For Fans, Loving ABC's Lost Means Accepting Your Powerlessness
Here's what I know, after deliciously devouring the first two episodes of the highly-anticipated fourth season of ABC's castaway drama, Lost (which returns for a writers strike-shortened eight-episode season at 9 p.m. Thursday).
WARNING: this post is chock full o' spoilers.
Point # 1: Enjoying the show requires a Zen-like approach to television. in short, you must accept that there may be no real answer the the show's mysteries and if there is, you will not be able to predict it.
Point #2: Though producers have said they plan to resolve the show in 2010 -- and its hard to know how the production disruptions caused by the writers' strike will affect this timetable -- you wouldn't know it 
by the first few episodes of this newly truncated, eight-episode season. As I say in a full-blown Floridian review running Thursday, it's like peeling an onion, only to find a puzzle box inside.
Point # 3: The coolest trick in the first two new episodes involves scenes which flashback and flash-foward. As rabid fans remember, we learned at the close of last season that a clump of scenes which seemed to feature our beloved castaways in typical flashbacks at home before they landed on the island were actually depictions of their future – after at least some of them have been rescued.
The new episodes’ action alternates between flashbacks explaining the background of a curious team which comes to the island as a rescue squad, and scenes which take place after some characters leave the island, but before the off-island scenes we saw in last season’s final episode. If you're already confused, see point Number One.
Point #4: SPOILERS GALORE -- At least one dead character makes an appearance, one of the new characters has a talent for communing with the dead and castaway John Locke (TV’s second-best character actor, Terry O’Quinn) sees his mysterious bond with the island growing deeper. One nugget which does drop for us hopeless followers: the notion that the island itself is an entity acting consciously gains more relevance here.
Point #5: Just as modern-day whodunit series such as Monk and Law & Order present mysteries too convoluted for any viewer to puzzle out, Lost’s brain trust offers a show which is impossible to big-picture. The trick here, is giving viewers enough clues to feed the idea that they know enough to solve the riddle -- when in reality, they don’t.
And the few hints available only shed a bit of light: we know the future-flashes in the first two episodes don’t go far as last episode’s finale, for instance, because stalwart hero Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) is only just starting the full-blown alcoholism we saw last year, and his bushy beard is still a sexy stubble.
Point #6: Producers also learned from a previous mistake; fans won’t accept writers pulling new characters from the 30 or so castaways who are not regular stars and somehow never figure in the series action. So this season, new figures literally fall from the sky as the team trying to reach the Losties parachute out of a spiraling helicopter to join our hardy band.
Point #7: What I really like about the new season: the addition of Ken Leung (the spiky guy from the last X-Men movie) as an aggressively cynical medium and Wire castmember Lance Reddick as a mystery man behind the new rescue team. Beyond bringing some multicultural flavor, they’re also among the coolest actors now working on TV.
Point # 8: Also, the first two episodes feature three things I love most about Lost; the heroic tussle between Locke and Jack Shephard, lots of sarcastic mind games from Others leader Ben Linus (Michael Emerson, the best character actor on TV) and a heaping helping of overweight lottery winner Hugo “Hurley” Reyes (Jorge Garcia).
The Feed is a blog on TV, media and modern life by St. Petersburg Times TV/media critic Eric Deggans. Possibly the most critical guy at the Times, he has served as music, media and TV critic at various times over 10 years.
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Look out Eric, the PC police are out to get you.
Posted by: Tim | January 31, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Well, considering that i have described myself as bald and made physical references to actresses as well, it would be in line with the way I've written past stories.
I described Hurley that way so people who are only passingly familiar with the show might connect with who he is....
Posted by: Eric Deggans | January 30, 2008 at 05:18 PM
Why would you describe Jorge Garcia as
overweight lottery winner Hugo “Hurley” Reyes?
That would be like me writing I read bald man Eric Deggans' blog about TV.
Would you then describe Evangeline Lilly as the voluptuous Kate or the tall Matthew Fox as Jack Shephard?
Get my drift?
Posted by: Rich | January 30, 2008 at 05:14 PM