Getting Lost and Getting Lost and Getting Lost

For some people, last night was a momentous occasion. At our house, it meant a feast of ribs and tropical fruit while we watched the first two hours of the final season of LOST on television. We've been waiting a long, long time for the games to begin again.

Other people just don't get LOST. They don't see the fun in the endless, crazy plot twists, the striking images, the confusion of both ideas and emotion. All the characters are blends of good and bad, of likable and infuriating. The dead speak and the live are seldom allowed to get on with the business of living. Even time isn't a straight line on the island. Even the end is not certain. The mysterious, powerful, (now dead) Jacob says: "nothing has ended. And everything before the end is just progress."

Some people get lost in the jungle and some people get lost in this representation of the jungle. Each of the groups thinks the other is a little crazy. The fans feel a little lost without LOST; while other shows represent complexity, none does it with such a sense of curiosity and overwhelm. They also get lost in LOST. My husband is always in trouble because he asks too many questions during the show. Ask a question during LOST and you will lose another piece of the puzzle gathering information about something that may or may not already be in the past.

Of course, the people who don't get LOST are happy for the folks who do get LOST to take their crazy paradoxes and non-linear thinking and get lost. And the people who do get LOST think that the people who don't get LOST are already lost in a representation of reality that has too few curves to possibly be real.

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