Boone Hill

I encourage all you hardcore Losties - or if you are feeling as if you could be a hardcore Lostie (and there has to be a better name than that [don't ask me though, I'm terrible with names]) - to rewatch Season 1 now, or very soon, or at least commit to finishing it before 5/23. For firsts, it's awesome, but so different than the last 3-5 seasons; seconds, you'll see how this season is closely paralleling the first season, except of course our characters have been dramatically changed.

The fractured and jumpy nature of time on the show has a strange effect on the viewer - if you watch along in real time, the show has gone on for years and in sooth, the last three seasons have taken up only a month or so in real time. Consider, it was but a few weeks ago from Jack's perspective that he was standing on a bridge, all pilled up, ready to end it all. That's gotta weigh on a character, yet for we, the viewers, it's been years, and Crazy Beard wearing Jack is long in the past.

But if you were to watch Lost in marathon fashion, as many people do, the show would have a quite different effect as you finished one season after another in a matter of days/couple weeks. The impact is closer to the characters actual experience of the passing of time.

But then, there'd be no time for off the wall theories or "general mystery pondering" which, one might argue, is the main enjoyment of a mystery story - speculation, guessing, getting the viewer/reader to play along.

So let us enjoy this mystery while we can, for soon it will be gone, never, ever to return.