The Story of LOST From a Guy Who Has Seen One Episode of LOST

Thanks to BookhouseBoy for the following.

I got an idea recently to ask a friend of mine who has only ever seen one complete episode of LOST to see if he could summarize what happened over the course of the six seasons of the show, either through what he did see over the years, or what he got through "pop culture osmosis." This is the result, which I thought you might want to share with the LOST fans who still come to DarkUFO as a funny little Christmas present.

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THE STORY OF LOST FROM A GUY WHO HAS SEEN ONE EPISODE OF LOST
by Andy Hunsaker


So, there's a plane on its way to Hawaii or some such that goes down, and Dr. Matthew "Party of Five" Fox, Michelle Rodriguez, John Locke, a fat guy named Hurley, Evangeline Lilly and hordes of other people all wind up on Lost Island, but you only meet a few of them, probably the people in first class, at first. Turns out the ass-end of the plane crashed somewhere else and all the coach people were on the coach section of Lost Island until maybe Season 2. Tom Hanks with a giant beard makes a point of not showing up, but there could very well have been a volleyball floating around with a face drawn on it.

They pretty much play "Survivor" for a few episodes and try to make fires and forage for food and probably have immunity challenges until someone finds A Hatch that is not named Richard, nor is it naked. It's locked down tight and they have a Lost Island Student Council meeting to figure out how to open it. But then some weird stuff starts happening in the woods, like a funky smoke monster showing up and leaving polar bears in the tropics. That's not nice at all. There also may or may not be angry natives and someone may or may not get caught in one of those stealth rope traps that dangle them by their leg for said angry natives to spear and skin alive... unless I'm thinking of Predator.

Anyway, stuff topside starts to go crazy go nuts, so down the hatch! Turns out there's a secret abandoned army base down there full of guns and food and secret things and A Mysterious Countdown. What happens when the countdown reaches zero? Most people think Giant Nuclear Bomb, but other people think something else - like maybe a signal to the army to come back so they can be rescued. The one episode I saw revolved around John Locke arguing in favor of bomb, I think, while some other guy tried to convince him not to fiddle with anything in case they ruin their chance to be saved. I think John Locke won the argument and stopped the bomb, but there was a cool black guy I kinda liked in that episode, but then he died at the end of it so I didn't watch anymore.

Eventually, Michelle Rodriguez and the Coach Class Lost Island Stunt Casting Brigade show up and start throwing punches, stretching resources even thinner because there are pointedly no FedEx packages with angelic symbols washing up on shore, nor is Helen Hunt anywhere waiting for any of them - she has married Chris Noth and you just have to accept that, Chuck! She has kids, for christ's sake! Four years is a long time, and Lost lasted for, like, six or eight!

So it turns out that the whole island is one vast government experiment, either testing social skills, group dynamics or experimental hallucinogenics, hence the polar bear. The army probably shows up eventually and throws their weight around, and eventually everybody gets rescued, since they all time jump into the future and Dr. Of Five is back home in San Angeles delivering babies or performing surgery on children. But he and Evangeline Lilly and maybe his brother realize that They Have To go Back To The Island. Because There Are Things Left Unsettled. Or maybe they left somebody behind, or no one wanted John Locke to have sole possession of a giant nuclear bomb, because he was a hardass and he'd wipe something off the map with it. He had a scar on his face, so he must have been secretly evil. Or not-so-secretly evil. Everybody hated him, at least, and fans probably loved to hate him.

When they go back to the island, they realize they all died in the plane crash, the smoke monster is actually the mystical mist of surreality/the will of God and Lost Island is the test they have to pass to get into heaven, and John Locke goes to hell, but Dr. Of Five wins, viewers moan as the conclusion could never be as good as the hype, and Season 1 of Lost on DVD becomes a metaphor for Christmas, symbolizing lack of payoff, in the "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" episode of "Community."


Or, as David Letterman's more succinct description of Lost goes: "There's a hole with a thing on it and a fat guy and look out!"