Individual Entry: Lost
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March 31, 2005

TV : Lost

I am a big fan of this show (for now), and expect to post comments on each episode. My concern is if this is really leading someplace or if the writers are just making it all up as they go along. For now I am assuming the JJ Abrams knows what is really happening; but I will probably drop the show quickly if that trust is ever betrayed.

For those who have not seen the show, a commercial jet crashes on a topical island on the way from Australia to America, with 40+ survivors. Very strange things start to happen which lead one to believe that there is more going on than a simple castaway story. Every episode is split between 2 days of action on the island itself (each episode picks up the day after the previous one), and flashbacks of one of the survivor’s stories before they boarded the doomed plane. The backstories are usually relevant to what is happening on this island and tell us a lot about who the characters are. They also often include hidden connections between the survivors if you watch closely.

The show often reminds me of Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”. In that novel (which won the Pulitzer Prize) a bridge in Peru collapses killing 5 people. A Friar who witnessed the accident spends then next few years of his life investigating the lives of those who died to understand what led them to be on the bridge at that moment and (he hopes) answer the question of why they died. As the book says “Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan” (A point also made by M. Night Shyamalan’s excellent movie, “Signs”). While it remains a mystery what the island actually is (purgatory? a mind control laboratory? a government experiment out of control?), the show is as much about why these specific people are there as it is about what is happening to them because they are.

Posted by Steven at March 31, 2005 01:42 PM