Lost: Season 1 on DVD

After four months spent savoring the first three seasons of that masterpiece The Wire, I decided to get out the city, go tropical, and see what what all the fuss was about Lost. And though at first I was slightly put off by the network-ness of the show (lots of exposition, high degree of corniness, intense drama over things that seem to be completely forgotten the next day), I admit that, around about disc three, I was totally hooked.

I'm not going to go into any plot details, but basically: a plane crashes, 44 people wind up on a deserted (?), friggin' bizarre island in the South Pacific, and the show shifts between (thank goodness mostly) their adventures post-crash and their overly melodramatic backstories. There are maybe a dozen characters whom we follow pretty closely, show after show, most of whom I didn't mind spending time with whenever their "turn" came up.

Although there were certainly flaws and annoyances here, there were also more than enough intriguing relationships and narrative threads and left-field weirdness to keep me going back for more (including the pilot and two-part season finale, that's 22 episodes in all), and the acting is mostly pretty solid, and there have been more than a couple of creepy moments that gave me serious goosebumps, and more than a couple of tender moments that made me cry, so, absolutely, I'm diving right in to Season 2.