Lost by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof
DVD Collection - Main Level - TV LOS
When it first aired, Lost appeared on the surface to be a show about a group of survivors who crash landed on a mysterious island. As each episode progressed the viewer would be presented with the on-island drama of the survivors while being intercut with a particular character flashback. These flashbacks would add layers to the character in focus and also reveal how they made their way to the doomed flight. Sounds simple right? Perhaps if the show had persisted in this format it would be, however Lost is much more than that.
What Lost is, is a dense mosaic of mysteries where each piece of the puzzle that is revealed might answer a question but will raise three more. At first the viewer will be presented with questions like “how will they make it off the island?” or “what is the real story behind these people?” Then suddenly a character will unearth a hatch buried in the island floor and a mysterious entity will knock down trees and seemingly devour people. Characters that appear to have nothing to do with each other will suddenly show up in each others' flashbacks. Throw-away lines and events will suddenly take on a whole new meaning in the face of a storyline revelation, and that’s just the first season.
What the writers of Lost are able to do is take a very close up glimpse of a select group of characters and with each episode pull away from that close up revealing a large dense mythology surrounding them. What might appear convoluted at first is in fact very carefully planned. That being said, Lost is not for the casual viewer. You can not miss an episode; watching them in order is mandatory, and sometimes repeat viewings are needed to appreciate the full scope of detail that is being crafted. While the jury is still out on whether or not the writers can satisfactorily answer all the questions they’ve raised, the unprecedented decision by ABC to give the writers a clear end date will no doubt help them achieve this goal.
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