In its 6th and final Season, Lost has managed to re-invent itself once again and remain vital.
By John J. Joex
ABC, Tuesdays 9 PM EST
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars (After 5 Episodes)
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
Lost has been appointment television for myself and millions of other viewers since the show first debuted in 2004. The series about a group of survivors from a plane crash that find themselves on a mysterious island that has many secrets grabbed the public’s attention when it first debuted and has since done something few other shows can boast: it has continued to re-invent itself each season. I remember when I wrote a review for the show after its first four episodes I commented that I could not see how the creative team could keep the series viable for more than a season or two. Of course I did not realize the amount of vision and planning they had put into the idea that would continue to keep the series vital and engaging into its sixth year (or, as an alternate explanation, they are really, really good at winging it and riding by the seat of their pants). I do admit that Lost as strayed at times (parts of Season 3 and some of the time travel stuff last season), but it has never veered completely off course like, say, Heroes. And now, with the planned sixth and final season, the show has re-invented itself yet again and has my head spinning through its first five episodes.
At the end of Season 5, Jack Shepherd convinced his fellow time travelers, who were stuck with him in the 70’s (and era anybody would want to escape from), that they needed to detonate the nuclear bomb on the island to change future events and keep their plane from ever crashing. The others with him reluctantly agree to go along with this plan and, after at first seeming to fail in this endeavor, the fifth season finale ended with Juliet at the bottom of a pit pounding on the bomb until it exploded. Fade to white. Wait until the Season 6 premiere.
And as the current season resumed, we find Jack and the others still alive (though Sayid and Juliet are barely hanging on) and they have returned to the present day, though they are still on the island. Their plan of changing the timeline and the fate of Oceanic 815 appears to have failed (though Miles later gets a message from the grave that “it worked”). But then there’s another story to tell that begins with a flashback to the airplane just as its hits the turbulence that ripped it apart and sent it plummeting to the island. Only, this time around the turbulence passes and the plane is still intact. Huh? What happened?
Welcome to Lost’s newest story-telling technique: the flash-sideways (Parallel-Flash? Lat-Flash? Alt-Flash? I’ve seen any of a number of suggestions on the Internet). Apparently setting off the bomb did do something, and now as each episode tracks the goings-on at the island, we also get a glimpse of the main characters in this new alternate reality. So get ready for your head to spin out of control and be sure to have your quick-reference Lost encyclopedia handy!
At first, I thought the flash-sideways were showing us what would have happened if Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed. But the fact that Desmond sat down next to Jack during the season premiere should have clued me in that something was afoot (I totally spaced that until a few days later because I had become so accustomed to his presence with the other characters). As the episodes have progressed, we find that this alternate reality was different even before Oceanic 815 ever left Sydney. Entire timelines have changed including Shannon not coming back to America with Boone and Locke being engaged to marry Helen Norwood and Jack having a son. And this alternate reality is peppered with characters that we have seen throughout the show’s first five seasons including Others and characters who appeared in previous flash-backs (or flash-forwards or flash-diagonals or whatever). Basically, almost every person who shows up on the screen for more than a minute or two could have previously made an appearance at some point during the show. Thank goodness for the Lostepedia because after referring to that on multiple occasions I realize how much back-story has drifted from my conscious over the past few years.
So is this new spin that the creators have thrown at us in Season 6 really advancing the story or do they just want our heads spinning so fast that we won’t realize they have pulled a fast one on us to get out of writing a real conclusion to the series? Hard to say at this point. I like it so far and believe it is giving us a deeper look at each of the principal characters, though you could argue these glimpses are meaningless because they’re not part of the real world. Or are they? On the island, the events relate back to Jacob (now supposedly dead) and his black-clad nemesis and the chess game these two had been playing that seems to involve everybody (and I mean everybody). I imagine that the alternate reality will play into all of this at some point as well. If so, this could give us a masterful conclusion to an outstanding series. And we can only hope that is where the writers are headed and try hard to forget about the bad taste left in our mouths after Battlestar Galactica totally fumbled away its attempts to wrap up its many storylines.
Most importantly, Lost continues to deliver an engaging drama that has avoided the staleness that often permeates television shows that manage to stick around more than a couple of years. It’s still appointment television and it currently looks like it is building up to a heck of a culmination to its over-arching story when it finally wraps up this season.
Which leads to the question of what’s next? The ratings for Lost had declined over the last few seasons, though they have still remained respectable. So far this season, though, the numbers have picked up and I’m guessing the pivotal series-ending episodes will pull in blockbuster numbers. So does ABC try to continue the story through a spin-off of some sort (or a spin-back or a spin-sideways)? Hard to say, but they have indicated an interest in keeping the property alive. We can only hope they decide to leave it alone for now, though, and move on. After six excellent seasons (assuming this season continues on its current pace), it deserves a rest so that we can reflect back on the good times it brought us.

For the most complete online Lost reference guide, go to Lostpedia.com
Watch episodes of Lost online for free (all the way back to Season 1) at Hulu.com
Buy Lost Season’s 1 – 5 on DVD from Amazon.com at up to 58% Off: