Nerd alert!
Even the most prolific of us get a case of the brain slugs. Mine is particularly bad today. See?
Yeah.
That bad.
So what I'll do today is simply point you in the direction of something I find to be, as John the Baptist put it, "wicked cool".
As anyone who has known me in the last six years can attest, I loved the TV phenomenon that was Lost. There was literally no other thing that compared to it. It was its' own fundamental thing, a creation of unique zeitgeist in our modern culture. The common comparisons, although not exactly on target, were to The Stand and Twin Peaks, both of which I have loved. The show is simply one of my favorite things ever and the hole it has left in my pop-culture heart has yet to be filled. No joke, no hyperbole, I genuinely miss the eager, giddy nature of the nights it was on and the mass-theorizing that followed in the morning. I plan on doing more of an in-depth analysis in the future but for now I wanted to highlight a peripheral, or perhaps tangential aspect to the show.
An integral aspect of the hour long drama was the nature of time and its structure as a means of telling the larger story. This was initially done by splitting each episode into the current narrative and a demonstrative or character-revealing flashback to before the island story. As time went on the show (MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR A SHOW THAT NO LONGER IS ON THE AIR) switched to flash forwards and side cuts that intersected with the main story. While ostensibly just a cool way to tell a massive and sprawling tale that was akin the a novel for TV, it created a phenomenon known as 'viewer lock-out' which kept the average viewer from wanting to jump in and pick up the action in without seeing the backlog of episodes, which by season 6 was a whole hell of a lot.
I was (still am) obsessed with this show and simply cannot say enough good things about it. I honestly feel if you have any appreciation for fictional art in any sense you should give it a chance, if for no other reason than to see one of the most amazing, beautiful (and not coincidentally expensive) TV pilots in history. If you've watched the show in its entirety, and if you're reading this that is a distinct possibility, then I want to fill you in on a very cool secret.
Ready?
Someone possessing more skill and patience than myself took every single episode and edited them into one long, chronological take on the entire series. Instead of having to check the mind-bogglingly comprehensive Lostpedia for who did what and when, everything is presented as it happened in sequential order. The entire series is cast into a new light as a result. Everything from the beginning to The End takes on a whole new significance as a result. Characters are shown in a new light, actions have more relevance and life-long struggles are made clearer as a result. The effect is uncanny.
Obviously this website and the content hosted there is of....dubious legal standing. The show was a massive hit and made millions for ABC, but what is to be done with its legacy is still up for debate. I absolutely adore this idea. Some fans wondered if this style of consumption would be an option when the entire show was released in a single volume for Blu Ray but it has yet to be done by official sources. I still hold out hope for an official version of this, but fan edits like this are a fascinating source of intrigue for me. If you have any interest I would highly recommend giving a look, even for specific points in the show, to see how they look in new light. A deconstruction like this a shuffling of the deck and a fresh take on what is, in my mind, one of the best works of fiction in existence.
Not to be too hyperbolic.
