Lost is a strange but wonderful series. There are so many things going on, you can’t help but be a bit confused from time to time. There’s an unexplainable medical/magnetic thing happening, where passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 who were in a wheelchair or had cancer or were sterile suddenly found their medical problems solved after the flight crashed somewhere in the Pacific between Australia and Los Angeles, and the island they landed on seemed somehow alive. Miracles happen. But so do other reversals. Women who get pregnant on the island die with their babies. What’s with the second plane that’s found in the ocean with all passengers accounted for . . . and dead? Is this island a kind of alternative world? All of these questions have made for one of the more exciting television series in recent history.
The end of season three found the survivors of flight 815 within moments of being rescued. A mysterious boat has appeared off the island’s shoreline that has hung a knocked-out paratrooper named Naomi dangling above the tension-rattled group. There’s conflict over whether the would-be rescuers are to be trusted. Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Sayid (Naveen Andrews) and most of the “level-headed” castaways try to do everything within their power to get off the island, while Locke (Terry O’Quinn) and Ben (Michael Emerson) believe the rescuers to be less than truthful about their motives for coming–not to mention that neither wants to step off the island’s inexplicable healing soil until they locate and mince words with Jacob, the unexplainable God-like being that Ben constantly mentions. Between the two factions stands a group of people with different motives to either stay or leave the island. Con-artist Sawyer (Josh Holloway) would be returning to a world where he’s not particularly welcomed, Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) run the risk of losing their baby because of the island’s strange birth rules, and Juliet would lose years of research to return to her cancer-ridden sister.
So, season four finds the survivors of flight 815 at a crossroads. Instead of the usual character specific flashbacks that have been such an integral part of the series, those moments find the characters looking into the future instead of the past. This shift flips everything on its head. This new dynamic helps give Lost a new methodology to follow. However, the key to the series still lies in discovering and observing the dynamic shifts that revolve around the identities of the Oceanic Six–first, which characters are the actual survivors, and second, how these particular six are going to make it off the island, as opposed to the others.
Obviously, getting rescued has been a central theme of Lost from the start. It stands to reason that the longer the survivors are on the island, the more suspicious some of them are apt to become of any potential rescuers. Also, with rescuers comes the introduction of new characters. One might expect the arrival of rescuers to be the death nil for Lost, but the crew behind the series has handled their introduction so well; it has only added another dramatic element.
With all these elements at play–the mysticism, the newcomers, the character interactions, and the flash forwards into post-Oceanic crash time–Lost has to make a few sacrifices to cram it all together. J.J. Abrams and company have crafted too many interesting characters for their universe. Throughout all the chaos blitzing through this season, a few of the key players take a back seat more than some would probably like. Most notable is Sawyer; he rarely finds an integral spot in the narrative. Juliet, as well, gets nudged in that same direction, serving up only secondary trust/distrust conflicts on the beach. She does, however, get a clever expository episode that helps reveal some of the secrets behind how she transforms from the sweet, curly-haired researcher on the mainland to the hardened, untrustworthy woman of scorn.
Despite the fact that not all of the characters get ample screen time, Lost continues to be one of the most sophisticated and intriguing television series on the air today. Watching season four on Blu-ray has made me very excited for the arrival of the fifth season on January 21, 2009.
Lost is unbeatable in Blu-ray (AVC/MPEG-4 codecThe colors are bold and vibrant, the level of detail is astounding, and there’s a nice sense of 3-dimensionality to boot. I can’t find a thing wrong with this picture, and it’s presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, so it fills out the full monitor.
The English PCM uncompressed 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit) soundtrack rocks! Like the picture, the sound is so pure that you can’t imagine it streaming any clearer or more precise than it is here. Additional soundtrack options are English and French Dolby Digital 5.1, and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0, which is often the case. Subtitles are in English SDH, French, and Spanish.
The bonus features included here are pretty average. The commentary tracks aren’t as compelling as the show itself, but fans will probably enjoy hearing what Lilly and Garcia have to say about “The Beginning of the End,” or what editor Mark Goldman and producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse say about “The Constant.” I enjoyed listening to director Stephen Semel and actors Kim and Kim from “Ji Yeon,” and if you’re finding your way, as I am with this series, the commentary for “There’s No Place Like Home, Part 2” with Lindelof and Cuse is pretty good.
Disc 3 is full of featurettes. There’s “Lost on Location,” which zooms in on behind-the-scenes filming of some of this season’s most dramatic scenes; “The Freighter Folk,” which is a guide to new characters with some insight into what producers were looking for; “The Island Backlot: Lost in Hawaii”,” which shows how a large crew of technicians transformed paradise; “The Right to Bear Arms” features a rundown on the firearms used in the show, with cast members talking about what it’s like to use them; “Soundtrack of Survival: Composing for Character, Conflict & the Crash” is a live performance of the score by the Honolulu Symphony Pops; “Course of the Future: The Definitive Flash-Forwards” uses this season’s leaps into the plot-future as the basis for an interactive feature that includes actual script pages “Offshore Shoot” shows the giant rigs that were built to get the freighter shots; and “The Oceanic Six: A Conspiracy of Lies,” a fake documentary that tries to get at the truth behind the stories the six survivors are telling.
Rounding out the bonus features are deleted scenes and bloopers, and another symphonic performance for “The Others Theme.” Oh, and the color insert is a replica of the kinds of safety instructions you find in the seat pocket on airlines.
