Lost: The Complete Fourth Season, 5 Blu-ray discs (2008)
Starring: Naveen Andrews, Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, many others
Executive Producer: Carlton Cuse
Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment 57851 [Release date: Dec. 10, 08]
Video: 1.78:1 for 16:9 color, 1080p HD
Audio: Uncompressed PCM 5.1, English/French DD 5.1, Spanish Dolby 2.0
Extras: Audio commentaries, Featurettes, Deleted Scenes, Isolated Music Track, Bloopers, Season 4 Featurette, HD Exclusives
Length: 604 minutes
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Rating: *****
After the resounding success that the Lost Season 3 Blu-ray box set offered, it was hard to see how Buena Vista Home Entertainment could drop the ball with Season 4, and once again they’ve delivered a stellar package of intriguingly good entertainment. Season 4 picks up where Season 3 left off, but also greatly challenges the abilities of all but the most astute watchers to follow the convoluted world of Lost by incorporating several new plot twists and story lines. The season opens with a funeral and a coffin – but wait – is it a flash forward, or a flashback? That’s one area where Season 4 has definitely upped the confusion quotient – there’s a constant barrage of flash forwards and flashbacks, and man, can they be challenging to keep track of! Of course, you eventually find out who’s in the coffin, just not until much later in the season. There’s also a lot of focus on the “Oceanic Six,” the apparent survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. But wait – only six of the multitude of apparent survivors actually survived the crash? As the season progresses, the viewer learns that a rescue of the survivors is apparently underway, but are the rescuers really there to help, or do they have ulterior motives? Is there some sort of media cover up designed to mask the presence of any survivors from Oceanic Flight 815? And are there other inhabitants on the Island in addition to the infamous “Others?” As with the excellent Season 3 Blu-ray package, there’s a tremendously humorous but usefully educational featurette, this time called “Lost in 8:15,” which basically summarizes the plot action up to this point – very helpful if you might have missed something along the way!
I have to say, in terms of the quality of the writing and the overall effectiveness of the story, Lost is still just as compelling as it was in Season 1 – I’m still just as addicted now as I was then. I can’t honestly say that any other network television show I’ve watched in recent years is anywhere nearly as intriguing or entertaining as Lost – no mean feat for a series about to begin its fifth season. The quality of this show is remarkably consistent, and it doesn’t hurt that throughout each episode, you have the gorgeous Hawaiian location visuals as the background!
As with Season 3, technically this box set is a complete home run. The Image quality is nothing short of magnificent – the SciFi channel has been rebroadcasting the Season 4 episodes in HD recently, and the image quality here just runs rings around the already excellent broadcast quality. And the uncompressed PCM surround sound audio is equally breathtaking; Buena Vista gets five stars for the remarkably good job they’ve done with the sound engineering on this series. And the veritable cornucopia of bonus materials is just staggering – one can spend quite nearly as much time watching all the extras (especially trying to gain any additional clues as to what the heck’s really going on!) as on the actual series itself. There are also “mocumentaries” like “The Oceanic Six: A Conspiracy of Lies,” that apparently are aimed at divulging the truth behind what really happened on the Island, and whether the “survivors” are being perfectly honest. As an entertainment package, Lost Season 4 is just about unrivaled in the sheer quantity of viewing options that are offered. The fact that the quality is equally high, well, that’s just the icing!
As with all good things, there is also some bad – I had a great deal of difficulty operating the “SeasonPlay” feature, which is designed to allow easy repeat access to specific viewing areas. Blu-ray has taken quite a few hits for its shaky accessibility and functionality in terms of pause and continue of specific selections, and “SeasonPlay” is supposed to address that, but I had a significant amount of trouble getting it to work at all. It’s a relatively minor gaffe, but one that will probably give some folks a degree of consternation. Navigating Blu-ray is still in the learning curve stage for many of us; hopefully newer units will correct these nagging problems. Otherwise, this package is just short of magnificent and very highly recommended!
— Tom Gibbs
