Quick Thoughts on LOST

I was writing a big long entry about LOST but it just seems kind of dumb. So instead I’ll offer a few quick, mostly spoiler-free thoughts.

  • Like most new TV, I ignored LOST when it first came out. But my first real exposure to it came when I was a youth group leader at my church and one of the kids would rush out the door as soon as youth group was over so he could get home in time to watch the show. It seems kind of funny now, but this was pre-Hulu and all our online watching. The show was that captivating.
  • I later got hooked when a few former coworkers were chatting up LOST and I realized I had to stop waiting for the DVD and catch up on the show. Serialized television can be kind of frustrating, but when they really work like LOST, it’s addictive.
  • Near the end the writers made a point of explicitly telling us they weren’t going to answer all our questions. At one point they even worked it into the show’s dialogue. They’re the writers, it’s their show, they can do whatever they want. But you know what? Screw you. Egging people along for six years with mysteries you had no intention of answering is cruel.
  • At the same time, claiming your enjoyment of the show is now a waste because they didn’t answer your questions or didn’t tie it up the way you like is ridiculous. Yes, answers and the ending will color how we view the entire series, but that doesn’t negate your initial enjoyment of watching the show. The ‘oh my gosh what is down the hatch’ feeling I had in the beginning is in no way diminished by how the show ended. If you claim LOST wasted your life, then you never enjoyed it in the first place.
  • In the end I think LOST was really about the characters and not the plot or the mystery, which I think explains your take on the ending. If you were all about the characters, you probably loved it. If you were all about the mystery and what the heck is the island, you were probably disappointed. I enjoyed the ending for what it was, but I think long ago I subconsciously realized LOST wasn’t going to resolve the mysteries.
  • I love how the show made fun of itself. For all the seriousness of the characters and the mystery, the show still had a sense of humor about it. The best were perhaps when Hurley and Miles debated time travel or when Kate openly mocked the name “Christian Shepherd.”
  • [FINALE SPOILER WARNING] One thing I’d really like to see: A wacky comic book spinoff of Hurley and Ben’s time as protectors of the island. Somebody get on that. (Rumor is we might get to see a glimpse of Hurley and Ben as protectors of the island on the DVD extras, but that’s not the same. I want to see comic book Hurley giving comic book Ben a noogie and everyone laughing it up.)

Yeah, that was still long. Well, you should have seen the first draft.

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