Jan 28, 2010

[TV] Lost: Season 2

Lost: Season 2When a show really hits it big on its debut season, you can imagine all the pressure that goes along with the production of the second season. How do you follow-up a smash TV hit? We see movies fall into the same trap over and over again and naturally TV productions aren't immune from this kind of a scenario either.

Given how shaky I was when I first started watching Lost, it was very important for the second season of the show to somehow make more sense and do a better job of hooking me. The first season was relatively able to attract my interest but I wasn't quite sold on the show just yet.

So let's just say that the first time I tried my luck with the second season of Lost, I gave up on the show. A few years later and with a lot of prodding by my partner, I finally gave in and decided to give Lost another chance.

Lost of course is that landmark brainchild of J.J. Abrams about the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 and the mysterious island they find themselves stranded on. The first season presented the notion that the castaways weren't alone on the island, and that was just the first of many of the island's secrets.

This season expanded on many of the initial secrets of the island from the last season, starting with the "hatch" that Locke had found in the jungle. This later on expands to discovering other survivors from the plane crash on the other side of the island and new characters of strength and interest like former police woman Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) and the physically imposing priest called Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) to name a few. And of course, this was also the season that introduced Michael Emerson as the mysterious Henry Gale, and that certainly helped turn the show around.

LOST,  Mr. Eko examines DHARMA INITIATIVE swan...Image by Wonderlane via Flickr

The main mystery of the second season was revealing more and more about an organization that had operated (or was still operating) on the island known as the Dharma Initiative. They had set up a series of stations all over the island, each of them having a unique purpose. Beyond just possible storage facilities for supplies, the stations present individual pieces to the overall puzzle of the island.

Then of course there was increased interactions with the Others which at first seemed rather silly and like a rather shallow plot point for me but thankfully in time things turned around. But of course it ended up not making things easy to appreciate and I along with many other newbies to the Lost franchise lost interest and gave up on the show mid-way. A few more devoted fans pressed on and thankfully Henry Gale helped turn things around for many people. That list of people now includes me.

This season was decent but probably could have done a better job handling the plot points. Then again, it also would have helped if the actors weren't letting newfound fame get to their heads and thus could have mitigated a lot of the weird character exits due to other priorities or just shifts in their available time for the show, thus affecting how they were portrayed on air.

This is definitely not ever going to be one of my favorite seasons of the show but once you get past the first two-thirds of the season, you might share my opinion about things starting to turn around.

Lost: Season 2 gets 3.5 boxes of Dharma Initative supplies out of a possible 5.

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