Lost: Part 1

 I'm watching Lost for the fourth time (thanks, Netflix). Apparently so are thousands of other people around the world, making the series a global phenomenon for the second time. 

Warning: the final season and especially the last episode always reduce me to tears -- ugly, uncontrollable, cathartic tears -- and I plan to blog about it. And no, the tears are not because of the shitshow that is the final season. I can't quite explain it, but this show does things to me. So why would I put myself through that -- again? Because the series is that good. 

I've been reading articles that other people have been posting about rewatching the series, like me, and watching the series for the first time -- and, most interesting, watching people watch the series for the first time, including this hilarious one. Something that keeps coming up is that new viewers, unscarred by years of waiting for some sort of solution to the many mysteries of the island, don't hate the last season. In fact, they think it's pretty good. And they can't understand why we think it means what we think it means.

I'm trying so hard not to give spoilers here. If you haven't watched the series, stop here. Your viewing should be unmarred by any expectations.

I, like everyone else, thought that the last season, especially the last episode, meant that everyone had been dead all along. That everything the characters had gone through had been part of some kind of shared purgatory, lowering the stakes (because they could never have been rescued and all the trials they experienced were meaningless set-ups) and rendering its mysteries void.

Apparently, and this is a big apparently, we were wrong. It's one reading, but one that new viewers don't share. Which means that we're all obliged to rewatch the series and see why our cynicism led us to the worst possible conclusion. All hands on deck. Or bamboo. Or whatever.

But I started rewatching the series before I read these articles and the mystery deepened. Why? Some people, most of them uncultured heathens, don't like the series for the reason the rest of us love it: the mysteries. I once read that people formed viewing parties each week, after which they'd discuss their theories about where the island was, what the Dharma initiative was, what the numbers meant, who the others were, what happened to Walt and more. 

I'm a viewing party of one. And so far, I want to know two things: where the polar bears came from and what the smoke monster is.

The series may be the product of several writers' imaginations, but it became something more concrete over the years. It doesn't matter that we don't have any answers (or that we have several hundred instead) -- the island exists out there somewhere now because we willed it into being. The mysteries are the important thing, the soil on which the island is built, and the joy of the series is uncovering clues and piecing them together -- no matter whether or not they actually lead somewhere. It's a Schrodinger's box situation; they're both there and not there at the same time.

In Part 2, I plan to discuss the first thing that intrigued me about the series: the characters and what they represent. But I rarely plan my posts (no sarcasm needed, thanks) (this one was meant to be about how the first season primes us to read the final season as we did, so I guess that'll be forthcoming too), so who knows. See you in the next one.