Lost - Season Two
Before I get into this let me warn you that Lost is best enjoyed unspoiled. While I'll do my best to avoid giving anything away, if you do want to tuck into season two of Lost completely untainted by foreknowledge, then look away now.
On the other hand, Lost is all about the journey and knowing what happens is only half the story - finding out why and how it happens is where the fun lies. I had the misfortune (courtesy of Dreamwatch magazine - an otherwise fine read) to learn about two major events which occurred during season two. However, things are rarely what they appear to be in Lost, and sure enough the circumstances of these two events proved to be somewhat more interesting than the events themselves.
Still, read on at your own risk.
We watch a lot of TV shows in the House of Cawthorne, and it's time we wrote about one or two of them. For the most part reviewing the odd episode of Doctor Who, or an entire season of CSI would be a pretty useless endeavour: one episode of CSI is much like the next, and reviewing every single episode of a show would just grate after a while.
Lost, however, is a slightly different kettle of fish. Each episode adds a little more to the (pretentiousness alert) tapestry of the show's mythology, while also building on the mystery of why these characters are on the island and who they are. Each episode is a piece of the puzzle, while each season is a large step along the journey (mixed metaphor there maybe... think of each episode as a piece of the puzzle, and each season the process of putting all those pieces together only to realise that the puzzle is nowhere near complete).
Why am I skipping ahead and writing about season two when I've barely said a word about season one?
Well, second seasons are a far more interesting measure of a show. During the first year of a show the creative minds behind it will be finding their way, equally the audience will be getting used to the characters and working out what it's all about. Additionally, most shows seem to face the constant threat of cancellation during their first year on the air.
Come the second year, the show is more secure from a production standpoint. However, the audience knows what to expect and, as a rule, the producers are now required to deliver a show that builds on what's gone before, while also heading off in interesting new directions and while also remaining true to what's been established in the first season. Creatively, the second season also affords the security to actually start developing that long term story.
In short, the first season is a lot of finger crossing and fumbling around (unless the show has been really well planned from the outset and is an instant hit, as seems to be the case with Lost), while the second season is where the challenge really starts.
Down in the House of Cawthorne we all but gorged ourselves on the first season of Lost - we couldn't get enough of it. We watched the entire series intensively over the course of a few nights. Admittedly some of those nights were separated by the span of several weeks, but Lost is the televisual model of the unputdownable novel: once you start you simply can't stop watching it.
Even though we couldn't wait for the second season to start, it actually took us quite a while to get on with watching it. In the end we started watching mainly in a bid to beat Channel 4 (who announced the start of the second season in May) and to avoid the inevitable spoilers that the trashy TV and gossip mags seem to delight in posting.
There was also a bit of nervousness - we'd enjoyed the first season so much it seemed almost impossible for the second to measure up. When we finally took the plunge, we ended up watching the entire season over about a week. It's safe to say we were glued to our set once again.
There are two things I really like about Lost - two things which took me by surprise when I first started watching last year. The first is the way in which the history of the characters is as much a part of the story as their experiences on the island. In the hands of almost anyone other than JJ Abrams I would have had almost zero interest in Lost - after all how far can you go with a bunch of people stranded on an island? Luckily Abrams and the rest of the writing team remembered that great drama is built upon great characters and they've made the backstories of the characters one of the most compelling parts of the show.
The second is the way the writers expertly trip up viewers along the way, making us believe we understand a situation and then showing us it's something totally different. This is most effective in the way that a character's history is only revealed fragment by fragment. Equally the characters stranded on the island often shift between the poles of hero and villain: 'good' characters do bad things, and 'bad' characters sometimes do heroic things.
Season two has, I think been a successful continuation of the series. While some mysteries have been solved (we know, for instance, what was in the hatch, and why Jack got married and divorced) others remain unanswered. Meanwhile, whole new questions have arisen. It seems that the more we find out about what's going on on the island, the less we understand.
Of course season two ended on a cliffhanger so oblique that most of us were surely left scratching our heads. Luckily Lost has been so successful that it's unlikely the series will end prematurely (like Carnivale or Angel) with questions left hanging. Then again, with US network television nothing is guaranteed.
