The rushed pursuit of a goal without pause for reflection is what allowed the show’s crippled heroes to disappear in the crowded chaos of a world that didn’t seem to care. Jack’s desire to fix people was clouded in obsession, Kate’s search for love, ignored with a front of strength, Sayid’s focus on the debilitating fear of his inner darkness, Hurley’s fixation on an ‘uncontrollable’ fate, Claire’s wavering fight against abandonment, Charlie’s comfort in his excuses to hide in the shadows, Jin and Sun’s self-imposed struggle to connect, Sawyer’s anger driven destructive therapy, Lock’s isolating need to prove his ability; the Island’s pull showcases the misery of distraction. They wanted the accomplishment, they wanted the destination, the satisfaction, the answer, they wanted to chase the next conquest. They always wanted what was just out of reach, and as they sacrificed to fight what surrounded them, the ‘reach’ tore them apart and became all that mattered.
This broken perspective that carried each character to Lost’s Island is the same driving force that blinds viewers into questioning the show’s execution. The poetry of the series is not in the words that told the story or in the magic that expanded an audience’s mind, it is in the ability of a show, seemingly contained behind the screen, to challenge its characters while manipulating the people who watched them to be challenged in the same way. Lost wasn’t about what was happening to the people on TV, it was about what was happening to the people who watched it.
Lost is a great show. This is not opinion. However you mix it, the formula creates one of the most well executed adventures to find television history:
Engaging – Intriguing and Mysterious Plot
Lost is a demanding show. It’s strange to talk about issues such as Commitment and Work Ethic with regards to a television series, but that is because most network friendly TV shows only explore the surface and never challenge the viewer to do anything other than show up. Active participation from the audience is a rare opportunity that most adventurous viewers have to dig deep below mass media to find. Both thought provoking and viral, the show was not limited to the confines of episodic structure, the haunting nature of Lost left for a week’s worth of discussion and decision between chapters.
Technically Perfect – a Collection of Quality Components
A major part of Lost’s personality is the powerful atmosphere that surrounded it. Without being a distraction the score, the setting, the camera, the playful lighting, the mind bending sound all contributed to an eerie feeling that at this point, even just the word ‘Lost’ evokes. The drifting title credit that red-carpeted the show’s arrival said as much as it said little, and that's a lot for us to handle.
Mix of Genres – Creating its Own Niche
The key is to push the limits. When it comes to fiction there is a special quality that lies in the fantastic. With a world like the one that Lost lives in, success is found on the brink of the unimaginable, as far from reality as the human mind will allow you to go without losing sight of what we can understand. If this world can take you to unexplored ideas while maintaining that life line, that link back to reality… that’s where evolution happens. The exercise is so good that dozens of ideas have worked to mimic the make-up of the show and join the club, only to come and go as a ‘nice try’. Lost’s connection to our lives is rooted in the guy-meets-girl, the adventure vs action, the dramatic suspense, and the comic relief, and by blurring the genre lines, they not only brought Lost to life, they gave it a life of its own.
Complexity – Well Developed Detail
Only once it is understood that there are no Red Herrings can the true extent of Lost’s ability be conceived. There are no attention diverting lies, there are only wandering elements of an intricate story. The layers of Lost make it so that information is forgotten and revelations that seem like questions are actually the answers to old unknowns. Along with cult classic references, hidden historical allusions, hints caught up in math and literature, intricate character connections, and an evolving stage complete with trap-doors, there are multiple storylines that crisscross through space and time linking episodes and ideas across seasons. The trick is to gaze a little wider and not restrict your mind to the present. Whether every element was part of the plan or the creators just Forrest Gump’d their way through this maze, it doesn’t matter, cause it works.
Approachable Themes – Common Topics with a Twist
Even with the intrigue of the unknown and the flair of the mystery, Lost revolved around universal issues of love, purpose, trust, betrayal, strength, fear, curiosity, good, evil and the in-between, and it addressed them all with a mix of unique creativity and traditional understanding. It was the same old, but with some new personality. No matter the mode of delivery, the message and subject were always as pure as the emotions that fueled them. This is what made the show accessible to such a diverse viewership, and this is one of the reasons it was about more than just a special Island.
Rich Characters – Some New and Some Old
The conflict between the complexity and the familiarity of the show’s players is what made Lost so compelling. Although many of the personalities that interacted within the story were foreign to prime time programming, the characters were real and recognizable and faulted in the same way as many who tuned in. The story dragged the crew of characters through dramatic events that broke them down, added to their history, changed their outlook, and massaged their core. From Flashback to Finale, each personality that lived in the show evolved, but managed to remain familiar at their foundation. The series could have unfolded in a hospital, or a school, or in the streets of London, and the journey of the characters would have brought them to a very similar place to where they are now. But Lost chose a different arena. And it was in this choice, this most peculiar of characters, that the benefit of uncertainty engaged the audience and made them participants in the Island’s games.
Extensively Entertaining – Boredom is not an Option
The show never stood still and never relied on formulaic certainty. From the surface level one-liners and Sawyer-style nicknames to the eerie suspense at the edge of the seat, the philosophically charged ideas to the conversations that dissected them, the unveiling of new discoveries to the tying of loose ends, the lovable friends to the dynamic villains, and the ever changing layout of the story’s telling, Lost was continually compelling and if nothing else, a fun ride.
Great argument and detailed discussion can’t alter the fact that these attributes are locked into the framework of the show. Over the course of six seasons these aspects have formed a personality that is unique to Lost. And although we contributed to its final shape, the heart of the show is beyond the reach of the arm-chair critic. Opinions and Comments quickly become Reviews and Criticism and Demands, and the majority of people put the show on trial. Nothing has changed though. There’s no need to continue to list off the specifications that map out Lost’s make-up, because these qualities aren’t a secret. The secret is that whether someone believes the show is good or bad is not a reflection on the show, but rather an expression of the reviewer. The viewer is the question mark. The viewer is the variable. There’s no need to defend Lost, or attack it, people need to investigate what it is within them that reacts with Lost if they want to figure things out.
Oceanic Flight 815 carried a microcosm of the world’s wandering issues, and as the flight crossed into prime time six years ago it brought with it an audience with the same diversity. There was a great collection of unique baggage, tightly packed with colourful backgrounds, an array of expectations based on nothing more than guesses and assumptions, different focal lengths used to see the world, and personalized approaches to life’s great game; and the characters in the show weren’t very different from these viewers either. When 815 piñata’d across the sky spilling out over the show’s start line, the experiment began. On both sides of the screen people were thrown into uncertainty, faced with extraordinary circumstance and a new landscape carved in questions. Viewers followed their Favourites, disagreed with decisions, placed themselves in hypotheticals, and as the mysteries revealed themselves so too did the theories. Very quickly the focus of the show became the island’s unknowns, and the battle of ideologies began – Faith vs Science.
The entire series revolves around that single simple question: Faith or Science? And the question isn’t being asked with respect to any of the Island’s riddles, it is a question that answers the state of mind. From the chaos of the broken beach in the first episode, to the Hatch, to the Others, to the Dharma Initiative, to the debate over what the Island is and why it is, the world of Lost was an arena of self discovery.
It wasn’t just Jack and Locke who were caught in the throes of belief. Every character found themselves rolling with the waves along the Faith-Science scale; ever changing, ever reevaluating, ever inquiring of themselves. The two philosophies are distinct and powerful. Science represents Logic, Analysis, Detail, Certainty, and Faith represents Patience, Trust, Wisdom, and Feeling. At various points during the journey, the show fueled frustration in the holders of both approaches. We saw this manifest itself not only in the conflict amongst the island’s castaways, but also in disagreement between couch castaways. Quite often Science can’t trust the imagination, and many viewers were unable to handle Lost’s mystery. Those viewers holding on to Science’s structure became aggravated and impatient with the growing complexity of a world layered in questions and tested by fantasy, and they walked away. But Faith was not always an easy path to take either. With trust comes expectation, and it wasn’t odd for Faith Fan viewers to become comfortable with what they believed Lost was telling them, only to feel abandoned by a new direction. Lost did not allow for predictability, or settle into a routine, Lost was constantly changing and forcing the audience to work to keep pace. Lost was a treatment for the Absolutes, if you needed it, and if you let it work its magic.
Oceanic Flight 815 and most of the other participants in the Island’s process needed this treatment, because Faith and Science didn’t begin when Jack woke up in the bamboo jungle. Before finding the Island, Lost’s characters were wavering with the question in their ‘normal’ lives and they were trying to answer it by avoidance in most cases. The Island was a special place whose rules offered an opportunity that people couldn’t find in the outside world. The Island was not a time for answers to be handed out or for questions to be understood, the Island was a time to figure out why the question was being asked at all.
The Lost Attitude is tied to the question of ‘Faith or Science’ in its pursuit of Absolutes. A need for understanding, a need for success, a need for answers, a need for it Now, all tend to compel people to quickly settle in certainty, no matter where they find it. But not everything is as simple as Yes vs No. These absolutes leave no room for growth, no room for evolution, no room for the dynamic. These absolutes are what drive the endless rush in life, nurture the disappointment and negativity in people. These absolutes tormented Jack, and Kate, and Locke, and Sawyer, put Lost out of the reach of many viewers, caused the faithful to question the finalé and the series as a whole. Without these absolutes Lost lives forever. Without these absolutes the show becomes more than its final episode.
The answer to ‘Faith or Science’ is the same as the answer to ‘Journey or Destination’. The answer is easy. The answer is both. And the Why associated with the asking of this question is both painfully simple and unapproachably expansive: your meaning of Life. If that’s enough for you than you’ve already Zen’d yourself into a peace far beyond most. If the ‘meaning of Life’ feels like an incomplete thought, it’s because it’s beyond a challenge to decide what balance of Fait
h and Science, Peace and War, Truth and Mystery is right for you. If we walked through a world of complete order, with every loose piece securely held in place, where around every corner there are more signs of ‘certainty’ and ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’ waiting to ease our anxiety, we would be at the end. We would no longer need to live, or love, or explore. And the same goes for a world who has paved our path for us, where we simply open our eyes at the start of the day and take it all in while we get carried towards the conclusion. The excitement lies in the in-between, in that mind-set where adventure is found because not everything always fits every time. Where you are challenged to blend the logic of Science with the trust of Faith. It is in this special space that life is truly lived and that you go beyond just drifting by.
The show itself is almost as interesting as the way it affected people. Even weeks after ‘the End’ was aired, I am still revisiting the Island and exploring it’s secrets with help from hundreds and hundreds of enthusiasts. Anyone who can’t appreciate the genius in creating an immortal story and entertain their creativity with some imagination, is probably always miserable, and likely needs a little ‘Lost Island’ intervention of their own. The series is like the introduction of a young science in that it is covered in theory and skepticism. The art of it is that there is no right or wrong, there is just interpretation, extrapolation, assumption, and it’s not because it’s an incomplete story, it’s because the truth of the show is fluid and appears in different forms depending on who is looking at it. Interpretation is totally unique and personalized. The most important quality of the investigation though is a person’s entry point; Don’t fight the mysteries, have fun with them. The only way the shadows of Lost don’t make sense is if you never turn the lights on and close the door on curiosity.
My mind continually wanders through some of the best mysteries; the massive ones that envelop the entire series, the little details that tickle the sub-conscious, the unknowns I didn’t know I didn’t know until I started to know the unknowns they were hiding in. It’s putting the puzzle together now that all the pieces have been taken out of the box; the Island’s history in time and space, the continuity of the Flashbacks, -forwards, and -sideways, the Whispers in the Jungle, the connection between Jacob, the Smoke Monster, and the Others, the role of the 815 survivors, leaving the Island, finding the Island, understanding the Island. And although it’s not as easy as just snapping sections together, you shouldn’t want that kind of game, you shouldn’t want someone else to have all the fun while you stand and wait at the finish line for them. You should want to figure out the big picture even though some puzzle pieces are face down, others are piled on top of each other and partially hidden, others still may seem to look about right, but are actually upside down. It’s way too fun, and if it’s not, you need to figure out why.
Yeah it’s just a show, but then I guess clothes are just ‘what you wear’. It all tells a story. Even in not making a decision you’re telling the world about yourself. There are many television shows that do nothing more than colour silence with some grey background hum. They play one note, and they play it without any risk. There are suspense rides that let you peek out of your everyday comfort to feel a little extra, just like there are staged comedies that lob up juicy punch lines to give you a little tickle and a smile. This is the TV of Distraction, the TV of Fatigue, the TV of Passive-Escape. Lost is the TV of Provocation. It asks for engagement and it asks for contemplation and it asks for commentary. And since it does this from an aggressive stage, from the controversy of pushed boundaries, you need to reveal yourself to answer to the show. I learn more about a person from a quick cut at the show or a deep admiration for the character of Locke, than I do from a full fledged get-to-know-ya concerned with career and current events and hobbies. Lost is Lord of the Flies with a touch of the Dead Poets Society, it’s Memento and it’s Donnie Darko, it’s Fight Club’s lesson plan, it’s Inside Man’s IQ, it’s the 25th Hour’s struggle, it’s a love like Out of Sight with the edge of American Beauty, it’s Reservoir Dogs after the heist. Lost is just the beginning, because it now lives in your mind; it can change as you change, be rewatched and reunderstood, mean different things to you in different framework, bookmark your past self, and intrigue you at random. It’s that story that is reread differently every time, even if it’s never reread at all.
The series has come to an end, and now you have to decide where you stand. You have to decide if it worked for you. Did you find your way and join the Island’s disciples, ready to move on, with those who had found peace and understanding? Did you find balance? Did you discover and feel the effect of the Attitude? Did you step back, wait for patience, and find the reward of curiosity? Or do you need more time to explore your story, to explore the show, to find your understanding? Did you get it, or are you still Lost?
