It seems a lot of people are missing the point of Lost. The latest is Lucy Irvine, author of Castaway, who says it’s unrealistic. To be fair, only two episodes have aired in the UK so it’s easy to jump the gun on this one.
The whole point of Lost is that it’s unrealistic.
Over the rest of the first season (I’ve seen it already), there will be numerous episodes where members of the cast point out how unlikely, if not impossible, it was that they survived; all sorts of weird things happen, of which the invisible monster and the polar bear are but two; and there are amazing coincidences all over the place. However, there are many, many hints that there is a reason for all these weird things happening.
This does, of course, make the show almost immune to criticisms of implausibility, although its slow-moving plot, predictable structure, etc are perfectly valid areas for criticism. We’ll have to wait till the end of the show, I suspect, before we’ll know if it makes any kind of sense under its own terms. Given the rate at which we’ve had plot explanation in Alias, J J Abrams’ other show, don’t be banking on much emerging very rapidly, though.
Here are a few things to look out for in the first season:
- Survivors of the crash appearing in the backgrounds of each others’ flashbacks
- The magic numbers
- The hatch
- The Locke episode
- The survivor who wasn’t on the plane
