My Opinion of Lost (Spoiler alert for those not caught up to season 6, episode 4 "The Substitute"

I'm allowing myself to post this on my Australia blog because the oh-so-fated flight took off from Sydney.

I love Lost. Tim and I are fans of the show but not to an extreme degree. We don't attend special conferences and are participation in The Lost Experience games has been very minimal.

For us, part of loving Lost is making fun of it. We make fun of the fact that they keep throwing us more questions without providing many answers. We joke about how the writers have no idea what they're doing. I really don't think they started the show with any set plan in mind. I think the writers sat there and said, let's put people on an island and scary mysterious black smoke will chase them.

Then another one of the writers probably said. Awesome! What is the black smoke?

Oh, I have no idea. But we'll figure that out eventually.

There's a great YouTube video about the writers of Lost. It's hilarious, and I don't think it's far from the truth. Unfortunately, the sound on the video is a bit out of sync. I don't know why. It's still funny, though.

For those who believe that the Lost writers have always known exactly where they're going, I give you this piece of evidence. According to the NY Times (and Lord Wiki!) the character that Michael Emerson played was scheduled for just three guest appearances. So he wasn't supposed to be that important. Then Ben Linus became very central to the plot. Now maybe the writers DID already know about time travel and Jacob's feud with his shape-shifting nemesis. Perhaps they liked Emerson and weaved his character into their already-formed plans.

It's possible.

But I doubt it.

And then we have the numbers. There are these mysterious numbers that keep repeating themselves on Lost. Hurley had them on his winning lottery ticket. Desmond punched them into a computer every 108 minutes to stop the world from ending. And the same numbers are found in other places.

Fans of Lost have become obsessed with these numbers. There's a whole blog dedicated to 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. If you really want to go into depth, you can visit Lostpedia.

I've wondered if we'd ever get an answer about these numbers. According to Lostpedia, one of the writers once said, We may never know what the Numbers mean. I translate that to mean: This whole number obsession has gotten out of hand, and we'll never come up with an answer that will satisfy enough people.

People weren't too happy with the open-ended response from the writer. He got unhappy letters from fans. Oops. So the writers started providing answers. I actually didn't know about these until just now. They haven't been revealed on the show but instead in interviews and The Lost Experience game thing.

In 2009, one of the writers said: Here's the story with numbers. The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative in an effort to try to change the variables in the equation so that mankind wouldn't wipe it itself out.

Okay. Yeah. Whatever.

I'm not in love with that answer, but it sure beats what we saw last Tuesday. Fake Locke takes Sawyer into a mysterious cave. There we see the names of some of our favorite Lost characters. Each name corresponds with one of the Lost numbers.

I could totally picture the writers with this one.

WRITER ONE:  Crap. We're getting to the end of the series, and we still haven't explained the number thing.

WRITER TWO: Oh yeah. We better do that. People might get mad if we don't.

WRITER ONE: What should we do?

WRITER TWO: Are you sure they might just forget about it? Maybe they won't notice that we never explained it.

WRITER ONE: No, we need to explain it somehow.....

WRITER TWO: I know! How about we have a cave with everyone's name on it. Then each name will have a number!

WRITER ONE: Great idea! But why are the numbers there?

WRITER TWO: Jacob put them there.

WRITER ONE: Why?

WRITER TWO: Uh, I'm not sure yet......

We all have different opinions, and I'm sure some fans are satisfied with this cave-number development. I think it's absolutely ridiculous but silly enough to be entertaining.

I might end up being wrong, but I have a feeling that Lost is not going to end up impressing me with its outcome, at least not in terms of it's fantasy/science fiction aspect. I think we've been led on a wild goose chase.

But despite all that, I still love Lost. I get teary-eyed when I think about how it's ending in a few months. I'm going to miss it.

Why do I love Lost?

I love the characters. I love the human aspect of the story. The characters are so multi-dimensional. It's not a show about heroes vs. villains. It's about people struggling with their past mistakes and finding their way in a difficult world.

Lost has had beautiful stories about death, love, sacrifice, realization, reconciliation, etc. Many episodes have made me cry. One of the most tear-jerking storylines for me is the relationship between Kate and Claire. I cried in "Wherever Happened, Happened" when Kate revealed the truth to Carole Littleton, and said I'm going to find your daughter. Goodness, I can't watch that scene without crying.

Then there was the recent "What Kate Does" where a heartbreaking theme was woven into multiple scenes. Despite the fact that Kate had held her up by gunpoint, Claire later asks her to come up with her to meet the people planning to adopt the baby she's pregnant with. She can't stand the idea of doing something so difficult all alone. When the adoptive-mother opens the door, she tells Claire she no longer can adopt the baby. Why? Her husband has left her. She can't raise a baby on her own. She doesn't want to do it ALONE. Then later, Sawyer reveals to Kate that he blames himself for Juliet's death. He had asked her to stay on the island with him. He didn't want to be alone. It was such an emotionally charged episode. When Kate broke down sobbing, I was very ready to join her.

In Lost we see so many different sides to the main characters. We see how they react on the island. We see them in flashbacks, giving us insight into why they act the way they do. We see some of them off the island and how they react to being rescued. And now we're seeing the characters in an alternate reality. What would have happened to these people if the plane never crashed?

I love it.

I love them.

I love the Losties. I love the Others. And I love almost everyone in-between.

All in all....

If I had to grade the show, I'd give it a C- for science fiction/fantasy storyline. For characters, I'd give it a definite A+.

Oh...and also. The music by Michael Giachinno is fantastic. I give him kudos too.

P.S-I'm not expecting all the mysteries of Lost to be answered. But I'd really like to know what was the deal with Libby being at the mental hospital with Hurley!



What would our world be like if we
 knew for sure there 
was life after death, and 
we could easily talk to our 
dearly-departed on the Internet?

The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts 




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