Getting LOST

Here's a post that I've been meaning to make for awhile now. It's an article that I wrote for my school's paper about the decreasing fan base of Lost in the penultimate seasons. It looks much better properly formatted, but the paragraph formatting feature isn't working for some reason, so use your imagination and pretend that it is working.

Enjoy!

On September 22, 2004, Oceanic flight 815 disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

Taking off from Sydney, the 324 passengers were thought dead by the public. However, out of the 324 passengers, 70 came to realize that they were the survivors of a plane crash on an uncharted island in the South Pacific that would change their lives forever.

Each survivor with a unique past and back story, they slowly start to piece together that each of them are interconnected in ways that they could never have imagined. Though does this mysterious island provide refuge and atonement for past sins, or does it create more problems and questions than the survivors are able to handle?

For the pop culture experts out there, you may have known that Oceanic flight 815 is a fictional plane, which is great news for television fanatics. Without which, ABC’s Emmy award winning show, Lost, would not be possible.

Involving numerous intriguing plot techniques devices such as twists, foreshadowing, flashbacks, and cliffhanger endings, Lost is not just another television show, but a television experience that allows that viewer to tap into their imagination and theorize and speculate about what may or may not happen on the show.

While Lost still has a gargantuan fan-base, some viewers simply do not understand (or choose not to understand) the mysteries of Lost whilst the amount of viewers that religiously watch the show each Tuesday night is continuing in a downward spiral. Why is that? For such a popular show, why are long-time fans of the show beginning to stop watching as Lost reaches its series finale? Could it be that the questions and intense situations are too much for the viewer’s mind to handle?

Granted, some aspects of the show are highly implausible, the questions and mysteries are far from boring. For instance: what is the Dharma Initiative? What does the numerical sequence 4-8-15-16-23-42 have to do with the show? And what exactly is that black smoke monster running around the island? It is questions like these that attract and engage viewers to Lost while simultaneously dissuading other viewers from watching. Does the show involve too much thinking and theorizing that some people just turn off their minds?

As Americans, we cannot deny the fact that the level of intelligence in the country has gone downhill over the years. Whether it’s due to laziness, lack of motivation, or something completely different, we can not push away that the public in general has a tough time using their own brains and creativity and rely on others to spoon-feed them information.

Now, you may be wondering what does this have to do with Lost? As the seasons of Lost have progressed, for every answer given, it seems as if three more questions are posed. Some may think that getting answers to one’s questions would give some sort of satisfaction to the viewer and allow them to take a deep breath while re-grouping their thoughts about the show. However, being that some questions aren’t answered for a couple seasons, it gives viewers the chance to ponder and speculate their own answers. As time passes and theories are developed, viewers start to accept the ideas that have been created among other Lost viewers. When the time comes that a large question is answered, some fans are not pleased with the answer being that they had either started to believe a theory of their own or feel that they were cheated if they feel that the answer given does not truly satisfy them.

As Lost prepares for its final season, complaints about the complicated nature of the show are at a high, as are viewer headaches. Questions are still arising just as worries that the producers are “making it up as they go along”. Executive producers of Lost, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, have stated on numerous occasions that the previous seasons and plot lines were planned and thought through and that they do know where the show is going leading up to the series finale. Though, this does not prevent viewer complaints, it shows that the show is actually planned and outlined, however lack of viewer patience and dedication to the show and its revelations give some viewers the excuse to exclaim that Lost is too complicated and has deviated from its original roots.

In regards to the plan for the ending of Lost, Damon Lindelof says,
“Yes, the actual ending ending is exactly the same as we'd always planned on it being, except we didn't know if we were going to get there after two seasons, four seasons or after six seasons, so the road to the ending has had to change significantly. But the ending itself? Whether people like it or not, that's the ending we've had.”

In the end, Lost is not a show for everyone. Though facts show that the writers and producers know where the show is headed, it doesn’t keep some viewers to continue their complaints of its complicated nature and lack of answered questions. In relation to this, Lost proves to be a successful example of just how little the public delegates their minds to handle when it comes to patience and dissecting information.

Being that Lost is a television show, it is the opinion of many that viewers should not have to be subjected to opening their minds and scratching their heads while being entertained. In fact, some question whether it is entertainment at all. Regardless of viewer opinions, Lost is and will continue to be a show that is extremely entertaining while simultaneously engaging the viewer and allowing them to be apart of the show through creativity and use of their inner quick-witted intelligence…whether the casual viewer agrees with it or not.

The final season of Lost can be seen Tuesdays at 9:00 PM on ABC.