There Are No Skippable Episodes of Lost

In Lost Season 3, Episode 14, “Exposé” two island extras get elevated to starring roles in an anthology-esque episode that went down in television infamy. And while I concur with the negative curve of the episode’s polarization, I wouldn’t call “Exposé” skippable. There are no skippable episodes of Lost.

Lost’s Worst Episodes Are Still a Part of Its Tapestry

For Nikki and Paulo’s haters, their episode was at worst an hour more torturous than anything Sayid Jarrah conceived of while working for the Republican Guard and at best the filler episode to end all filler episodes.

“Exposé” might very well be the filler episode to end all filler episodes, but when did filler become such a dirty word? It used to be a privilege to invite the characters we love into our homes every week to spend time with them, whether that time was spent advancing the plot or not. The act of binarily sorting episodes into filler and non-filler proves inherently faulty with its implication that the most load-bearing pillars of the medium—sitcoms and procedurals—are worthless investments. When one of the most beloved and iconic entries into the television landscape was proudly touted as “a show about nothing,” an aversion to filler reads as an aversion to television.

It might seem strange to examine Lost under the lens of arguably one of its worst episodes when the series gifted television with masterpieces like “The Constant” and “Through the Looking Glass”, but “Exposé” serves as an ideal microcosm for the show’s high-risk/high-reward nature. In 2004, ABC invested over 10 million dollars in Lost‘s pilot – a price tag never before conceived of in television. Moreover, the network was betting on an unproven and completely original concept, setting a precedent for risk-taking and innovation. But innovation did not always equate to perfection, and not just in critically panned episodes like “Exposé”. Lost‘s freedom to take creative risk meant it was rife with flaws, but to dub those moments skippable (or watchable at 1.5 speed) is an act of airbrushing history.

Television is designed to tell episodic stories, and while many of the best entries do service to an overarching narrative, they still maintain a distinct beginning, middle, and end of their own. In a binge model where an entire season of television is designed to be consumed in one sitting, episodes closer resemble micro-acts of an extended film rather than individual pieces of art. However, the most acclaimed television episodes of the past decade, like The Bear‘s “Fishes” and The Last of Us‘ “Long, Long Time” more closely resemble the storytelling model deployed in “Exposé”. While this risk didn’t pay dividends in “Exposé”, it doesn’t mean that filler, experiments, or deviations from a show’s main story aren’t worth experiencing because they’re a part of a show’s voice for better and for worse.

Lost’s Flaws Represent a Feature of Television, Not a Bug

Much like The Swan station’s pantry, Lost was stuffed with all the essential supplies to sustain a fandom-oriented audience – puzzle box mysteries, intriguing lore, genre tropes, and a vast ensemble of engaging characters. Though Losties feverishly flocked to their television sets from 2004-2010, the show’s contemporary devotees are much more defensive of its shortcomings than the ones swapping polar bear theories on message boards in the early ‘00s. In the streaming era, Lost has been reclaimed as more than a mere show, but as a symbolic bastion of network television as a whole. To many television lovers, Lost exemplified television as an art form not just despite its messiness, but because of it.

When “Exposé” unsurprisingly made its way onto Vulture’s list of “Lost’s 20 Most Pointless Episodes”, fans even began digging Nikki and Paulo out of their sandy graves. In 2007, complaining about Lost‘s criminal couple was as unifying as mourning favorite islanders or swapping Dharma Initiative conspiracy theories. “We have to go back” has become not just an appropriate mantra from Lost, but one about it as well. Lost invokes a nostalgia for appointment television, water cooler discussions, storytelling routed in original concepts over existing intellectual property, and 20+ episodes seasons that allowed room for zaniness and even the occasional misstep. Because to love Lost is to love television – warts and all.

Lost is available to watch now.