I’ve now seen the first four episodes of Lost season 4.
After a tense build up to an amazing cliff-hanger at the end of season 3, season 4 has been a roller-coaster. Gone is the slow, edge-of-the-seat and often agonising pace at which the plot and characters developed and the tension grew in much of season 2 and 3, and in comes a much more thrilling and exciting action tone.
Not to say that it’s delivering all the answers – while some amazing things happen in the early season 4 episodes, they still throw up yet more questions, and only tease us with possible outcomes rather than reveal any in full. There are still a full two seasons to come, so I guess things will not be fully explained even by the end of the current season.
However, it is still gripping – my jaw dropped more than once during the four episodes, as the new challenges facing the survivors lead to unexpected divisions and behaviour. Some of the characters that I had down as the reliable and dependable group members have seemingly begun to crack or change as pressures mount, and it’s hard to predict what might happen between now and the end of the season.
It really is the best thing on telly at the moment.
Mind you, I don’t have a TV and this is the only thing I watch, so that’s not a hard conclusion for me to reach.
I thought I’d be able to put my finger down on Season 4 and have discovered that I now know less than ever about the Island or the people on it. Good, but frustrating. I used to watch it in a group when I was in Princeton as well as listen to a podcast, but now that I’ve returned home to Los Angeles, I have done neither of those. I should take up the podcast again to get some conversation going about it. Funny, though – I know a bunch of people here who watch LOST, but no one watches it together! Weird!
Try the official Lost podcast (on iTunes). The writers/producers talk about the episodes after they have aired, and answer emailed questions. They actually reveal stuff, and usually interesting stuff at that. For example, they said that both of these are important to the plotline of Season 4:
And that the second one should go some way to giving an explanation of the missile time-shift from episode ?3.
I’m really liking season 4, by the way. You’re right, Simon: a completely different direction which has turned the show into a conspiracy thriller. The second episode was one of my all-time favourites. I’m looking forward to this week’s one, which is a Desmond episode. His are always brilliant: the time-travel one last year is (I think) my favourite Lost episode.
PS once you’ve watched the second one, blow your mind with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
Maybe skip straight to the wormholes section if you’re not a physics buff…
What are those two links on YouTube Justin? Are these the missing pieces? I’ve not really heard much about them.
The first one is one of the missing pieces (the only really useful one from what I can see), and the second one is one of the “canon” videos that they release from time-to-time for the fanboys. They are both official and have been talked about by the creators.
Here’s one of the other, important, ones: