Year: 2009
Running Time: 731 Minutes
Rated: TV-14
SRP: $79.99 Regular (SRP $120 Dharma Initiative Kit)
Studio(s): ABC (Disney) Studios
Release Date: December 8, 2009

Film/Feature: A–
Hurry up, you’ve only got five weeks left to catch up to speed on Lost before the final season begins, and what better way than the Lost Complete Fifth Season on Blu-ray to assist you in that task. Whether you need just a refresher, or you want to build up to that momentous premiere on February 2, 2010, this blu-ray has all of the contents you hope to attempt to make some sense of this fifth season.

As the title of this review suggests, Season 5 was just a matter of time–travel that is. Yes the dreaded sci-fi crutch of time travel was the focus of this past season; a move that had plenty of Lost followers scratching their heads. Let’s face it, this did appear to be a leap of great magnitude when its initially introduced, and the fifth season begins with much of the core group, Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Sun (Yunjin Kim) , Hurley (Jorge Garcia), and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) separated from the rest of the group as seen in the end of the fourth season as they make their escape back to the mainland. Left behind are Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) Locke (Terry O’Quinn) who try to lead the rest of the survivors as the island experiences back-and-forth jumps through time, while Richard (Nestor Carbonell) and Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) lay hints as to explaining what’s going on. Slowly, Ben Linus (Emmy-nominated Michael Emerson) pulls the puppet strings, revealing a much bigger plot. Themes throughout the season include acting on free will and choice versus destiny; the paradoxical and non-paradoxical; and if you don’t come out of this season more confused than before, then you just weren’t watching hard enough. I jest.

Lost is probably the most successful science fiction network show to come along in the last decade. Perhaps that it takes place on a tropical island instead of in space, people have been tricked to discover that they’re watching science fiction. A note to those who have been duped, sorry, you’re geeks too. But there’s nothing wrong with caring about these characters or their outcomes. That’s just the mark of good writing. Season Five is just another big piece of this large jigsaw puzzle that’s Lost, which we’ll find out if it’s a great big payoff, or incite an online riot of rampage. Either way, you’ve made it this far, why stop now?

Video: A
Everyone knows by now that the most of the location shoots take place on Hawaii, and every breathtaking view of the island, the surf, and the rain forest is captured on a 1080p AVC-encoded transfer in 1.85:1 aspect ratio. As expected, the detail is crisp and shows every pore and wrinkle of people’s skin; every one of Jack’s overgrown beard hairs are seen, as is the stubble on Locke’s chin, all of it exposed to the world of high def. At night time, or when time travel happens with the blinding light, Lost can look grainy, but consistently so, which leads me to believe it is the result of a stylistic choice, or the particular equipment they chose for those scenes as opposed to the transfer itself. Night scenes also take advantage of the super-deep blacks and great contrast. Other visual staples of Lost that look impressive are the lush and green valleys of the Hawaiian mountain ridges; it’s as if every bunch of branches can be picked out. Skin tones are all accurate, warm, and at times scary, like when Jin is seen with a sun-blistered face. You can’t even tell it’s makeup. Lost continues to be amongst those few shows to push the video standard of television, higher and higher with each season on blu-ray.

Audio: A+
Lost is presented in a number of audio options, with the main one being the 5.1 English DTS-HD track. This is an active and accurate audio track full of side-to-side movement, atmospheric effects that place you in the middle of an island like crashing waves and rain forest sounds such as crickets chirping in the night. Spine-tingling music travels to the rear channels and to the back of your neck. There are a few scenes that happen out in the ocean in the pouring rain and you’ll be inclined to pull open an umbrella in your theater room. LFE output has a bold, yet balanced presence. Disney/ABC has done another wonderful job on the audio department and did not let me down at all. Other audio selections include: 5.1 Dolby Digital in French and Spanish, and in 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish L.A. and English; subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish L.A. German, Bahasa, Malay, and others.

Extras: A
The presentation of Lost is extremely well-done once again. The entire season is split up into five blu-ray discs in one tidy case, however, if you’re looking to spend some more money and are an a Lost diehard, there is an extremely fan friendly Dharma Initiative version of Season 5 on Blu-Ray which includes a Dharma Orientation folder of goodies and VHS tape. There are Dharma patches, maps, a Geronimo Jackson CD, you name it. Well, no, there is no Dharma liquor, I’m sorry. (See image below)

Menus are superb as always showing a brief clips designed specifically for the menus and are in real time. So for example on Disc 1, you are apparently inside a microwave and Hurley starts the clip by placing a burrito inside, right by the menu words. By waiting a few minutes, Hurley comes back, opens the door and pulls the burrito out. The menu dissolves, and it starts over again. On the fifth disc, the menu selections are all over the place, which is appropriate, and makes it more challenging to find all of the Easter Eggs (and there are a lot—more below).

To get two things out of the way first, I want to talk about the blu-ray exclusives. Want to know why you make the jump to blu-ray? This is why.

On Disc 5 is Lost University is a BD Live feature so get ready to hook up to the internet. In order for “full enrollment” registration on www.lostuniversity.org is required. Your blu-ray will give you a unique registration “student ID” which you can begin what is essentially a series of courses to be a Lost expert. Courses such as: Language 101: Korean, History 101 Heiroglyphics, Philosophy 101: I’m Lost, Therefore I Am, Science 201: Jungle Survival Basics, Physics 101: Introductory Physics of Time Travel. In Semester Two some of the courses offered are Advanced Foreign Language (Latin and Arabic). Each subject has one or two classes (those with two require at least two real-time days in between taking them), professors, and a reading list. A test much be passed of all varities (some don’t require any work) and 21 credits must be passed in order to move onto the next semester. Sound intense? It’s not, really. But it is a lot of fun especially if you want to take your love for Lost an extreme step further, or perhaps you just want a better understanding of everything that’s at stake here.

On Disc 4 is BD Exclusive: Lost 100 HD (19:00) Filming the 100th episode complete with a cake from Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes), and the fate of Faraday.

And a feature on all of the discs is BD Exclusive: Season Play which I raved about in my Season 1 and Season 2 reviews which allowed multiple viewers, under one roof and one blu-ray player, to create profiles and watch the season at different rates.