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LOST TIME
A personal reflection on the season past and the season to come

Flashback, Jan. 31, 2007: Lost was at a low point. Critics and fans had turned on the show after a shaky start to a weirdly scheduled season. Ratings were on the wane. The big question: Had Lost lost it? The answer seemed far from certain, but hopes were high that the first episode of the new year, the Juliet-centric ''Not in Portland'', would mark a return to health.

Exactly one week earlier — on Jan. 24, 2007 — I was working on a cover story about Lost when my wife called. She sounded off-her-rocker drunk, which I knew had to be impossible, because Amy doesn't begin drinking heavily until after dinner. Kidding: She rarely drinks at all. Through slurred speech, my wife attempted to explain that sometime in the past hour, she had gotten sick and passed out in the bedroom. Her hair was wet, as if she had taken a shower — but she had no memory of taking a shower. She was scared. What had happened to her? I immediately packed up my work stuff and headed home. On the way, worry got the best of me, and I called 911 and asked for an ambulance to go to my house. When I got home, I found my daughter, Lauren, sitting on the porch with a neighbor playing with a teddy bear the paramedics had given her. Amy had been taken to the hospital. Later that afternoon, we were given a preliminary diagnosis that was officially confirmed within a couple days. Amy had a brain tumor.

Eight days later, Amy had brain surgery, or what Doctor Jack Shephard would call a craniotomy. I remember walking her to the operating-room door and saying goodbye and trying not think thoughts like ''What if this was the last time I see her alive?'' To get through the hours ahead, I tried to work on the Lost story. My great friend and Lost cohort Dan Snierson had basically taken over the job from me, but I wanted to remain involved. I needed the distraction. That afternoon, while he worked on the main feature, I tried to peck out the sidebar we had decided on weeks before. It was a cheeky assessment on which Lost character would be the next to die. I gave cancer-wracked Ben 6-to-1 odds, noting ''His health sucks.'' I wrote these words while doctors sawed open my wife's skull and scooped out three golf-ball-size clumps of growing cancerous matter that had tried to kill her. But I'm all about the gallows humor, so it was all good...at least until the surgeon came out and told me that Amy had an aggressive grade of cancer. He also said he had to leave some tumor behind because of its sensitive location. To try removing it would risk reducing her to a vegetative state or worse. ''Good call,'' I told him.

Over the course of the weeks that followed, Lost helped me get through the strangest season of my life. I was at home, taking care of our two children and Amy as she endured 40 days of daily chemo and radiation treatments. I became even more immersed in Doc Jensen theorymaking. I took over the Lost TV Watch with ''The Man From Tallahassee,'' just as the show was beginning a run of return-to-excellence episodes. And I became extremely invested in the show's pressing behind-the-scenes drama — the efforts by the producers to negotiate an end to the series itself. It seemed to me that a lot of the criticism of Lost was rooted in the long-held suspicion that despite claims to the contrary, the show was just another making-it-up-as-they-go-along, ad-shilling shell game. I was convinced, right or wrong, that if the writers could write toward a fixed end, they'd at least have the opportunity to make good on their promise of a meaningful, satisfying yarn. It might be overstatement to say something like ''As I grappled with the uncertainty of my life, I sought answers and certainty from Lost.'' But I'm sure that in my mad scribbling about the show, serious steam was getting blown. And I certainly was buoyed during by the unexpected and deeply moving outpouring of support from readers of this column. You didn't have to do that. I'm very grateful that you did.

Today, Lost is in a different place. The show has its end date. It has renewed heat and creative energy, thanks to last season's capture-the-imagination flash-forward finale. And all signs point to a new season worthy of our interest. My family is in a different place, too. Amy is doing well. She lives in the shadow of an official prognosis and she still takes chemo five days each month. That sucks. But she's tumor-free. She's a fighter. And she's happy. Her hair has grown back; she has a cute short cut, just like she had when we first met. Our kids are as well as can be expected. We have all learned something about the necessity of community (''live together, die alone,'' eh?) and grappling with the ambiguity that defines all of our lives. Lost didn't teach me that. But I will say that in many fantastic, dynamic ways, it reflects that experience for me.

In the season premiere, titled ''The Beginning of the End,'' you will meet a man who gets some bad news. His best friend has just died. The tragedy hits him hard, so hard that it threatens to imperil the meaning of his hard-fought survivor's life. But he makes a choice — a choice to live a life worthy of his friend's sacrifice. This will prove very difficult, maybe even impossible, and it will invite many unforeseen consequences. But it doesn't make his conviction any less true or the choice any less correct. If I didn't like this guy before, I love him to pieces now. He's a dude after my own heart. Come back on Friday, and we'll talk more about him some more.

Lost is back. We are back. Now let's have some fun.

—Doc Jensen

Next week, we'll have a reader-mail edition of Doc Jensen, focusing on your reaction to the season premiere. Please: Send feedback to JeffJensenEW@aol.com.

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Posted Jan 29, 2008 | Order Article Reprints
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