Probably the most ambitious review I have ever taken on. BUT I want to give my thoughts on one of my new favorite shows, so it’s worth it. 

I’m also well aware that I’m way behind the hype-wagon with this since it’s pretty old. Nonetheless, I am still hyped and here we are. 

As usual, I’m trying to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, so it shouldn’t ruin anyone for the plot, should you decide to watch it. 

Hope you enjoy! Let’s get into it.

 

Lost: Series Review

 

Synopsis:

After the crash of the Oceanic 815 flight on a strange island, the surviving passengers attempt to stay alive and get home. But the island and its mysterious inhabitants have other ideas…

 

(source: me. I came up with that myself. Pretty proud.)

 

 

Good Stuff:

• Characters

Okay I know this is a plus point in almost all the reviews I post where I like things. BUT seriously guys, Lost is a whole new level on this.

There are so many characters. And they’re all sowell done. They all have really cool backstories and motivations and personalities of their own and play off of each other and the situations in awesome ways and just… they’re the heart of the story, okay.

There were a lot of characters I started out disliking that I grew to qualify as some of my favorites. And the characters who were already my favorites made me love them even more with their cool character arcs. Honestly the last two seasons, I basically just loved everyone who was on screen. (Almost. I mean there are still bad guys. xD)

Anyway. -thumbs up- That’s my favorite part of Lost. On to the other favorite bits.

 

• Mystery

I have taken many writing technique notes on how to do mystery writing from this show. Seriously, just the perfect pacing of how they raised questions and revealed new information and showed stuff was… really good. I mean obviously there are a ton of spoilers on this angle of things, but I did a lot of theorizing and had a lot of “WHAT” moments watching it.

• Plot overall

Honestly, I only started this show to have something to watch with my brother so we could both cleanse our palates from Agents of SHIELD season 6. I hadn’t been overly interested in what the plot held for us. I mean… a bunch of people get stranded on an island together and try to survive, big whoop.

But seriously. The whole storyline ended up being just… really incredible and one of my favorite stories. I’m definitely very impressed with the plot here.

 

• Clever use of a lot of elements

There are a lot of tired old elements out there in the world of fiction. You know that feeling you get when an element shows up and you’re like “oh man, I know where this is going” and you’re tired of it before it even gets going?

-jazzhands- Not here, ladies and gents! (I mean… okay, the love triangle is kind of the exception but we’ll talk about that later.)

But just… so many cool things showed up, and even if it was an element I’d seen before, and even disliked, I ended up really loving it in this.

Some of the angles of the bad guys… of different things on the island… different character archetypes… and (my personal favorite,) their use of time travel… it all just felt so original and fresh and grabbed me so much. The writing was just really clever and good involving a lot of things I was almost positive I wouldn’t like.

 

• Excellent handling of a large-scale story

There’s… a lot of story here. There are a ton of plot elements, a ton of characters, a ton of questions to be answered and a ton of arcs to be followed up on.

And it honestly, to me, never felt scattered. Everything and everyone in the plot served a purpose and played their part and no one was ever there to just… be there. I was expecting thing to get really confusing and stretched just with this big of a plot and this big of a cast, but it really didn’t.  

 

• Full circle

Gonna go slightly against popular opinion on this one for a second. xD

Because going in, I’d had multiple people warn me “it gets weird further in” and either said that they didn’t finish it or that they hated the ending. So, I was extremely hesitant, and waiting for the show that I loved to turn the corner and become horrible.

And for me, it never did?

I really actually loved the full arc the story went on through the whole thing. It felt like a natural progression to me and honestly I got really excited when time travel/returning to the island was pulled into the picture. My gripes with the show further in were surprisingly few.

So yeah, for various reasons, I’m one of the very few people who liked the ending of Lost a lot. When I say I like Lost, I like all of Lost.

 

• One more tiny thing

Not exactly spoilers. Or very small spoilers.

But there’s a dog. He was there in the beginning and made me happy but I was really positive they’d kill him off for emotional impact a few episodes in. I was positive he’d never see the other side of season 2.

BUT GUESS WHAT

They never killed the dog. The dog lived through the whole series.

And that made me very very happy.

 

Bad Stuff:

• Content (language and inappropriate scenes)

While it never gets super serious, there is language throughout. (“son of a *****” is basically Sawyer’s catchphrase + some other characters use it and that’s the biggest offender I can think of, language-wise.)

Also there were definitely some scenes in the earlier seasons that had to be skipped. Basically whenever you’re getting a Sawyer flashback, beware.

Sawyer is a great character, but also the source of a lot of sketchiness, especially near the beginning when he’s being a jerkface.

• Love triangle

The biggest complaint I have about Lost, to be honest, is this element right here. xD

A lot of character development for all three of the people involved got shoved aside for this to be a thing. The drama got played up way too much and just… yeah, overall, I feel like it ruined a lot of things. (Especially Jack. Who was up there competing for favorite character and then more or less got ruined by this and took until the last season to recover and get some development back.)

 

• Blood/scary stuff

The first episode had more blood and horror-y feelings to it than basically anything that came after it, so I don’t feel like you can get a fair representation from just that.

Buuuut people get shot, there’s a monster roaming the island, some torture happens (though not in-depth), and characters do die.

Also there are a shocking amount of childbirth scenes in this show.

Yeah, blood is a thing.

 

• A couple season finales

This isn’t something that really continues to bug me that much in the retrospect. But when I was first watching through, I got pretty annoyed.

Most of the time you sort of expect the season finale to be a resting spot. It can be a bit of a cliffhanger, sure. But just… resolve some stuff. End the chapter and then hint at the new chapter that’s coming in a mysterious way.

The finale of the first season and the fifth season are the ones that bug me most on this front because they came like really close to reaching the whole season goal, and then it cut away before you could see what happened and just went “come back next season!”

Season 2 wasn’t as much that. And I definitely liked the endings of seasons 3 and 4 on the front of wrapping things up but still being a cliffhanger.

Anyway.

Partly just me being nitpicky there.

 

• One particular season 6 episode

I still hold that I love the ending of Lost.

But the one episode “Across the Sea” still bugs me immensely and I wish it didn’t exist.

Because basically what it was supposed to be was just a purely backstory episode revealing secrets you’ve been wondering about for a long time. And it just was not pulled off well at all. It was like a sloppy fan theory come to life and went in all the wrong directions. Which didn’t fit at all with everything else going on.

I was still able to enjoy the rest of the season, but that episode was awful.

 

• A few dropped plotlines

For the most part, the plot did get completely wrapped up. But there were still a few things in earlier seasons that didn’t get followed up on that I was really curious about. Smaller things, mostly. But I would have liked a few more answers.

 

Season-by-season thoughts:

 

Season 1:

An awesome beginning. Dynamics are established, groundwork is laid, and character backstories are shown to be amazing. Still slightly annoyed with the extreme cliffhanger that was the finale, but this was a really good season.

Season 2:

Pretty sure this one is my favorite season overall. The mystery advances. More characters are introduced, and some of the biggest villainous threats are brought into the frame. Plus probably the most moments of any season that had me gaping at plot twists.

Season 3:

It’s a bit of a toss-up on this one. Because on most fronts, this season has my favorite plotlines of all. (Desmond and Charlie! Plus Sun and Jin and Hurley and a lot of awesome other things!) But also this is the season that introduced the love triangle and has the most of that going on so… -gag-

All the highs and lows Lost has to offer.

Season 4:

The season that switches from flashbacks to flashforwards. I thought I’d have more of a problem with that, honestly. In my opinion, this one had a really strong finale. The plot unfolded in a really interesting way. There was a lot of wondering who’s the real bad guy and who’s there to help. There are also some more new characters who were pretty awesome.

(And my favorite episode, The Constant. ❤ Gotta mention that.)

Season 5:

I was fully prepared for this season to be the beginning of the end and to have it majorly suck. Plot twist, it didn’t. At least for me. xD

I really liked the time travel being thrown in there and it was cool finally getting some more answers. Plus the whole dynamic of “the gang’s back together again!”

Main complaint being that they had a pretty good opportunity to say whyexactly they needed all these people back on the island, and didn’t? I mean it was explained later, but it really felt like just “you gotta get back to the island because you just goTTA” and everyone sort of seemed to go with it.

I dunno. I liked the rest of it though.

 

Season 6:

Basically the belly of the beast. I was, again, very prepared for suckiness. And was utterly shocked when I didn’t get it. I mean, there was that one episode near the end that I hated. But I loved the end. It was bittersweet. I actually liked the flash-sideways (it was a lot less of a big deal than I expected?) and just… yeah. A lot of spoilers lie in these waters.

I can see why there are people who don’t like it, especially if they were watching this over a larger timeframe and had more time to get attached to their theories.

But I did like it a lot when it was all over.

I’m satisfied. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Overall:

A huge, amazing story with a huge, amazing cast. Definitely an adventure of a lifetime and I’d highly recommend.

 

So, those are my thoughts on the show. Hope you guys found those interesting to read! And I’m more than open to discussing in the comments. ❤ More specific questions or discussions if you’ve seen Lost. -nod-

Plus this is sort of my opening for the fact that I have another post planned that’s full of Lost fan stuff, so. xD

Have a great week everyone! See ya next time,

~writefury