When Lost took its first commercial break last night, millions of J.J. Abrams fanatics experienced a collective nerdgasm when ABC aired a special sneak peek of Star Trek that showed Captain James Tiberius Kirk outrunning CGI monsters while stranded on a Hoth-like terrain. However, those of you who were paying very close attention (read: not fast-forwarding through commercials on your DVR) may also have noticed a mysterious series of four five five-second-long interstitials that aired during the course of the program, each of which asked the question, “What Did You See?†Well, if you were wondering exactly what it was that you saw, you were experiencing the earliest waves of a viral marketing campaign for Flash-Forward, a show that ABC is very excited about but has yet to pick up.
Being the curious types, we decided to Google the phrase “What did you see?†last night. If you do so yourself, you’ll see that the first (paid) result directs you to a mysterious site for the Mosaic Collective, which claims to be “dedicated to connecting the world one experience at a time.†Sounds to us like we’ve got another shadily motivated conglomerate on our hands, à la Dharma Initiative or Massive Dynamic.
So what does it all mean? Heck if we know! We present the four five stills ABC showed last night for you below (in the order they were originally presented). If anyone can tie together a link between stock footage of a funeral, a wedding, a Big Wednesday surfer dude, an ultrasound video, and some kids running out of a school, here’s what you should do:
1. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
2. Immediately after that, start pulling together your pitch for a mysterious, conspiracy-theory-laden show and schedule a meeting with ABC honcho Steve McPherson.