And Now for Something Completely Different-LOST

"I looked into the eyes of this island, and what I saw was beautiful." - John Locke

I hate mainstream television. ABC, NBC ,CBS or Fox with their reality TV, horrible sitcoms, false-flagging/lying "news" they they show each night at 6:30pm (Do you think Katie Couric sleeps with a bottle of vodka by her bed for when the nightmares come?) and their HORRIBLE announcers during professional sporting events (Joe Buck and Tim McCarver-just go away or stop talking...you make my brain hurt and my anger rise). However, their is a diamond in the rough, as they say. That diamond is LOST. Normally I would not blog about a damn TV show on ABC, but this is such a mind-bending, gripping, paradoxical show that EVERYONE should watch it. It has a worldwide following sine it began in September of 2004. After now an astonishing 117 episodes, the show concludes on May 23, 2010. I know I will be wearing a black armband on the 24th.....Since the 2005 Emmys see what they have been nominate/won for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_for_Lost

That's 41 Emmy nominations (not including the current season 6), winning 10 Emmys. That's 7 Golden Globe nominations, winning one. These are just some of the critical praise from the mainstream media. Type LOST TV show into Google you get 129,000,000 hits. Granted the viewership has declined over the years (15.69 million for season one down to 11.05 million for season 5 in the US ) but LOST is being shown currently in 50 countries from Estonia to Saudi Arabia to Argentina. Considering that LOST is considered a "cult" show and the show is actually more addictive than crack (study were done at Stanford University and LOST rehabs are popping up all over the country like a whack-a-mole), you are talking maybe of HUNDREDS of millions of people who look forward to those 18-23 magical weeks each spring for the last 6 years where they can can be totally befuddled for an hour each week while watching LOST. When the DVD sets are released (usually around Christmas-thanks Santa) they have either been #1 or #2 each year for the best selling TV DVD of that particular year. What I am getting at is this is an amazing show-well written, great actors, amazing production and directing and a plot line that at some times makes you go "what the....oh my God!".

If you have never seen the show here is a brief synopsis:
Oceanic flight 815 going from Sydney to Los Angeles suddenly crashes in the South Pacific and the survivors land onto a mysterious island. On this island, there are many enigmas and problems that the survivors must face while they learn about the island and each other The show is formatted in two ways: current timeline with the survivors on the island and flash-backs, flash-forwards and flash-sideways of their lives off the island. The show has a amazing ensemble cast (its huge, but these are the main characters throughout the 6 seasons):

• Jack Shepard (Matthew Fox)-Spinal surgeon from Los Angeles
• John Locke (Terry O'Quinn)-a paraplegic who has a special connection to the island
  
• Kate Austin (Evangeline Lilly)-a woman who is on the run from the law
• James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway)-a wise-cracking con man
• Hurley "Hugo" Reyes (Jorge Garcia)-lottery winner that becomes very unlucky
• Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews)-an Iraqi with a violent past
• Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) & Sun Kwon (Yunjin Kim)- a Koren married couple who have issues
• Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan)-a rock star with a drug addiction
• Claire Littleton (Emily De Ravin)-a pregnant woman going to Los Angeles to give her child up for adoption
  

Other characters have appeared in one or more seasons, but I do not want to give that away for those who have never seen the show. LOST even has it's own wiki site (which has 6727 different articles, 250,000 members and over 150 MILLION hits on their website plus blogs and everything for web 2.0 users can think of about LOST):

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

If you haven't seen the show yet, again please stay away from the lostpedia, but those who enjoy LOST, it is an awesome resource to read up on your favorite show. Also look at this site for you LOST junkies:

http://www.thetailsection.com

Its great for LOST theories about what the heck is going on, up to date news about the show and various interviews with cast and crew.

Watch out for LOST spoiler sites (like http://darkUFO.com/ or http://lostspoilers.wikia.com/) or as like the name implies, it will spoil it for you (Unless your like me have have no patience and no cash to buy anther season). Also, considering the show is done in approximate real time (each show is about one day) the syndication of the show televises it out of order, which makes no sense as you need to watch the show chronologically for it to make it comprehensible. This is not a show that rots your brain-the show becomes so intricate that you have to think...and then when the show is over, you realize that the next week is just a waste of time until the next episode. I searched the Global Village to see if you can watch ALL episodes on line, but I couldn't find anything. You would probably need to find bit-torrents online to watch all episodes. However check out Google videos or youtube and type in Lost season 1 or 2 or whatever and you can find some of the older episodes there. ABC.com is just showing season 6, so avoid that until you watch the first 100 or episodes first-let's do some quick math: 117 episodes times approximately 43 minutes per episode equals 5031 minutes or almost 84 hours or three and a half days-I hope you have some vacation time and lots of coffee stored up. For those kinda up to date, I've included Hulu Lost on my website, which has 39 episodes but is kind of out of order but at least you can get an idea about this show. Again though a warning: THIS IS SHOW IS ADDICTIVE-it should come with a warning label from the FDA. So if you find yourself on a Thursday morning @ 3AM trying to decide if you want to watch another episode (well, they are ONLY 43 minutes long....I can get by on 3 hours of sleep) don't kill the messenger.....In the World that we live in, it is nice to find something that can bring you joy, make you think and help ignore all of the stupid problems of life even if it is only for hour or so. Go get the first season and begin to get LOST!