Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The End, Part 2

Hey Lost Fans. Time for part two of my Post-Lost wrap up. We're now more than a week removed from the finale, and the buzz is starting to fade. I don't think that's a bad thing. It's obviously a good thing. I'm sure it'll kick back in once the DVDs are released and various rewatches begin. I for one am going to follow Jay and Jack as they rewatch the series. We however are not going to do a full on rewatch. Why you ask? Well several reasons, but mainly it's that neither Amanda nor I really want to. We are still a bit unsure of the future, but there will be episodes coming, and it'll be a fun and exciting summer on the Lost Flashbacks Podcast.

So with that said, I'm ready to move on to the main idea of this post. Last week I talked about the things about the finale that shocked me. This week, I think I'll talk about a more series related idea. The idea of Chapters. Now, a different show that will remain nameless named it's seasons and episodes "Volumes" and "Chapters". Lost obviously(and thankfully) did not do this. But there were clear differences in each season as a different idea, motif and device was used. I hear people saying that since the show didn't answer various questions, the on island mysteries and conflicts didn't matter so much. I disagree and I wanted to try and discuss each "chapter", and go briefly into why it all mattered so much in the end.Originally, I had all the chapters in the same post, but it became VERY long and I was holding back. So I've decided to release them separately but much more often.

Chapter One - The Losties

I know I know, the whole series was about the Losties. But the 1st Chapter was the one where they were the main focus every week, and we learned the most important things about who they were. It's not a surprise that every episode that season is amazing. It was Lost at it's best. We learned important things later, but if you want to know who someone was when they arrived? Then you watch their season one episode. In "What They Died For" Jacob says he brought them all to the Island because they were flawed. Just like J.J. Abrams' famous statement "They are not only Lost in the world, they are Lost in their lives." The conflicts, and issues we see these characters go through both on island and in their flashbacks reverberates all the way until the end. Jack's need to fix and save everyone leads him to understand that it's his destiny to sacrifice himself for his friends, and the Island. Sawyer, shackled his whole life by hate and a need for vengeance becomes a great leader once he rids himself of Cooper. Locke, always being told what he can't do, being made a fool of, and tormented by Anthony Cooper finds peace, and a true destiny on the Island that eventually leads Jack to do what he does. As promised, I'll have more about the characters later on.



Season one also introduced almost all the major mysteries, some of which would not be resolved until season six. These mysteries include The Smoke Monster, the Whispers, Adam and Eve, the Sickness, Polar Bears, the Others, the Hatch, and even the cable leading into the ocean gave us the Underwater Station theory from Jack from Jay and Jack! With all these mysteries, and no answers though it could not be about those mysteries. It was all about the characters, and how they were just as dumbfounded as us. We were all discovering the Island together. Its secrets, its mysteries, its wonders and it was INSANE. We wanted to get in that hatch just as much as Locke, I'm still terrified of William Mapother(Ethan), and we felt so much hope(and then terror) when the raft was launched. The penultimate sequence of season one, featuring our Losties boarding Flight 815 remains one of the most moving in the entire series, and perfectly highlights how far we had come in our relationship with these people, and their relationships with one another. There are literally whole books about season one of Lost so I'll stop there, but one last thing. Many people thought that season six would have a very season one type feel. It did at times, but in my opinion we could not get that feeling back again. We could not get that feeling of total mystery back because we knew the characters so well. The true mystery of the first chapter of Lost was the mystery of these castaways, and why they were all LOST


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