Product Description
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Created by successful television producer J.J. Abrams (Alias),
Lost has become one of the most popular and critically accled
programmes of its day.
The story concerns the survivors of a terrible plane c, who
find themselves stranded on a tropical island with seemingly
little chance of a rescue. Medical doctor Jack takes a position
of leadership, helping to rally the survivors and prepare them
for a period of difficulty as they learn how to survive on the
paradisaical island. But everything is most definitely not as it
seems, and as the series progresses the island's many dangers and
mysteries are revealed; including evidence that the plane c
may not have been an accident after all. As they struggle to
survive, each of the character’s forms alliances and makes
enemies, all while dealing with the unresolved issues of the
lives they've left behind.
Lost distills the difficulties of society down to their essence,
exploring these problems with compelling characters and with a
setting that's equal parts paradise and mystery. This collection
includes the complete series 1 to 6 of the television phenomenon.
.co.uk Review
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Lost: Season One
Along with Desperate Housewives, Lost was one of the two breakout
shows of 2004. Mixing suspense and action with a sci-fi twist, it
began with a thrilling pilot episode in which a jetliner
traveling from Australia to Los Angeles ces, leaving 48
survivors on an unidentified island with no sign of civilisation
or hope of imminent rescue. That may sound like Gilligan's Island
meets Survivor, but Lost kept viewers tuning in every Wednesday
night--and spending the rest of the week speculating on Web
sites--with some irresistible hooks (not to mention the beautiful
women). First, there's a huge ensemble cast of no fewer than 14
regular characters, and each episode fills in some of the back
story on one of them. There's a doctor; an Iraqi soldier; a
has-been rock star; a fugitive from justice; a self-absorbed
young woman and her brother; a lottery winner; a her and son;
a Korean couple; a pregnant woman; and others. Second, there's a
host of unanswered questions: What is the mysterious beast that
lurks in the jungle? Why do polar bears and wild boars live
there? Why has a woman been transmitting an SOS message in French
from somewhere on the island for the last 16 years? Why do
impossible wishes seem to come true? Are they really on a
physical island, or somewhere else? What is the significance of
the recurring set of numbers? And will Kate ever give up her
bad-boy fixation and hook up with Jack? Lost did have some
hiccups during the first season. Some plot threads were left
dangling for weeks, and the "oh, it didn't really happen" card
was played too often. But the strong writing and topnotch cast
kept the show a cut above most network TV. The best-known actor
at the time of the show's debut was Dominic Monaghan, fresh off
his stint as Merry the Hobbit in Peter Jackson's Lord of the
Rings films. The rest of the cast is either unknowns or "where I
have I seen that face before" supporting players, including
Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly, who are the closest thing to
leads. Other standouts include Naveen Andrews, Terry O'Quinn
(who's made a nice career out of conspiracy-themed TV shows),
Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, Yunjin Kim, Maggie Grace, and Emilie
de Ravin, but there's really not a weak link in the cast.
Co-created by J.J. Abrams (Alias), Lost left enough unanswered
questions after its first season to keep viewers riveted for a
second season. --David Horiuchi
Lost: Season Two
What was in the Hatch? The cliffhanger from season one of Lost
was answered in its opening sequences, only to launch into more
questions as the season progressed. That's right: Just when you
say "Ohhhhh," there comes another "What?" Thankfully, the show's
producers sprinkle answers like tasty morsels throughout the
season, ending with a whopper: What caused Oceanic Air Flight 815
to c in the first place? As the show digs into more
revelations about its inhabitant's pasts, it also devotes a good
chunk to new characters (Hey, it's an island; you never know who
you're going to run into.) First, there are the "Tailies,"
passengers from the back end of the plane who ced on the
other side of the island. Among them are the wise, God-fearing
ex-drug lord Mr. Eko (standout Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje); devoted
husband Bernard (Sam Anderson); psychiatrist Libby (Cynthia
Watros, whose character has more than one hidden link to the
other islanders); and ex-cop Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez), by
far the most infuriating character on the show, despite how much
the writers tried to incur sympathy with her flashback. Then
there are the Others, first introduced when they kipped Walt
(Malcolm David Kelley) at the end of season one. Brutal and
calculating, their agenda only became more complex when one of
them (played creepily by Michael Emerson) was held hostage in the
hatch and, quite handily, plays mind games on everyone's already
frayed nerves. The original cast continues to battle their own
skeletons, most notably Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Sun (Yunjin Kim)
and Michael (Harold Perrineau), whose obsession with finding Walt
takes a dangerous turn. The love triangle between Jack (Matthew
Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), which
had stalled with Sawyer's departure, heats up again in the second
half. Despite the bloating cast size (knocked down by a few by
season's end) Lost still does what it does best: explores the
psyche of people, about whom "my life is an open book" never
applies, and cracks into the social dynamics of strangers thrust
into Lord of the Flies-esque situations. Is it all a science
experiment? A dream? A supernatural pocket in the universe?
Likely, any theory will wind up on shaky ground by the season's
conclusion. But hey, that's the fun of it. This show was made for
DVD, and you can pause and slow-frame to your heart's content.
--Ellen Kim
Lost: Season Three
When it aired in 2006-07, Lost's third season was split into two,
with a hefty break in between. This did nothing to help the
already weirdly disparate direction the show was taking (Kate and
Sawyer in zoo cages! Locke eating goop in a mud hut!), but when
it finally righted its course halfway through--in particular that
whopper of a finale--the drama series had left its irked fan base
thrilled once again. This doesn't mean, however, that you should
skip through the first half of the season to get there, because
quite a few questions find answers: what the Others are up to,
the impact of turning that fail-safe key, the identity of the
eye-patched man from the hatch's video monitor. One of the
series' biggest curiosities from the past--how Locke ended up in
that wheelchair in the first place--also gets its satisfying due.
(The episode, "The Man from Tallahassee," likely was a big
contributor to Terry O'Quinn's surprising--but
long-deserved--Emmy win that year.) Unfortunately, you do have to
sit through a lot of aforementioned nuisances to get there.
Season 3 kicks off with Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline
Lilly), and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) held captive by the Others;
Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Sun (Yunjin Kim), and Jin (Daniel Dae
Kim) on a mission to rescue them; and Locke, Mr. Eko (Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Desmond (Henry Ian Cu) in the
aftermath of the electromagnetic pulse that blew up the hatch.
Spinning the storylines away from base camp alone wouldn't have
felt so disjointed were it not for the new characters
simultaneously being introduced. First there's Juliet, a
mysterious member of the Others whose loyalty constantly comes
into question as the season goes on. Played delicately by
Elizabeth Mitchell (Gia, ER, Frequency), Juliet is in one turn a
cold-blooded killer, by another turn a sympathetic friend;
possibly both at once, possibly neither at all. (She's also a
terrific, albeit unwitting, threat to the Kate-Sawyer-Jack love
triangle, which plays out more definitively this season.) On the
other hand, there's the now-infamous Nikki and Paulo (Kiele
Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro), a tagalong couple who were cleverly
woven into the previous seasons' key moments but came to bear the
brunt of fans' ire toward the show (Sawyer humorously echoed the
sentiments by remarking, "Who the hell are you?"). By the end of
the season, at least two major characters die, another is told
he/she will die within months, major new threats are unveiled,
and--as mentioned before--the two-part season finale restores
your faith in the series. --Ellen A. Kim
Lost: Season Four
Season four of Lost was a fine return to form for the series,
which polarized its audience the year before with its focus on
The Others and not enough on our original c victims. That
season's finale introduced a new storytelling device--the
flash-forward--that's employed to great effect this time around;
by showing who actually got off the island (known as the Oceanic
Six), the viewer is able to put to bed some longstanding loose
ends. As the finale attests, we see that in the future Jack
(Matthew Fox) is broken, bearded, and not sober, while Kate
(Evangeline Lilly) is estranged from Jack and with another guy
(the identity may surprise you). Four others do make it back to
their homes, but as the flash-forwards show, it's definitely not
the end of their connection to the island. Back in present day,
however, the islanders are visited by the denizens of a so-called
rescue ship, who have agendas of their own. While Jack works with
the newcomers to try to get off the island, Locke (Terry
O'Quinn), with a few followers of his own, forms an uneasy
alliance with Ben (Michael Emerson) against the suspicious gang.
Some episodes featuring the new characters feel like filler, but
the evolution of such characters as Sun and Jin (Yunjin Kim and
Daniel Dae Kim) is this season's strength; plus, the love story
of Desmond (Henry Ian Cu) and Penny (Sonya Walger) provides
some of the show's emotional highlights. As is the custom with
Lost, bullets fly and characters die (while others may or may not
have). Moreover, the e of Michael (Harold Perrineau), last
seen traitorously sailing off to civilisation in season two, as
well as the flash-forwards of the Oceanic Six, shows you never
quite leave the island once you've left. There's a force that
pulls them in, and it's a hook that keeps you watching. Season
four was a shorter 13 episodes instead of the usual 22 due to the
2008 writers' strike. --Ellen A. Kim
Lost: Season Five
Since Lost made its debut as a cult phenomenon in 2004, certain
things seemed inconceivable. In its fourth year, some of those
things, like a rescue, came to pass. The season ended with Locke
(Terry O'Quinn) attempting to persuade the Oceanic Six to return,
but he dies before that can happen--or so it appears--and where
Jack (Matthew Fox) used to lead, Ben (Emmy nominee Michael
Emerson) now takes the reins and convinces the survivors to
fulfill Locke's wish. As producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton
Cuse state in their commentary on the fifth-season premiere,
"We're doing time travel this year," and the pile-up of
flashbacks and flash-forwards will make even the most dedicated
fan dizzy. Ben, Jack, Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Sayid (Naveen
Andrews), Sun (Yunjin Kim), and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) arrive to
find that Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell)
have been part of the Dharma Initiative for three years. The
writers also clarify the roles that Richard (Nestor Carll)
and Daniel (Jeremy Davies) play in the island's master plan,
setting the stage for the prophecies of Daniel's mother, Eloise
Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan), to play a bigger part in the sixth
and final season. Dozens of other players flit in and out, some
never to return. A few, such as Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), live again
in the past. Lost could've wrapped things up in five years, as
The Wire did, but the show continues to excite and surprise. As
Lindelof and Cuse admit in the commentary, there's a "fine line
between confusion and mystery," adding, "it makes more sense if
you're drunk." --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Lost: Season Six
It’s taken a long time to get here, but finally, the last season
of Lost arrives, with answers to at least some of the questions
that fans of the show have been demanding for the past few years.
In true Lost fashion, it doesn’t tie all its mysteries up with a
bow, but it does at least answer some of the questions that have
long being gestating. In the series opening, for instance, we
finally learn the secret of the smoke monster, which is a
sizeable step in the right direction.In terms of quality, the
show has been on an upward curve since the end date of the
programme was announced, and season six arguably finds Lost at
its most confident to date. Never mind the fact that it’s
juggling lots of proverbial balls: there’s a very clear end point
here, and the show benefits enormously from it. Naturally, Lost
naysayers will probably find themselves more alienated than ever
here. But this boxset nonetheless marks the passing of a major
television show, one that has cleverly managed to reinvent itself
on more than one occasion, and keep audiences across the world
gripped as a result. There’s going to be nothing quite like it
for a long time to come… --Jon Foster