My two preferred series on the US TV during the last few years ended last week. First the curtain fell on ‘Lost’. It started six years ago as what looked like a dramatized version of ‘Survivor’ with a group of people stranded on an island following a jetliner crash. Soon the island proved to be much more than a small piece of land lost in the Pacific Ocean, it had magical power and hid numerous mysteries, as well as other groups of people fighting for its control. The gathering of people also started to look much beyond coincidental, and the permanent alternation of flashbacks revealed their past and their personalities. As we came to know them better and better, to discover their strength and weaknesses, their qualities and flaws, their passions and secrets, the relation between the characters became the central strength of the series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-76O2_F9xiM
(video source minorityFILMS)
The following seasons made the series look more and more complex. At one point, during the third or fourth season the complexity of the situations and labyrinths of the action seemed to grow beyond control. The jumps in time started to be not only backwards, but also forwards and sidewards. Time travel and magic seemed to replace to a large extent the scientific and rational approach of the first two seasons. By the fifth season I had personally lost any hope to understand the whole action by means of logic. Luckily, the core of characters continued to be with us, and I and probably many other fans got to the point of relation you establish with family members or good friends – when you care about them you are ready to oversee their flaws. So the last and final season which was supposed to explain everything did not disappoint me even if I less resonate with mystical and religious explanations as the ones that were brought in by the producers and script authors, and even if some episodes seemed to carry (maybe intentionally) glimpses of Xena, The Fountain or Indiana Jones. What I cared about was the fate of Jack, John, James, Kate, Sayid, Hugo, Jin, Sun, and yes, even of Ben.
‘Lost’ was the best series of the 2000s – maybe at pair with HBO’s ‘The Wire’. It was not in my opinion the best TV series of all times as some consider it. I liked more the 90s hit ‘X-Files’. Yet it may have been the series whose characters I cared mostly about.
I have decided long ago to abandon Lost. In general, it is hard to follow a series in which every episode is a follow-up of the previous one. I only stick with 24 and I missed so many that sometimes it’s hard to follow. Lost had many plot twists with good guys being bad and bad guys being good. But at some stage I wanted the series to go past the Island. I wanted them to go back to their lives at home. And I lost interest in what happens next, mainly because I think the script writers are playing the public into watching more and more episodes. They advertised the final episode in Australia for tonight. I am not going to watch it. But I agree that for aficionados it is a very addictive series. I turned cold turkey on this some time ago, so I won’t be watching it.
Give me back the X-Files, where you were allowed to miss episodes…:-)
Rafi
I must admit that I didn’t get the whole picture yet…
Why women becoming pregnant on the island should die?
In brief… “Lost” is mainly for the public that feels “lost” most of the time…
But very very addictive…
Thanks, Michele, Rafi for your comments. I think that indeed the last season tried to answer most of the questions but did not fully succeed. Why pregnant women should die? what about the series of numbers – why did they need to be entered evry 108 minutes? The easy answer is ‘blame the electromagnetic field!’ Hard for us to accept but it’s maybe because we are engineers 🙂
I have decided long ago to abandon Lost. In general, it is hard to follow a series in which every episode is a follow-up of the previous one. I only stick with 24 and I missed so many that sometimes it’s hard to follow. Lost had many plot twists with good guys being bad and bad guys being good. But at some stage I wanted the series to go past the Island. I wanted them to go back to their lives at home. And I lost interest in what happens next, mainly because I think the script writers are playing the public into watching more and more episodes. They advertised the final episode in Australia for tonight. I am not going to watch it. But I agree that for aficionados it is a very addictive series. I turned cold turkey on this some time ago, so I won’t be watching it.
Give me back the X-Files, where you were allowed to miss episodes…:-)
Rafi
I must admit that I didn’t get the whole picture yet…
Why women becoming pregnant on the island should die?
In brief… “Lost” is mainly for the public that feels “lost” most of the time…
But very very addictive…