Lost is one of the most fascinating shows currently running on network television.

The brainchild of Alias and Felicity creator J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber, it concerns Oceanic Flight 815, flying from Syndey, Australia to the United States when, for some undetermined reason, it loses control and crash-lands on the beach of an unexplored island somewhere in the vast South Pacific. Roughly 50 passengers emerge from the flaming wreckage, shell-shocked, disbelieving. They quickly rally under the de facto leadership of spinal surgeon Jack Sheppard (Party Of Five's Matthew Fox), and start preparing for a stay of undetermined length, crafting a community amongst the deitrus left behind in the plane's demise. But as the days start collecting into weeks and eventually months, hopes of rescue start to fade, replaced by a more base emotion... fear.

For you see, the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 quickly come to realize they are not the only people living on the island. And the mysterious "Others" also occupying the island are far from friendly, keeping tabs on our protagonists and occasionally kidnapping a few for their own nebulous reasons. Oh, did I mention the "monster" that seems to consist of a cloud of sentient smoke that can uproot trees like a rampaging dinosaur, or the odd manifestations that seem to afflict certain castaways, or the mysterious, underground hatches that seem to have been left behind by a group that even pre-dates the "Others"?

Since it's premiere in 2004, Lost has unfolded like a richly-textured novel, folding the mysteries and dangers the survivors face on the island unto flashbacks that illuminate the frequently unhappy pre-crash lives of said survivors (daddy issues abound), who seem to have crossed paths many times before getting on that ill-fated flight. Even within the island narrative, the chronology will often leap around with disorienting skill, fracturing the story into tasty fragments, doling out important information in dribs and drabs but always moving toward some grand, as-yet-unexplained final revelation about the island's gifts and curses.

As season three opens, Jack, escaped criminal Kate Austin (Evangeline Lilly) and charismatically scruffy con man James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) have been captured by The Others and have been brought back to their encampment. Kate and Sawyer are thrown into cages, while Jack is propositioned by The Others' apparent leader, Benjamin Linus (the unsettling, bug-eyed Michael Emerson). Seems like Jack's medical background has made him an invaluable asset to Ben. Meanwhile, the other Oceananic survivors await word of Jack, Kate and Sawyer's fate. Formerly paralyzed box company employee John Locke's (Terry O'Quinn) unusual relationship with the island continues to deepen and grow progressively stranger as he goes to great lengths to prevent the island from ever being discovered (oh, and we finally learn how he ended up in that damned wheelchair in the first place). Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), who spent the last three years stuck in an underground bunker on the island pushing a button every 108 minutes lest the world come to an end (don't ask), finally blew the whole thing to hell in last season's finale, and emerged from the blast with flashes of future events suddenly occurring to him. Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) continues to be really, really fat and say "Dude" a lot. Claire Littleton (Emilie De Ravin) has thankfully stopped bitch-slapping fading rock star and former junkie Charlie (former Hobbit Dominic Monaghan) and screaming "My Baby!" every five minutes. Jin Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) and his wife Sun (Yunjin Kim) are expecting a child, but what former Other doctor Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) reveals about her duties on the island threatens to shatter their happiness.  

That's not to say that season three didn't have it's creative rough patches. The first six episodes, wherein Jack, Kate and Sawyer have the crap kicked out of them both physically and psychologically during their imprisonment by The Others, quickly grew repetitive and wearisome in the eyes of many fans, not helped by the nearly four-month gap in-between this "mini-season" in the fall of 2006 and the show's return to the airwaves in February of 2007. Also, the abrupt introduction of Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paulo (Rodrigo Santoro) early in the season as miscellaneous background extras suddenly thrust into the narrative as if they'd been important members of the cast all along rubbed many fans the wrong way, causing the producers to quickly write the characters out in the episode "Expose", in a way that would makes fans of Tales From The Crypt chuckle with fiendish delight.

Lost is not a television program that one can drift in and out of and gain any genuine satisfaction. Unlike "Every Episode Is The Same" cop/lawyer/doctor shows like CSI, Law & Order or House, Lost is a convoluted jigsaw puzzle, only with seemingly half the pieces gone and the box with the final picture missing. Like previous "mythology"-heavy cult favorites Twin Peaks and The X-Files, Lost is a gorgeously eccentric series that combines elements of survival adventure, sci-fi, soap opera and geek-friendly pop culture riffing ("Hey, don't look at me... I'm not the one dumb enough to fall for the old 'Wookie Prisoner' gag.") into an ever-expanding saga that peels away to reveal one secret after another. Do the creators of Lost really know where all the four-toed statues, ghostly manifestations, and rapid, regenerative powers are eventually going to end up, or are they just pulling it out of their ass as they're going along? I have no idea. The series is just slightly past it's mid-point if the creators are to be believed, so there's no telling what's in store for out castaways. I'm reminded of something Stephen King (who's fiction is a big influence on Lost) wrote in the afterward of the first installment of his 1996 novel The Green Mile, which was originally published in six monthly chapters:

 "I really like the high-wire aspect of this project. Screw it up, and a million people will be howling for your blood."

Lost has a similar fascination about it. It may all turn out to be a "snow globe" mind fuck that'll infuriate long time fans, but... maybe, just maybe, the tapestry J.J. Abrams and his creative team have been steadily weaving over the past three years will finally reveal something grand and awe-inspiring when the last stitch is in place. Either way, I'm along for the ride until the bitter end. Lost is dynamic serialized pulp myth making of the most engrossing sort, and the DVD sets are ideal for barrelling though an entire season in multi-episode mini-marathons in search of nuggets of truth beneath the show's lavish surface. Dive in, brotha.


Presentation
The 23 episodes of season three are presented in crisp, anamorphic 1:78.1 transfers that render the show's lush, Hawaiian location footage with gorgeous, color-saturated detail. There's nary a speckle or compression artifact in sight. The 5.1 English audio (with additional tracks in English and Spanish 2.0 and French 5.1) offers an elaborate reproduction of the show's impressive sonics, with falling rain, smoke monster roars, gunshots and subwoofer flashback whooshes given an excellent, three-dimensional spread. Michael Giacchino's superb musical scores are also presented with excellent fidelity, mixing beautiful, sad melodies featuring solo piano, violin and cello lines with savage, jangling outbursts of percussion that recall the alien soundscapes of Jerry Goldsmith's great sci-fi/horror scores of the 1960's and 70's (Planet Of The Apes in particular). No complaints here.

Extras
Spread across the first six discs of the set are four audio commentaries on the episodes "A Tale Of Two Cities" (with executive producer Damon Lindelof and actress Elizabeth Mitchell), "I Do" (with writer/producer Carlton Cuse and actors Josh Holloway and Evangeline Lilly), "Expose" (with co-executive producer/writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz) and "The Man Behind The Curtain" (with Lindelof, Cuse and actor Michael Emerson). These are breezy, enjoyable tracks with the creators dishing on the technical and narrative sides of the production and the actors generally goofing off and laughing at themselves.

Disc seven offers a platter full of goodies that Lost fans ought to eat up. With a main menu set up to resemble a bank of control panel monitors, one clicks on the individual screens to be brought to several sub-menus, offering the following:

-Lost Book Club (8:12) is an interesting look at the long line of literary influences on the series, everything from Of Mice And Men to Watership Down to Carrie. If for nothing else, this should have certain fans of the show scrambling to their local libraries in search of clues. 

-Cast In Clay: Creating The Toys Of Todd McFarlane (5:13) is pure commercial fluff detailing the action figure line inspired by the show (I call dibs on the "Sun In A Bikini" doll!).

-The Next Level: Inside The Video Game (4:08) is more "buy me!" nonsense about the creation of the forthcoming Lost video game.

-Lost On Location (58:13 total) offers brief featurettes chronicling the production of the episodes "The Glass Ballerina", "Every Man For Himself", "Not In Portland", "Flashes Before Your Eyes", "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead", "The Man From Tallahassee", "Expose", "The Man Behind The Curtain", "Greatest Hits" and "Through The Looking Glass". There's a lot of interesting tidbits buried here.

-Crew Tribute With Evangeline Lilly (7:19) has Lilly introducing the often-unsung members of the production crew, from caterers to boom mike operators to grips.

-Lost In A Day (25:33) is probably the best of the making-of material on the disc, which depicts one 24-hour period in the show's production (February 21st, 2007) and how pieces of no less than seven different episodes are being filmed, edited, scored and ADRed in both Hawaii and Los Angeles simultaneously. Shot with 24-style split screens, this is a fascinating look at the jigsaw puzzle constantly being supervised by the show's creators and producers.

-The World Of The Others (14:12) looks at both the characters of the show's group of baddies and the production design of their community.

-Terry O'Quinn: Throwing From The Handle (1:41) offers a brief look at O'Quinn boning up on his knife-throwing skills, eventually goading a crew member into taping a dollar bill to a nearby tree, which he neatly skewers with his next toss.

-Blooper Reel (6:35) contains the obligatory collection of flubbed lines, technical foul-ups and the like. Some laughs, but not the best of it's kind.

-Lost Flashbacks offers some additional flashback material snipped from the episodes "Further Instructions" ("Locke Escapes", 1:27), "The Glass Ballerina" ("Funeral Scene, 0:39) and "Expose" ("People Can Change", 3:35). It's easy to see why these were taken out.

-Deleted Scenes (17:20) contains footage removed from several episodes, including the scenes "Doctor To The Rescue", "Introducing Nikki and Paulo", "Sex Talk", "Breaking Rocks", "Alex And Daddy", "Super Powers, Dude", "Charlie Carries On", "Changing Our Luck" and "The Journey To Jacob's Place". Some of the scenes here offer some nice additional character insights as well as some laughs, but, again, they're not strictly necessary.

-Orchid Instructional Film (2:10) is a bizarre bit with a Dharma Initiative doctor trying to film a video, only to have him and the camera crew freak out over... a bunny? I assume this'll make sense at some point next season...

-Finally, there's a screen of Sneak Peaks (7:51), including the hideous-looking sports comedy The Game Plan, Brothers & Sisters Season 1, Grey's Anatomy Season 3, Ugly Betty Season 1, What About Brian Seasons 1 & 2 and a thirty-second preview of Lost's upcoming fourth season, which doesn't tell us anything except to "protect the island at all costs!".

Oh, and Easter Eggs are studded throughout the various submenus (far too many to detail here). Just keep pushing the arrow buttons on your remote in every possible direction, and you may even get rewarded with a yummy fish-biscuit or two.

Final Word
Lavish, eccentric, bizarre... Lost is as audacious as anything currently being produced on network television. Who knows what the future might hold (Desmond, perhaps), but, for now, it's one of the most confidently engrossing serial dramas out there. Weither you've been a fan from day one or are just discovering the show on DVD, the third season of Lost is frequently dazzling, and rewards multiple viewings with "Oh, now I get it!" revelations.