The only thing that matters now are the people we love: Alan and Lex and Tim. John, they're out there where people are dying.

Or why The Walking Dead is the new LOST.

I’ve been pretty much under the impression for about a year now that no show will take the place of my precious LOST. Lately I can’t help but parallel The Walking Dead to LOST in so many ways. Here we go: this entry will contain SPOILERS about both shows. If you have never seen lost… the show has been over for more than a year. GET IT TOGETHER.

Content:

Reaction to your fears. Post apocalyptic situations.

Lost begins with a brutal plane crash. (Plane breaking in half, People getting sucked into engines, impaled by trees, etc). Or more accurately our main character waking up in bamboo after this terrible event.

Walking dead begins with our main character walking through destruction and then finding a little girl who we think he is going to save. She turns around to reveal she is infact a zombie

Already here are parallels… Walking dead: man wakes up from a coma to find a post apocalyptic world and must go into good-cop mode.

LOST: Man wakes up from a shock induced coma to find that he is a victim of a plane crash and must go into doctor mode

Really? This is too easy.

The shows themselves deal a lot in the first few episodes and throughout the series with how people are going to react to a dire situation. You see greed, lust, anger, and plenty of racism.  From both shows no less.

Episode structure:

LOST for a while liked to start episodes where you learn about people’s lives before they were in the plane crash. Walking dead followed suit. You learn what got Rick (Main Man) into a coma in the first place. You learn about people’s families and hard times.

LOST many times tried to have an uplifting moment to cap each episode or a cliffhanger. WD does the same thing. Mostly with a cliffhanger, though. Zombies everywhere doesn’t bode well for uplifting emotions.

LOST had comedic moments pretty regularly throughout the show and WD has a few sprinkled here and there.

Characters:

Jack: Protagonist, de facto leader. bold, hot temper, and will do anything for his ‘group’. Good natured to an extent. Surgeon , Has a propensity to speak while taking dramatic breaths. Rivalry with Sawyer

Rick: Protagonist, leader,  will do anything for family and his ‘group’, good natured. Good cop. Has a propensity to yell his lines breathe heavily and make the veins in his face show. Rivalry with Shane

Kate: Hot woman, strong willful. Loves Jack, Loves Sawyers, has a bit of a bad streak,

Lori: Hot woman, strong willful, loves Rick, loves Shane, bit of a lie-streak.

Sawyer: Con-Man, Lives for himself until he finds love, sex with analucia, Juliet, and Kate. Anti-hero, sometimes the villain turned good guy in the end. Whole episode dedicated to haircut

Shane: Bad Cop, Lives for himself until he finds love, Sex with Andrea, and Lori, Anti-hero good guy turned villain so far, Whole episode dedicated to haircut.

Juliet: Other woman. Loves Jack then Sawyer. Most of her actions revolve around her desire to make sure her sister is ok. Can throw down. Blonde. Attractive. Smart.

Andrea: Other woman. Loves Shane. Most of her actions revolve around her desire to protect her sister until her sister turns into a zombie. Can shoot you in the face. Blonde. Attractive. Smart

Now for the stretches:

Benjamin Linus: Villian. Soft spot for family. Will do anything to stay alive.

Herschel: Soft spot for family. Think walkers are still people. Will do anything to keep family safe. Could possibly go crazy in the next few episodes.

Michael: Walts dad. Asshole. Makes terrible decisions. Kills ana lucia. Loves wife after divorce

Morgan: Duane’s dad. Nice guy. Makes great decisions. Kills his zombie wife pluse hundreds of other zombies. Loves wife even after she tries to eat him.

Walt: Kid. Awesome. Special powers. Loves Locke.

Duane: Kid. Awesome. Kills Zombies. Loves mom and Dad.

Locke: Older. Guy who couldn’t walk then could. Many different personas in life before island. Asshole father. Sometimes an adversary to others. Full of philosophies. Father figure to some.

Dale: Sucks. Has all the tools. Sticks to regimine and order. Adversary to Shane. Full of philosophies. Father figure.

Sex, Gender and Politics:

Both shows have plenty of Sex. Characters are shacking up left and right for the sheer fact that they might die tomorrow. There is infidelity, and pregnancies in both shows.

Both shows have no homosexuals whatsoever.

Gender roles are not turned on their heads in either show. There are some strong female characters, but eventually they both fall into the structure that the men are in charge and we will be kick-ass and by their sides.

As far as politics go there are power struggles all around and in both camps.

Rick vs. Shane. Jack vs. Sawyer.

Rick vs. Herschel. Ben vs. Jack.

Lock vs. Jack. Shane vs. Dale.

The struggle for who decides what’s best for the group gives me a live together or die alone kinda vibe. 

Notables and Not so likelies:

LOST and The Walking Dead leave us with unanswered questions.

Ex: What is the island? (L) What caused the outbreak? (WD)

What the FUCK happened to Walt? (L)  Where is the Jones family? (WD)

The others?(L) Merle? (WD)

Lost had the smoke monster and a lot of other paranormal. Like time travel and dimensions and all that.

Walking dead just has Zombies.

Each Season seems to be goal oriented. Lost we had the hatch season, and the get off the island season. Walking Dead we have the CDC and the Farm.

It isn’t perfect, but it is the closest thing I’ve come to in a long time.

There are also plenty of other things that I could point out but hopefully I’ll have more evidence to back it up. Thanks Walking Dead for filling my lost hole.