So in an out-of-the-blue, out of sight out of mind return, LOST got a satirical beating on the Simpsons last night.
Homer Simpson drops off Bart at the movie theater so he can go his his favorite place in the complex: the food court. After stuffing himself, Homer can barely walk and breathe to the exit when he stumbles across a fitness store. The slick fitness salesman ("who is not required to give his name") convinces the overweight Homer into an expensive exercise treadmill, complete with an HD TV and Internet streaming.
So in order to cope with the boredom of exercise, Homer finds out that he can stream old television shows while on the equipment. One show he never heard of was called STRANDED. In the pilot, the burning crash wreckage is shown, and Jack is smashing open a coconut which reveals his childhood puppy inside (in a demon state with red eyes) where a collar with the flight number "815" on it. Suddenly, Homer is hooked on this old television show.
Homer becomes obsessed with the show's mysteries that he starts living (not exercising) on the treadmill. He starts a journal of all the mysteries, and groans when the flashbacks "create more questions than answers!" There are scenes of LOST characters speaking illogical gibberish between themselves, until the Locke character is eaten by a Lava Monster.
Homer gets so into the show that he forms a discussion group with Lenny, Carl and Moe. However, that turns into a violent personal confrontation between the three, leaving Homer with no one to share his thoughts and feelings about the show that is confusing, frustrating, obsessing and contradictory. He tries to block out what other people had said about the show (that only the first and last seasons mattered).
Homer then goes into bunker mentality, "spoiler free" mode to the ire of Marge, who basically sums of the show as being exactly what the producers said at the beginning did not happen: that all the characters died and went to hell and the afterlife.
Homer then realizes what the rest of us world knew-- that LOST or in his case, "Stranded"-- the television show about mysteries, the character stories, the plot twists, anticipation of answers came to a jolting halt when things didn't all quite add up in The End. Homer's frustration at television, which promises more than it usually delivers, is a parody within a parody.
The episode also infers that the state of network television is so bad that viewers are willing to watch old television series (or buy DVD box sets) just to escape time even though there may be no satisfying payoff in the end.
