The naysayers who condemned Lost prior to its first-season success
were fond of claiming that it was “just like” a certain other television
show, from some forty years in our cultural past, that it added nothing
to the mythos established by that earlier phenomenon, and that
it was impossible to watch Lost without thinking of that other show
and its set of similar contrivances.

As fans, we can deride the short-sightedness of those facile voices
all we want.

After all, Lost is a drama, whereas the previous series was a comedy.
Lost has moments of terror and suspense, whereas the previous
show had pratfalls. Lost has some four dozen castaways, whereas the
previous show had only seven.

Add to these obvious differences the fact that the other show reveled
in its stupidity, while Lost has moments of undeniable brilliance,
and the charge is revealed as a ridiculous canard, barely worth mentioning.

Except.

When you take a closer look, you find that the naysayers might
just have a point.

A few words of orientation, first, for the benefit of those readers more
familiar with the survivors of that ill-fated Oceanic Flight 815 crash,
and not the prior band of unlucky travelers.

There were these seven people, see.

They all boarded a fishing boat, in Hawaii, for a three-hour excursion.
Within those three hours, a freak storm came out of nowhere,
battered the little boat to and fro, and left it in ruins on  …