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E. A Solinas |
Date: 2009-05-14

It's the beginning of the end for "Lost" -- only one more season to go, and plenty of strange destined events yet to be explained.

And "Lost: The Complete Fifth Season" may be the best season of the show yet, with some unexpected glimpses back into the Island's history, mysterious people, and more explorations of the mysterious Jacob. It feels like the entire season is packed with strange twists and unexpected turns, complete with a trip back in time that illuminates everything that has come before it.

Jack joins forces with his former enemy Ben, trying to bring the Oceanic Six back together and get them back to the Island. But Charles Widmore has been sending assassins to kill Hurley and Sayid, and someone is sniffing around Kate's relationship to Aaron. Their only hope of getting back to the Island is to follow the instructions of Eloise Hawking, a woman who has intricate knowledge of time and space -- and the Island.

Meanwhile, the Island is randomly leaping through time, flinging Sawyer, Juliet, Daniel, Charlotte and all the others from one time period to another. And when the Oceanic Six (minus a few) arrive on the Island again, they find that it is now 1977 -- Sawyer, Juliet and their friends have all been living there for the past three years, as part of the Dharma Initiative. Sun and Ben end up in the hands of the remaining Others -- along with a supposedly dead man now returned to life.

But as the fateful Incident approaches, Jack and Co. end up having their plans unravel around them, and a bunch of gun-toting Dharma people out for their blood. With the help of Daniel Faraday and his mysterious journal, the splintered little group sets out to somehow reset everything that has happened on the Island -- even as Ben and the Others approach an ancient monument, where the Island's fate will be changed forever.

There's a sense of melancholy in the fifth season of "Lost." Okay, it's never been a cheerful show, but it's clear that many of the plot threads are being wound together, and the characters that are killed have wrenchingly tragic send-offs. What's more, this short season reveals a whole lot more about the Island than we ever knew before -- the stone foot, the Incident, Eloise Hawking's knowledge about time, and the Island's mysterious ruler Jacob.

And it's packed solid with plot, full of twists, gory action, flashbacks, flashforwards, and a sense of supernatural suspense. The first half of the season is all about the Six slowly being drawn back to the Island (almost against their will, really) while the second is about the disasters that ensue because of their presence, and the fight against the inevitability of time. It's just a big thick rope of plot twists that tightens itself as it approaches the explosive finale.

Fortunately this season is also graced with exceptionally good dialogue, and some funny moments often supplied by the ever-lovable Hurley (example: writing down the "Empire Strikes Back" script from memory). And it evolves into straight-out science fiction after sort of flirting with it for the past few seasons.

Matthew Fox does a pretty good job as the increasingly irrational, obsessed Jack, but he's overshadowed by Josh Holloway. Holloway is pretty darn brilliant as the new alpha male in the jungle who suddenly has his peaceful domain disrupted. Michael Emerson is also excellent as the vaguely creepy Ben, whose frustrations and anger start boiling over as he tries to somehow fix whatever has gone wrong, only to make a terrible mistake.

Actually, most of the cast does an excellent job: Naveen Andrews, Elizabeth Mitchell (especially in the finale), the dry-witted Ken Leung, Jeremy Davies, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, and the ever-awesome Jorge Garcia. There are also some other incredible actors who become pretty prominent here, including François Chau, Zuleikha Robinson, the ageless Nestor Carbonell, and the mysterious Fionnula Flanagan.

And Mark Pellegrino is introduced as the mysterious Jacob, whose identity, nature and goals are all murky. You're left wondering who this guy is, and if we'll see him again.

"Lost: The Complete Fifth Season" is a tightly-written, intensely-plotted stream of bittersweet sci-fi, and it leaves you hungry for whatever is next. Only one more season yet to go.

Robert Moore |
Date: 2009-05-14

Season Five of LOST was the first that provided more answers than questions. The first four seasons had raised questions at an extraordinary pace, providing the occasional answer. But while the end of Season Five raised a couple of massive questions of huge cliffhanger proportions, we nonetheless got more of a sense of what is going on with the island, its inhabitants, and its visitors than ever before. There are still some major unanswered questions, like the origin of the island and what the deal with Richard Alpert (the ageless wonder) is and who built the statue (and what brought it down), but we still are getting an overall picture of things.

What held true of LOST after Season One holds true of the show after Season Five: whether this turns out to be a great show depends on how well they manage to wrap up the overall story line. There have been very, very few shows in the history of television that have set out, from the very beginning, to tell a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and an end. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (the new one, not the old one) was one. BABYLON 5 was another. Many other shows have more or less ended up telling a story, but in a way that wasn't crucial to the structure of the series. This was even true of a show like ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. But for shows like LOST and BSG, our ultimate judgment will hinge on how well all the loose ends are wrapped up at the end. The final answers will have a retroactive effect on the rest of the series. If we are left at the end feeling that the secrets of the island have not been adequately answered, this will undercut all that went before. If we don't accept the way the stories of the characters are resolved, it will weaken the series as a whole. I loved the way that BSG ended (though I'll grant that not everyone did) and I fully hope that LOST will end similarly well. We've gotten five great seasons and I doubt that Damon Lindelhof and Carlton Cuse will suddenly lose their ability to tell a great story. Plus, they will continue to be assisted by some great writers like Drew Goddard and Elizabeth Sarnoff and Brian K. Vaughan (who got a great shout out this season when Hurley is seen reading in Spanish one of the volumes of Y: THE LAST MAN, the famous graphic series written by Vaughan).

Season Five began with the survivors of Oceanic 815 and their various allies split into two groups. The Oceanic Six are back in the real world, but Jack and Ben are determined to lead them all back to the island. The rest back on the island - at least those that are still alive, most having died - have, like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, become unstuck in time. They find themselves moving from one year or decade - heck, from one century - to another. And when the Oceanic Six return, they find themselves stranded in a different time themselves, back in the seventies with the Dharma Initiative and the Others. Most poignantly, Sun has found out that Jin is till alive, but they are stuck thirty years apart.

But this wouldn't be LOST without a host of twists and turns. We are barraged (in a good way) with a never-ending string of shocks and surprises. Things constantly turn out not to be what we expect. That is especially true of John Locke, but true of just about everyone else as well. The amount of detail is almost overwhelming, though in a good way. It keeps the show fascinating and ever fresh. And of course, this being LOST, there are a host of deaths. The only series with a larger body count is BSG.

The best thing about Season Five of LOST is that it continues the excellent pacing that was established after the Season Three hiatus. I'm sure everyone will recall that fans were outraged and disappointed after the first six episodes of Season Three, which were broadcast a few months before the show resumed in the winter. Fans felt that the show was dragging, as if they were trying to stretch the series out an extra season or two instead of getting on with the story. When the show resumed, the producers responded to the fans' complaints and significantly stepped up the pace of the storytelling. By the end of that season it felt like a new and completely refreshed show. And Seasons Four and Five have maintained that pace. One thing that definitely helped them maintain the pace was the announcement at the end of Season three that the show would end after Season Six.

And so we come to the beginning of the end. For five seasons LOST has been one of the most intense, involving shows on television. I'm already starting to get sad about its end. I still haven't quite recovered from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ending this spring and now LOST ends next spring. It has been a great story from the very beginning and we can only hope that things remain just as good as they have been.

Zachary Koenig |
Date: 2009-05-27

While watching the first four seasons of LOST, I was continually amazed at the show's ability (due to its incredible writing) to keep the material fresh. Whether it was the flashbacks of season one, the Hatch in season two, or the huge bombshells dropped at the ends of seasons three and four, LOST was always able to keep me guessing and never felt as if it were treading the same ground twice.

This fifth season is no exception, and one could even make the case that this is the "strangest" season of LOST to date. Gone is the relatively linear format of the previous four seasons, and in is a storytelling format that jumps across time as easily as the Starship Enterprise! There are really three main "plot schemes" that exist during the course of the season (warning: minor spoilers ahead):

First, the question of "what the heck happened to the island?!" is answered, as the island (and all on it) are skipping through time and must find a way to reverse the effect before their nervous systems suffer the consequences of being displaced in time.

Once the time-skipping is stopped, the islanders find themselves in vastly different time periods, which allows the writers (in perhaps the most brilliant move in series history) to actually SHOW the Dharma Initiative, not just explain it.

While all of that is going on, the "Oceanic Six" are dealing with problems of their own ("We have to go back, Kate!") and each one must make their own decision about returning to the island.

All those thought-provoking topics provided hours more entertainment the likes of which has never been seen on network TV. Yet, I actually consider this to be the fifth-ranked season of the show for a couple of reasons:

-A few episodes bogging down and not advancing the plot as much as in the past. Though it is interesting to see some of the "Losties" initiate themselves into the Dharma group, a bit too much is made of them just "being there" and the plot stagnates a bit. The same thing happens with the "Oceanic Six" storyline...some parts are interesting, but I just breathed a sigh of relief when "they" (I won't say who or how) get back to the island.

-Also, I really missed the use of flashbacks. Though the writers are still able to tell interesting stories without them, for the first three (and the flash-forwards for one) seasons I considered the "flashes" to be the emotional backbone of the show, as it was how we really became acquainted with all the characters. I realize that the "flashes" had probably run their course, but (selfishly) I still missed them all the same.

So, had I been able to give this season a "4.5 star" rating, I probably would have. But, two factors made me lean to the side of five stars: The incredible finale episode (which I consider to be the most riveting two hours of television I have ever watched in my life...I literally walked around in a stupor for about an hour afterwards in shock) and the "John Locke/Ben Linus" plot thread. Only the LOST writers could show Locke in a coffin and then have him play a larger role in the next season than he did in the previous one!

To conclude, though certain trivial details (few flashbacks, a couple "draggy" episodes) may not put this on top of your "favorite LOST season" list, it is still (by quite a large margin) the greatest show on TV today (and perhaps ever). Buy with confidence knowing that, from beginning to end, you will continue to be amazed and entertained like never before.

Magnolia 12883 |
Date: 2009-05-04

Never has a show absorbed me, captured my imagination and, yes, challenged me in the ways that LOST has. This seemingly simple premise of a group of strangers crashing on an island and hoping for rescue has, in just 5 short seasons, given way to the most labyrinthine serialized TV plot currently (or perhaps ever) in existence. This season in particular has taken the labyrinthine qualities to another level. There's time travel, hidden connections being revealed, explanations of long-held secrets and questions, and, yes, more questions and cliffhangers than you can shake a fist at. Just a great great great show! :)

JP |
Date: 2009-12-09

NORMALLY I could care less about the packaging BUT........in this case I am more than a little upset!! 4 seasons, 4 DVD boxes, and 4 uniform packages (just changed the colors) that look great sitting next to each other on my shelf. And NOW they decide change the look of the box?!?!?!?! Did IQ's suddenly DROP at the company responsible??!

I'd like to find the imbecilic MORON who ok'd this change and punch him/her in the head!!! (well...if it's a woman...I'd just yell alot!!)

This is right up there with the DEMONS FROM HELL who release DVDs that won't let you skip over previews!!!!

Yes...I LOVE the show and this won't change the quality of the shows contained on the discs inside but......this travesty sticks out like a sore thumb on my shelf!!!

I'm seriously tempted to deduct a star or 2 for this screw-up, which I KNOW is about money (the new box is probably cheaper and you KNOW all the greedy demons really care about is the $$) but that wouldn't be fair to one of the best shows on TV.

As for the show itself....what can I tell fans they don't already know? That it's back in fine form after 2 not-quite-as-good seasons? That it REALLY makes me look forward to the final season? Well..........you already know that or you don't watch the show and probably will never see this review!!