Revisiting Lost

(If you've never seen the television series Lost from beginning to end, proceed with caution as spoilers abound)

In my life, politics & movies are the two obsessions, the two things that I am famous for in my personal life.  But there is a third pop culture phenomenon (don't look at me like that-when the Republican party is nominating reality TV stars, bestselling memoirists, and failed 1940's leading men, politics has descended into pop culture) that I am obsessed with (well, four if you count Harry Potter) and that is Lost.  And we cannot say goodbye to this blog without me bringing back at least a couple of Lost articles, so in the next couple of days, I have every intention of doing just that as we will talk through two Lost-related topics.

One of these articles is spurred by a recent rewatch of the series.  I usually watch the series once every three years, but due to some logistical issues, this is my first revisit since 2020.  I always find, though, that I learn some new things with each visit.  Lost, divided into 121 wonderful episodes, is not a show that you watch with your cell phone out (at least not the first time).  The series is filled with intense, in-depth clues and long-running mysteries.  For all of the talk about shows like Severance or Succession today being cinematic in their presentation of different enigmas on the show, Lost was really in a class by itself, and doing so on broadcast television.  Coming in the wake of The X-Files, it created a multi-character bonanza with mysteries that were largely solved within the confines of the show (yes, they were).  So there's always a lot to learn with each revisit.

My biggest observations this time, though, were around some of the cultural conversations about television that have happened since my last rewatch.  The concept of a "filler" episode has become a discussion topic that people (including me) have a lot of opinions on.  Watching this show, I was struck by how important the "filler" episodes were to the longer success of the series.  Lost came out during an era where it was not unusual to have 20+ episodes each season, and indeed for the show's first three seasons that was the case.  Much of the end payoff of Lost comes from the characters being found after coming to the island as broken...that they found love & compassion with each other.  That's not possible, though, if you don't have episodes like "Tricia Tanaka is Dead" or "The Long Con" or "Whatever the Case May Be" building their bonds and back stories together.  This is honestly a problem you see with a lot of modern television.  One of the best shows on TV right now, Heartstopper, is almost transcendently good at showing the complicated, burgeoning young love of the two main characters...but without more episodes the side characters feel phoned-in and two-dimensional by comparison.  No character on Lost ends up being two-dimensional because we are allowed time for Miles, Rose, & Richard to get their own episodes tucked into the series, giving them room to feel formed as fan favorites.

This also makes their episodes where they try to play with form much more successful, because there's so much bought into the individual episodes themselves.  The most recent season of The Bear suffered because so little was said between the characters, and because you didn't have as much plot already cooking to be able to take episodes where you feel like very few things are happening or they want to focus just on one little character development.  But on Lost, when you have an episode like "The Constant" or "The Other 48 Days" you really feel like you're learning in-depth about other characters, things that will be important to what's happening onscreen.  It doesn't feel like it's taking you out of the story, but more like it's investing into what you're doing.

I will also say that I loved, aesthetically, the way I did this rewatch.  Though I have Netflix, I made a point of watching the series on my DVD sets.  DVD's of this time frame put actual work into creating something special for the home viewer, so you get little Easter eggs (like a microwave making popcorn or a plane falling) when you pop in a new disc.  It also felt more tangible.  One of the joys that Lost watchers had when it was live (and I do go that far back with the series) was taking a break each week to obsess & ponder; we've seen this joy repeated with the most recent seasons of Agatha All Along and Only Murders in the Building, where you need to pour over clues to understand what might be next.  Though you can never duplicate this, the DVD's at least added some nostalgia to the endeavor.

Okay, in terms of actual new observations this time, I found a few things that tilted a bit in my opinions.  First, it is staggering how many bad decisions on the show are driven by a sense of toxic masculinity.  Jack, John, Sawyer, Ben, & Michael all make really crucial mistakes the further you go.  Perhaps one of the reasons that Sawyer has emerged as one of my favorite characters the more I rewatch is because of the five he's the only one who seems to get a sense of understanding that he's actually caused harm, and should maybe think before he acts.

Also, Jack is a real asshole in Season 3.  Jack is, let's face it, an asshole for most of the series' run outside of maybe the very end of Season 6 and most of Season 1.  But I was really struck by how just straight-up awful he is in Season 3.  The way that he expects Juliet to be accepted after what the Others did to Charlie, Claire, & Libby, particularly as Juliet is provably still working for Ben...come on dude, that's expecting too much of them.  

I will also say that my complicated relationship with Juliet continued this rewatch.  Juliet is a fan favorite, and unlike Ben, one that pretty much everyone agreed to like before the finale.  It's easy to like Juliet.  She is (give or take Ben and maybe Rose) the smartest of all of the castaways, and generally makes the most good decisions (she dies by accident, and because Jack needed to prove he was right when he was wrong again, because I don't think anyone would've ever actually gotten the better of her on the show).  But she is really too ruthless in Seasons 3-4 to actually be redeemed.  I get the why behind some of her decisions, but when she was free of the Others she still helped them...I don't know, I feel like people like Elizabeth Mitchell so much they're willing to overlook some of the clear dirty-handedness of her character in Season 4.

Those are what I found this cycle.  Still my favorite show, still can make me cry, swoon, laugh, & dream.  Can't wait until 2027 when I catch it next!