Lost: The Complete Fifth Season

Lost Season 5 Does not work on DVD Players in Southern Hemisphere. The copy purchased is for the American markt or Northern Zones. All other DVD set's we have purchased through Amazon are fine apart from this one.

Got a great price for all seasons of the lost dvds. An excellent purchase

This was my first LOST on blu-ray (I have the DVD sets) and I noticed the superior quality of the blu-ray to the DVD immediately. Lots of extra features - many interactive. A must for all LOST fans who want to re-watch. The 1080p HD is amazing and so necessary for a show where fans look for such things as tiny weeny dots on the screen.

In more ways than one, Lost Season 5 is the best season of one of the greatest shows ever to air on television. It had all the elements that have come to define the show, and make it one of the most enjoyable experiences ever to hit TV. It had great character development, it had great mythology, it had great moments, it was original, and it had a superb story. And let me start off by saying that I'm a time-travel geek. I lay awake at night in fear of time paradoxes and my life being erased. I've also seen most major & obscure takes on the subject, so I followed and understood the whole season with the information that was given. I can see how somebody would get lost easily, but I understood it perfectly, and that's just because of my geekiness. Your experience with Season 5 may vary.

Highlight Episodes:
The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham
LaFleur
Namaste
Dead Is Dead
The Incident

First off, the characters. Ever since Season 1, Lost has struggled with bringing new emotions, and stories that seem like they fit with the character, and not for any cheap or uninteresting side-note or plot device; that is if they even move the characters along. In Season 5, this is not the case, every character matures in a totally different way than we've seen before, and it does them justice. This is especially the case with Sawyer, who after 5 Seasons has finally granted my wish of wanting to see him in a leadership role. But he's no leader like any we've seen on the show before, and he's certainly no Jack. He's still the cool, nickname guy we knew before, but this is a Sawyer that uses his brain for somebody other than himself, and he just does it in some have called a "Winston Churchill" type manner. And this description would suit him well. We finally found a stable relationship for Sawyer, and for a long while there, he was one of the few characters on the show that had found some sense of happiness. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid & Sun also progressed well from off-island life to island life, giving each of the characters a real reason to return that again suited their characters well. Heck, even Kate or Jack didn't seem annoying for a while there. Then of course, we saw Miles & Faraday grow into their roles on the show, as they became not only essential to the story, but they found a way into our likability circle. Sure, they may have came late, but especially in the case of Miles now, he fits right in.

Story-wise, the season does start off a bit slow do to the whole 'We're Getting The Band Back Together' storyline. Sure it was essential, but it felt like it could have been condensed a bit. But that only lasts for a few episodes, and they're usually inter-spliced with the time-travel story (More on Time-travel later). But once everybody got onto the island, it just rocketed down the path of no return with each episode being slammed-packed with great moments & stuff we've never seen before. Keeping the show on the island, but moving it mostly to the 70s was a great change of pace for the season, and it was fun living in the Dharma world for a little bit, getting to know the characters, events & the company that shaped the island so much, even though we wished Radzinsky had bit the bullet early from the moment he started opening his mouth. But overall, I couldn't have been much more satisfied with the arch the season took, and it did a nice job of setting up the final season.

As for the time-travel, I was stunned how the show took it in such an amazing/original direction. I mean, the whole island moves in time, stays in one spot for a while, then takes the castaways to another time period. And some of the stops are pretty amazing. We get to see the island in the 50s, the future, the 80s, and other various unknown points, and what the castaways usually found in these periods was just so fun for any Lost fan. I mean, the moment where the island skips in time, and a rope once dangling from a well was just sticking out of the ground since the well hadn't been built yet. So awesome. But that's not all folks, they presented time travel theories, created the time-loop timeline, and dived deep into the question of 'Can you change the past, or is what done is done? If you try to change the past, do you just eventually set it on its present course?' These are deep questions, and it was just so fun to watch Lost tread ground that most other media hasn't even touched on, much less delved into.

Overall, time will tell its true placement in the series' hierarchy, but for me, it was one of the most fun and satisfying experiences watching TV in my lifetime. Sure, it's not for everybody, and it is hard to get a grip on it, but for those that can (and it certainly helps to watch all the episodes in a short span of time), then you might be half as keen to love it as I do. And what about those last 30 seconds? One of the best cliffhangers in TV history, especially if you have the chance to pop in the next episode right afterwards? I say yes.

It's difficult to gauge how each season of 'Lost' compares to other seasons in this landmark series simply because revisiting past years does not offer the same initial excitement it once did upon first viewing. To elaborate, the enjoyment of each season of 'Lost' hinges on the intriguing mysteries of the island and its inhabitants being slowly and artfully revealed piece by piece through a nuanced and creative storytelling. Subsequently, once the mystery is revealed to us, it is difficult to review past episodes and attempt to judge it on its artistic merits simply because it no longer holds the same tight spell of suspense over us as it once did when we did not know what to expect. Thus, an audience must usually rely not on a reviewing of the episodes but a personal recall of the initial impressions the episodes made to even attempt a judgment of each season.

But putting that wordy preamble aside, how does 'Season 5' stack up with the 'Lost' library? From a storytelling continuity standpoint, the series continues to deliver high-adrenaline arcs that will keep audiences on their toes. Although Season 1 and 2 can still be considered as having a special place in the 'Lost' library simply because they pioneered so many of the initial suspense and mysteries that we now take for granted as questions answered [What is the Dharma Initiative? Who are the Others? Is there a world outside of the island, or is it purgatory?] one still must admit that the storytelling, if not Season 1 then definitely Season 2, had some lulls. Season 3 and 4, while perhaps not raising mysteries as significant as the origins of the Dharma Initiative or the temporal existence of the island, still does a consistent and pleasant job of presenting new mysteries to the island [Who is Jacob? What is the island's purpose? What is Locke and Jack's destiny?] Also of note, after the creators of the series announced in the middle of Season 3 that the series will definitely end after six seasons, there has been no lulls in storytelling. The series has moved in a frenetic pace ever since, and the audience never feels as if the writers are stalling or attempting to stretch out a thin storyline for the same of a standard 22-episode television format. The story is being told as the writers mean to tell it, with no artistic failing or studio pressure to deform an otherwise great vision. It's television magic that we are experiencing.

From a character standpoint, the series has definitely gone down a clip through no fault of its own. One of the most arresting aspects of the series, the character flashbacks that help flesh out present events by informing the audience of a character's past, are gone. However, their absence are a necessity simply because there are no more backstories to tell-- we know the characters, and now the story that must be resolved is their relationship to the island.

However, for all of us who enjoyed immensely this dual-layered approach to storytelling, thankfully the creators have found a clever way to keep us moving through time. Two storylines are occurring simultaneously in two distinct time periods, one in the present day and one during the height of the 1977 Dharma Initiative, and they both have consequences and results on one another. As a result, the storytelling in 'Lost' still has a dual-layer of complexity, sine each storyline from different eras continue to remain relevant to each other.

Sorry to wrap this short, but I'm sleepy. Great season, crucial to any 'Lost' fan, and not disappointing in the least bit. Prepare for fourteen hours of television viewing!