Phreaky Phriday: Ultimate Nerd Guide To “Lost”

Every once in a while, a TV show comes along that redefines what it is to be human in the midst of a cruel world, a show that causes us to rise up with a common cry of acclamation, and declare to the world, “This! This is what it is to be alive! To be free! To be triumphant in this live of adversity, come what may!”

When it comes, it’ll probably be on HBO. Until then, we can pass the time by watching Lost. To aid you in your viewing, I thought I’d post a little “Ultimate Fan’s Guide” to help you navigate your way through the show.

  • LOSTCasts. A podcast dedicated to analyzing the show, in all of its persnickety glory.
  • The Lost Fan Fiction Archive. No show is complete without a herd of basement dorks putting down their Star Trek replica models for a few minutes and writing pages and pages, and pages, of fan fiction. For those of you unfamiliar with fan fiction, imagine if the next 86 episodes of lost were written by a team of 14 year-old nerds trying to impress 14 year old band girls. Then imagine that the 14 year old band girls wrote the next 79 episodes, but did each one as a chain-letter, passed around on the bus before state marching band competition. Then image that they all sit around, and tell each other how great their writing is, then complain about the fact that ABC should totally let them write for the show, cuz they R teh l33t writorz, LOL.
  • The Lost RPG. Yup. RPG. As in Role Playing Game. As in Dungeons and Dragons.
  • The Lost Numbers. Every wonder what those numbers mean? These guys don’t know either, but they list every time one of those numbers show up in an episode. A typical posting would be something like “In Season 2, episode 2, Kate wears a shirt that is made of 30 weight cotton and says the word ”Jack“ seven times, and as we all know, 23 is the only prime number listed in the sequence, and 7 more than 23 is 30.”
  • The Ultimate Lost Theory. I’m not kidding, this is an amazing analysis. It almost doesn’t matter if the guy is right or not, you have to appreciate the kind of nerd power it took to put all of these threads together. This link may be crashed when you check it – it’s hosted on some small, backwoods message board, and it got Dugg, Slashdotted, and Farked. Poor guy.

So there you have it. For those of you not content to simply watch and enjoy, you may now begin your free-fall descent down the rabbit hole.