REBOOT:PREVIEW

G4 Television begins its four-hour block of reruns of LOST on Monday.

The question is whether old viewers will watch the reruns knowing what happens in The End. That question is the split dogma of the show itself. After the final episode, viewers were clearly divided into Civil War Camps: those who loved the ending because "it was perfect for character resolutions" versus those who hated the ending because it did not clearly answer the sci-fi, fantasy, mystery story arcs leading up to the final season.

Taking into consideration what viewers know now, can the series have a viable "flashback" of its own? Is there a way to view the show in new context the second time around?  Or will the viewer be played for a fool like John Locke?

We know the main characters wind up in Eloise's church in the state of being awoken but dead. This is the proclaimed "sideways world" but it raises more questions than it answered during Christian and Jack's brief casket conversation. But it does not explain the Island. Are there clues to determine what the Island really was?  Was it real? Was it its own character? Was it an illusion?

We were told that Jacob was the person who brought the humans to the Island. His right hand man was The Man In Black, his dead brother, a smoke monster. The idea that these two supernatural oddities control the lives of visitors is almost the opposite Fantasy Island metaphor, instead of personal fantasies coming true one's evil nightmares come to the forefront.

Is it possible to re-examine the show and piece together the story arcs not to meet an individual's postulated theories but to see if a reasonable literary storyline emerges from the characters? Just as the characters were tested at intellectual and moral levels, can the show itself be redeemed? Is there enough hope in the fact that TPTB knew what they were doing to be faithful to all the story arcs as being important components in the saga, or will a review of the series turn into a full face run into the activated sonic fence?

We will try to put an literary analytical review of the episodes in the context of what we know happens in the future. We will see how long that lasts before the show's main plot(s) goes off the rails.