Skip to main content

LOST: Why It Is The Second Best TV Show In Modern TV History (After The Wire) and Certainly Better Than Game of Thrones

After I finished watching second season of Lost, I asked my friends on Facebook a question whether I should proceed with rest of its seasons viz. Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth. I got only one response and it was overwhelmingly negative. I was certainly enamored with Lost's intriguing plot but the finale of season 2 led me into thinking that there was going to be too many things to grasp with Lost's remaining seasons. I decided to take some time off and dwell into some further studies about its remaining seasons. Lost has unarguably been called one of the greatest TV series of all time plus as I mentioned above, I loved its mythological+Supernatural+sci-fi plot, so I had enough reasons to go ahead. And that I did and I'm glad, I made that decision.

Lost, over the course of its six season runs, can be said of having the most compelling humane-story that was ever-so-consistent. The one aspect that's been lauded most about Lost was its vast star-cast. It's star-cast featured actors from various geographies and thus brought in many cultural shifts, rituals, beliefs and shocks. And then, they all were super-talented and spontaneous. What Lost did to them was to add one more dimension to their mesmerizing life-stories and that was their 'lives' itself. All of its characters have been developed to the fullest and all of the main star-cast had at least one episode dedicated to their lives which was simultaneously being telecast to us with what's happening in real time on the mysterious island. Character Development is the most central element of tremendous success Lost enjoyed and if you could believe, the show had around 30 or so characters over the course of its six seasons' spell and developing their characters to the best guises can be compared as one completely inhuman, unbelievably, astonishing task which J.J. Abrams, the creator of the show, I don't how pulled off with exquisite ease. The characters of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, John Locke, Ben Linus, Desmond Hume, Sayid, Charlie and Richard Alpert are now proved 'ICONIC'.

Each and every episode of LOST was full of suspense and as one critic commented, there was no better show during its run that can turn a ? into ! within minutes. Beautifully filmed on the locations of one Hawaii Island, it was one of the most expensive TV Series ever conceptualized and made. The Island provided most of the gumption, mystery, supernatural drama and tension of the series but the show was always trying to provide the answer to the one question: 'Who is greater: Science or Faith?' and it never answered that question which left many of its viewers and TV Critics aghast and heartbroken at the end of its season 6 finale. Dr.Jack was a man of Science and John Locke, a man of faith. John Locke always believed that all his fellow passengers including him were on the island for a particular purpose and reason but Jack never ever believed him until season 4 and only when he went through excruciating pain both physically and mentally. The character of Sawyer was the one I enjoyed the most for it was the one with most obvious human flaws and goodness. Michael Emerson in Ben Linus is as great a villain as you could possibly find anywhere or was he a villain? Lost and many great American TV shows always brings with them the greatest sense of ambiguity and imbued their pivotal characters with them. They never get judgmental with them and thus let the viewers decide who was really bad and who was real good. But the answers one get are never complete or satisfactory for they are the outcomes of a though process, a mere opinion and everyone can have a different opinion. So in one episode you would think why can't Jack kill Ben and get done with it but two episodes later, you find that Ben has got reasons and pretty good ones and in reality, he isn't really bad. It's all situations and circumstances. That elements of ambiguity in each episode gives the viewers a terrific thrill. Then there is the time-travel theory depicted and presented so magnificently that on more than one occasion, you will find your jaw dropped on the floor on its brilliant execution. Game of Thrones is as cluttered as Lost was with many dynasties and geographies and wonderful characters but it takes time to unfurl their mysteries. Lost doesn't. From the very first episode to its very last, it proves to be an edge-of-your-seat thriller which always lets its viewers guessing.

In India, it's said that every engineer in the making watches or have watched Lost. I watched it after completing my post graduate management degree and after watching its final season finale, 'The End', I was in tears. I found myself in the same state multiple times during its six year runs but this one occasion symbolized utter fulfillment and appreciation for the creators of the show. Unlike any other show in history of TV History, I put LOST second on my list of greatest TV shows ever made for the simple reason that The Wire provided me with academic delight like Dickens of London and Tolstoy of Moscow. Lost is still being discussed by many around their office-coolers or college campus even though it ceased to exist in year 2009 and thus it shows how close it comes in chasing THE WIRE for that prestigious tag of being the greatest. LOST is enigmatic and charismatic and honestly no adjective can honor its thrill and suspense quotient and in this way, it earns my strongest recommendation. It's the SHOW of The SHOWS.......#LOSTFOREVER

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Love and Friendship

Friendship is an aspect of life that’s not controlled by its beholders. Ideal friendships, well they are the things of past now. Many a times we have seen our parents or their parents talking about their old great friends and how amusingly they tell us about their bonding, the moments they spent together and we see a ‘priceless’ twinkle in their eyes…..that’s something which is missing from modern friendships. There are terms & phrases like ‘yaar tu to apna bhai hai’, ‘yaar tu to ghar ka aadmi hai’ which even today invoke something very beautiful inside our hearts but we all know that the feelings underneath them are ‘hollow’, they are just mere words, ‘emotionless’ and ‘impassive’. Well who am I to comment on such an indefinable ‘qualitative’ perspective? I’m one of you, those wretched creatures that are still in need of true, great friendships. Well I certainly can’t say that I haven’t got friends. I’ve got friends, plenty of them in fact, and some of them are real great. I s...

Racing Extinction (2015) : A Commentary

It's really hard to switch on to a different language from the one you have constantly been tinkering with. I grew so accustomed to writing in Hindi in last few days that it started dawning on me that I might never be good again with my English. So this is a tester, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, one of my movie group friends, an American by nationality, questioned my fondness of documentaries. I specifically wrote in one of my columns that documentaries demand your unwavering attention and once you gave 'that' to them, you are rewarded much more handsomely than a proper, narrative, fictitious film. My reasoning for believing so is that a documentary is an experience of a creative process. It doesn't get made to 'entertain' you. They are there to reveal something to you. They teach you something. You get overwhelmed by them. 'Racing Extinction (2015)' was one such documentary. I watched it in last couple of days. I couldn't complete it in one ...

What Virat Kohli Could Learn from Sourav Ganguly's Career

This IPL season might be dubbed as 'Kohli's IPL' in years to come. He is unarguably the best exponent of white-ball batsmanship going around. However, for someone like me who places a great emphasis on longest form of Cricket i.e. Test Cricket, until and unless he proves himself in seeming and swinging conditions of England and New Zealand (I believe in him and thus shall wish him luck), I shall still rank him behind Kane Williamson and Joe Root. Just to make sure I'm impartial to this debate, I put my favorite cricketer of all time i.e. Sourav Ganguly behind Sachin, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid when it comes to rank him in FAB FIVE of Indian Batsmanship because he simply wasn't as good as them in test cricket. Many call him a very good test cricketer and maintaining an average of 40 in test cricket from the very beginning till the very end signifies their reasoning but still, he fell short of 45/50 that makes a batsman statistical behemoth in purest form of Cricket. ...