Lost Season 3 on DVD

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Well, mid-January has arrived, and as predicted, we found some time to hunker down and watch Lost Season 3 on DVD.

We started on Sunday, and with a push to stay up much later than we typically do, finished the entire season at midnight last night. There are 23 episodes in season three, roughly 45 minutes each (since there are no commercials), so total viewing of roughly 17 hours. Whew. 🙂

The bottom line is that I thoroughly enjoyed it (I believe more than Lois did, but she enjoyed it as well). That said, the details aren’t as simple as that.

I had heard the following complaint from a number of die-hard Lost fans, who watched season three on TV last year: “Too many repeats!”. I didn’t know exactly what to make of that comment when I heard it (over and over). I didn’t want to ask for clarification either, because I’m one of those people who love to be completely surprised, whereas Lois loves to know exactly what’s going to happen.

Now I can guess what they meant, but I still can’t be sure, because I didn’t watch it on TV, waiting a week for each episode. Originally, I thought that perhaps they meant that season three was delivered with lots of full-episode repeats throughout the year, making it painful to keep the story fresh and connected week-to-week. Now I think that people were complaining that in each individual episode, there was more repetition of previously viewed scenes.

I don’t mean the inevitable “Previously on Lost” mechanism that nearly all serials have to use, but rather flashback scenes that were 95% identical to previous flashbacks, only shown from someone else’s point of view. It’s a legitimate complaint. But, on DVD, when watching in marathon sessions, it’s not as bad.

I think the real frustration with that technique in a weekly serialization, is that you get less new stuff, and then have to wait another week for a dose. On DVD, you plow through the repetition, pick up the new 5% in the scene that they were trying to convey, and find out the new new thing minutes later anyway.

Another complaint (that we had) is that the show meandered a bunch in season three. Not in the sense that they had no ideas, but rather that they crammed in too many ideas and plot twists. Some were truly mind-bending, but I believe that this is due more to the fact that they hope to spin this franchise out for so long, that they want to plant as many seeds and hooks as they can. If they told a deep, but simple story, they’d be under pressure to wrap it up more quickly than otherwise.

As with the past seasons, the finale is a two-hour action-packed frenzy. They introduced a new technique in those episodes that hadn’t been used before in the previous 69 episodes, and it was horribly executed (in my opinion). I won’t ruin it, for those who are like me, and won’t want to know. Trust me, I didn’t give away anything with the above.

Both Lois and I felt that the writing in season three was a bit “Lost” (sorry, couldn’t resist). That said, I still loved it, will absolutely watch season four, and will continue to praise the show to newcomers, searching for something they can obsess about, lose themselves in, and soak up tons of entertainment time on, for relatively little money.

The only argument in our house will be whether we agree to suffer the weekly episodic wait (Lois is leaning in that direction), or skip this season and wait for the DVD (my preference). Lois wins nearly every argument on every subject matter, so you can guess what the outcome of the above dilemma will be. 😉

As with the past seasons, I am continually impressed with the ingeniously simple explanations that they often come up with when solving a previous puzzle/conundrum. Many times, you wait for a fantastic (as in fantasy!) explanation, which would be fine, but perhaps not as satisfying as a clever explanation that you just hadn’t thought of.