The fourth season of “Lost” is an embarrassment of monotony and special features as the show that really never seems to get anywhere fast continues its trend. Unfortunately once you are hooked you’re hooked and with the promise of only two shortened seasons left you would be foolish to abandon the series now. However, there is no denying the creators of this series have dug themselves an incredible hole and the only way to get out of it is to deliver an ending that will rock audiences to their core. What is the mystery behind the South Pacific island that has kept our cast captive all this time? Who knows? But I can tell you it better not be a dream or boil down to some kind of silly science experiment. The series finale better be wholly original or it will be a stand out disappointment.
The 14 episode fourth season does very little to advance the story and as usual offers up more questions than answers, but I will give the folks at Buena Vista Home Entertainment props on one specific special feature that does give the viewer an opportunity to revisit the season in a special kind of way. Almost as a bonus episode the “Course of the Future: The Definitive Flash-Forwards” feature first asks the user to take a variety of the flash-forward scenes from the season and put them in chronological order (don’t worry, it’s relatively simple) and that is followed by a bonus area of flash-forward specific features. Here you will be able to watch all of season four’s flash-forwards as one singular 52 minute episode in chronological order. You can watch it with or without script notes as well, which give you a small bit of added insight into the ideas the writers had with each scene. It doesn’t blow the secret behind the show wide open, but it does make the existence of the show’s silly time-traveling plot a little easier to manage for those that simply don’t care to think back on each episode. You can also watch the flash-forwards in shortened segments following one character at a time, just click on Kate and boom, you get her 17 minute story and that’s it. Sort of cool for the superfan.
The rest of the features aren’t exactly bad as much as they are overly abundant. Who needs a feature spanning 26 minutes featuring a live performance of the show’s score? And then who needs 16 more minutes as a supplement to that feature. A variety of the features I watched at 1.5x speed and got just as much out of them as I would have at normal speed, and perhaps more as I was inclined to watch longer at a rushed pace.
A feature called “The Right to Bear Arms” is perhaps the most entertaining as it shows the difficulty from seasons 1-4 at keeping track of how many guns there were, who had one and how they fit in the story. Only problem is that it too is too damn long. The making of features are lengthy while only occasionally interesting, and you get nine deleted scenes (9 mins), a blooper reel (3 mins), a variety of audio commentaries and an 8:15 recap of the first three seasons of “Lost”.
Perhaps the absolute best feature of the whole deal is one it looks like Buena Vista will be spreading across all their Blu-ray television releases and it is called SeasonPlay. This feature, once started, plays from one disc to the next remembering where you were and where you left off. For example, if you watch the first disc of “Lost” and come to the end a screensaver image of sorts will ask you to insert the second disc. Eject the first disc, toss in the second and it will immediately pick up at the start of the next episode without menus. Should you eject the discs and watch other movies, don’t worry, it will remember and ask you where you would like to pick up the next time you toss one of the discs in and it allows for a seamless integration from disc-to-disc. This isn’t exactly a “Lost” specific feature, but it does apply to this particular Blu-ray and it is something to definitely check out for the avid hour-after-hour fan of the show.
Overall, this is a fabulous release for the die-hard “Lost” fan, but the season itself is rather bland with very little to get excited about. I actually don’t think I will be able to get too excited about “Lost” until after watching the series finale. I continue to believe the second season was the best as it seemed less interested in stringing the viewer along, but with so few episodes left we are building to the ultimate finale and the hope it all pays off is there.
