There will never be a TV show like Lost made again.

No matter what you think of it there won’t be, can’t be, another show with its scope, its ambition, its odd mélange of sf, fantasy, sitcom, mystery and with its peculiar zaniness and odd sincerity.

In the future there might be shows with similar themes but they won’t have the budget or the audacity to pull off what Lost did, nor the excellent cast that budget entails. Despite its flagrant and at times annoying excesses, what do you think the chances are of any other show “tricking” so many people who claim to hate sf and fantasy into watching just that for so long?

As I said, it will never happen again.

I first saw Lost  accidentally.  Like Firefly, I had not planned to watch it as I thought it sounded terrible. I caught the tail end (tail section, heh) of one episode while waiting for another show to come on, back when I still watched a show or two on an actual TV.  (Imagine that.)

I was instantly captivated, completely sucked in after only two minutes. Never have I been engrossed in a story so quickly.

As soon as I could I watched the earlier parts of the first season.

So many good things about that show. Yes, I am still upset that Kate was not the leader, as was the original plan for the show. That would’ve been more interesting as she was a better character than Jack. It’s also the first show on a major American network I recall seeing where a full half of the cast was not white. That has not happened since as far as I can tell, by the way.

Every show has its flaws and so did Lost. Like other great works, however, it rose above them and somehow coalesced into the strangest show ever that appealed to any sort of mass market. How it managed to do that I don’t know.

About the ending, I thought it was fine.  The best that could have been done. To me the journey is what matters. And what a hell of a fine journey it was – though I wanted to throw my TV out the window when Shannon died. Talk about character development done right.

And best line from the show? Undoubtedly when Frank Lapidus after realizing that all of the former Lost-ers are on his plane says, “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”