Thanks to Kelli for the following.
I don't have any scans, but I found this great little article in the lastest issue if Nylon magazine, so I figured I share it with y'all!
LOST: In a show with more twists than a bag of pretzels, April Long has found a favorite.
For true acolytes of LOST, only three words are needed to describe it. Best. Show. Ever. There are many of us who have pressed boxed sets of it upon friends with evangelical zeal, and who no-so-secretly distrust anyone who says they "don't get it". LOST is part science fiction, part character-driven drama, part mystery, part suspense-heavy paranormal thriller - and all amazing. It is an intricate, intelligent, and often completely baffling show, unlike any other that has ever been on television.
Anyone who watches it will know that its labyrinthine curlicues of plot are too complex to summarize (and if you're one of those people who cheated and watched "All of LOST in Eight Minutes," shame on you), but LOST, in a nutshell, goes something like this: A flight between Sydney and Los Angeles crashes on a remote tropical island, which is invisible to the outside world, and the stories of each of the survivors' lives before the crash are told in flashbacks, with each episode dedicated to one character's story. They soon learn that the island was once home to an experimental scientific collective known as the Dharma Initiative, that it has a number of supernatural qualities (and dangers, including a sinister smoke monster that rumbles through the jungle), and that they are not alone. LOST gets its claws into you once you start to notice the background patterns - interconnectedness between characters, crossovers in time and space - and the more of these you see, the mo! re of a headfuck it becomes. New layers of mythology and riddles are built up with every episode, while the show itself evolves from what initially seems to be a sort of Survivor-meets-Lord of the Flies type of experiment into something incomprehensibly smarter and more sophisticated. That, no doubt, is partly why LOST has spawned innumerable fan sites that do everything from cataloging the books the characters read to exhaustively dissecting freeze-frame images. The best of these are Lostpedia.com, which currently features 4,209 articles devoted to the show, and the blog The Tail Section, where you can join in such fun activities as taking the "Which LOST Character Are You?" quiz (I'm Jack, evidently) and testing your command of trivia. Sooner or later, LOST makes everyone fly their geek flag, and proudly.
It may involve parapsychology, electromagnetism, time-travel, the question of fate v. free-will, and jinxed lottery numbers, but ultimately, LOST is about human beings, in all of their conflicted, confused, and uncomfortably messy glory. It makes us think about the motives that drive our decisions; it asks us to ponder whether our hearts lie more on the side of science or faith; it cracks open the hard shell of normal existence to expose the raw nerves that lie beneath.
As you become attached to certain characters, you question them just as much as you believe in them. Is John Locke - the former box company employee who was crippled before the plane crash but can walk after it, and who has visions that imply he has been "chosen" by the island to unlock its mysteries - good or evil? Is Jack Shepherd - the (hot) do-gooder doctor and all around mensch - ultimately kind of an uptight asshole? Does mild-mannerd, over-eating lottery winner (and former insane asylum denizen) Hurley really see dead people? And is spooky, cabin-dwelling, omniscient Jacob supernatural or flesh-and-blood? Every character has a dark side. But then, don't we all?
LOST offers moments of almost unbelievable tension and terror; as well as pathos, shocking violence, humor, sex, and sadness. The writers are unpredictable: they have no qualms about killing off key characters, or snatching the rug out from under the plotline by pulling major "gotcha" switcheroos. The experience of watching LOST is a little bit like attempting to do a jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded. It demands a lot from the viewer - patience, dedication, imagination, trust - but the rewards are well worth such sacrifices, even if they are meted out at a sometimes maddeningly slow pace. When it ends, as it is destined to do, with its sixth season in 2010, all of those loose ends will be tied up; the last piece placed in the mosaic, and we'll all know exactly what it is we've been lookijng at this whole time. That prospect is both thrilling and woefully sad: We will finally know all the answers; but we will have lost LOST.
For true acolytes of LOST, only three words are needed to describe it. Best. Show. Ever. There are many of us who have pressed boxed sets of it upon friends with evangelical zeal, and who no-so-secretly distrust anyone who says they "don't get it". LOST is part science fiction, part character-driven drama, part mystery, part suspense-heavy paranormal thriller - and all amazing. It is an intricate, intelligent, and often completely baffling show, unlike any other that has ever been on television.
Anyone who watches it will know that its labyrinthine curlicues of plot are too complex to summarize (and if you're one of those people who cheated and watched "All of LOST in Eight Minutes," shame on you), but LOST, in a nutshell, goes something like this: A flight between Sydney and Los Angeles crashes on a remote tropical island, which is invisible to the outside world, and the stories of each of the survivors' lives before the crash are told in flashbacks, with each episode dedicated to one character's story. They soon learn that the island was once home to an experimental scientific collective known as the Dharma Initiative, that it has a number of supernatural qualities (and dangers, including a sinister smoke monster that rumbles through the jungle), and that they are not alone. LOST gets its claws into you once you start to notice the background patterns - interconnectedness between characters, crossovers in time and space - and the more of these you see, the mo! re of a headfuck it becomes. New layers of mythology and riddles are built up with every episode, while the show itself evolves from what initially seems to be a sort of Survivor-meets-Lord of the Flies type of experiment into something incomprehensibly smarter and more sophisticated. That, no doubt, is partly why LOST has spawned innumerable fan sites that do everything from cataloging the books the characters read to exhaustively dissecting freeze-frame images. The best of these are Lostpedia.com, which currently features 4,209 articles devoted to the show, and the blog The Tail Section, where you can join in such fun activities as taking the "Which LOST Character Are You?" quiz (I'm Jack, evidently) and testing your command of trivia. Sooner or later, LOST makes everyone fly their geek flag, and proudly.
It may involve parapsychology, electromagnetism, time-travel, the question of fate v. free-will, and jinxed lottery numbers, but ultimately, LOST is about human beings, in all of their conflicted, confused, and uncomfortably messy glory. It makes us think about the motives that drive our decisions; it asks us to ponder whether our hearts lie more on the side of science or faith; it cracks open the hard shell of normal existence to expose the raw nerves that lie beneath.
As you become attached to certain characters, you question them just as much as you believe in them. Is John Locke - the former box company employee who was crippled before the plane crash but can walk after it, and who has visions that imply he has been "chosen" by the island to unlock its mysteries - good or evil? Is Jack Shepherd - the (hot) do-gooder doctor and all around mensch - ultimately kind of an uptight asshole? Does mild-mannerd, over-eating lottery winner (and former insane asylum denizen) Hurley really see dead people? And is spooky, cabin-dwelling, omniscient Jacob supernatural or flesh-and-blood? Every character has a dark side. But then, don't we all?
LOST offers moments of almost unbelievable tension and terror; as well as pathos, shocking violence, humor, sex, and sadness. The writers are unpredictable: they have no qualms about killing off key characters, or snatching the rug out from under the plotline by pulling major "gotcha" switcheroos. The experience of watching LOST is a little bit like attempting to do a jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded. It demands a lot from the viewer - patience, dedication, imagination, trust - but the rewards are well worth such sacrifices, even if they are meted out at a sometimes maddeningly slow pace. When it ends, as it is destined to do, with its sixth season in 2010, all of those loose ends will be tied up; the last piece placed in the mosaic, and we'll all know exactly what it is we've been lookijng at this whole time. That prospect is both thrilling and woefully sad: We will finally know all the answers; but we will have lost LOST.