The Paley Center announced the initial lineup for the 31st Annual Paley Television Festival, from March 13-18th several popular TV shows will unite their casts on stage for some exciting Q&A’s. No doubt, the highlight of the interactive press junket will be the 10th anniversary reunion for the masterpiece of all television shows, LOST.
Details like what cast members will be attending and if it will be streamed online have not been released yet, but I’m going to fly to Sydney just to fly to L.A. to see the LOST cast…if I make it.
It has been TEN years since LOST‘s debut. TEN YEARS! Dare I say, If you have not seen (what I believe) to be the BEST television show ever created/produced/aired…queue it up on your Netflix, hit up your local library and put those DVD’s on hold or bug one of your besties to borrow the complete series and PURGE over a weekend, week or two. Or do what I did and RE-watch it.
Upon watching the series in its entirety again, I realized the brilliance. The brilliance of Michael Emerson in season Two. The brilliance of season four, episode five “The Constant’ which is the finest 43 minutes of television ever created. But most notably, the brilliance of the final season, which was clouded almost entirely by question marks leading to the finale. One was so overwhelmed with possibility that disappointment was a virtual certainty…the first time. After watching it all again, I cried at the poignancy of the last season and what the finale meant. Each remembrance was so well crafted that when you finally get to Jack, knowing the outcome, knowing what it all meant, you finally see the intention of what the show is truly about.
Every show has flaws. Every single one, without exception. LOST just played a very high stakes game, of which likes almost no other show before or since has even tried to attempt, in terms of storytelling, volume of important characters, etc. I personally feel everything served a purpose, whether we liked that purpose or not.
It’s a cute parlor trick to say the show was different for the first couple of seasons. I find it very difficult to find any show that stayed the same after two seasons, besides Dexter. And look how that turned out. And after watching LOST again, it is obvious that the man of science vs man of faith premise is constant throughout. As are the internal conflicts of what the characters used to be versus what they have become as a result of being together on the island. When I finished it, IMO theres not a single consequential question I felt was left unanswered. You can snag your sweater on the drawer of sci-fi all you like, but the final seasons revelation was to illustrate that the questions of the present mattered little to the purpose of the whole.
Anyone who is still bitter over the LOST finale only needs to watch the series again from the perspective of knowing the final result. The show is a brilliant introspective into life, meaning, relationships, atonement and existentialism. You do yourself a disservice by dismissing that. Sure there’s still some great shows. Amazing shows even. But I haven’t been able to fill the void left by LOST.
And if it was on purpose or completely coincidental, whoever scheduled the LOST reunion on the 16th is a mother effin genius.
-Dagobot
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