LOST: Back to the Island
The Complete Critical Companion to The Classic TV Series
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- 13,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A comprehensive critical companion to the blockbuster TV show LOST, revisiting its core themes, lore, and impact on culture
For fans of one of the most successful and highly discussed shows in recent memory, LOST: Back to the Island is both a delightful time capsule and a rousing work of entertainment criticism.
Before it premiered in the fall of 2004, LOST looked doomed to be an expensive, disastrous plane crash of a TV show. Instead, LOST was a massive hit, debuting with the biggest audience for a new drama on ABC in over a decade, reaching heights of over 23 million viewers at its peak, and holding on to a hefty fan-base for its entire six-season run.
The elements that made the series seem like a boondoggle proved, instead, to be a big part of its appeal. Audiences loved the exotic island setting, became invested in the morally compromised characters, and feverishly tried to unravel the show’s many mysteries.
In LOST: Back to the Island, TV critics and veteran LOST recappers Emily St. James and Noel Murray revisit what made the show such a success and an object of enduring cultural obsession, twenty years later.
Through essays, episode summaries, and cultural analysis, they take us back to the island and examine LOST’s lasting impact—and its complicated, sometimes controversial legacy—with a clear-eyed and lively investigation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this spirited commentary, screenwriter St. James (coauthor of Monsters of the Week) and TV critic Murray serve up brief essays on each episode of ABC's Lost (2004–2010). The authors commend the pilot for its fast pace, applaud season four's time-traveling romance "The Constant" for its writing, and credit the season three finale with reinvigorating the show after a shaky run of episodes. Though the overall tone is laudatory, the authors aren't afraid to take the series to task. For instance, they criticize how characters of color were afforded less screen time than their white counterparts and how Kate Austen, the lead female character, was reduced to "chasing two men around the Island" after becoming enmeshed in a love triangle. Some entries are little more than recaps, particularly for filler episodes the authors dismiss as "doldrums," but the best selections feel like lively debates with fellow superfans, as when they mount an enthusiastic defense of the much-maligned season three outing "Exposé" as a "nasty little poison pill of an episode" that allowed the writers to dispose of two characters strongly disliked by viewers in a darkly entertaining way. Discerning and fun, this will delight anyone who's gotten into a heated discussion about the show's many mysteries.
