Angelus News | July 12, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 14

Promotional
image for the final
season of “Lost.” |
ABC VIA IMDB
The golden age of ‘Lost’
Perhaps the last live
TV drama to capture
a country’s attention
before the streaming
era, the hit ABC
show also took faith
seriously.
BY AMY WELBORN
It was a time, my children. A time
when a television series might have
as many as 25 episodes in a season
and — even stranger — the gap between
those seasons was measured in
months, not years. It was also a time
when a smart, entertaining television
series was born and lived at that pace,
directed, not at an algorithmic niche
with the virtue signaling to prove it,
but at a broad general audience and
was wildly successful at it.
That, my children, was the age of
“Lost.”
This year marks the 20th anniversary
of the beginning of the show’s six-season,
121-episode run on ABC. Since
then, it’s been available on DVDs and
various platforms. It’s currently on
Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix.
I was a bit of a latecomer to “Lost,”
initially put off by a remark in a preview
that was something like, “So, the
entire UCLA volleyball team crashes
on an island, and? …” I eventually
caught up — maybe during summer
reruns (yes, that was a thing too, children)
and was hooked.
You’d be hooked, too, if you watched
the first episode: without a question
one of the finest pilots ever made, beginning
with a single eye-opening, the
gradual consciousness of screaming
in the background, the heartbreaking
and terrifying aftermath of a plane
crash, a collection of intriguingly
distinctive survivors and ending, somehow,
with a monster in the jungle. I
mean, what was this?
“This” was indeed, something else.
Something unique to television at
the time, and since. An adventure
that straddled some space between
science fiction and fantasy, a drama
with sharp comedic elements, and an
absorbing, albeit frustrating mystery. It
was even an exploration of faith, in its
broadest sense.
Most of all, though, “Lost” is about
people. I’m going to maintain that the
deep, continuing appeal of “Lost” lies,
not in monsters or numbers or secrets,
but in its profoundly humane vision,
embodied in the adventure, the
conflict, the heroism, the sorrow, and
the winning, diverse cast of characters,
strangers but not, in communion without
even knowing it.
Quite simply, “Lost” is us.
A striking promo for “Lost” that aired
in England in 2005 featured the cast,
artfully made up and costumed, dancing
in artsy ways, the burning plane
behind them. The cast voice-overs
echo: one of us is a sinner … one of us
is a saint… all of us are lost.
And that, in my mind, is it. That’s the
appeal. That’s the reason why, under
YouTube recordings of Michael Giacchino’s
moving, perfect soundtrack
to the show, so many comments (e.g.,
“I hear the first few bars and I’m in
28 • ANGELUS • July 12, 2024