First I'd like to issue a Spoiler Alert, because if you haven't seem the show and plan on watching it, I will possibly ruin some bits of the show that are crucial to its enjoyment, although I'm not getting too detailed on plot summary. And also if you haven't ever seen the show LOST, stop whatever you're doing and go watch it right now, all 120 episodes are on Netflix and Hulu so you'd better get started. And trust me, once you start you won't be able to stop. And that in itself is the beauty of the show. I've seen all of the episodes several times, and yet I am still called back to the series every so often, and I become completely engrossed in it once I start. And I know that isn't the reaction of everyone, but I know several people who feel very similarly to me, and love the show just as much as I do. And I think that's because LOST gives us what we really want in a tv show or movie, and that's diversity, intimacy, and suspense.
The plot of LOST is pretty ridiculous. I mean its certainly interesting and exciting, but the entire idea of a magical island and everything that happens there is totally ridiculous. I think Hurley, one of the main characters in the show does an excellent job of depicting how crazy it is when he tries to explain it all to his mom in the first episode of season 5.
"Okay… See, we did crash. But it was on this crazy island. I mean, we waited for rescue, and there wasn’t a rescue. And there was a smoke monster. And then there were other people on the island — we called them the Others, and they started attacking us. And we found some hatches and there was a button you had to push every 108 minutes or — well, I was never really clear on that — But the Others didn’t have anything to do with the hatches, that was the Dharma Initiative. They were all dead — the Others killed them. And now they’re trying to kill us. And then we teamed up with the Others because some worse people were coming on a freighter. Desmond’s girlfriend’s father sent them to kill us. So we stole their helicopter and we flew it to their freighter, but it blew up. And we couldn’t go back to the island because it disappeared. So then we crashed into the ocean, and we floated there for a while, until a boat came and picked us up. And by then there were six of us. That part was true. But the rest of the people who were on the plane…they’re still on that island."
Now that plot synopsis is pretty spot on, and from reading that, I'm sure most people would say wow this show is stupid, why do so many people love it? But the beauty isn't in the plot, it's in the characters. The show opens on a scene, not of the island or the plane crash, or anything like it, but the eyes of one of the main characters, Jack. This image of the close up of characters eyes is one that stays with us throughout the series, and actually the exact scene of Jack's eye is the final image of the Finale episode. This is just a small example of the show's true focus, which is the people in it. One of the most amazing features of the show, which is executed excellently from the first episode through the 3rd season, is the Flashback. These Flashbacks change in each episode, and highlight a different character, or sometimes a pair of characters. In each episode we see the past and background of a different character, and this is crucial to our development of a personal relationship and intimacy with them. We know these characters and we know their stories, and it's impossible to not develop some sort of sympathy for them. Even Benjamin Linus, who is pretty easy to hate, becomes a sympathetic character when we see his childhood and the motivation for most of his actions. And characters such as Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, and John's stories make us love them even more.
But even the characters we love have dark sides, and that makes us love them even more. Sayid was a torturer, Kate is a criminal, Sun and Jin have a troubled past, and even the beloved Hurley was once in a mental institution. I think this shows perfectly the truth about humans, that you can never see all the aspects of a person just by looking at them in the present, and I think that we like having that acknowledged. Nobody likes to be judged, and we all say pretty often "if she only knew", or "he just doesn't understand me", which are sometimes lame excuses for things, but are often fairly true. By seeing the deeper motivations behind all these characters we are able to feel as though we truly know them, and have a relationship with them. Seeing the ugly pasts of these characters help us to humanize them. If we didn't know Jack's past struggles, it would be hard to relate to him, because he plays such a heroic character. The diversity is what makes us believe in these characters, and care about them.
The final component that makes LOST so beautiful is the suspense. This is somewhat of an aspect in any great story, but LOST does it excellently. Granted there are times where I wish they had delayed a reveal of something slightly longer so that the we could have more anticipation, but for the most part by the time we discover the answer to something, we've been asking the question for several episodes, if not seasons. I didn't watch all of the show while it was airing on TV, but the parts I did see live had me on the edge of my seat, dying of anticipation for the next episode. In the Pilot episode we are made aware of some strange creature or force in the jungle, and yet it is not until season 2, almost 30 episodes (20 hours) into the series that we actually get a real shot of what became known as the "Smoke Monster". When our Losties capture Benjamin Linus in season 2, there are several episodes in which we truly do not know if he is in fact one of the mysterious "Others" that live on the Island, or simply a survivor of a hot air balloon crash like he claims to be. It is this suspense that draws us back to LOST, episode after episode. I could write an pages outlining all the unanswered questions, and that in itself is amazing. The LOST writers knew that to explain everything that ever happened would take away from this suspense, and there is so much ambiguity surrounding the story that we watch it again and again, and still discover new connections that we'd never made before.
And I think a huge part of the suspense is this idea of fate or destiny that flows through the entire series. The idea that there is a higher power or purpose controlling the lives of these people, and making things happen for a reason. And I think we love that because that's something we want. We want to believe that when something awful happens there's a real reason for it, and when things go wrong there's something else to blame for it. And so this aspect of LOST is able to tsp into our deep human desire for a higher power. We, along with the characters of LOST, like to believe that there is a reason for our lives, and our deaths.
All of these components and so many others make LOST, which occasionally struggles in the believability department, a beautiful work of art. We feel as though LOST is real, because the show works like real life. We see the stories of the characters and are able to develop what feels like personal relationship with them all. We aren't privy to loads of information the characters don't have, meaning we are often making the realizations and discoveries right along with them. LOST shows me what it is that people really want in a story, and how writers are able to suck in an audience, simply by making the audience feel as though they are part of the story. Now I need to go finish this episode I started watching this morning, I think John is about to blow up the submarine that would enable him and the other survivors to get off of the island... Intriguing right??
God bless,
Joel Childers
- The Naturalized Texanian
I really did want to feel like part of the story so some friends and I made this video, loosely as a parody if LOST, for a youth group retreat last summer.
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