LOST is over. This show has entertained and infuriated countless people throughout its six year run but it has always done it with immense intelligence. It was never a just a show about castaways surviving on a tropical island. I love that this show has a truly international cast. This aspect of it was part of why I initially got interested in it. Seeing dynamic characters of different ethnicities and nationalities all in one great TV cast is revelatory in my opinion. This show treated the various cultural backgrounds in its cast quite respectfully. They also didn't make their ethnic characters saints. I greatly appreciated that.
I remember watching the first season on and off because my class schedule in the year it debuted didn't always allow me to watch it on TV. I'd seen enough episodes on TV of the first season to motivate me enough to buy the first season DVD set. By the start of the second season I was undeniably hooked. I never had a problem with all the mysteries and ambiguity of LOST. It became the main reason that I kept on watching. It satisfied my own inherent aptitude for attention to details. In this aspect, LOST rewarded me heavily.
The island itself is a character in the show. It has served as a vessel to discuss so many big issues, arguments, and themes that happen throughout life. One of the themes that's easy to point out are the different types of families in the show. They're all laden with dysfunction. However, reconciliation and acceptance of family members' faults and individual personal faults are a major theme of the show. Siblings on LOST are often opposing reflections of each other. Boone and Shannon seemed to not really get along but share a secret history between the two of them that's somewhat inappropriate despite the fact that they're step-siblings. Charlie & Liam Pace trade off positions in drug dependency. Mr. Eko & his brother Yemi are another example. Eko becomes a drug lord. His brother becomes a priest. Jack & Claire don't find out that they're siblings because of a shared father until mid way in the series. It becomes something that's mostly positive for both of them despite Claire's potential mental instability when they can finally become like brother & sister. Juliet has a sister with cancer. This information is used to manipulate her onto the island. Benjamin Linus and Ethan Rom are even revealed to have shared something like an older brother, younger brother relationship. The end game reveal of Jacob & the Man in Black being brothers highlights all the odd relationships between siblings throughout the series. One is supposedly good while the other is supposedly bad. They are both manipulated into taking on these roles by "mother". Their demi-god like status is secondary to the fact that they both have some very real faults. They've also betrayed their brotherhood repeatedly throughout the show. This is because they both believe each other to be unfairly limiting the other. The Jacob & the Man in Black are awfully similar to the earlier conflict of Benjamin Linus vs. Charles Widmore. These men both have strong connections to the island however disagree fundamentally with how things should have been done there. In my opinion, a lot of the conflicts on LOST result from great misunderstandings. It humanizes the conflicts despite all the crazy manipulations and fantastic sci-fi tendencies of the show.
I've gone into rambling. I'll leave that bit about conflicts between sibling like characters for now. I'll go into other aspects that I love about the show in another entry, another time. I've been rewatching the show on DVD lately. What should I talk about next time? I think I'll talk about Desmond, one of my favorite characters. Until next time
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