I watched the episode where some dude got sucked into a jet engine. That was only a few months ago. I never started watching LOST because I knew it would be too addicting.

For example, my roommate and I watched the whole first season of Heroes during finals week. Poor timing on our part, but the show was awesome!

I finally started watching it last summer after a couple years of prodding and a tip that every episode was online in HD for free on abc.com so I managed to watch about an episode a day. And in brief, it was not the wacky "people dying with some mind-controlled smoke monster in a metal bunker off the coast of some island" movie I had imagined it to be based on people talking about it.

The first three episodes were fairly trying. The show didn't really promise anything exceptional or exciting, it just introduced a bajillion different characters. Until they had the episode about John Locke (Walkabout). Then the sense of mystery and fantasy crept into the show and Locke emerged as, if not the main character, the most interesting of the survivors. That sense of mystery about the island was what kept me hooked the first season. Then the retro Dharma Initiative buildings in the second season were still intriguing and likable and it managed to maintain its sense of mystery.

Lost is the only show I've seen that has managed to have a feeling of mystery in it. Maybe a couple Twilight Zone episodes were mysterious, but I really loved how the suspense/power/fantasy/mystery of the Island grew. For the first two seasons, at least. Not to say I disliked three through five, but they were different. It was probably better for the series that it moved from a lot of intriguing background on the Island to somewhat intriguing action/group dynamic situations in three and four. Season five started off as a mess, but got better. My only gripe is that there's more flashback content in all five seasons than actual relative "real-time" content. Especially in season five. But, in my opinion, the fifth season had the most heart-wrenching 3 seconds in television history. Which is I guess solidifies its good drama series name, but it also makes me sad.

I love Lost. It's definitely a show people will either absolutely love, or hate though. The thing about this show is that it's so detailed and complicated that you absolutely have to watch every episode or you miss things (which is probably the biggest reason people who don't like the show, well, don't like it). One thing that's just insane is that once you learn something significant, you can go back to earlier episodes and pick up even more information about it. Little subtle things from the past make sense and have significance when you originally thought they didn't which is a big reason why I love this show.

I think what keeps me into Lost is the way the mysteries are revealed, not just in the way I already mentioned, but more so in a way in which you get a fundamentally different perception on the reasons and outcomes you experience each season. There is an ancient and mystical element involved with the show that doesn't surface hardly at all, it isn't obvious, and it's delivered when you don't expect it. I fucking love that.

A lot of people may hate that it takes a long time to get "answers", but I think that's because we compare how plot works in regards to other television shows and novels and it gives the impression of Lost being really slow and dragging. In reality the revealing is extremely time sensitive and you realize this phenomenon when something is revealed and suddenly every assuringly slow or boring part in the past makes sense and you think, "Damn, they really couldn't have done better than how they did it." It's almost an art the way they have it down. The past finale was crazy because when you previously began to think you're picking up on the origins and ideas of the island, your face is slapped and water is poured on you and you realize there is a whole dimension of shit you didn't account for. Yet, somehow, it all ties together perfectly.