Easter is one of those in-between holidays, at least in my house. Definitely more important than Arbor Day but not nearly as important as Thanksgiving. So several family members didn't come to Easter dinner yesterday, which means I got to talk to a couple of people a lot instead of several people just a little. Since I work for The Most Awesome TV Blog in the Universe (TM), the conversation turned to television, specifically to 'Lost.'

I don't remember exactly how the conversation went (I wish I had a tape recorder running), but it was very close to this:

Sister: Oh, you watch 'Lost?'
Me: Yeah, it's great!

Sister: So what's going on on it?
Me: _______?

Sister: I mean, the last time I saw it they were on an island. That guy who was on 'The Practice' was there.
Me: Michael Emerson. He's a great actor.

Sister: So what has happened since then?

Me: Well, the show still has six or seven episodes left, but it seems to be a battle of good and evil. There's an evil guy battling a good guy...

Sister: The doctor?
Me: Well, he's a good guy, yeah, but I'm talking about Jacob, who just came on to the show the last season or so. The other people on the island...

Sister: The other people?
Me: Well, there were others there, from the Dharma Initiative. It's a long story, but they had been there for decades doing experiments. The castaways fought them for a while and then several of them eventually got off the island, but when they went back...

Sister: Why did they go back?!?
Me: Well, the doctor felt really guilty about leaving their friends there and the rest had reasons to go back, plus they had to go back, it was their fate. But when they went back they found themselves back in 1977 and had to blend in with the Others who were living there. Then they had to blow up an H-bomb so they could reset the timeline.

Now it looks like they have split the timeline and there's an alternative reality where the plane never crashed and they're living their lives. But there's weird things happening: they're looking into mirrors a lot, they're kinda recognizing people they've never met before, there are bruises on their bodies and they don't know how they got there.

It looks like one of them has been chosen to take care of the island and keep the bad guy trapped there. There's the the doctor, the big guy Hurley, the Korean couple, the guy in the wheelchair...

Sister: The bald guy? He's good, right?
Me: Well, he used to be, but he's not the same guy now. He's evil. He's dead and then the smoke monster took his form...

And when I said the words "He's dead and then the smoke monster took his form," I realized that no one who watches 'Lost' "once in a while" or "just a few episodes" could ever really understand what's going on.

It's not like 'Gossip Girl' or 'Criminal Minds' or even 'American Idol.' Sure, it would help immensely if you had seen the show and knew the basic plot, but even someone who hasn't seen any episodes could follow a summary of the plots of those shows (this guy slept with this girl because of this, this woman got killed because of this guy, this singer was booted off because the audience thought he did a bad job, etc.).

But you can't explain a show with smoke monsters and time travel and alternate realities and two plane crashes (sister: "wait...they crashed on the island TWICE?") and donkey wheels and former good guys being taken over by...something and other people coming to the island ("how did the castaways get on a helicopter?!?). I think I did a really good job in explaining the show to a complete novice but I still must have sounded like a mad man.

Which reminds me, the next family get-together we have I'm going to try to explain 'Mad Men' to her.



Someone said that the title 'Lost' also describes how fans of the show feel, so you can imagine how lost someone who doesn't watch the show feels when someone tries to explain it to them. I could have done a complete PowerPoint demonstration, with flowcharts and clips of the show and maybe puppets to act out the most important scenes from the show over the past six seasons and even a personal summary from Matthew Fox himself and it wouldn't have helped.

Some shows just can't be explained to people. Some shows you just can't "dip into it" and expect to understand and enjoy. 'Lost' is one of those shows. You either have to buy the DVDs and watch every single episode in order or you don't watch it at all.

When 'Lost' first started, we all thought it was just a show about people trapped on an island after a plane crash. How would they survive? Would they fight? Who would die? How would they get rescued? Oh, we knew mysterious things would happen, maybe even dinosaurs and quicksand and maybe pirates or hidden treasure, but we couldn't have guessed where this show was going to go, which is one of the reasons it's so fantastic and works so well.

I don't know if my explanation made my sister want to watch the show more than ever or if she just sighed with relief that someone explained it to her so now she doesn't have to watch it (even if she doesn't understand it). The ham was great though.