Before you even remove the wrapper, the actual box for Lost Season Three is already great.On the edge of the front cover is the scrawled phrase “Jacob Loves You”, which is both creepy and kind of funny.On the spine is a previously unseen Dharma logo.It shows what appears to be a snake with six heads – possibly a hydra.I think I might have squealed girlishly once I laid eyes on the box.
Fan reaction to Lost has been a roller coaster since the moment Flight 815 hit the beach.People complained about the lack of momentum, and then whenever anything changed or moved forward, they’d complain about that.“They’re always on the beach, isn’t there anything on the island?Oh, now there’s a hatch.I hate the hatch!”As it aired, Season Three took a fair amount of abuse, and then by the time the finale came along, everybody was excited again.You have to hope they’re not tailoring the series to match fan reaction, because that would be a disaster.Do something new, but don’t change anything.
True, Season Three had its weaknesses, but having it all on DVD will alleviate most of them.The three-month gap in between the sixth and seventh episode aggravated most of us, especially as the cliffhanger was not particularly compelling.(Hey look, the heroes have the upper hand!I’m on the edge of my seat!)Sure, it was great when episodes seven through twenty-two aired weekly without interruption, but people tend to overlook that when they complain.With the box set, there’s no gap at all.Problem solved!
For some reason, ABC touted the season’s mediocre episodes as being groundbreaking while largely ignoring the most important episodes.Remember how they claimed that the episode revealing where Jack got his tattoos would answer “three of the island’s biggest mysteries”?On the off chance that you would actually consider the origin of his ink (Spoiler:He got his tattoos from a tattoo artist.) as one of the island’s biggest mysteries, that still left us two big reveals short of the promised allotment.But without that relentless promotion on the disc, you can just watch that episode on its own terms, and it’s not bad…just highly disappointing if you really believed that all of your questions would be answered.
Season Three, more so than its predecessors, stands up as a single story.The premiere gave us more information about The Others than in the previous two seasons combined.Sure, the focus on The Others pushed favorite characters offstage, sometimes for long stretches, but the payoff was there.Not the capitalized Payoff, where we learn just what the hell is going on, but for those paying attention, a lot of questions were answered.That’s not to say that there aren’t all manner of new questions now, but at least they’re NEW questions.Now we’re wondering who Jacob is and why women on the island can’t survive pregnancy, but we’re not still asking about that power line Sayid found or where those polar bears came from.
I have to think this season suffered from the inevitable comparisons to Heroes (which really caught on during Lost’s three month break), when they’re really very different series.Heroes gives you the big payoffs with exploding men and father-son battles on the psychic plane.Heroes is constantly moving forward, whereas Lost is rooted in history.Not just the character flashbacks in every episode, but the history of the island itself.In Season Three, we learned how Locke ended up in that wheelchair and who drove Sawyer’s father to kill himself and his wife, and we also saw the earliest days of the Dharma Initiative.
Some of the episodes this season stand up as the best of the series so far.Besides the episodes I just mentioned a couple of sentences back, Desmond’s flashback and the stunning season finale come to mind immediately.And now without scheduling woes or network mis-promotion, viewers can enjoy the season on its own merits.
The special features range from entertaining to important.The deleted scenes are interesting, but nothing extraordinary.A couple of behind the scenes documentaries are watchable, but not life-changing.After three seasons, we’ve seen a lot of behind the scenes.The blooper reel is pretty funny.There’s a series of cast and crew interviews about The Others, and a discussion of the books referenced in the series.This is one of my obsessions when it comes to analyzing Lost, so I was pleased to see it.(Strangely, nobody referenced the unreliable narrator in “Turn of the Screw”, which I think is particularly important.)The commentaries are fairly entertaining, with the writers occasionally getting a little slap-happy.I really enjoyed a short feature revealing that Terry O’Quinn learned how to throw knives on the set and got really good at it.Locke throws his own knives!Best of all is the previously unseen Orientation Film for the Orchid sub-station.(The Orchid appears to be the facility where Jack was kept prisoner, although I don’t remember it being referred to as such.)The same Asian man narrates, using yet another candle-related name – Edgar Hallowax.In addition to some misplaced frames showing a variety of images, including a flicker of “God Loves You as He Loved Jacob” (Which, for the obsessive, is not the same phrase as in the Others’ brainwashing film.), there’s a bit where the doctor, holding a rabbit branded “15” panics when he discovers that another rabbit with the same number is in the lab.“Keep them apart,” he yells.This being Lost, that’s going to be very important.
An excellent DVD release for a top-quality season – that’s really all you can ask for.
