Lost Re-Found

It's been about two months now since Lost finished its six year run. Almost as soon as it was over, I started to think about watching the entire series again, from the beginning. I wasn't interested in doing it to see where the various "loose threads" had been left hanging out, or to look for signs of careful planning ahead by the writers. Not mainly, anyway. Really, I wanted to start watching it again as a loving fan, not to pick nits, to experience it all again. After all, Lost would most definitely be the kind of storytelling in which one could find all new layers of depth and meaning on a second viewing.

As I'd been pondering this, and waiting for just a little more "distance" from the finale, I actually had a couple different people mention to me that they actually missed my weekly Lost episode comments and analysis here on the blog. That surprised me a little, I think, since I really wasn't sure anybody actually liked me droning on too much about TV shows. But then, Lost is kind of special that way.

In any case, I decided that when I did start watching the show again, I'd follow along on the blog. So this is the introduction, leading into what I suppose will eventually total to another 100-plus posts about the episodes of Lost. I have no schedule here; it's not going to be a weekly thing, or twice-weekly thing, or any other particular thing. When I watch a new episode, and have nothing else particularly pressing I want to post about, I'll talk about the old Lost episode I watched recently.

I would hope it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The whole point in doing this is to reconsider every episode of Lost with full knowledge of what the whole is. Translation: there will be SPOILERS. So if you haven't yet watched the entire series, you'll want to skip out until you can catch up.

Lost had all sorts of ancillary story bits attached to it. There was the tie-in novel supposedly written by one of the crash survivors. (Well, he survived long enough to get sucked through the engine in the pilot episode.) There was the alternate reality game run between two of the seasons. There was the video game. Plenty of other things too. I'm going to ignore all of that, as I mostly ignored it the first time around...

With one exception. Between seasons three and four, a series of 13 weekly mobile phone mobisodes, Lost: Missing Pieces, was released in a lead-up to the premiere of season four. Each episode was a single scene in a non-continuing narrative, just a little something extra that fit somewhere in the three years of Lost up to that point in time -- almost like a deleted scene. They were included on the season four DVD set, and somehow seem more "official" to me than some of this other side content. I mean, they even feature a lot of the main actors (and recurring guest actors). They're also "dated" online by helpful Lost fans, placed in their chronologically correct places during the show. So I figure I'll watch those at the appropriate times, and comment on them as part of the episode they belong "in" or "near." I mention all this right off the bat, because one of those mobisodes is connected to the pilot itself.

I'd actually planned on just jumping right in with my first review, but of course the pilot episode is worthy of more commentary than most, and I've already rambled on quite a bit just setting this whole thing up. So in the hopes of avoiding the internet pitfall of "too long; didn't read," (too late) I'll pick this thread up soon. (Tomorrow? Next week? Like I said, I don't intend to set a schedule for this.)

And if you aren't a fan of Lost? Well, you can start ignoring a fair chunk of my blog posts all over again.