Remember That Time On LOST When: You Saw The Statue of the Foot!
[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]
It was the four-toed statue that saved my relationship with LOST. For a while, LOST and I had been fighting. It was the same fight I get into with all my significant others. “I’m bored!”, I screamed. “You’re always bored!”, it screamed back. “We don’t do anything!” I yelled. “We do tons of stuff!”, LOST responded. “Yeah, like WHAT! Tell me one thing we do.” LOST stared at me. There was a silence that filled the seconds and bloated them into minutes. “We uh”, LOST responded sheepishly. “We uh, we debate faith versus reason! And we hang out in the Hatch, and stuff…”
“You don’t open up to me, either. I don’t know anything about you! Why won’t you let me in, tell me your secrets,” I commented resentfully to LOST. But LOST just stood there, having nothing to say to me.
And we split.
I really thought I was done with LOST, halfway through the second season. To this point, I haven’t written much about Season Two, because well…I don’t remember much of it. I quit on the show. There were all sorts of ludicrous hiatuses, and the plot was just dragging, and dragging. So I said fuck this, and I stopped watching.
Months passed, and I sort of missed the show. This was before I had a DVR, so I had fallen behind and I didn’t have any means to really catch-up, even if I wanted to. And I told myself that I didn’t. But I had an unacknowledged interest in the show, it loomed in the back of my brain. Deep down inside, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on. I still wanted to know what the fucking Island was, I wanted to know what was up with Smokey, and Desmond. But the grind of watching week after week as the show went nowhere had worn me down.
I was done! No, seriously! That’s what I thought, until I found out about the foot.
It’s odd that I can remember the very day that I decided I was going to give LOST a second chance. It was July 4, 2006. I was over my friend Dave’s house for a pool party, to celebrate the lovely birth of our Empire. And by celebrating America’s Independence, it wasn’t like we were at a parade, or even like, rattling off favorite Amendments. We were being American. I was completely drunk off of some ungodly concoction called Pirate Punch, stuffed with shredded and processed former-meat, and spinning idly in a pool.
My friend Jesse was still watching the show, a much more faithful viewer than myself. And because I was curious deep down inside, I asked him what had been going on. I recall spinning round and round in a floaty tube, as he told me all about the electromagnetic pulse, and the Others kidnapping Jack and Kate and Ana Lucia getting shot in the dumb gut. And I thought it was all cool, because I really wanted to like the show. But then he told me about the giant statue or a four-toed foot, and I was all like
Whaaaa, dude, what the fuck? Huh! Four-toes! EXCLAMATION POINTS
I couldn’t help but think that it was the coolest thing in the world. Tell me more, I had to know all about it! Where was the rest of the body? Are you sure it only had four toes? Holy crap. I don’t know if I found it that amazing, or if it was the clear rum, peach schnapps and fruit punch sloshing around in my gut, partying with what was probably fourteen hot dogs, a cavalcade of tortilla chips, and a loose hamburger.
The plot by LOST worked. I was intrigued again. I had to know what was going on with the show. The new wrinkle in the Island was yes, another mystery I wouldn’t find out the answer to anytime soon, but it was also another layer of intrigue to the already incomprehensible going-ons of the Island. It was a ploy, and it worked, and I guess I don’t really feel bad about it.
I smashed in the digital video discs for Season Two when they came out, and I worked my ass up to this part I had heard about regarding feet and ugly sandals, and epic oddity. People dog on spoilers, but it may have been spoilers that got me back into the show.
And when I saw the sandal, I thought, oh snap! A familiar refrain when you’re watching LOST:
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more weird, LOST has again blown my damn mind
All of the Season 4 and Season 5 epic nature would have been something I missed if it weren’t for that dumb foot, that new layer of mystery, and a drunken day in a pool.