Lost - Seasons 1-3

This post will have spoilers, okay? It's hard to talk about Lost without talking about the story.

I wasn't watching much television when Lost burst onto the scene along with Desperate Housewives within a couple weeks of each other and catapulted ABC up in the ratings. The premise seemed cool, but I just wasn't interested much in the medium. In the last year I've gotten much more into some of the more prominent shows, and finally blazed through the first three seasons, catching up just as the last one ended. Lost was a huge hit during the first season, and it's still popular, although the ratings have dipped and some have stopped watching because they aren't answering any real questions or they just don't like where it's going. I haven't minded the constant mystery too much, although maybe the fact I watched it in about a month and not spread out over a few years helped me there. Regardless of the lack of answers, I think I'll see it through to the end, just to see where they're going. It's seemed like maybe they didn't know what they were doing for a while, but now that they know when it's ending, I think we'll see a more solid plan and some real truth at some point.

Lost is always interesting even when not a lot is happening on the island, because of the flashbacks. They're kind of a contrived way to develop your characters, but it's not a problem since they're just so intriguing. One of the strangest things about them is how often characters show up in the background of other characters' flashes. Sometimes they're hints of things that have already been revealed, and sometimes they're just seemingly crazy coincidences, although maybe they will be explained. My favorite example is Hurley being on someone else's TV, a clue before we find out he won the lottery using those mysterious numbers before crashing on the island. The most notorious coincidence in my mind is how often Jack's dad seems to appear in everyone's stories, sometimes prompting them to do things they shouldn't. All of these appearances are one of the more strange things of a show filled with them. They're rather mundane compared to the smoke monster, but there's just too many for it to be normal.

The writers claim that everything in the show can be explained with science, but I have some trouble believing that. They haven't really done anything yet to back that up, and some of the explanations would have to be pretty out there. The smoke monster, for one. And why Desmond is able to predict the future after the electromagnetic discharge. Can he still do it after Charlie's death, or was it just for him? Why does the island have seemingly magical healing powers, and allow some to age but not others? How is an uncharted island apparently so hard to find, yet so many things crash on it? Flight 815 going down seems to have been caused by another discharge, but that doesn't exactly explain it getting torn apart, and everyone inside surviving. Was the drug plane brought down for the same reason? How can they actually explain everything without it being science fiction, and will they even bother to actually explain it all? Some things just seemed random and thrown in because they're weird, like the statue of the four-toed foot. After the crazy finale, can they really add anymore questions before they start answering some? Are they going to bother explaining some things, like Libby's presence in Hurley's mental hospital, or are they just letting that go since she's dead?

Even when the plot is so convoluted, it's easy to keep watching because the characters are so good. In the beginning, Jack seemed like the typical reluctant leader-hero-guy, but over time he's been built up as more and more of a jerk. He's not always fair, and we see in flashbacks that he's a mean drunk and too often pushes people into doing what they don't want to. He is way too stubborn and often closed-minded. He's usually honest, but that's not all it takes to be a good person. Locke kind of pisses me off. His backstory is kind of awesome and at first he seemed like a unique old-guy badass, but he's gone off the deep end and done some truly ridiculous things. He's causing a lot of destruction and death out of his selfish desire to stay on the island. Sawyer's an interesting case. At first, he seemed like a bad guy with a criminal past, but as time's gone on he's become more sympathetic and done a lot more defensible things. Definitely a bit enigmatic. Kate's got a really cool history, although she makes a lot of decisions with really suspect reasoning. The rest of the cast is generally intriguing, sometimes funny, and well acted. The deaths have been around, and they keep things fresh and exciting. I think the number of characters is pretty good right now, and we'll see how the show goes from here. After the reveal at the end of season 3 that at least Jack and Kate made it off the island, I'm really curious about what happens.