The Good
Overall, this second season really works because it wasn’t afraid to try things with the characters.
The Bad
Sometimes I wonder how this show will resolve itself?
Lost: The Complete Second Season - The Extended Experience completely lives up to it’s title. With seven discs giving viewers 1056 minutes of episodic content, this show is both exhilarating and confusing at the same time. Quite simply, this show is examining society but more to the point it is looking at society from in the midst of an extreme situation. The people stranded on the island trying to figure out why they are there, all the while contending with the knowledge that there is a monster-like being among them.
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Allegorically speaking, this show seems to be examining our diverse world. Showing all different kinds of people, and the many skeletons in their (our) closets, Lost seems to be saying that we’re all going to have to work together in order to survive on this planet (island). That we have to use our differences as a means of strength to rise above what is on the surface. Now, I think this might be a somewhat simplistic way of looking at this show, afterall, part of it’s popularity is the fact that the audience doesn’t know what’s going on.
Given that we get to see these characters lives before they have come to the Island, that only raises the stakes. Also, it doesn’t matter if we are seeing Dr. Jack (Matthew Fox) or Hugo (Jorge Garcia), the point is how we are seeing these characters in their “lives,” is oftentimes at odds with how we are seeing them on the island. The depth and dichotomy this creates is astounding, because as viewers, can’t let go of our preconceptions. This show goes out of it’s way to mess with the idea of appearance and action. By doing this, we are unable and forced to get past our thinking models.
It took me some time to wrap my head around this show and I wouldn’t say that I have got it all figured out. Honestly, I don’t think I am very close at all. It is enjoying this gray area, this not knowing that makes Lost: The Complete Second Season - The Extended Experience such a treasure.
Features
Three commentary tracks have been given to us in this set. They are for the episodes Man of Science, Man of Faith (on this is Executive producers Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Bryan Burk and Jack Bender), What Kate Did (on this is director Paul Edwards, director of photography Michael Bonvillain and actress Evangeline Lilly) and The Whole Truth (on this is Actors Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim, writers Elizabeth Sarnoff and Christina M. Kim). I did something interesting with these, I decided to skip around at various points in the show for all three of the tracks. I don’t know if that was such a good idea but it was an interesting experiment. I got to hear the actors discuss their roles and how the creators of this show really take into account who they are writing for. The producers of course touched on the logistics and the reasons why for certain aspects of the episode they were talking about looked how they do. Lastly, I liked hearing from DP Michael Bonvillain because I think the look of this show is very unique. Unfortunately, he didn’t get as technical as I would have liked.
Lost Flashbacks
It will be hard to talk about about this section without giving a lot away, so I am going to speak in generalities. There are a decent load of flashbacks for our characters. Some, I thought opened up more possibilities in the directions in which this show could go, while I think others were sprinkled on here to sort of confuse the issue a bit. Also, there is other information offered (I don’t want to use the word revealed because I don’t know that this show ever reveals anything!), both about the characters, the islands and places that surround this show.
