Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lost Resort’ On TBS, Where People At Their Emotional Lowest Get Some Spiritual Healing, If They Can Handle It

Have you been at the end of your emotional rope and started thinking that you should just go to the Costa Rican jungle and participate in a spiritual retreat? No? Well, 9 people did and they also agreed to have it filmed for basic cable! That’s the premise of Lost Resort. Can these people heal while cameras are shoved in their faces?

LOST RESORT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A montage of the first season of Lost Resort, where nine strangers come to a spiritual retreat at an isolated resort in Costa Rica.

The Gist: The nine strangers taking place during this spiritual retreat are either broken or near-broken, emotionally, and they’re going to be spending three weeks at this retreat being subject to all sorts of methods from five “healers” that will help them get to the root of their emotional issues and begin to rebuild.

The nine strangers have some seemingly intractable problems: Thea, 28, is suffering from marital problems and low self-esteem stemming from an abusive family relationship (we’ll apparently see her husband Brandon later); Becca, 35, is a Lutheran pastor who has had a crisis of faith after her son was stillborn and she was told she will be unable to have another child; Claudia, 52, according to her bio, has been “proposed to 9 times, engaged 6 times, and married 4 times” and always seems to people-please; Robin, 48, and Christine, 27, are a mother and daughter who can’t seem to do anything but fight about big emotional family issues; Greg, 32, is angry all the time; Meco, 26, has abandonment issues stemming from being a foster child, and also survived the GIlroy mass shooting a couple of years ago; and Vairrun, 32, has seen so much tragedy as a Chicago firefighter and EMT that he is unable to open up emotionally.

The healers have different specialties, but Chrissie Fire Mane is the narrator and owner of the retreat; during their first day there, she tries to get them to talk about why they’re there and what they hope to accomplish. Meco is reluctant to open up, and she hates the vibe that Robin is throwing off, given how privileged Meco perceives Robin to be. Later, during what is called a Rage Ceremony, where the participants are supposed to scream out their rage and begin the healing process, Meco refuses to participate, and Vairunn expresses his anger in such a subdued manner that Chrissie wonders how tough it’s going to be to get him to open up.

Of course, the real drama will take place in the bungalows, where Robin and Christine are already driving Chris nuts with their arguing, among other issues.

Our Take: Lost Resort is one of those reality series where you know that the juicy stuff is going to take place between the people participating and not necessarily during the activity that brought them there to begin with. To be sure, all of the participants have some deep-seated emotional issues, ones that therapy and other traditional methods have not been able to repair. So, we get why these people volunteered to open up in front of cameras and give their minds and bodies over to Chrissie and the other healers promoting a more spiritual method of healing.

We want to see the contestants start to rebuild after these three intense weeks, but we’re also going to see a lot of interpersonal conflict — and maybe some attraction — as the montages at the beginning and end of the first episode show. Already we see Chris alternately curious with and annoyed at Robin and Christine’s fighting; they’re squabbling is rooted in the fact that Robin blames her mother for a lot of her emotional issues, while Christine thinks Robin not only has been irresponsible since she divorced Christine’s father, but she can’t keep dealing with her grandmother getting all the blame for everything.

Then we have Meco, who actually seems to have her head on straight, despite the piles of shit that have been dumped on her in life. She threatens to leave the retreat because she can’t deal with the “woo woo” nature of the healing, and we’re looking to see her come around. But we also know that she’s going to have problems with Claudia and an attraction to Vairunn, so what is going to take precedence? Her path to healing or her interpersonal relations?

That is really the big issue we have with Lost Resort. We don’t think the producers care one iota about seeing these contestants actually get better. They salivate at their deeply personal and traumatic stories and want to see them fight and kiss each other. If this were a real spiritual retreat, the healing would be the focus. And we’re not even sure if they’re all in favor of Chrissie and her staff’s methods; they seem to be straddling the fence between honoring their methods and making fun of them.

So, will these people get better after their three weeks away, just to get hurt again when they see themselves on TV now? Who knows? But it’s certainly possible.

Sex and Skin: Besides seeing Meco’s crop tops and some shirtless guys like Vairunn (not Scott, though), that’s it.

Parting Shot: As Christine primal screams her way through her rage ceremony, Robin wonders just what is going to come out of her mouth next.

Sleeper Star: We liked Oneika, a New York-based mindfulness coach who is fully aware of the “woo woo” reputation her profession has. We also appreciated Atasieā, an Ecstatic Dance coach, for his super rage-filled rant during the rage ceremony.

Most Pilot-y Line: As some of the participants talk on the porch of their bungalow, we see headlights go by, as if they’re facing a real street with real traffic. Let’s hope it was just a driveway.

Our Call: SKIP IT. We’re pretty sure that Lost Island is going to focus less on the healing and more on the participants’ drama with each other and themselves. And that’s no way to help heal a broken soul.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Lost Resort at TBS.com