Lost's Greatest Hits
Yesterday I ranked the season themselves. Today I thought I'd look back and pick the greatest moment from each season of Lost. Most of them were
surprisingly easy to choose.Season One: The ending of "Walkabout." The fourth hour of Lost, this was the episode that turned me into a fan. The revelation of Locke's past, and what happened to him on the Island, made you realize this show was different. If I wanted to turn anyone on to the show, I'd show them this.
Season Two: The season-opening sequence in "Man Of Science, Man Of Faith." Looks like a flashback, but we have no idea where we are or who this is. It's a thunderbolt when we discover we're in the Hatch, right where we left off last year.
Season Three: The end of the final episode, "Through The Looking Glass," when Kate approaches Jack. We realize we've been watching a flashforward, and they got off the Island--and aren't necessarily that happy about it. This is probably the greatest moment on Lost and one of the greatest moments ever on television.
Season Four: The first three seasons were easy, but no single moment stands out so obviously here. I guess I'll wimp out and take the popular choice, the ending of "The Constant." It's more a a stand-alone thing than my other choices, and the show is maybe trying a bit too hard here. Nevertheless, the ultimate connection between Des and Penny was a powerful moment.
Season Five: There were a lot of great moments this season, and it's hard to pick the top one. Discovering the nasty young man is Charles Widmore. Ben choking Locke. The Six getting on that Ajira flight, knowing what's in store. Sayid shooting young Ben. The revelation of who Jacob is. And quite a few others. But the moment that got to me most was Ben being judged by Smokey in "Dead Is Dead." Particularly when he sees Alex again--and it turns out to be a less than loving reunion. Ironically, the moment loses some power in retrospect, now that I know it's part of a long con by MIB. But it was incredibly powerful the first time around.
Season Six: No question here. The ending, when we find out (for better or worse) just what's going on in the flashsideways. Though I question the dramatic choice, I can't deny it was deeply moving.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:01 AM
4 Comments:
It seems to me it's difficult to "question a dramatic choice" when you've been "deeply moved".
The moment may have been moving, but it had the effect of cutting off one half of season six from the rest of the show, and arguably trivializing much of what was happening. One can be moved emotionally while recognizing intellectually there's something wrong.
Question: Suppose that in one hand, you had all six seasons of Lost on DVD. In the other hand, you had all six seasons, except that the entire AltaWorld had been removed from season six.
Which of these is the better show? Which would you recommend to a friend to watch?
(Clarification: If you deleted the altaworld scenes from S6, the resulting episodes would be less than the standard 42 minutes each. And sometimes they would not end on a dramatic "bang!" since the final scene had really been an alta-bang. And the entire S6 would be shorter than any other season. Unless these things completely horrify your dramatic sense, I'd rather you answer not be based on these considerations.)
I honestly don't know what my answer is. But the fact that I find the question hard to answer says a lot. Also, as far as I can tell, deleting the altaworld creates no real continuity problems in the resulting series, except maybe one or two sentences that Desmond said, but those are cryptic even in the complete series.
I almost didn't catch your comment before the post was off the scroll.
Perhaps you'd like to let us know what yout best moments of each season are (though I suggest you save it for the next Lost post).
Anyway, maybe they'll offer your option on the DVDs.
In a week or two, I'll have something up that goes into alternate theories of the alternate world, but, as I stated at length in earlier posts, the conventional understanding of the altaworld is not dramatically satisfying because it's more a bow after the curtain than an integral part of what was up till then a very exciting plot. While seeing the characters working out their problems in new situations had a certain interest, proper storytelling required them to tie in more strongly to the main plot to pay off. (Though the producers were going for a different payoff--one which no one saw coming, and one which had a power of its own.)
Without altaworld, you've also got to explain Juliet's dying thoughts. And though the ending would be a happy one, it would be fairly bittersweet as so many regular (and non-regular) characters had to die to (perhaps) save the world.
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