So explain what the hell is going on?

[broberfett]

I occasionally turn on lost for a minute while flipping channels, but I have no idea what is going on. Mostly I see people by camp fires. They are always hallucinating or something like that. Some big thing moves around in the bushes, but you don't see it. So is the show just a bunch of never ending unsolved mysteries? Go ahead and spoil away.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

No, a lot of the mysteries are explained over time, but with each answered mystery, new ones arise. That being said, there is a definite feeling that the show is heading towards closure by the end of the fifth season (leading to the sixth and planned final season). At least I feel that way.

 

[Lindley]

Two powerful groups are fighting over control of the Island. There's indications that the second is a splinter off of the first. But whatever their origins, the Losties are caught square in the middle.

Why are they so interested in the Island? Well, we're not sure. We know why yet *another* group was studying it----a pocket of exotic matter at its core which allowed certain unique properties to manifest on the island: rapid healing and time travel certainly, and there's an indication some form of teleportation and/or remote viewing may be at work as well.

Of the 40 survivors of the plane crash, 8 eventually made it off the island only to be convinced it was necessary for some them to return to save the rest. They did so. Except that the whole lot of them are in 1979 now due to the aforementioned time travel properties.

So, you're stuck in the past and you have some limited knowledge of the island's future. What do you do? Try to change it, of course. Despite warnings from the physics guy that changing the past is impossible, they've set out to do so on the theory that if they can destroy the pocket of EM energy that crashed the plane, then the plane won't crash and everything will be different. Except personally I think they're just fulfilling a predestination paradox.....

Oh, and there's this black smoke monster on the island that can turn into people you know, and another fairly mysterious dude who seems to run the place. (Theory: Jacob is a white smoke monster.)

 

[LitmusDragon]

^ That's it in a nutshell. Also, a great deal of the drama of the show revolves around a conflict between the two ostensible leadership figures of the original plane crash survivors- one who believes the island is some kind of sacred entity and becomes a sort of disciple to it (and believes that everyone on the plane was destined to end up on the island, for some purpose), and the other who takes a more pragmatic view of the situation and just wants to make sure everyone survives and gets to go home.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

It is impossible to understand even a small piece of LOST if all you do is turn it on for a couple of minutes while flipping channels.

I've watched every episode twice, and can barely keep up with everything.

Lindley gave a pretty decent thumbnail sketch at a 45,000 foot, executive summary level...but wow...such summaries hardly do justice to the greatness of this show!

Basically, LOST is sort of like doing a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. It all fits together in a really cool way...but you have to put it together piece by piece to see what the larger picture is, even in one corner of the puzzle. Sometimes you put 20 pieces together and have to set them to the side for a while to see where they fit into the whole. Sometimes you don't see connections between individual pieces until 2 or 3 seasons later.

Even now, there are so many pieces and groups of pieces on the table that it will take all of season 6, just to fit together what we have in front of us already.


It's alot more than campfires!

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I think this sums it up

 

[broberfett]

So explain this youtube comment: "He forgot about the polar bears."

 

[Lindley]

Oh, yeah. There are some random polar bears on the island. Someone---probably Dharma---was keeping them locked up for some kind of study, probably for turning the Frozen Donkey Wheel. The details of that aren't entirely clear.

 

[Gertch]

Do you all realize how crazy we all sound in public trying to explain this stuff? Keep watching for the white coats...

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Oh yeah, I used to explain the show to people, now I don't bother because I'll just get crazy looks.

To explain the Polar Bear. In the second episode of the first season, Sawyer gets attacked by a Polar Bear and kills it. There's another polar bear roaming around, but, for all we know, that's it, just the two. In the third season (and confirmed in the fourth) we find out that the Dharma Initiative (group of scientists who fought with the natives on the island known as the Others and were wiped out) were doing scientific experiments and some of them involved polar bears. There appears to be at least one experiment that teleported a polar bear to Tunisia where it died (probably using the Orchid, which can transport things through space and time).

Polar Bears are really just a minor mystery.

 

[Starbreaker]

Just watch.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It all turned out to be surprisingly simple, really.

The Island is at the nexus of power on the planet. Or perhaps its a big sentient alien blob. Whatever the reason, the area has a frakked up space-time continuum that causes people to become unstuck in time, both mentally and physically, heals people, causes the dead to come back to life and/or causes people to see hallucinations of the dead, enhances polar bear intelligence, alter the laws of probability, teleportation and other fun stuff.

Some of these effects happen outside the Island, or continue after you leave the Island, but the "controls" seem to be located on the Island itself.

The monetary value of all of this is obvious, so powerful people are battling for control of the Island, which is made much tricker since the Island seems to have an opinion about it and can take steps to frustrate or help one side or the other.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions, for instance, has this been going on since the time of ancient Egypt and if so, do the Goa'uld have anything to do with it? But to me, the basic situation has been explained. In S6, I'll just be having fun watching the endgame unfold.