Hello Lost fans far and wide, and welcome to my little experiment here.
In one sentence: I'm going to be watching Lost for the first time in chronological i.e. not episodic/airdate order, and am going to blog about it, one episode at at time.
In much more than one sentence: I'm a pop culture junkie. I love keeping up with pop culture as much as possible. And yet, somehow, I missed out on Lost. It was likely because I was in college and didn't have TV when it first aired, and by the time I had the ability to watch it on TV, it was already on its third season, and I felt like it would be too maddening (and take too much of my time and money) to try and catch up. Through osmosis, I did find out about the time jumps and flashbacks, and an idea started to slowly hatch in my head.
I knew from the beginning that there was no way that the show was ever going to really explain all of the mysteries and mythology surrounding the show. There had just been too many things that had built up over time, and the show, from the little I knew about its style and plot, always struck me as being more about how how the characters reacted to the strange things happening on the island rather than the strange things themselves. Therefore, I realized that it might be interesting to try to watch the show chronologically rather than episodically, as doing that would allow me to likely understand character motivations from the very beginning, as well as possibly not be quite as maddening to keep track of week in and week out.
When I heard that the third to last episode of the series was a flashback to the early days of the island, I was ecstatic, as I had a clear starting point for this instead of just beginning at a random short flashback. So I'll begin with Across The Sea and work from there.
After doing a lot of deliberating and research, I've decided to view the episodes in a somewhat strange order, but one that I think will make for the best narrative experience possible and still stay true to the chronological experience. Originally, I was going to watch the episodes set in 1977 before I even saw the plane crash, as well as try to watch the crazy constant timeflashes that happen before the survivors on the island get to 1974. However, I realized that there would be a lot of emotional drama lost if this was how I was introduced to many of the main characters. It would likely also be strange to have the characters remember all of their experiences on the island, and react to seeing some people they had already encountered before, while I would have no idea what they were talking about. Anyhow, here's the basic order of how I'm going to watch the episodes:
1. Everything pre-crash (including all flashbacks) excepting any episodes that show the main characters experiencing timeflashes (including 1977 and the huge number of timeflashes in the beginning of Season 5)
2. The crash and the 108 days spent on the island after it.
3. All of the timeshifts for the people remaining on the island until they get to 1974.
4. All footage showing the survivors that get off the island from 2005-2007.
5. The 1977 episodes.
6. The rest of the main timeline through to the last episode.
7. All of the sideways timeline.
You can see that I'm making a sort of controversial decision to watch the sideways timeline all at once, after the main narrative. Based on what the sideways timeline really is, and based on how it ends the whole show, I actually think this might be an extremely effective way to watch the show, and it might be more poignant than the way it was presented.
All right, after all of that, a quick rundown of what I know and don't know about the show (minor spoilers here). While I do know some basic plot points due to the research I needed to do to get that viewing order in place, I made sure to make it so that I learned virtually no character development, and even the plot points I know have no context.
I know:
A plane crashed on the island.
All revelations that happened in the last episode (such as what the sideways timeline really is).
There's someone named Jacob and someone named The Man In Black that are related somehow and are from the island (or something).
There are characters named Locke, Jack, Kate, and Hurley, and I know that Jack is played by Matthew Fox and Locke is played by Terry O'Quinn.
There's something called a Smoke Monster, and at some point there was a polar bear, I think in Season 1.
What I don't know:
Everything else. :)
I don't want to create a set schedule for this experiment, as my life can be very unpredictable in terms of how much work I have (I'm extremely busy in general). There may be weeks that go by without a post, and I may do posts for multiple days in a row. In fact, there might be an off chance that in the next several weeks I'll try and cover more than one episode a day. We shall see.
I hope you enjoy this, and maybe it will help you experience the show in a new way. All I ask is that in the comments you don't spoil anything for me. And as a warning, for those of you who haven't seen the show before and don't want it utterly ruined or would like to watch it the "normal" way, these posts will be filled with spoilers. I'll update with Across The Sea soon. Thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment