LOST

Last night ended my (almost) two year love affair... with LOST.

David and I got into LOST pretty late. We never watched it on TV because we just couldn't. I'm the type of person that will watch a season of a show I love in a very short period of time. Every Christmas for a while I would get the latest season of Alias on DVD and spend my whole Christmas vacation watching it, even staying up all night to watch because I couldn't wait for the next episode. 

Anyway, I digress.

About two years ago I had to be on bed rest for a few weeks and Dave convinced me that we needed to start watching LOST. I was so totally NOT into the idea. I can't think of really why I never wanted to get hooked on the show except for I probably thought the idea of a bunch of people being stuck on an island was stupid. I don't know why I thought that, I just know I was dead set on NOT watching it. David had seen the first season on TV and always wanted to continue watching it, but never did, so he borrowed the first season and said if I watched one episode and didn't like it, we didn't have to keep watching it, so I agreed.

After that first episode, I was HOOKED. I needed to immediately watch another.

So there started our love affair with LOST.

In the past two years, whenever we would have chunks of free time, David and I would spend hours catching up on LOST. We'd wait for the more current seasons to come out on DVD, purchase them and watch the whole season in less than a month, sometimes less than two weeks.

We had to wait to finish Mad Men to start LOST because we knew we couldn't get caught up in LOST because nothing else would matter and then there went Mad Men for a while. We finished Mad Men and started season 6 less than a week ago and finished it last night. 

It's weird to think about, but Dave and I have spent a good amount of our time together watching LOST and there are a lot of memories of discovering these characters, eating nuts next to Dave while I was on bed rest, sharing dinner, looking at each other with confused, perplexed or shocked faces when something crazy would happen and always asking each other, "You wanna watch another??" after every cliffhanger, which was pretty much every episode. 

This season brought back a lot of old characters and reminded us of a lot of things that happened that we totally forgot about. 

The thing this season reminded me the most of was my love for John Locke. Not post-death, new John Locke, but the real Locke. The one who stood up on the sand miraculously and walked on the beach, without his wheelchair, on that very first episode. The Locke that existed in the real world, in flashbacks before the island, and the Locke that lived in the real world in season 6, in the "flashsideways". Never before has a character compelled me to feel so much pity and sadness. He made me want to reach out and comfort him. The real Locke, my Locke was so broken and so vulnerable. I just wanted to take care of him.

My other favorite characters are as follows:

Hugo "Hurley" Reyes

Hurley was always, on the island and off, the most compassionate, generous, self-sacrificing and humble person. There was not one thing he ever said or did that I disliked or could not accept. His heart was HUGE. He always made me either smile or cry and laugh every time he made a Star Wars reference, which was kind of often. I mean, when you're stranded on an island with crazy people and insane circumstances, you'd reference Star Wars, too.

Jin-Soo and Sun Hwa Kwon

The lost love between this married couple developed and grew due to the circumstances of being stuck on an island. I hated Jin at first, but the closer he got to Sun, and the more their love flourished, the more mine for the both of them did as well. This last season, they made me cry like a baby.

Desmond Hume

All this poor man wanted to do was get back to his beloved Penny and there was not one thing he wouldn't do to make that happen. His courage, faithfulness and endurance made a person never want to give up. I loved his storyline and there was never an episode centered around him that I didn't absolutely love.

Ben Linus

Ben has to be one of my favorite villains of all time. I hated him so much for so long, and yet found myself rooting for him every once in a while, all while questioning why I was hoping the best for him. I wanted to see him redeem himself and even though he would show traces of humanity and compassion, he never quite made it completely, until I fell in love with him in season 6 during the "flashsideways" scenes. It proved to me once and for all that there was so much potential in him to be good, to do the right and honorable thing. It fascinated me so much as to how in one life he could be so inherently evil and in another life so inherently humbly heroic.

Sayid Jarrah 

What can I say about Sayid? He was a badass. He went from believing there was no good in him to discovering just how much of a hero he really was. I loved watching his journey and loved his heroic ending. I loved him no matter what he did.

James "Sawyer" Ford

I absolutely hated Sawyer from day one (David loved him). He was such a jackass and so selfish and conceited... buuut, the island made him a real man. Through the crazy circumstances of life on the island he, like Locke, did a complete 180. The island forced him to face his humanity. And the best part of it all: he never lost his sense of humor.
 

Daniel Faraday

This kid was crazy and crazy brilliant. I loved discovering all that went on in his mind and how much he just wanted to figure it all out and how he would confuse the hell out of everyone else, even though he didn't mean to and he was always right on the money.

Charlie Pace 
I loved this kid because of his innocent love and his sacrifice. He was misunderstood and broken, but that didn't stop him from redeeming himself and saving his friends. I kept on rooting for him, even after every stupid mistake.

Bernard and Rose Nadler

Cutest couple in my book. The loved each other so much and sacrificed everything else for each other. They knew that what was most important was their love and their commitment to each other, even if it meant they might die for it.
 

Vincent

How could you not love Vincent? He was such a good puppy, and such a survivor! Plus, I'm a sucker for animals in TV and in life. In both cases, I tend to like them more than real people.

I forgot to add Juliet!!

Juliet Burke

This woman was fearless! I loved how she always followed her gut and would risk her life for the sake of another. She had such a gentle nature, but could seriously do some damage if she wanted to. I loved how bold and brazen she could be at times and how she would give up so much in a second if it meant someone needed her. She, to me, was the real heroine of LOST.

For me, the main theme of LOST is that sacrifice is the ultimate expression of love.  I think that is what I have loved the most about this wonderfully beautiful, addicting and heart wrenching show.

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." - Joseph Campbell

"This is love: 

not that we loved God, 

but that he loved us 

and sent his Son 

as an atoning

  sacrifice  for our sins." 

- 1 John 4:10