I have to say right off the bat that I never watched Lost: The Complete Collection
in its initial run. I also have to say, thank God for Netflix that let me watch it in a relatively compacted length of time where I could watch all six seasons in order but without significant delay. If I hadn’t, I would never have remembered even half of what was supposed to be going on. Those caveats aside, I did enjoy the show. I had already heard about the series ending — which I will not discuss here, having already loosed that spoiler on someone I thought would have heard it by now — so I viewed the whole series with that revelation in mind. It added something, I think.

For anyone who doesn’t know the premise…a group of passengers survive the crash landing (mid-air break up) of Oceanic Flight 815 and find themselves on a tropical island. Not unlike an earlier group of castaways who were a little less angst ridden…(Gilligan’s Island: The Complete Series Collection) they have to learn to work together to survive. Speaking of Gilligan and crew, I couldn’t help but notice that in the Lost survivors we also had a millionaire, a celebrity, a couple of young beauties, a married couple or two, a professor (or at least a high school science teacher). Just saying…

But Lost is much more complex. The action flickers back and forth to the lives that brought the survivors to this pass. My favorite thing to do was play “spot the other cast members” in these flashbacks. I do hope somewhere in one of the references this series spawned is a list of all the random encounters that tied these people together.

The acting was consistently strong, with only one or two performances that annoyed me. I won’t say who I disliked, but I particularly enjoyed Terry Quinn’s multi-faceted Locke and Jorge Garcia — Hurley was my favorite character of all — as well as Dominic Monaghan and Emilie de Ravin as Charlie and Claire. It was fun to see the guest stars too — Nathan Fillion was a treat, for example.

A lot of people have complained that the producers didn’t know where they were going with the show, and I agree in part. It didn’t seem to have one strong story arc carrying through the entire project, but I forgive them. They set themselves a major task, and did a decent job with most of it. Would I watch it again? I think Newell would disown me if I did…but I did enjoy it.