SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT, SPOILERS AHEAD, ALERT

We could not get into LOST at all. And no, it wasn’t the ludicrously stupid behavior of the castaways. (Jack finds Kate running on the beach? For exercise? While they’re stranded on a desert island?)

Neither was it the just-plain-goofy disregard for the possible. (Jack’s hanging upside-down by one leg in a snare trap and he casually shoots the anchor rope with a handgun to free himself, because, oh, they never mention it, but apparently his character is not just a surgeon but also a world-class trick-shot pistol marksman.)

And finally, it didn’t bother us how painfully obvious it was that the show’s creators didn’t have any kind of coherent plan for what was going to happen. (“Wait, we didn’t get canceled? We’re a hit? Oh, crap. Alright, summer homework for all the writers: Everyone needs to think of three weird things that can happen in over the next couple seasons. They don’t have to make any sense. In fact, it’s better if they don’t.”)

No, what bothered us was imagining how smelly everyone must have been by day four. Were there any scenes where characters brushed their teeth?

If it had been up to us, we would have shown the survivors of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 finding a cache of Colgate Wisp Toothbrushes in the second episode. Like, a huge pile of them. They’ve got a special freshening liquid packaged right in them, so you don’t need water to rinse. You just pick spearmint or cinnamon and clean up your nasty mouth wherever you are—at work, at the gym, on a road trip, or marooned on a tropical island.

That scene probably would have kept us from abandoning the show. Because every time two characters would get intimate, we were like “UGH, imagine how BAD they both REEK.” If we knew they had Colgate Wisps, we could have just thought “oh, they probably both just brushed their teeth offscreen a couple minutes ago.”

Anyway, after six seasons, when the show wrapped up, we asked our friends who had watched the whole thing what finally happened. They told us it turned out the characters were dead the whole time.

We were like “for SIX YEARS? Oh, man, then they must have stunk EVEN WORSE THAN WE IMAGINED!”

Back to top