LOST

Unlike Madama Roommate, I started watching LOST in 2007, when I was a mere twenty years old. If you know me, you'll know that I don't watch much television. My mother, an epic TV-watcher, would always walk by as I'd be firmly planted on a couch with a book in my lap and try to get me to watch the boobtube, but I preferred reading, thank you very much. When I was home during the summer of '07, my sister found a brief respite from running after her two sons by watching the LOST DVDs that her brother-in-law gave her as a present. After nagging persistently, she managed to convince me to just watch the pilot.

I was hooked right away. The two-hour pilot has, to this day, remained the finest piece of work on television that I've had the pleasure of viewing. I've never forgotten the way in which the camera shared Jack's experience of waking up in the bamboo field and getting up to slowly, horrifyingly discover that a burning plane wreck has emerged around him. I loved the flashback system, where we got to piece together the former lives of these strangers as they began anew on a desert island. This was what absolutely made the first season a masterpiece - that this mysterious island with smoke monsters and polar bears didn't take centrestage just yet. LOST built itself upon the miraculous ways in which the characters' lives - past and present - revealed themselves in poignant, hilarious and, miraculously, interweaving threads.

I'm sad that this show is coming to an end after a devoted 3-year viewership, but I'm excited to see how the writers wrap everything up.

And yes, non-LOSTies, we did end up discovering why there were polar bears on the island - they were brought there for experimentation by the DHARMA initiative. What were the DHARMA initiative doing on the island? Err... beyond electromagnetic experimentation, I'm not sure I really know... with LOST, I don't think you ever really know what's going on. For me, that's part of the glory.