'Lost - The Complete Second Season'
(Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Naveen Andrews, et al / 6-Disc DVD / NR / (2004) 2006 / BVHE)
Overview: A horrific plane crash leaves 48 passengers alive, and stranded on a remote island in the South Pacific. The survivors include doctor Jack, now freed prisoner Kate, one hit wonder rock star Charlie, Iraqi military vet Sayid, and a mysterious man named Locke. For a while their goal is simple survival, but they soon realize that it was far more than mere chance that brought them together, and each of them has a purpose that will help them unlock the island's secrets.
DVD Verdict: Warning: Spoilers for both Seasons Two and Three! Season Two of 'LOST' was a very strong follow-up to one of the most impressive new shows in several years. It has also proven to be one of the most interesting television series on multiple grounds. For instance, it has taken the serial format to perhaps its logical extreme. If at one end of the narrative spectrum you have LAW AND ORDER, a show that each week features a completely self-contained episode that leaves no plot or dramatic conflict unresolved (a format I will confess to utterly detesting), at the other you have LOST, a series that will only complete its story when it comes to an end. Comparing these shows to literature, LAW AND ORDER could be compared to a large collection of short stories. A show like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which more or less told a single major story each season, could be compared to a sequence of novels. LOST, on the other hand, could be compared to a massive epic novel like WAR AND PEACE or LES MISERABLES. Is LOST a great show? Given this narrative structure, we honestly don't know yet. It is the only show that I know that can only be properly judged when it comes to an end. We can say this: this has a chance to be one of the truly great shows in television history. What we can say so far is that Seasons One and Two have been wonderful components of what we can only hope will be a great story. If we thought we knew what LOST was about in Season One, Season Two proved us wrong. We knew that there were people that Rousseau referred to as "the Others" and we knew there was a hatch, but little did we realize that the island was perhaps (I say "perhaps" because we still aren't really sure) the setting for an elaborate set of social experiments, complete with covert observers. We also learned that the island was in fact home to multiple hatches, each with a distinct function. We further learned that the original group of survivors was not the only one from Flight 815 to survive the crash; we are introduced to a group of people commonly known as the Tailenders. As the season progressed, the number of new twists and revelations continued to mount. My only complaint with this has been that given the extremely large (and continually growing) cast we sometimes lose contact with the various individuals. Give a choice between a plot-driven and character-driven series, I'll always opt for the latter. Indeed, the stated intention for LOST was for it to be a character-driven series, but I'm not sure they have always maintained the proper balance. Mainly this is simply the result of the gigantic cast. There were many new characters in Season Two, as well as a host of guest appearances in the various flashback scenes. (On a purely personal level, I was especially delighted by the brief appearance of Wayne Pygram in the Rose and Barnard flashback episode. Pygram played one of the truly great villains in TV history as Scorpius in FARSCAPE. The delight in LOST was that he spoke in his normal accent and with minimal make up, while as Scorpius he appeared in heavy make up and spoke in a highly cultivated accent.) We had six major new characters introduced. First we met inside the hatch Henry Ian Cusick's character Desmond, who promptly disappears until the end of the season. Although the season ends with Desmond apparently dying, the fact that Cusick has been announced as a full time cast member sort of takes the suspense out of whether he survived or not. Interestingly, Desmond's last name is Hume, joining Locke and Rousseau as characters sharing last names with major 18th century philosophers. We then met four major new characters among the Tailenders, Michelle Rodriguez's Ana-Lucia, Cynthia Watros's Libby, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's Mr. Eko, and Sam Anderson's Barnard, the oft-mentioned husband of Rose. Fans of ANGEL were delighted to discover that Barnard was played by the same actor who so memorably portrayed Holland Manners, the elegant but thoroughly evil head of Wolfram and Hart. Last but certainly not least, we met one of the Others, Henry Gale, portrayed magnificently by Michael Emerson (who has been announced as a fulltime cast member for Season Three). All of these characters brought a great deal to the show, though considerable controversy arose when Rodriguez and Watros were both arrested for drunk driving. This was especially troubling in Rodriguez's case because of prior drunk driving convictions and possible violation of probation. There is a widespread belief that both their characters' deaths later in the season were connected with the arrests. The fact that both characters seemed to leave the show prematurely certainly bolsters that belief. The producers have already informed us that while Season Two was about the Hatch, Season Three will be about the Others. Hopefully it will also deal with two major events from the season finale. Throughout Season Two Locke and others had diligently been resetting the timer inside the bunker, but in the finale they let it go all the way down. Show runner and co-creator Damon Lindelhof has already acknowledged that this was an incredibly important event, the ramifications to be dealt with in Season Three. He has confessed that on a scale of importance from 1 to 10, allowing the numbers to go all the way down was a 10. But perhaps even more interesting, the event triggered by the numbers going down resulted in a detectable event elsewhere in the world. The very last scene of Season Two was of two men surrounded by scientific instruments detecting the event on the island, showing for the first time that there really is still an outside world. Furthermore, one of the men then made a phone call to the woman we learned in a flashback was the extremely wealthy woman with whom Desmond was in love. In other words, she is searching for Desmond. So in a new twist Desmond could prove to be the most important character on the show. There is also one cause for hope in Season Three. The end of ALIAS has freed up some of that show's production talent to come over to LOST. Drew Goddard, one of the most spectacularly gifted writers on television (he first came to public notice in Season Seven of BUFFY, where as a new writer he wrote most of the best episodes, including the memorable "Conversations with Dead People" and the great Spike episode "Lies My Parents Told Me" while on ALIAS was tabbed to write the series finale). Goddard will almost certainly gain a reputation as LOST's best writer. He did contribute one episode for Season One, the superb script for "Outlaws." With the danger of much of the creative team of LOST leaving for the STAR TREK movie, the addition of someone with Goddard's abilities is comforting. This is a family friendly Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:
Commentary by: Executive producers Damon Lindelof, Carleton Cuse, Bryan Burk and Jack Bender on "Man of Science, Man of Faith", Director Paul Edwards, Director of Photography Michael Bonvillain, and co-star Evangeline Lilly on "What Kate Did", Executive producers Damon Lindelof, Carleton Cuse and Bryan Burk on "The 23rd Psalm", Director Jack Bender, co-stars Jorge Garcia & Cynthia Watros on "Dave", Co-stars Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim, writers Elizabeth Sarnoff and Christina M. Kim on "The Whole Truth"
24 episodes from the 2005-2006 season on 6 discs
Exclusive unaired flashbacks
LOST connections: interactive experience that plants seeds for season three
Conspiracy theories with creators, writers, fans
Fire and Water: Anatomy of an Episode
Secrets From the Hatch
Deleted Scenes
Bloopers
Channel UK promo directed by David LaChapelle
The World According to Sawyer
www.LostOnDVD.com