It's been about four years since I began watching the mystifying and often irritatingly suspenseful Lost series. The show, now in its fifth season, has taken so many turns and added so many characters that it is a mere shadow of the Lost of season one, proving that writers can feed any sort of plot to viewers as long as the portions are just right.
It all began with a crash on an island but has led to ghost sightings, black cloud monsters, polar bears, men who don't age, time travel and spending hundreds of billions on finance corporations taken from taxpayers.
The genius of Lost is in the seamless transition from realistic occurrences to pie-in-the-sky fantasy without losing a large core audience that anxiously awaits the clock striking nine every Wednesday.
We begin from a reasonable story and then find ourselves lost in a mess of unforeseen problems. Each program results in the fixing of the events in the previous program, continuing an addiction to finding more fixes. There is no need to enter the numbers in the computer if they do not open the hatch; there is no need to halt CEOs' bonuses if they were not given the money to supply them.
Watching the newest episodes without knowing what was "previously on Lost" would be impossible to digest and every viewer would dismiss the show, unable to relate. Viewers became absorbed by the crash, and without that dramatic event there is no relevance in discussing Richard's immortality just as there is no relevance in helping General Motors now after decades of hardship.
More often than not, questions were created rather than answered. The snowballing problems that generate are not caused by the Others, the survivors, the Dharma Initiative, the government or even the corporations, but rather because of their involvement with each other. This collectivization of ambitions eliminates the possibility to complete any goals; the groups work best within their boundaries but fail miserably when they attempt to communicate with organizations that work in completely different fashions.
The real world is entirely different from fantasy. Everything fits perfectly in the world of Lost, with every character somehow connecting to one another, the primary reason why people love the show, and the primary difference with reality. There will be all the answers at the end of season six, but the answers to all of our real problems don't come so easy.
Standing back and looking at the entire course of events, I don't know why I'm still watching this chaos play out. The roles of the characters have morphed from being doctors and repairmen into gods, and the executive branch has gone from protecting our rights to crusading democracy and even electric car design - and yet everybody's awaiting the next episode.
