I’m a big fan of LOST. The TV show began its final season
Tuesday, and I carved out time to watch. If you haven’t kept up, it is probably
too late. This is the story of the passengers on Oceanic 815, a flight that
crashed and sent a few of its survivors reeling on a mysterious island. There
is a spinal surgeon, a brilliant liar and criminal, a Scottish guy who likes
to sail, a chubby fella who won the lottery and may be mentally ill, and of course
a cute girl with a bad side that all the guys like and who is in competition
with another cute girl (who was already on the island) who is a doctor and so
intelligent you realize she is always hiding something. There is an evil but
intriguing guy named Ben and a man who has probably died several times named
Locke. There are other people who survived the crash, people who chose to come
to the island for some scientific Dharma initiative and vintage jumpsuits,
and “others,” the not-so-technical name for the bad guys who are sometimes good
guys. The stories involve fear and celebration, relief and stress, love and
romance, pain and conflict, and an occasional travel through time. The story
flashes forward and backward, and now it seems to have gone sideways. I can’t
keep that straight, but I love the character development and the parallels with
our lives.
There are many truths in the show. A prominent one for me is this: frustration mounts when they can’t figure out the purpose of their experience or the trustworthiness of any of the island’s so-thought leaders.
