People that know me probably saw this coming 
. Hey I made it until the third article in the series FWIW. This post is all new content: a spoiler-free reflection about the ABC series and examination of what I like about it. I also posted my thoughts on the final episode and conclusion here. If you haven’t checked out Lost, read this but don’t click on that link. I will know.
"The Complete Series" sets are for babies.
Lost and Me: Part 1
For me, Lost is special not in the least because of its timing in my life: it began in the first fall that I spent living in North Carolina, having graduated from college and gotten married in the summer.
The only show I was watching at the time was 24 [I can't believe there isn't a page there anymore; I refuse to change my link, 404 be damned] but in the past couple of years I’d gotten into Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel as a latecomer to both parties. The common thread is the thing I responded to most in all three: excellent stories and dialog and serialized storytelling that rewarded careful attention and knowledge of past events in each show. The DVD sets that I obediently collected had commentaries and features that served to highlight the production aspect of television that I hadn’t paid attention to before: the writers and show-runners who think up, argue about, and finally write these stories down.
Joss Whedon is an obvious example of a creator who’s as publicly known as his creations. Another writer on Whedon’s shows whose episodes stood out to me (we’re almost back to Lost, I promise) was David Fury. As Buffy and then Angel concluded, I kept up with news about these writers’ projects on Whedonesque, a fan site that’s still active (see, fox.com/24?) that is the best resource I know about for Whedon news. David Fury was going to write for an upcoming drama about a plane that crashes on a deserted island, and it followed that I was going to watch an upcoming drama about a plane that crashes on an island.
The premiere was September 22, 2004 which is also the day in the show that the plane crash occurs. That night
For non-viewers, this is the title card that signifies the end of an episode, which frequently appears right after a major plot twist. Here it means that "Lost and Me" will pick up later in the article.
Lost
This will be brief because Lost more than any other show should not be spoiled for those who haven’t seen it. Even if you haven’t seen it and think somebody has blown the ending for you, think again. I’ve heard and read people angrily blurt out an ending which is their angry misunderstanding and not what actually occurred. Even if someone has even-handedly and logically explained the ending to you (who is this person who understands the story but doesn’t want you to experience it properly though?), Lost is worth watching for the way it’s told and the twist and turns along the way.
A plane on its way from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles crashes on an island in the Pacific, but miraculously many passengers survive. We follow a dozen or so of around forty survivors who come from various interesting walks of life and were in Sydney for various interesting reasons. What is that noise in the jungle? Why is seemingly nobody coming to rescue them?
"Guys, where are we?"
Almost every episode focuses on one “centric” character who has flashbacks to before the crash woven in to the island story. This is especially effective in the first season because the origins of each character are revealed gradually: if you’re still watching when episode 18 rolls around you are probably very curious about Hurley’s reason for flying to and from Sydney, so the answer is that much more rewarding. In later seasons the flashback format is ditched in favor of others that I won’t say one word about further.
I’ve started to write another paragraph here and deleted it so many times that it’s probably time to move on. If you haven’t seen Lost and end up watching it I don’t want to give you one more piece of information that you wouldn’t experience first for yourself.
What I Like: Part 1
Like my favorite Quentin Tarantino movies (1 2), we aren’t always shown events in the most logical order. This is rarely confusing, though to be fair there was at least one episode whose chronology was a little too clever for its own good IMO and as I mentioned I think that many people have the wrong impression of the series ending based on chronology of events. There are cases where the same event is shown from a different character’s point of view, and even better (at least to me) there are major cliffhangers that do not get resolved for several episodes. We’ll be shown something shocking and want to watch the next episode right away, only to find that the next one tracks characters who aren’t related to the event, or that the it builds up to the same event from another point of view. I know that this kind of teasing isn’t appreciated by everyone, but I don’t mind in the least.
Like The Stand, which was a major influence, and A Song of Ice and Fire, which was not an influence but is being read by Lost co-runner Damon Lindelof now and involved in an interesting and one-sided feud, the story is told through POVs that rotate over a large cast of characters. As the story evolves new characters are introduced each season (no small task when your premise is a deserted island!), while at the same time the original ones are honored to the end. My favorite character is a sympathetic and brilliant villain (so Tyrion Lannister again pretty much) who is introduced in the second half of Season 2. I can’t say much more without venturing into spoilers, but it’s enough to say that it was not difficult to decide on my Facebook profile picture for series finale day:
"My name is Henry Gale. I'm from Minnesota. And I crashed on this island just like you."
If it sounds like there are a lot of “Like (something else)” statements, it’s because the creators have been very honest about the influences behind their show: for example, compare this list of Lindelof’s favorite movies to events on the show. Better, nods to several books and films which inspired the story are in the background of the show itself, as characters reading the books, etc… A comprehensive list is here. If you listen to one episode of the enormously entertaining podcast that Lindelof and the other show-runner Carlton Cuse did while the show was on, I’d recommend the Mother’s Day episode where both men interview their moms: go here, search for “mothers”, then click the “play” icon. Lindelof remembers going on family trips and sitting in the backseat of the car surrounded by piles of books.
Lost and Me: Part 2
Ironically given the show’s mantra to “live together, die alone”, I watched the first episode alone, glued to the living room couch while my wife did something in another room. When it was over I went straight to her (which didn’t take long in our two bedroom apartment) and told her how awesome the thing she missed was. I was most impressed by the opening scene: the hero Jack wakes up and is lying on his back in a serene jungle. He hears the faint sound of screaming and runs to a beach where his plane has crashed, but instead of seeing the chaos all at once we see progressively more of it in the background as Jack runs by. Like most of Kill Bill this idea might have been taken from or was a nod to something else but I didn’t and don’t know about it if so.
Despite my enthusiasm I apparently didn’t know how special Lost was to be because I skipped the second episode outright. Luckily ABC aired both hours of the pilot the next Saturday. This is when my personal Lost community was born out of fate, as that Saturday afternoon two of my best friends (both of the guys this time) and their significant others had gone hiking and met for dinner at one of Brier Creek’s finest establishments. I skipped the hike but went to Moe’s, and before leaving asked if everyone wanted to come over to watch the two hours of Lost. One of these guys requires days of planning to do anything and has a strictly enforced quota of one activity per weekend let alone day, so I’m not sure why he took me up on this offer. Nevertheless, six people (this time including the wife) were glued to the living room couches watching Lost that night.
This communal viewing kicked off weekly lunch chats about last night’s Lost that would continue until the finale on May 23, 2010. I also had people over to our apartment (and from Live Together, Die Alone-onward house) for every season premiere and finale. Close calls were the Season 2 and Season 4 finales which fell within weeks of both our kids’ births. (Another notable coincidence between the airing of Lost and my life is that each birth divides the series neatly into thirds). There was no official gathering for the former because my wife was episode 19-Claire pregnant with our son, but we had our friends Dan and Rebecca over who were prepared to leave if necessary. I report gladly that they didn’t have to. Thank you, boy. For this reason Dan has the distinction of being over for all 12 premieres and finales. Our daughter was born two weeks before the Season 4 finale, just enough time for things to be normal enough to have people over. Thank you, girl.
For the series finale we had 13 people over, which sounds like an unlucky number at first. But since the episode was 2 1/2 hours long I had planned a special snack for the 2 hour mark: I asked some people to bring cookies and some ice cream and combined them with chocolate chips to make homemade (marginally?) Toll House Cookies (the recipe which involves rolling is confidential). When every ingredient was exhausted, guess how many treats there were? That’s right, 13 exactly.
What I Like: Part 2
I hope I’ve explained what I liked about watching Lost unfold for the first time, but like any series worthy of a blog article Lost is a show that I have and will continue to re-watch several times. What makes this worthwhile to me are the elements that work in harmony to the story: the dialog, scenery, and music.
Every time I watch a sci-fi show that’s taking itself too seriously and not having any fun (I’m picking on you Flashforward and don’t you dare Game of Thrones), I point out this exchange from the second part of the Pilot episode. Sawyer has just shot a polar bear that came running out of the jungle:
BOONE: That can't be a polar bear.
SAYID and KATE: [at the same time] It's a polar bear.
SHANNON: Yeah, but... Polar bears don't usually live in the jungle.
CHARLIE: Spot on.
SAYID: No, polar bears don't live near this far south.
BOONE: This one does.
SAWYER: Did. It did.
KATE: [to Sawyer] Where did that come from?
SAWYER: Probably Bear Village. How the hell do I know?
KATE: Not the bear. The gun.
SAWYER: I got if off one of the bodies.
SAYID: One of the bodies.
SAWYER: Yeah, one of the bodies.
SHANNON: People don't carry guns on planes.
SAWYER: They do if they're a US Marshal, sweet cheeks. There was one on the plane.
KATE: How do you know that?
SAWYER: I saw a guy lying there with an ankle holster, so I took the gun. I thought it might come in handy. Guess what? I just shot a bear!I won’t say much about the gorgeous scenery, shot almost entirely on location in Hawaii, or exceptionally beautiful actors, even the objectively least attractive of whom is featured on an album cover, but here are pictures worth 2000 words:
With regard to the music, there’s no “like (another show)” that fits composer Michael Giacchino’s epic score for Lost. Every character, theme, and location has a unique melody, and especially toward the end of the series these melodies are merged together to fit the story. Try to listen to the video below and not be moved a centimeter, even if you don’t have the context from watching the show.
Lost and Me: Part 3
As Lost is significant for starting in our first year in NC, it’s equally so for ending in the year (precisely the month before) we talked seriously about moving on to a new life in Portland, OR. After nine months of preparing to move and selling our house (on the market for 100 days, a significant amount of time for the characters on the show) we’re back in a two-bedroom apartment across the street from the one we started in until we head West on May 22: one day short of the finale’s anniversary. Of course these numbers and dates were not planned, but they’re certainly interesting coincidences.
My Thoughts About That Ending
…are here. Spoiler: I liked it!
Along with those of The Wire, my season sets of Lost are among my most used media possessions that I have and will revisit for years to come. My most recent rewatch was of the first five seasons before the sixth began. I plan to go through the complete series from our new place this summer or fall.
Coming someday: …nothing Lost-related. But that’s ok: it ended well.
Damon Lindelof is one of the nerds working on Star Trek 2, the sequel to the 2009 film that I loved. Carlton Cuse’s next series will be a drama on ABC about the Civil War called Point of Honor. David Fury was working on Steven Speilburg’s series Terra Nova with the rest of the 24 writing staff that he joined after the first season of Lost, but it seems he isn’t anymore.
If you made it this far or just scrolled to the bottom (you scrolled didn’t you, scroller), a reward:
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Great post. And as always, your memory is a special, special thing! I had totally forgotten that you had a ‘preview’ viewing of the pilot. A I remembered it, we watched it together for the first time. And how can you possibly remember that we were Welcome’d to Moes that night?
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