LOST Seasons 1-6 Review

Spoiler Free Review: 

When Oceanic Air flight 815 crashes on a remote island in the middle of the pacific the survivors of the plane crash find themselves struggling to survive. The Island has many mysterious dangers that keep the survivors on edge and threaten their survival. Interwoven within the on-Island survival story each episode also contains flashbacks to the person's past giving us insights into what they were doing before they got on the plane, why they were traveling from Sydney Australia to LA, and most importantly, the hardships in their past lives. It was an excellent formula that kept the show fast-paced and made for wonderful characterization. Within that first season we got to know the characters really well and you'd be hard-pressed to find a viewer who didn't find a character to root for and connect with.

With each new episode the survivors of Oceanic 815 discover new things about the Island and stumble across new mysteries. It is because of these mysteries that the show's focus and feel keeps changing from season to season. I didn't think that I was watching a science fiction show when I started but somewhere in the third season it became very science based and then somewhere in the sixth seasons the show writers did an about turn and changed it into a (badly written) fantasy show. 

I absolutely loved the first season and I enjoyed the second season quite a bit. Season 3 is when I began to question the direction the show was taking and I must say seasons 4-6 did not live up to this show's potential at all. Below are my thoughts on the individual seasons. Be warned, however, this show relies a lot on the mystery element so no matter how spoiler free I try to keep these you might want to watch season 2 before reading my thoughts on season 3 and so on.

Season 1: Oceanic 815 Survivors 
Season one was a story about people in a plane crash. The flashbacks did an excellent job of characterization so that when something was discovered or a situation arose that they had to deal with we knew how these characters would likely react. Most of the characters also had wonderful arcs that showed them growing and changing as they spent more and more time on the Island. It ended with a pretty big cliffhanger as some of the survivors are attempting to get off the Island and get more than they bargained for. It was an excellent season and I would highly recommend it.

Season 2: The Mysterious Others
By the end of season 1 the survivors are sure that there are others on the Island with them and that these others are anything but friendly. The season focuses on them trying to find out more and more about these mysterious others. After the events of the last season we want to see the characters we've grown to care about reunited. In my opinion this season is when a few of the seeds of this show's decline were planted.  Michael's actions, the way they handled the new characters, Locke and Jack's supposed "conflict" over the button, and the introduction of the Other character "Henry" were not handled very well and they set the stage for some of the problems that grew in later seasons. Some mysteries were also introduced this season that we never get a proper explanation for which became really frustrating in later seasons. Watching it the first time these elements did not seem to be a problem at all, but taken in the context of the whole show things are a little different. I would also highly recommend season 2.

Season 3: Behind Enemy Lines
This season focuses in large part on the society of the "Others" on the Island and how they interact with the survivors. It focuses heavily on the character of Benjamin Linus - the leader of the Others and much is revealed about the Dharma Initiative - the people responsible for building the Hatch and other such facilities on the Island. This season marked a turning point in the series: this is when the focus shifted from characterization to action and "the next big curveball" type of storytelling. The mysteries were being piled on as we went along and many of them were solved before others were added, but my main problem was that characters' motivations stopped making sense and started becoming part of the "mystery". This is very flawed storytelling and plainly bad characterization. Mystery is great and to keep a viewer guessing why something is happening or what the heck is up with this Island is cool, but when I have no idea why characters are doing what they're doing - especially when these characters have already been established in previous seasons - then there's a problem. The other thing that frustrated me about this series is that it effectively got rid of the diversity in the characters... characters who weren't Jack, Locke, Kate, Ben, and Sawyer started to fade out of importance or just disappeared altogether. Not cool.

Season 4: The Freighter
This season was a lot leaner and more fast-paced than season 3 (there were much fewer episodes). The focus is shifted once more, this time it's all about the newest arrivals on the Island - the (again) mysterious people from the Freighter. Season 4 changed the formula of flashbacks into something new that worked, but wasn't, in my opinion, as effective. There were some great characters introduced like Daniel Faraday and Miles, but to be honest the number of unexplained things started to become overwhelming this season. It was good, better than three in terms of pace, but I really wish they had stuck to some of the already established mysteries. Also, I missed many of the characters that used to play a big role in seasons 1 and 2.

Season 5: Science of Time 
Season 5 is all about time. I really liked some of the things they did with time in this season and I liked the way they brought the focus back to the whole Dharma initiative thing, but I feel that this didn't quite live up to it's potential. It was still great, and I began to have hope that the series might get back on the right track and answer some of those old, almost forgotten questions, but they made one misstep in my opinion which was the big time jumps. The first three seasons all took place within a number of days and now suddenly we're being shown huge leaps in time with sudden character shifts that don't make much sense or haven't been explained well enough. Again, the authors seem to have forgotten that real humans have something called motivations every time they do something. Real humans don't just change their ways randomly. You have to SHOW how a character is changing and that makes the change very interesting for the viewer. Overall, a solid season, very far removed in terms of focus from season 1, but it worked quite well.

Season 6: And now Fantasy 
I'm a fan of Fantasy, I really am, but when it's well done. The "mytholgy" of the show that was revealed in this season was ridiculously basic and unoriginal. It also swept aside all the sci-fi and characterization questions that had been built up in past seasons. As if the authors couldn't be bothered to figure out and pull together the world building they had already done and just wanted to get it over with so they decided to make this "magical" solution. Unfortunately, even that proved too difficult for them to follow through and the season 6 finale ignored both the sci-fi and fantasy world-building that had been done. There was still much to enjoy in terms of little character moments and things, but I found this season the least engaging overall. I lost all interest in watching it just a couple of episodes before the end and had to make myself finish.



Overall, if you haven't watched LOST yet and think you might want to I'd recommend the first and even the second season, but beyond that it's not really worth watching.

 Spoiler filled review coming soon!