born. And now here we are; Appointment TV has been replaced by streaming subscriptions, and viral memes and celebrity press tours have taken over our algorithms. Wikis and forums still exist, but they’re not the same. Somehow everything is bigger – the internet is bigger – and as an adult it is more time consuming. The cozy, isolated TV communities of 20 years ago may be a relic of the early 2000s, when the Internet offered so many options but was small enough to create magic.