Still LOST

It's really incredible how I went from never having seen LOST when I moved to Virginia about 7 months ago to now planning most of my week around the new episodes airing at 9 p.m. (ET) on Wednesdays. If you remember, after polishing off the first season DVDs while I was still cable-less, I wrote up some quick thoughts about the show here.

As you probably know from reading some of my previous posts, I made my way through the second, third and fourth seasons (online and on DVD), with plenty of time to spare before the beginning of the fifth season (currently airing). We're a little over halfway done with the season, and I thought back the other day on how far the show has come since its initial season. For those of you who don't watch the show, here's a video ABC created for people in your situation who thought they might want to give this season a shot. It basically takes you through the first four seasons in five minutes. Of course, just through the 10 or so episodes already aired this season, the story has morphed an incredible amount just from where that video leaves off, so if you want to try to pick up the show now, you'd have to at least watch this season's episodes online.

I'll summarize the seasons in another way here (Warning, I'll include a lot of embedded links to info about the show that will act as spoilers to people who've never seen the show):

-Season One, as I described in the earlier post, mostly focuses on the plane crash survivors struggle to survive on a desert isle, with some supernatural elements peeking through. But mostly, the action is contained to interpersonal drama and the occasional idiotic venture into the mystery of nature. In the literary realm of conflict types (what we were taught in elementary school as five types, now apparently expanded to 6, to include man vs. machine/technology), the season mostly falls into man vs. nature (survival), with some man vs. self and man vs. man thrown in (human drama), with just a sprinkling of man vs. supernatural/fate.

-Season Two picks up with the discovery of the Hatch, an underground bunker, equipped with all imaginable human amenities, in which a mysterious Aussie named Desmond has been living alone for about three years. Desmond's sole purpose, we learn, is to enter a series of six numbers into an old computer every 108 minutes, vaguely believing that doing so keeps the world from ending. This hits home one of the main thematic arcs of the show, faith vs. science/logic. There is no logical reason to believe that pushing the button, as it's called, does anything but reset a strange-looking 108-minute clock, but some characters believe that it is their destiny, and faithfully execute the task. Also, we are introduced to a set of survivors from the other section of the plane, who have fared far less well in staying alive as a group. We're caught up on their story very quickly, and also learn more about The Others, a group of people living on/near the Island who were introduced at the very end of the first season in kidnapping one of the survivors. In sum, the overarching conflict shifts from survival to a man vs. supernatural, with a sparking man vs. man/group in the beginnings of serious conflict with The Others.

-Season 3 expands to show us the world of The Others, and sheds more light on the Mysterious Dharma Initiative, the scientific research group that previously inhabited the Island and to whom we owe the Hatch and some of the other mysterious aspects of The Island. In this way, the story shifts more clearly to a man vs. man/group conflict as we see the Others and the survivors interact more with each other. Also introduced at the end of the season are another group of people from off the Island who come on a freighter.

-Season 4 literally blows the cover off the storyline to that point. We discover the freighter folks are not there to rescue, but rather kill, the people on the Island, with cloudy motivations. We see lots of man vs. man conflict in violence among the Survivors, the Others, and the Freighter Folks. Finally, it is seen as a struggle to get off the island for many people, and really investigates the concept of time travel and how it might fit into the overall arc of the show. The main takeaway is that some of the survivors do succeed in getting off the Island, after much struggle.

-Season 5 has been described by the shows creators as the counter to season 4, in that its latter part has mostly been concerned with those who got off the Island returning to it (again, with cloudy motivations). Trying to so is understandably complex, and we follow those who were left behind through some incredibly mind-exploding (literally, in some cases) time traveling experiences. At this current juncture, they are back to the Island, though apparently existing in more than 1 time period. Most of the main characters are living in the 1970s Dharma Initiative, while some others apparently exist on the Island in some unknown present (2007 or 2008).

I'm sure that was very confusing and disjointed, but hopefully mostly accurate. The main point of this post is to examine the progression of types of conflict and how the storyline has expanded into other realms with each season. The progression I just outlined seems to me to make sense when one examines the possibilities for a show featuring the basic premise of landing on a desert isle. Of course, the most immediate conflict is survival, and that takes up most of the first season. But that conflict quickly becomes unsustainable in terms of entertainment. Cast Away, which almost exclusively features Tom Hanks surviving alone on a desert isle, was a pretty long and decent movie, but there’s no way it could have been made into a popular serial TV show. People need interpersonal conflict to remain entertained.

To fill that need, it’s almost inevitable that new characters must be introduced. Predictably, in Season 2, we learn that the Survivors are not alone on the Island (i.e. Desmond and the Others). This type of leap would normally signal a downturn in a show's quality. But conversely, in LOST’s case, it increased. This was possible, I believe, by strongly relying on the sci-fi or just plain weird aspects of the Hatch. The science vs. fate theme worked well, and it really opened the door to become hooked on the show's overarching mythology.

Season 3, then must go a step further, and really lambaste us with new people and new conflicts. Predictably, this was a tipping point for many viewers to stop watching. The idea that an entire colony of sophisticated people has been living mysteriously and largely unnoticed right next to the survivors was just too much to take - too trite - for many people. Again, I think it is the deft and steady unveiling of the Island's history and mythology that keeps the show from unraveling at the seams at this point.

Pushing further, the conflict between peoples on the isle becomes unsustainable as well, so an entire deluge of off-island characters are introduced, along with a lot more violence and explosions. This was, I think, another tipping point for many folks who were fans of the show and its mythology, a total cop out in many's views. I think the larger forward-moving action push to get the characters off the island is what sustains the season.

In season five, the parallel journeys over 3 years of the folks trying to get back and those who were left behind took up most of the first few episodes. Now that those who left have returned, and the various conflicts introduced at different times (both in and out of the show's reality) are coming together to guide us toward the show's final next season, the show is maintaining the momentum necessary to carry it to the last season. All the human, sci-fi, fate, and man vs. man conflicts are coming to a head, and I'm hooked. Possible ends are in sight, and I'm in for the long haul.

In sum, I'll say my favorite season was season 2. Taking what could be seen as a completely ludicrous notion that a man has been living underneath the survivors and making it intriguing was a skillful maneuver by the show’s producers. It was bizarre, philosophical, and a complete departure from what is normally seen on TV. At a time when even TV’s last refuge for science fiction fans, the Sci-Fi channel (which does show LOST reruns), is selling out to try to broaden its appeal, such a move was risky, and it paid off well. Also a fitting description for the entire show, I suppose.