I Bought a Borrowed Suit and Learned to Dance

I know that I might be behind the times on this, but I think I am becoming a big fan of the show "Lost." Last night, I watched the first 4 episodes with a few friends, and I really enjoyed the writing and concept of the show.

At first glance, the show seems to simply be another reincarnation of the "lost on a deserted island" tale, which has recieved treatment in various forms throughout the years in television and the movies, but "Lost" is so much more than that. Many of the elements that have been built into the show demonstrate an incredible level of attention to detail among the show's writers.

Another one of the most interesting parts of watching the show is how I mentally categorize people that I know into the characters on the show. Chuck Klosterman talks about this phenomenon in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Klosterman discovered that after he began watching MTV's Real World in the early 1990's, people that he met somehow reminded him of people that had appeared on the show. This type of media transferrence might be an indictment of the place that entertainment holds in our society, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Those of you who are familiar with the show probably all know someone who reminds you of Jack, Sawyer, or Kate. It is also interesting to think if that person were in a similar situation as the survivors, would they act in the same manner as they normally do, or would their behavior be altered significantly by being placed in such an incredibly stressful situation. I think that these kinds of questions are very easy to ask in hypothetical situations, but the true answers would only come with such an event becoming a reality.

I was talking with one of my friends last night whom I watched the show with, and we wondered how long the show will run. He said that believes it will last about 4 seasons, but that length might have to do with some issues that we discussed regarding viewer satisfaction. At first, it seems that viewers are very satisfied with the show. It is one of the most highly rated shows on television, and is also written and produced at a very high level. One of the most intriguing aspects of the show is the level of mystery and suspense that it works with. Such an element continues to draw viewers in week after week. What do the numbers mean?

We wondered if viewers will lose interest in the show if they are not given answers to questions that they have regarding the show. I think that there are some people who might not continue to watch the show if they do not think that the show does an adequate job of explaining some of the mysteries present on the show, but this should not cause the writers of "Lost" to alter their methods of storytelling.

As I said earlier, this is a large part of what makes the show so popular. If the writers had chosen to make the entire situation surrounding the numbers or the backgrounds of each character completely clear from day one, the appeal of the show would be diminished greatly. People would not be walking around wearing shirts listing the numbers or taping them to their desks if all was now clear.