Layton: ‘Lost’ without it

This coming Tuesday, viewers around the country will plop themselves down in front of the boob… This coming Tuesday, viewers around the country will plop themselves down in front of the boob tube at 7:57 p.m. and wait with bated breath for the coming of the television apocalypse.

No, Steve Jobs isn’t planning on erasing the lackluster feedback from the Apple iPad press conference by unveiling the Apple iEverything — the be-all, end-all of Apple products that lets you lay in bed and control every aspect of your life, all the while playing with the T-Pain Auto-Tune app.

And no, it is not the announcement that — surprise! — Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno (and Sarah Palin) are actually the same person.

On Tuesday, millions of people will sit down to watch the premiere of the sixth and final season of “Lost.”

Five-and-a-half years ago, ABC stuck a show in its schedule that seemed like a huge risk for everyone involved. Seriously, a show about people who crash on a desert island that’s seemingly inhabited by smoke monsters and mysterious “Others?” I loved the series from its incredible pilot, but I had predicted it would last one, maybe two seasons at best.

I have never been so happy to be wrong. Five seasons, an enormous and dedicated fan base and enough series mythology to teach a college course on (there actually is one at Tufts University) later, and “Lost” has become a surprising but overjoying cultural phenomenon. “Twin Peaks” has nothing on this show.

Practically redefining what it means to be a watercooler show, every episode of the series presents so many mind-bending questions — not to mention serious acting credibility and emotional investment — that it’s impossible not to find fellow “Lost”-philes wherever you are and subsequently debate about that giant foot statue for hours on end.

To try to sum up the past five seasons of the show to the unengrossed would be like trying to thoroughly explain the study of thermodynamics to someone who has never taken a physics course — that is to say, impossible. Sure, you could explain the basics and skirt over the subplots and sub-subplots, but then not only would the listener become inevitably confused but would also miss all of the inter-character drama that has little to do with the mythology, but everything to do with what makes the show great.

There are plenty of you out there who probably despise the show, and despise even more hearing fans discuss it. Does a conversation about the Jack-Kate-Sawyer relationship make you want to go into convulsions? A theory about Daniel Faraday and his crazy b*tch of a mother induce vomiting? Well, you are obviously not a “Lost” fan.

To you haters out there, I say give it a try. Sure, you’re a little late in the game, but everyone has to start somewhere. A warning though: It is imperative, if you are to pursue the five-season undertaking of catching up with the show, that you start with season one. If you ignore this advice and try to start mid-series, your brain might literally explode. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

With this being the final season, the producers have a monumental task ahead of them. They must tie up the hundreds of miniscule loose ends without any gimmicky cop-out devices (It’s all a dream? Hell no!) and they need to maintain the high quality of writing and acting that the series is known for. If they fail, I will fear for the safety of their lives, because fans will be quite angry.

So for the next four days, I will be nervously reciting the numbers in my head, and I’m sure many of you will be doing the same. And please, let Juliet be alive in some time-warping, shape-shifting capacity, because I love her.