My Lost Season 1 Rewatch Diary
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”
-John Locke (the paper salesman)
January 15, 2019: The First Go Round
Nearly 9 years after leaving the island, I’m back. Feels good to return, seeing old familiar faces and ones I don’t miss as much (I’m looking at you Ian Somerholder and Maggie Grace). It’s hard not to feel bad for the plane wreck survivors knowing what lies ahead and how bad the situation already is from the getgo, tragedy on top of tragedy really. With a few exceptions, I like how I can’t really recognize most of these actors from anything else. Matthew Fox’s Jack is still Jack to me. Jorge Garcia’s Hurley Hurley. Sayed Sayed (Naveen Andrews). Claire (Emilie de Ravin) (!). Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim)! Evangeline Lily’s Kate probably stands out the most and looking back it’s not surprising why- hers is a well-rounded character from the beginning, and she is already playing both the person who wants to be redeemed and the fugitive still running from a checkered past. And she just comes off as a kick-ass action star type, somebody you’d want on your Survivor team. And then there’s Josh Holloway as Sawyer. He has a great redemption arc and becomes one of the real heroes of the show, maybe even more so from Jack in my recollection. I can’t really think of him, though, as being in anything else besides a brief role in the beginning of Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol and it’s surprising to me that’s the case (although a Culture Study commenter recently mentioned he’s doing a pilot with J.J. Abrams and playing a getaway driver so that’s cool).
1/16/19: The first end
I quit the enterprise.
February 2021: Back on the plane, err train
The idea for resuming my Lost rewatch seems to come like a divine spark of inspiration from the TV gods (and maybe out of frustration from the soft, safe landing of one of the latest contemporary offerings, WandaVision). Whatever the case, I’m glad to go back to the island and the first few episodes certainly affirm this decision.
3/5/21: “The Confidence Man”
You know, Sawyer, you probably could have made a move on Kate that didn’t involve lying about having someone’s asthma inhalers while said person is having an attack and you are getting tortured about it, and your mouth’s all bloody and stuff, but I digress.
3/8/21: Gone golfin’
Jack: “Hurley we’re focusing on surviving here, and you want to build a golf course?”
Hurley: “YES, FUN! MUST HAVE FUN.”
Me: “Yeah I relate to that now more than ever…”
Jack: “Let me take out the 7.”
Sawyer: “Alright I’m betting the house he misses!”
3/11/21 Clayah
Caught the first Claire flashback episode last night. Always thought she was an enjoyable character- laidback, great accent, easy on the eyes, likes peanut butter…BUT HAS DEMON BABY INSIDE, MIND BLURRY CANNOT SEE MORE NOW.
6/5/21: Back on the plane, err train, part deux (ex machina)
Times have been tough on the island these last few months. I’ve been eating lotuses (certainly not the heroin in Virgin Mary statues), and watching movies, catching up on the 2020 releases and revisiting old DVDs again. And so I haven’t had time to write anything here, or I haven’t remembered. I can’t tell really. Regardless, that’s enough prologue for now. Let me tell you what I’ve recalled as the fog clears:
- The numbers are cursed of course, and Hurley’s flashback episode is one of the best. Everybody loves Hugo and so do I.
- John Locke’s (Terry O’Quinn) deference to the island and its healing properties is a trip. It’s tough, though, his journey starts with such redemptive promise, but ends with you know what happening (I love Jack’s line to Kate at the end of the season too, “If we survive this we’re gonna have a John Locke problem.” Enter the delicious conflict of man of science vs. man of faith.)
- Walt is still a super intriguing character and his dad is still super annoying (although I admittedly came around to him more at the end, seemed like he was in a tough situation pre-island and was trying to make the best of it). Psychic powers aside, I think Walt is also good for the show because he’s a smart kid with a bit of an edge in a room full of well-intentioned, righteous adults (and we know how that often goes).
- Boone (Somerholder) is better than I remember, Shannon (Grace) less so, although I like her romance with Sayed. Unfortunately for Boone, though, he just fell off the edge of a cliff in a plane and is in critical condition as Jack tries to save his life. To be continued…
6/9/21 Life and Death
RIP Boone. I gotta say I liked him a lot more the second time around- risked his life by trying to save a drowning woman he didn’t know, reliable early helper for Jack, John Locke’s protege’, and the unrequited lover in a strange stepsister infatuation situation. All this gives his death a fair amount of weight and is the right amount of upping the stakes for the show at this point, a reminder that everyone is in a treacherous situation, while not necessarily a gut-wrenching loss of a main player (a la Game of Thrones) (in a way John Locke has also reminded me of a character on another HBO show, Westworld: the man in black, given his similar young idealist background and how being thrust into a strange new world gives him the means for an ultimately dark reinvention)). I also liked how the show juxtaposed Boone’s death with the birth of Claire’s child, and how the event made other characters, especially Kate and Jin, step into new roles (in the following episode, the surprisingly calming nature of Sawyer’s voice was a nice touch). It was a neat reminder how in a time when all seems so bleak, a little light can still shine through (the cave collapse episode is also a great example of this, as Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) is forced to push past his inner demons in a dire situation).
6/18/21 Wrapping Up
Whew. After almost 2.5 years, a global pandemic, and a personal move about 3 hours south, I’ve finally finished rewatching the first season of Lost (raucous applause followed by gracious bowing, “yes yes,” etc. etc.). If you enjoyed the show when you first watched (buffer of a few years give or take rewatch preferences), or like adventure/survival blended with sci-fi/mystery (and if you don’t I’m not sure we can be friends), then it’s definitely worth the time. I did find some parts to kind of slag though, and I wonder what a season of 10–12 one hour episodes would look like (or even if our friends at the BBC did a few hour and a half hour eps). Still, it was kind of nice to just have a 45 minute-ish episode, and even some less weighty moments for exhalation, not to mention a lot of very special episode montages on the beach at sunset, as scored by Michael Giacchino channelling Ludovico Einaudi. And sure some of those moments may lose their dramatic impact when viewed in succession instead of on a weekly basis, and parts of it are undeniably corny (Matthew Fox for one was given a lot of exceedingly dramatic moments), but I’ll be damned if it’s not one heckuva show filled with moments not out of a place in a Steven Spielberg-type summer blockbuster, and just darn compelling character journeys that resonated for me in my own life as I was stuck on my own island in this great in-between time (Jack, Hurley, Charlie, Locke, and Kate probably resonated for me the most. I was actually supposed to walk part of the Camino de Santiago back in May 2020 and could relate to John Locke’s pain at being turned away from his walkabout. There’s also a superstitious bent to Hurley that I tend to view life through and sometimes get carried away with (although it does make life more fun sometimes). And Charlie, Jack, and Kate represent some things I’m gonna have to spend some more time unpacking as I reacclimate to the post-pandemic world). The only downside to the whole thing was an acute sense of FOMO- why couldn’t my island time have been filled with sexy, interesting people with juicy backstories and mysteries? Or a smoke monster lingering in the background some- wait, nevermind.
#lost
