I was a JJ Abrams loyalist from the moment a curly-haired college freshman said "Dear Sally" into a tape recorder. Later, an extreme preoccupation with the Rimbaldi collection would help define September 2001 through May 2004. So, unsurprisingly, months before it aired, I was salivating for Lost based solely on name-brand recognition and I was proudly beating the drum for the unseen desert island drama. A stolen (not by me) bus bench ad was nailed to my dorm room wall. Like a certain former box company employee, I was relying very heavily on a reservoir of faith that it would be everything I wanted it to be.It would be overkill at this point to summarize the public's reaction to Lost or the place it holds in pop culture, so I'll simply say: faith paid off. That first season, I was the Jehovah's Witness of Lost fans, telling all my friends about the wonders that lurked in the corners of the island and in the (refreshingly diverse!) characters' murky pasts. By the end of season two, I could draw a spiderweb-shaped social map of my Lost influence; converts who had made coverts who had made coverts. Drug dealers would have found me incredibly useful. And so Lost became a personal, social touchstone, not just a cultural touchstone. Viewing parties were nearly mandatory, not just because of our obsession with the show, but because of an unspoken excitement over the fact that we all shared the obsession. Lost was pile-on-the-couch, talk-about-it-for-an-hour-afterward entertainment. Stuff like that happens when a show says, "here are the characters... and here are some big ideas."
It's perhaps terribly unfitting that the title of this article would reference a Raymond Carver story--Carver's subtle, domestic short stories navigate quiet pains that course beneath a modern surface. His work is far more connected to Mad Men, Men of a Certain Age, or perhaps Treme than it is to Lost, which wears its emotions on its Thai-tattoo-coverin
g sleeves. Lost, usually, shuns subtlety outright. It operates on the traditional dramatic movements of a modern soap opera and, with the possible exception of Friday Night Lights, so does every other single drama on network television. But that never tarnished Lost, or what it stood for because Lost was never one to whisper. It's always used exclamation points to define its characters (hero complex! never stops running!! broken spirit who masks his hurt behind quippy nicknames!!! REDEMPTION!!!!) and to ask its questions. And Lost never stopped asking questions."What does it all mean?" is the question we asked about Lost that we also asked about life. When we talk about the island, to some degree, we're talking about existence in a spiritual or, at least, metaphysical way. Faith and reason and their respective personifications were routinely pitted against each other, but the audience was never meant to root for one side or other. It wasn't debate club. It was a heady, whiz-bang dramatic game of communal reflection. "Talk amongst yourselves" was more Lost's demand than Coffee Talk's. Lost kept impassioned conversations about destiny, purpose, and faith spinning--on couches, at water coolers, on message boards--and even when we weren't talking about those subjects explicitly, we couldn't ignore them. Our take on Lost's characters and plotlines revealed and informed our views on bigger concepts. They were integral to the puzzle.
I'm not saying I won't miss the characters, the twists, and the Hawaiian backdrop. I will. I'm not saying I don't care if they don't answer mysteries. I do. (So, um, why exactly does Walt get all birdy-killy?) But what I loved most about Lost--and what I'll feel the greatest nostalgia for--is the way it made us wonder, and that we wondered together. Too often, art wants to provide answers, but Lost withheld them, both in theme and plot. It asked, sometimes directly, about what we stand for, philosophically, in the context of the Universe. It's easy to forget that, stranded on this unique, miraculous planet, we're still prone to wondering, justifiably, "Guys, where are we?"
