[Roll Your Own Life] The TV That Shaped Me (Part 9)

LOST (2004-2010)

Oh boy. Here we go. Number 9 (chronologically) of the Ten TV Shows that had a massive impact on me. This is going to be a tough one to write.

Let's get this out of the way - I started watching LOST because of another TV series that I absolutely loved - ALIAS. It was kinda like Buffy with spies, and it was great. Jennifer Garner was super-cool, kicking evil spies in the proverbials, and it was epic. I loved it. When J.J. Abrams announced another series he'd been working on, I thought I'd give it a go, even though there was little known about it - just that it was about a planecrash on a desert island.

There was talk of the pilot episode being one of the most expensive things on TV, and that it was going to be something seriously special I knew I had to tune in.

The pilot episode was seriously epic and a great bit of TV. It perfectly introduced the characters with a glimpse into their backstories - punctuated by the trademark LOST *whoosh* - and then, just when you're wondering what caused the plane crash of Oceanic Flight 815, the trees shake, and the strange starts seriously happening with the arrival of the smoke monster.

Weird stuff keeps happening, and over the series we see more and more of the flashbacks - each episode focusing on a character, until we discover the hatch...

By this time I was hooked. When season two introduced the weird underground bunker, and the numbers, and the computer terminal... talk about absorbing it all. I took it all in, checked out the websites for Oceanic, and the Bad Twin novel, and scoured the forums for theories. Yes, I became a bit obsessed.

Despite the fans starting to wane with the Others storyline, I stuck with it. And then the season four revelation of moving the island. I loved it.

I was engrossed. I was there with the Lost Experience ARG, joining in with the search for Rachel Blake, uncovering the Hanso Foundation, piecing together the clues.

It was great. Season five split the timelines, with some of the characters trapped on the island, some timetravel to the 70's, and then season six starts flash-sideways to an alternate timeline where the plane didn't crash. It was great. I wanted to know more. There were theories, and J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof denied them all, saying it was all planned, and none of the theories were right...

The series was coming to an end, everything was going to be revealed, and Sky did a simultaneous broadcast with the States at a ridiculous hour (5am) in the morning. Yes, I got up early to watch it...

And...

I was gutted.

I haven't been that disappointed with entertainment since The Phantom Menace. But the weird thing is, I was working at the cinema when Episode I came out, and after that initial disappointment I watched The Phantom Menace a dozen times and grew to love it. It's my favourite of the prequel trilogy! I know, shocking.

However, I haven't experienced that LOST finale again.

Debs still loves Kate and Sawyer as characters and a few years ago she asked for LOST for a Christmas or Birthday. So I bought the complete series on bluray, and we started watching it again. It looks glorious still, but I don't think we got any further with our rewatch beyond the first disk. Maybe it was that feeling of disappointment tainting it for me.

I really should give it another go.

#RPGaDAY 2019 - DAY 22: LOST

Mr Frodo, sir... Custom Autocratik dice thanks to www.chimericdesigns.co.uk

Day Twenty-Two of #RPGaDAY 2019 is LOST.

Initially, I thought about writing about the TV series. I was obsessed with that series, so much so I even started working out how LOST could be done as an RPG. This was back when I was doing stuff for Eden Studios, and thought a Cinematic Unisystem version of the game would work perfectly.

Of course, it never happened, and then there was that ending of the series which I won't go into... Such a shame. I really loved that series. Got very into it - read Bad Twin, did the online Alternate Reality Games, followed the clues...  Maybe I'll go back to my rewatch. I started a few years ago after managing to get the set on BluRay at a good price, and the opening episodes were still jaw-droppingly great. I loved every moment except that ending.

Anyway, this isn't really talking about RPGs is it? My amazing wife suggested I should write about the fine line between the characters getting lost and the players getting lost - and I must admit I hate that feeling of simply not knowing which direction to go in during a game. Thankfully, we have a great GM who plants lots of adventure seeds, and gives us the freedom to go off on a tangent.

I think I need more practice before I can do that.

LOST the plot...

This is the end... beautiful friend.

Endings have been on my mind a lot recently. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I've been finishing a few series that I've been reading for what seems like forever.

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Stephen King's The Dark Tower. I'm a massive King fan, and I mentioned in an earlier post that I had the honour of meeting him a few years ago when he was promoting Lisey's Story. The Dark Tower was his epic, his fantasy story that tied all of his universes together - all circling the Dark Tower, and Rowland the Gunslinger's quest to reach it.

It's taken many, many years for King to write it, and almost as many for me to read it. I've reread the first three, been sidetracked by other books, and forgotten the series almost entirely but I finally reached the last page a couple of weeks ago and was left with that disappointment that usually accompanies massive works of fiction.

Let's just get this straight - the ending of The Dark Tower is just about perfect. Without giving anything away, it is a logical conclusion, and a perfect resolution to the story. But, me being me, I just wasn't satisfied.

Maybe it's just me.

Yesterday, I finished reading the comic series Unwritten. Great stuff, about the power of words and stories, and imbuing a person with that sort of power. It defies genre, messes with the medium, and when the main story finished it came to its perfect ending. An ending that goes against expectations, and is another great and brilliantly suited ending. And again, I just kinda felt empty.

Maybe I just don't like endings.

Take TV for example. I quite enjoyed True Blood. Pretty good series, nothing groundbreaking, but that ending!! Oh, jeez... with a couple of minor tweaks it could have had a great ending.

Battlestar Galactica (the remake). I loved that series. Loved every second - brilliantly done, amazing acting, effects, and story... but again, that ending left fans very, very divided.

Of course, the series I felt most betrayed by was LOST. I loved LOST. Loved it. Was obsessed by it. I watched it as it aired, I bought the DVDs, I read the books (even the tie in weird one - Bad Twin), played the awesome online Alternate Reality Game (The Hanso Foundation stuff, and the Rachel Blake blogs), and the action figures. LOST was great. Mysterious, intriguing, and brilliant.

When the island moved I went insane with joy. It was great. And then the time travel stuff? Awesome.

And then came the ending. An ending that they promised us (way back at the end of season one) wouldn't happen. They said that wasn't what was going on, but they lied to us and that last episode ruined everything for me. I've not rewatched LOST, I've given most of the books to charity shops, sold off the action figures, and find it hard to think about that series at all.

Maybe that's why I'm having a problem finishing my writing...  I don't want to pull a LOST. Luckily, I know how the trilogy of fiction books that tie in with WILD end. I know how that last scene plays out - and I don't think it's a cop-out. But then, I bet Damon Lindelof didn't think the ending of LOST was either...

Well. We'll see. NaNoWriMo is looming ever closer, and I'm undecided as to whether I'm taking part - I probably shall, attempting to either make a first draft of the second book in the series, or rewrite the first for a new and improved draft.

Only time will tell!

Until next time, stay multi-classy and LLAP.

D