live together, die alone: a lost retrospective
The day was September 14th, 2005. I was 13 years old and a few weeks into the 8th grade. I had just arrived home from school and was eating a Hostess cupcake that my mum and I had bought for her birthday. I was sitting on the couch in our family room, getting ready to sew the ribbons on my first pair of pointe shoes. And so my mum decided to put in the DVD set that my dad had gotten her for her birthday: the first season of Lost.
Now I had been peripherally aware of the show, since she had been watching it since the pilot first aired, and she had told me about how it was such a cool/weird show. So I knew some snippets of information, like that there were polar bears and mysterious monsters in the jungle, there was a mysterious hunter guy who had been in a wheelchair before coming to the island, there were numbers that popped up everywhere after some guy used them to play the lottery, some guy named Boone died late in the season, and there was a hatch in the ground that they were trying to open. I hadn't seen an episode, though, and at that point I hadn't really been interested in watching it. So I sat there on the couch, sewing my pointe shoes, and somehow, I ended up getting sucked in. I ended up watching almost all of the first season within that next week, because season two started a week later and I wanted to be as caught up as possible. And by the second season started, I had been sucked right in to the fandom.
So now, five years later, after the show has come to its conclusion, I'm still obsessed with it. There are still things to debate about the sprawling, complex plot and its equally complex characters. I've been rewatching the whole series over the past couple months, and it's amazing how little details in the show come together over six seasons, from Locke's famous "two players, two sides" line in the pilot, to the mysterious skeletons in the caves in episode 1x06, to the seemingly random four-toed statue in the season two finale. And although the show was far from perfect at times (I don't think many people can forgive episodes like "Stranger in a Strange Land" or "Fire + Water," for example), it was, overall, one of the best things that I've had in my life over the past five years. To me, it wasn't just a show that you watched once a week: it was something that you analyzed, debated, and made crazy predictions about. Sure, it made you think sometimes, but that was what made it fun and worthwhile.
And so perhaps it was fitting that the series finale came two weeks before I graduated from high school. I think it was completely appropriate that the closing chapter of Lost coincided with a closing chapter of my life. When I was watching ABC's rerun of the series finale the week after it aired, I was struck by part of Christian's words to Jack in the church in the final scene: "The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people." I couldn't help but think that this was something that applied to my own life and my high school friendships, and struck me as something very fitting considering what changes were going to come with leaving high school. The ending of Lost as a whole, I think, couldn't have been better. Sure, there could have been some little details changed here and there that could have improved it, but in a show that focuses so much about the characters, having the ending focusing on them coming all together one last time before moving on together couldn't be more perfect. And somehow the series finale managed to get me to like Jack, if only just in that one episode, despite me hating him for six seasons. That has to count for something, right?
So five years after I watched the pilot episode for the first time, I may have changed a lot from that 13-year-old sitting on the couch sewing her pointe shoes, but one thing has stayed the same: Lost will always be my constant.
(And just for fun, I thought I would share some of my random, incredibly specific memories of my Lost watching experience over the past six years:
- Episode 2x13, The Long Con: My mum falls asleep and misses the ending of the episode; I still tease her relentlessly about it.
- Episode 2x20, Two for the Road: I spend like two days thinking that Michael shot Benry at the end of the episode instead of his own arm (must have been the bad reception on out TV back then), until one of my friends corrected me.
- Episode 2x23/24, Live Together Die Alone: We almost miss out on the last scene because we didn't expect it to involve a blizzard and two guys in the Artic, so we were about to turn the TV off until we realized that the show was still going on.
- Episode 3x08, Flashes Before Your Eyes: I watched it up in my brother's room with my friend Isabella. It was Valentine's Day and we'd had a snow day that day.
- Episode 3x21/22, Through the Looking Glass: I had read spoilers regarding the ending (shame on me!) but my mind was still completely blown because for some reason I hadn't really believed that they would actually go through with making all of Jack's flashbacks in that episode flash-forwards.
- Episode 4x07, Ji Yeon: It takes about half an hour of my mum and me making crazy speculations about Jin's last flashback (time travel? alternate reality?) before realizing that it was indeed a flashback, not a flashforward like Sun's.
- Episode 4x09, The Shape of Things to Come: I'm on spring break from school, and I spend the hours before it playing Final Fantasy X while my cousins mock me for getting angry at Cactuars for killing me.
- Episode 4x12, There's No Place Like Home Part 1: I was reading A Tale of Two Cities during commercial breaks for my English class because I hadn't finished my reading assignment but there was no way in hell I was going to miss Lost to do homework.
- Episode 4x13/14, There's No Place Like Home Part 2: I have to wait until three days after it airs to watch it due to dance rehearsals/performances, so I watch it up in our playroom on a cassette tape while eating mango green tea ice cream. Sometime later, that tape somehow ends up having a clip of Final Fantasy X on it during the last scene, and to this day I still have no idea how it got there.
- Episode 5x09, Lafleur: My mum is completely confused about time travel, so I have to draw out a diagram for her explaining everything. That conversation that Miles and Hurley have a few episodes later about how time travel works? That was pretty much me and my mum after this episode.
- Episode 5x11, Whatever Happened, Happened: True to how I began watching Lost, I was sewing a pair of pointe shoes during this episode.
- Episode 5x15, Follow the Leader: My mum had read an episode summary beforehand, so she spent the whole episode going "Ooh, this will be a cool scene" (e.g. when Mocke tells Richard to save Locke), eventually prompting me to tell her to "Stop being so Eloise-ish."
- Episode 6x09, Ab Aeterno: After this episode, I was up until 2 in the morning writing a literary criticism paper for my English class. I proceeded to get an A/A+ on it, even though I was pretty much pulling things out of my ass the whole time, so I've decided that the divine influence of Richard Alpert helped me do well on it.
- Episode 6x13, The Last Recruit: I beat Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days about fifteen minutes before the episode came on. I was half-hoping for the episode to have a character die in so I could go "No, [insert character here]! Who else will I have ice cream with?" Turns out that wouldn't happen until the next episode.
- Episode 6x17/18, The End: My uncle (also a Lost fan) was watching it with us, and he and my mum were asking questions about everything throughout, and I eventually had to give up trying to answer them because it was annoying me too much. Eventually my response was quite similar to Lapidus's while he was fixing the plane: "DON'T BOTHER ME!" (All in all, Lost nights at my house were Serious Business.)
And finally, I found on my camera a picture on a note that my mum left for me the morning after "The Candidate" aired (this was back when we thought Lapidus was dead):
... turns out she was right, of course. Because Jack was just too obvious of a choice.
Now I had been peripherally aware of the show, since she had been watching it since the pilot first aired, and she had told me about how it was such a cool/weird show. So I knew some snippets of information, like that there were polar bears and mysterious monsters in the jungle, there was a mysterious hunter guy who had been in a wheelchair before coming to the island, there were numbers that popped up everywhere after some guy used them to play the lottery, some guy named Boone died late in the season, and there was a hatch in the ground that they were trying to open. I hadn't seen an episode, though, and at that point I hadn't really been interested in watching it. So I sat there on the couch, sewing my pointe shoes, and somehow, I ended up getting sucked in. I ended up watching almost all of the first season within that next week, because season two started a week later and I wanted to be as caught up as possible. And by the second season started, I had been sucked right in to the fandom.
So now, five years later, after the show has come to its conclusion, I'm still obsessed with it. There are still things to debate about the sprawling, complex plot and its equally complex characters. I've been rewatching the whole series over the past couple months, and it's amazing how little details in the show come together over six seasons, from Locke's famous "two players, two sides" line in the pilot, to the mysterious skeletons in the caves in episode 1x06, to the seemingly random four-toed statue in the season two finale. And although the show was far from perfect at times (I don't think many people can forgive episodes like "Stranger in a Strange Land" or "Fire + Water," for example), it was, overall, one of the best things that I've had in my life over the past five years. To me, it wasn't just a show that you watched once a week: it was something that you analyzed, debated, and made crazy predictions about. Sure, it made you think sometimes, but that was what made it fun and worthwhile.
And so perhaps it was fitting that the series finale came two weeks before I graduated from high school. I think it was completely appropriate that the closing chapter of Lost coincided with a closing chapter of my life. When I was watching ABC's rerun of the series finale the week after it aired, I was struck by part of Christian's words to Jack in the church in the final scene: "The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people." I couldn't help but think that this was something that applied to my own life and my high school friendships, and struck me as something very fitting considering what changes were going to come with leaving high school. The ending of Lost as a whole, I think, couldn't have been better. Sure, there could have been some little details changed here and there that could have improved it, but in a show that focuses so much about the characters, having the ending focusing on them coming all together one last time before moving on together couldn't be more perfect. And somehow the series finale managed to get me to like Jack, if only just in that one episode, despite me hating him for six seasons. That has to count for something, right?
So five years after I watched the pilot episode for the first time, I may have changed a lot from that 13-year-old sitting on the couch sewing her pointe shoes, but one thing has stayed the same: Lost will always be my constant.
(And just for fun, I thought I would share some of my random, incredibly specific memories of my Lost watching experience over the past six years:
- Episode 2x13, The Long Con: My mum falls asleep and misses the ending of the episode; I still tease her relentlessly about it.
- Episode 2x20, Two for the Road: I spend like two days thinking that Michael shot Benry at the end of the episode instead of his own arm (must have been the bad reception on out TV back then), until one of my friends corrected me.
- Episode 2x23/24, Live Together Die Alone: We almost miss out on the last scene because we didn't expect it to involve a blizzard and two guys in the Artic, so we were about to turn the TV off until we realized that the show was still going on.
- Episode 3x08, Flashes Before Your Eyes: I watched it up in my brother's room with my friend Isabella. It was Valentine's Day and we'd had a snow day that day.
- Episode 3x21/22, Through the Looking Glass: I had read spoilers regarding the ending (shame on me!) but my mind was still completely blown because for some reason I hadn't really believed that they would actually go through with making all of Jack's flashbacks in that episode flash-forwards.
- Episode 4x07, Ji Yeon: It takes about half an hour of my mum and me making crazy speculations about Jin's last flashback (time travel? alternate reality?) before realizing that it was indeed a flashback, not a flashforward like Sun's.
- Episode 4x09, The Shape of Things to Come: I'm on spring break from school, and I spend the hours before it playing Final Fantasy X while my cousins mock me for getting angry at Cactuars for killing me.
- Episode 4x12, There's No Place Like Home Part 1: I was reading A Tale of Two Cities during commercial breaks for my English class because I hadn't finished my reading assignment but there was no way in hell I was going to miss Lost to do homework.
- Episode 4x13/14, There's No Place Like Home Part 2: I have to wait until three days after it airs to watch it due to dance rehearsals/performances, so I watch it up in our playroom on a cassette tape while eating mango green tea ice cream. Sometime later, that tape somehow ends up having a clip of Final Fantasy X on it during the last scene, and to this day I still have no idea how it got there.
- Episode 5x09, Lafleur: My mum is completely confused about time travel, so I have to draw out a diagram for her explaining everything. That conversation that Miles and Hurley have a few episodes later about how time travel works? That was pretty much me and my mum after this episode.
- Episode 5x11, Whatever Happened, Happened: True to how I began watching Lost, I was sewing a pair of pointe shoes during this episode.
- Episode 5x15, Follow the Leader: My mum had read an episode summary beforehand, so she spent the whole episode going "Ooh, this will be a cool scene" (e.g. when Mocke tells Richard to save Locke), eventually prompting me to tell her to "Stop being so Eloise-ish."
- Episode 6x09, Ab Aeterno: After this episode, I was up until 2 in the morning writing a literary criticism paper for my English class. I proceeded to get an A/A+ on it, even though I was pretty much pulling things out of my ass the whole time, so I've decided that the divine influence of Richard Alpert helped me do well on it.
- Episode 6x13, The Last Recruit: I beat Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days about fifteen minutes before the episode came on. I was half-hoping for the episode to have a character die in so I could go "No, [insert character here]! Who else will I have ice cream with?" Turns out that wouldn't happen until the next episode.
- Episode 6x17/18, The End: My uncle (also a Lost fan) was watching it with us, and he and my mum were asking questions about everything throughout, and I eventually had to give up trying to answer them because it was annoying me too much. Eventually my response was quite similar to Lapidus's while he was fixing the plane: "DON'T BOTHER ME!" (All in all, Lost nights at my house were Serious Business.)
And finally, I found on my camera a picture on a note that my mum left for me the morning after "The Candidate" aired (this was back when we thought Lapidus was dead):
... turns out she was right, of course. Because Jack was just too obvious of a choice.