Image Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS
There were really two types of Lost fans when the show was on the air: The ones who were there from day one and hung onto every clue, determined until the bitter end to unearth the island’s mysteries, and the ones who, despite enjoying the show at the beginning, simply couldn’t take on another unanswered question or Kate’s constant stream of awful ideas. I count myself in the former category, because no matter how many times the show had left me frustrated, disappointed, or utterly confused, I always had a place in my heart for it. That and I had to know how the damn thing was going to end.
I bring up Lost viewership fandom because of a recent story regarding How I Met Your Mother‘s viewership fandom. [Quick sidebar: Fundamentally, the shows aren't all that different when you think about it: There's a big looming mystery (the island/the mother), there's a struggle between being good (Locke/Marshall) and being evil-terrible (the Man in Black/Ted) and there's a rabid fanbase willing to stick it out. End sidebar.] According to the Associated Press, ratings for HIMYM “are the best they’ve ever been, up 19 percent over last season, and it has the youngest average audience on the network’s prime-time schedule.” (And it seems those solid numbers might continue: As EW reported, its first episode of 2012 helped CBS win the day, with 11.9 million viewers tuning in.)
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