Lost Season 4

Once again, Lost manages to carry us forward in the adventures of the survivors of flight 815 while completely reinventing the way the story is told in comparisons to seasons 1, 2 and 3. In some ways it reinvents television story-telling altogether. Up until now, we have become accustomed to character development through flashbacks. This year we are treated to regular flash forwards. Audiences of movies and television are used to non-sequential story-telling. Here we are made aware little by little, but right from the beginning, how the story will turn out this season. The ride is not about where we are going, but how we get there.

In some ways season 4 puts the story on hold, up until now 91 days have transpired since the crash. The main action of season 4 occurs in about one week. The writers strike affected all television shows this year. One can only wonder what it would have been like had the show been able to carry forward according to plan. That being said, what does happen is important to the plot. We learn a lot about the island without really getting a clearer picture of what is really going on, and we are set up well for the ride to come in season 5.

The one standout episode of the season, aside from the climactic ones at the end, is The Constant. This episode is creative writing at its very best, and is a good story at the same time. We learn more about one of our favorite characters, Desmond, and the season’s best introduction… Daniel Faraday.

Desmond’s character is another “believer” that the story presents to us. He believes in love. Like many other characters of faith in the show, he is a Christian and was at one time a novice monk. His constant devotion, the faith that keeps him going is the love that he has for Penny, and this show presents that fact to us quite literally.

Faraday is perhaps the most interesting man of faith we have yet to meet in the show. Not enough is show this season to really determine exactly what he believes. He comes across as an extremely intelligent man, one that is so smart that he has accepted that there are things in this world that we can not understand. He believes things that are true in spite of the fact that he cannot understand nor explain them. He is possibly a man that shows the balance between understanding and belief.

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