BY ALEXANDRA ISRAEL

In print | Published February 7, 2008

My addiction has come back full force.

You could say that my doom caught up with me Friday morning, when I successfully loaded the fourth season premiere of “Lost” onto my computer and a sinister, swirling electronic chord started my pulse racing and my head spinning. Or you could say that I began traveling this fateful path when I spent weeks dissecting last season’s mind-blowing finale. But I’d probably tell you that my addiction all started three and a half years ago, when I decided to check out this new show about a plane crash purely because “Lord of the Rings” actor Dominic Monaghan appeared as something other than a cute and cuddly hobbit.

One addiction feeds another, and what began as a byproduct of my LOTR mania has now become an obsession in and of itself. When the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 are on the air, my cell phone is turned off, work is forgotten, friends and family are ignored. I am now capable of spending weeks that were formerly devoted to hand-tracing maps of Middle Earth (yes, I really am that much of a geek) puzzling over mysterious sequences of numbers, freeze-framing certain moments in an attempt to gain additional knowledge and wondering about the significance of the fact that Sawyer was reading Ayn Rand. (The latter may just be the result of Sawyer being an arrogant prick – albeit an extremely sexy one.)

This, my friends, is the beauty of “Lost.” It’s one of the few TV shows (descended from both “The X-Files” and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks,” and recently joined by “Heroes”) that’s more than just a show. The show’s complex plotlines and characters do not lend themselves to casual viewership, and the more obsessive the viewer, the more clues there are to discover. Debates rage all over the Internet about issues that run much deeper than the McDreamy vs. McSteamy argument (although “Lost” does offer a similar theme in the Jack and Kate vs. Kate and Sawyer conundrum), and these debates are not for the faint of heart. They often involve quantum mechanics – invoked in an attempt to explain Desmond’s penchant for time travel and prophecy – as well as Biblical study, philosophy and political theory. I’ve read explanations for the show that delve deep into the ideas of Nietzche and Kierkegaard, draw parallels with The Brothers Karamazov, Catch-22 and Dickens (all of which have been featured at some point) and treat the island and its inhabitants as a biblical allegory. One of the most popular theories about the show was that the island was Purgatory, a now irrelevant idea that was amusingly drawn upon by the creators in a book published as a companion to the series, entitled Bad Twin and written by supposed Oceanic 815 passenger Gary Troup. (“Gary Troup” is an anagram for “Purgatory.” Get it?)

A joke like this on the part of the show’s creators – Damon Lindelof, J.J. Abrams, and Carlton Cuse – points to another reason why “Lost” is so much more than just a show. The creators are constantly creating supplemental material that feeds into the show’s mythology and offers glimpses of the truths that drive the story, and they are constantly creating an eerie sense that the events unfolding onscreen exist in real life. How else to explain the billboard advertising Oceanic Air’s New York-Singapore service that appeared earlier this month in Times Square? Or Web sites such as TheHansoFoundation.org, which cryptically references the Dharma Initiative, some sort of scientific experiment embarked upon by the island’s former inhabitants? Some tie-ins even provide answers to the show’s questions: players of last summer’s “Lost” internet game were rewarded by finding out the source of a series of mysterious numbers that kept appearing on the island: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. They’re generated by something called the Valenzetti Equation, about which I know nothing, so if you want further information I would suggest contacting either the show’s creators or a math major.

These are only a few of the reasons that my love of “Lost” is so all encompassing. There isn’t time to go into the myriad little things that make the show so wonderful – I haven’t even mentioned the superb cast and clever writing. If you really want to know why I love the show so much, I would suggest watching the pilot episode, available on iTunes or ABC.com. If you, like me, find it impossible to look away, I would suggest calling your professors before switching off your cell phones; if you explain that a plane crash caused you to miss class, they might just forgive you.

Alexandra is a first-year. You can reach her at aisrael1@swarthmore.edu.

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