A lot of people like television. I’m not one of those people. In fact, until my fiancé moved in with me, I hadn’t had a TV for almost 10 years. And why should I watch TV? When I want news, the internet is a better source. When I want entertainment, I watch a movie, play a game, or chat with friends. I find most TV programs to be insultingly bad. Two shows have broken through my dislike of television though: The Daily Show, a satirical news show, and LOST, the best drama on television. I’ll write about The Daily Show in another entry. Today I’ll write about LOST and tell you why it's the best show in a generation.
LOST is the story of a group of people who struggle to survive after a plane crash on a mysterious island somewhere in the
I started watching the first season as a way to study Japanese, actually, but became too interested in it. My fiancé and I would borrow the DVD from Tsutaya and watch it first in English, with English subtitles for her to practice her English. I would write down the difficult vocabulary for her to review later. Then we would watch it again in Japanese with Japanese subtitles, and I would practice my English. We did this for the first two seasons and really enjoyed it. Eventually we got too wrapped up in the story and we wanted to watch more episodes faster, so we just watched them in English. One night we went to Tsutaya three times to get more DVDs because we couldn’t stop watching it!
What is it about LOST that makes it so exciting? The first thing is that we never expect what will happen next, so we’re always surprised. Main characters sometimes die unexpectedly, so we are always worried that they might die at any time. The second exciting thing is the timing. Every episode ends with a cliff-hanger, so we always want to find out what happens next. The third thing that makes it exciting is the intricate storyline: every episode is packed with mysterious details that we want to know more about, like reoccurring numbers or interconnected characters. The story is larger than just the 40 minutes that it is shown each week because all of the events are connected to each other through back stories. Now that the characters are traveling through time, the story has become even more intricate because the events that are happening in this season are making the story that we watched in the previous seasons! Confused? That’s how every non-fan feels. But for the fans, that’s just part of the fun.
I’m not the only hardcore LOST fanatic. You can see for yourself –just check the number of pages on Wikipedia about it: every episode has its own page, as well as each season, character, and event. Along with that there’re hundreds of websites and podcasts dedicated to discussing the show. There’s enough information to fill a library of books, just about this one TV show. It’s a social phenomenon, and best TV program in a generation. Most of what’s on TV is garbage, but LOST is different. Start with season one and see for yourself.
Vocabulary:
satirical = a kind of comedy used to talk about serious issues
generation = the group of people at the same age (people in my generation are 35-45 years old)
struggle = try hard
pregnant = about to have a baby
conflict = fight, argument
destiny = fate, your future
wrapped up in = really interested in
unexpectedly = without notice or warning
cliff-hanger = a very exciting moment, like when a character is hanging on a cliff
packed with = full of
reoccurring = happening again and again
interconnected =connected to each other
intricate = detailed, complicated
hardcore = serious
fanatic = a crazy fan
phenomenon = an amazing thing
