Finally Getting Lost

Guys usually get lost because they won't ask for directions. However, now I am finding out that I really get Lost because I did listen to someone's directions. I don't watch much network television. As a result, I totally missed the TV series Lost, which recently wrapped up. A friend suggested that I watch it from the beginning and I have to admit that I am blown away.

The first shot of the pilot episode really sets the scene. There is an eye without any context, then there is an eye in a face lying in the jungle without any explanation. A man in a suit wakes up and walks out of the jungle to the scene of a plane crash. Linear story telling would have started with the crash or even the back stories of the characters. However, Lost starts with an eye attached to a person in the jungle, leaving the viewer wondering what could possibly be going on.

Having watched the entire first season, I find myself thoroughly addicted. The things that I like are the characters, the combination of survival and alternate reality and the use of flashbacks to build the story.

The characters are just incredible. So far, my favorites are John Locke and Hurley. I like them because they are filled with contradictions. Locke is introduced as the take charge hunter figure. He can hunt boar and track with the best of them. However, we learn that he arrived on the island in a wheelchair and remarkably had his legs restored because of the crash. He is always the voice of common sense and reason, but becomes obsessed with the belief that the island is testing him. Hurley is an obese, happy go lucky dude who is always ready to help out. However, his backstory is that after he won the lottery, he became a jinx bringing bad luck to all around him. His cheerful good nature is balanced by a frightening fatalism.

The story maintains a good balance between Robinson Carusoe and the Twilight Zone. Stranded on a tropical island, the characters must organize their survival and avoid a Lord of the Flies scenario. However, weird things keep happening. A polar bear appears on a tropical island. The pilot of the plane is snatched by a mysterious something. There are "others" on the island. The story dishes out its weirdness in a measured way. You can tell that it's going to get weirder as it goes. However, the weirdness unfolds in an almost rational way.

In the first season at least, the story alternates between present and past. Each episode reveals a little bit more about the unusual, or perhaps damned, survivors of the plane crash. Everyone has a story. There is the pregnant girl who scared the living daylights out of a psychic. There is the sweet, beautiful girl who was brought onto the flight in handcuffs by a U.S. Marshall. There is the son sent to retrieve the body of his father. There is the Iraqi who betrayed a friend to try to re-establish contact with a woman. It goes on and on. Every character who gets the benefit of a flashback has a story. It is an unusual group that winds up on the island.

I have finished season one. I look forward to continuing to watch the series unfold over the summer.