Lost withdrawal can be a savage thing, and five or six months is a long time to wait for a fix. Sure, you can always watch the series over from the beginning, several times. You could read Bad Twin until your eyes bleed. Commiserate with the thousands of other fans on the forums, or tap into the steady flow of totally bogus rumors being generated by fan sites desperate to keep their adsense checks plump. What’s a fan to do? Diversify.
As flattered as the guys and gals behind Lost are by your devotion, they want you to know there is more out there than just the island. That’s why they go to great lengths to drop literary and pop culture references throughout the show. Sure, some say that the appearance of books might somehow be tied to the multi-verse solution for Lost, where Lost is the junction between all the realities that exist within the books found on the Island (huh?) but something tells us that is not true. In a wider sense, it’s the cathartic act of the writers, set decorators, and probably an actor or two, saying “Hey, we have influences too.”
If you’re game, there are a number of series out there that can evoke that old Lost feeling, and even a few movies. Here’s a short list of some works guaranteed to stroke your Lost cortex, and expand your sense of the cool-tv-verse’s mass. Over the following week we’ll be reviewing more series, books, and movies that are sure to appeal to Lost fans looking to fill the hiatus vacuum.
The Prisoner – A secret agent retires abruptly and finds himself kidnapped and taken to a mysterious village with an architectural identity problem. Once there he plots his escape while running from bouncing white spheres and enduring cruel psychological mind games from his captors. Seventeen episodes tell the whole story, with an ending that will make you think The Sopranos finale was complete closure. Full of allegorical plots and parables, The Prisoner offers hours of deconstruction fun for viewers.
Nowhere Man – Thomas Veil finds that his identity has been stolen by mysterious forces who want to get their hands on the negatives to a photograph he took. Veil goes on a surreal road trip filled with blind psychic children, mysterious agents, and even aliens in a journey to get his identity back. The series also ended conclusively and much easier to swallow than The Prisoner, but will strangely find you asking for something a little weirder.
So now it is your turn to chime in. What gems have you discovered that remind you of the ‘type’ of programming Lost offers? Share your thoughts below tomorrow and tune in tomorrow when we look at a couple of movies that possess a dash of Lost’s secret herbs and spices.
– Jon Lachonis, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image by Jon Lachonis, Logo © ABC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
