What Is Left When There Is No LOST

The series finale of LOST took place one year ago, today. It seems a bit silly to eulogize a show, let alone one that has been off the air for a year, but it is important to note that there really hasn’t been a particular show to pick up the baton that LOST dangled out there.

Love it or hate it, the last episode of LOSTis one that stirred a lot of debate and conversation, some frustrating, some enlightening. An indelible impression was left when the passengers of Ajira 316 left the island, passing over a dying Jack Shephard. Left behind was a dead Locke/Smokey, a newly appointed island keeper in Hurley and a reformed right hand man in Benjamin Linus.

As the embers of those feelings about the show started to cool, LOST fans desperately searched for another show to fill the void. The hopes for another show, like LOST, seemed in peril. Some fled to the land of Fringe, some to V and little went to the Event.

Yet, I don’t think there has been another show out there that can compare with LOST. Now, I don’t think LOST was the greatest show ever but in terms of the mythology and intricate story lines of redemption and good vs. evil, I don’t think you can find another that was so good at it.

I still have a ton of questions about the show. Some that will never be answered. Maybe that’s the allure. Maybe that’s the hold the island has on its audience. Because we never really got closure, we’ll never really be free from wanting more of our fated castaways.

Among the big head scratchers for me, still, are the decision to kill off Jin and Sun after spending a huge portion of the preceding season keeping them apart with Sun desperately searching for her husband while trusting the Man in Black wearing a Locke suit. How about the Lighthouse? What the hell was the point of all that? Was it just some special contraption used to bring Jack’s belief to the island to join the rest of him? The others, the true Others claimed that it was there island. Yet, we knew that they were most likely brought there just like everyone else. Why kidnap the children, do experiments on Claire and Sun, hold Jack, Kate and Sawyer prisoner? Why did they spend so much time on Walt and why wasn’t he kept around? What the hell was the point of the blast door map or the lockdowns or any of it?

I could go on for days wondering, and sometimes remembering, about what made the show so damned interesting and head-into-the-desk slamming all at the same time. In the end, none of it mattered. It truly was, as they said, a giant Rube Goldberg device. It was a overly complex machine designed to perform a simple function, find a replacement for Jacob. Yet, throughout its six seasons the show created such an addiction among fans, they were willing to overlook a lot of the flaws in the execution of some of the seasons.

Looking over the sheet of new shows for Fall 2011, there is a noticeable lack of enthusiasm on my part, much to the relief of my DVR, I’m sure. There is a J.J. Abrams show with Jorge Garcia for those looking to recapture some of the nostalgia of Hurley being on an island. Of course, this time it’s Alcatraz. There are also a couple of other shows that piqued my interest, but nothing with the same caliber of LOST. Of course, I said the same thing about LOST when the previews for the pilot episode started airing.

Season One Summer Promo

Not much to make of what’s going to happen from that promo. We see a spectacular plane crash, a lot of Michael Bay explosions and chaos. Then we see a man shooting a big fluffy pillow as it hurtles itself towards him in the brush. We get the final question which defined the show to a ‘T’.

“Guys, where are we?”

It was a whim, an afterthought, a slip of scheduling that I actually saw the pilot episode of LOST and that was all it took. Like a junkie, looking for a new drug to take, I was hooked. I was searching through my couch cushions for change in order to score my next high. “The first one is free. After that, you gotta pay to play.” It was so simple a premise. Take 48 people, crash them on an island, add unknown scary monster sound, and leave on a low heat. After that, it became so much more complicated and erratic of storytelling to even try to explain to someone who had never sat down with it from the beginning. Fortunately, here is an excellent explanation in three minutes.

LOST in Three Minutes

So, as another season in television comes to a close and we see a bunch of new shows get plugged and a bunch of existing one get bled like a stuck pig. Remember, we’ll always be LOST, together.