I love Pam and Jim Halpert even more.

The Office always manages to take the cliched ‘special event’ episodes old-style sitcoms used to overhype, and subsequently underdeliver, and offer up to its audience a naturalistic tale. And what’s more, they manage to be funnier through that quality.

And while I didn’t like the newlyweds’ stance on that awesome wedding ceremony video, I understand it. I remember when I saw that video thinking it’s the sort of thing Michael Scott would try to instigate. So it’s natural that they’d be averse to it.

I only like it a) because it removes the sedateness of a ceremony I find overly stuffy and b) it’s an abstract event right now.

Regarding the first point, that’s only a valid stance it you find weddings to be an unnecessary event. Clearly, Jim and Pam don’t. Jim has dreamed of marrying Pam for years, and Pam has similarly had that idea of a dream wedding. Maybe I’ll one day meet the person that makes me feel like I need that moment, but the one semi-successful — obviously not wholly successful or it would be an ongoing condition — long-term relationship I’ve had was amazing and I still didn’t have the desire for a wedding.

But, getting to the second point, I’m not in the scenario of going through with a wedding. I talk a big game about ‘being yourself’ but in the real world I’m a huge pussy who never talks to girls he likes, can’t carry a conversation with most people, shies away from virtually all social obligations, and gets almost violently nauseous when heading to virtually any event where people I’m not very close friends with will be. So while I like the idea of a ‘fun wedding’ in principle, in reality if I did end up having a wedding I’m pretty sure I’d totally cop out and do the calm sedate thing.

Regardless, even with the dancing and cavorting down the nave of the church, Jim and Pam had the wedding they wanted. The one where the only people there were the ones that mattered: PB & J. Two great people that go great together.

For the last few months, I’ve been generally avoiding Lost spoilers. More recently, I’ve been shunning pretty much all TV spoilers because a few times I was reading spoilers for other shows I caught tantalizing glimpses of Lost spoilers and it was wrecking my chance of going into next season relatively clear of spoilers. And then, today as I was scrolling through TV news over at TV Squad I came across a post describing a casting announcement for Lost that is more than your typical announcement.

I won’t describe it here, but it’s something that Lost fans will get pretty riled up about. In fact, I would have loved to go into the new season next year without knowing about it at all. I miss those days of shock and revelation from the first couple seasons. with each new year my love of Lost grew so each new year I sought out more and more spoilers to satiate my desires. But this year I wanted none of it. As tantalizing and pleasing as those spoilers were in earlier years, they ultimately took away some of the pleasure from the show itself.

And that’s exactly why I wanted to go into next season completely unaware of any of the coming twists. Up until now, I had done that (excluding one major spoiler about the premiere which I curse ever having read no matter how accidental) and this casting announcement once again opens up the floodgates.

But I’ll continue my abstinence, at least until we get closer and spoilers are unavoidable, and maybe it’ll be worth it. Stay tuned, fellow Lostophiles.