Awkward Polar Bears & Awesome Mancandy: Adventures of a Lost Virgin

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm six years behind, but I'm finally getting around to watching the pop culture phenomenon that is Lost. I've always been interested, but knew that it was a mythology heavy show (much like my beloved Supernatural) and that I'd need to be able to pay close attention to it when I decided to take the plunge. It was also attractive to wait until the show was off the air, so I didn't have to wait for new episodes. Thanks to my handy Netflix Instant Watch capable Blu-Ray player, I have access to the first five seasons to stream, and the summer seemed to perfect time to start since most all of my shows are on hellatus til the fall.

Somehow, I've remained fairly unspoiled about the show. I know that: its a scifi mystery type show, people were stranded on a island after a plane crash, there's a huge cast, some of them seem to have a problem not driving while intoxicated, and I know most of the actors who are regulars. I know that some of those actors have left the show over the course of the years, but I have no idea how or when that would fall in the show, so it keeps me from anticipating exits. I even managed to avoid hearing anything about how it ended, beyond the fact that some people liked the finale and some didn't (go figure!).

I intend to blog regularly about the show as I watch, covering every episode. I may watch several episodes in a single night or weekend, so I'll probably lump those together in one post. I'll probably do mostly review and speculation and not much recapping (I'm too long winded to recap, see my Glee posts).

Without further ado, my take on the pilot:

The Lost pilot is probably one of the best I've ever watched, ranked up there with Justified, Glee, and The West Wing. I was afraid that there would be too many characters for me to keep up with, but that wasn't a problem. My only issue was that I caught myself watching for actors I knew appeared on the show like Michelle Rodriguez. I thought it did a great job with the exposition of the immediate plot: plane crash survivors marooned on a island, rescue is hampered by being off course, and there's a mysterious something in the jungle that likes to eat Greg Grunberg.

I know Matthew Fox is basically the lead, but I found him to be pretty bland. I hope this changes as we go forward, but I found Sawyer, Sayid, and Kate to be far more compelling right away. Ian Somerhalder brought the pretty as always, but I'm not sure what I think of his character. I keep waiting for him to be quippy and evil like Damon Salvatore, so I've got to learn to turn that off. I also found myself incredibly frustrated and angry with Jin, though my Twitter peeps assure me I'll change my mind eventually. I also didn't like Boone's sister Shannon, and was kinda disappointed that Sawyer didn't let the polar bear (WTF?) eat her. Overall, the mancandy quotient is off the charts, and I'd probably keep watching just to moon over Somerhalder's eyes.

Its hard to draw a lot of speculation from the pilot, other than "the island isn't what it seems and the polar bear probably wasn't the thing in the jungle" but stray speculations include:

• Charlie is either a psychic who sees the future or a time traveler
• The labrador is plot-important and may or may not actually be a real dog anymore
• Orange Mouth guy (who I know from the interwebz is Locke) is creepy and might be evil
• The marshal was played by Frederic Lane, probably my favorite incarnation of Supernatural's Yellow Eyed Demon, so obviously it was demon hoodoo that brought down the plane. Somebody get Jack and Kate some salt and a Zippo, stat.

Tune in sometime this weekend for more!