I admit,I'm a huge fan of Lost. If I wasn't such an Egyptomaniac, I don't know that I could follow as well. What I love (and sometimes hate) about this show is that it forces viewers to take careful account of all the seemingly unimportant details, largely in the form of symbols, and wonder why on earth they are there in the first place. For example, in the season finale, we see that Jacob is living at the base of a statue of what appears to be an Egyptian god who has a crocodile head. In Egyptian mythology, this is the god Set or Seth, who is know for having murdered the god Osiris (who became the god of the Underworld), and then cut his body into 13 pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt. Since Set is assoiciated with death, it was a natural assumption that Jacob was going to be murdered by way of some twisted conspiracy. I also love that a number of the characters names relate to famous names in Political Science: John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, Rousseau... How do these names relate to the plot of the series? I haven't quite figured that one out yet, and I have studied a lot of political philosophy in my time!
Our kids can't even watch television anymore without the demands of being able to apply their learning in a variety of contexts. Kids need to be able to read and interpret graphic texts if they want to follow some of the more up-and-coming shows that are getting a lot of hype. Have we taught our kids to think? Have we taught our kids what to do with what they've learned in real-life, unpredictable situations? The kids who can do this will be successful is 21st century institutions, and incidentally, will be the few who may very well be able to predict where the writers of Lost of going with the storyline...
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