Added: 378 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Nerdcore | 7 Comments

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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/15777/Lost-In-Lost/'>Lost In Lost</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

So, Lost is back on our screens for its penultimate season, and what a weird, bizarre, frankly daft trip it's been. We now find some of the Lostites and Others who are left on the island hurtling through time like a pebble being rattled in a tin can, while the rest are back on home soil, looking neglected, especially Jack whose shaved off that ridiculous Robinson Crusoe beard that he never had on the island - is this symbolic facial hair eluding to the fact that Jack is shipwrecked when not on the island, or am I, as this show lends itself to so well, reading too much into it? It also kept making him go all weepy-eyed and tearful, looking like a forlorn puppy so he's best off without it. It seems that all those who were rescued, apart from Sun, whose turned all badass, are coming to the conclusion that - by Benjamin Linus's spinal tumour! - They should never have left that rotten island.

Both Locke and the ever-cool Desmond (aye, brutha) seem to be the only people who hold any hope of saving the island and those left on it. And to do this, we now know, Locke has to get everyone back on the island, and to do that he has to die. Poor Locke, first he gets duped by his father out of a kidney, then thrown out of a window by him, becomes paralysed, nearly destroys the world, gets shot by Ben, and now this. Well, it serves him right for acting all mysterious-like in Season 1.

It's been a strange journey for the viewer and the characters, at times infuriating, complex, convoluted, annoying and disappointing. But when it got an episode right it could be startling, haunting, climactic, the right side of confusing and very good fun. The many, many 'lost' souls that were thrown by the wayside - it lost more support than President Bush - by its preposterous plot lines may've done the right thing in bailing out, saving themselves a lot of frustration and their social lives along the way.

JJ Abrams et al have created a monster that could rival the black mist itself, spanning, when it's run its course, 6 seasons, an online game that thousands have followed and a tie-in novel, along the way building up its own mythos, and leaving some of its dedicated followers hooked on it like TV crack. It's not always been the most well written show, and has at times, most times, seemed like the writers picked story lines out of a hat at random, or were having a competition to see who could come up with the most overblown, risible stories. Its combination of mystery, cod-mysticism, pseudo-philosophy, post-modern repetition, self-referencing and recurring motifs has alienated and confused more of the audience than has liked it, but I'm one of the latter. Even if the techniques it uses are manipulative, and sometimes irritatingly unrewarding.

At times it feels like we're being led, blindfolded, down a dark alley and then left there, alone, shivering with fear while we wonder whether we're going to get a bullet in the back of the head or a big hug. Watching Lost is like the team building exercise when you're told to fall backwards and your team mates will catch you. You climb up, slightly nervous, hesitant, unsure if you can trust it, but then finally your humanity pulls through and you think, have faith. So with renewed confidence you fall back, happy, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't let you down. You let yourself go and plummet backwards but there's nothing but empty space to break your fall, so, with magnified terror you tumble to the ground, cracking your skull on the floor. The blood begins pouring from your head as you strain with bloodied eyes to see if you can see the villainous swine who did this to you. You cock your head and the last thing you see is the backs of the people who were supposed to be catching you, walking away, somewhere in the distance. Those stinking, lousy rat-bastards left as soon as you turned your back, talking amongst themselves, cackling like hyenas on laughing gas, seemingly oblivious to the task they were asked to do, while you lay dying, betrayed, wondering why you ever trusted them in the first place...

You see to understand a show like Lost is to understand the innate complexities of life itself...at least that's probably what their press releases says, but it's not true. To understand Lost is to understand how TV networks like to hook an audience and then string them along for the ride, milking the cash cow until it's a withered piece of ragged leather. The show has about as much completeness as a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces have been scattered across the seven continents of the Earth, never to be found. It's scaled dizzy new heights in laughable, inane plot lines and has tested the audience's resilience and patience more than any other show in recent memory. And for this I applaud it with one hand (the proverbial sound of one-hand clapping) while with the other hand I beat it round the head, viciously, with a piece of wood that has sharp rusty nails dipped in anthrax and AIDS.

It's a show that unless you are fully prepared to surrender yourself to, and suspend your disbelief, will give you no rewards. But if you've watched it over the years, like I have, allowed yourself to look over the absurd plot holes, the mountain of questions that arise every other episode, then it can be fun, and ultimately, enjoyable. Take it too seriously, expect resolutions, coherence, or anything you'd normally require from a series, and look away now, because you will not only be disappointed, but baffled, angry, you may even, somehow, be mortally wounded. You'll be beside yourself with rage at how a TV show can play with your emotions like this - like a girlfriend who breaks up with you, then calls you back a day later to say how much she misses you and how it was all a mistake so can you get back together. Then you're back together for less than a day and she dumps you again! Repeat ad infinitum - that is the experience of watching Lost.

I've, so far, spent roughly 3480 minutes, so nearly 2 and half solid days of my life, watching the series. If I was in the hatch I would've pushed those damnable numbers into the computer 32 times in that period. Bear in mind this is so far, we still have the rest of Season 5 and all of Season 6 to get through...What can we expect? Well I doubt too many secrets will be revealed in this season, they'll save those for the last one. Questions like: What the heck is going on with that 4-toed statue? What is all the whispering? What is the black mist? What are the numbers? Who's Jacob? Why does the island have these strange properties? Do the two bodies found in the cave in Season 1 turn out to be some of the Lostites travelling through time? Why was Libby in the same mental hospital as Hurley? And just how does Cedric from The Wire fit into it all? And plenty more...

As well as these things there's the problem of the ever growing Walt who just gets bigger and bigger. He started off the show a little kid but by the end he's going to be older and more mature than Locke. His voice has deepened, and he's grown as tall as King Kong, maybe we'll find out that all that growling and snarling you hear when the black mist is about is just Walt waking up. He'll be like Gulliver in Lilliput by the end of the show's run.

As to the answers to the other questions, we'll just have to wait and see. Let's just hope in the final episode Hurley doesn't wake up in bed wearing a silk negligee, walk to the shower, open up the shower panel to see Locke standing there, and it turns out it was all a bad dream...because at times, that's what it all seems like.

Added: 378 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Nerdcore | 7 Comments

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