You Almost Lost Me
Last night’s episode of Lost almost lost me.
I’ve been warming up to the series, a little, this season after a couple of seasons of cooling. As I contended in a previous post, I find it hard to believe that the writers actually have any idea where they are going with the show. That may not be exactly accurate. After last night’s episode, I’m afraid the problem may be an even worse kind of disease: they know where they are going, at least in broad strokes, but they’re just not very good at getting there.
SPOILER ALERT: Again, if you haven’t seen it, don’t read it.
Case in point: The Oceanic 6 are trying to return to the island for reasons I’ll not get into in this post. They meet up with a woman (Faraday’s mother) who is apparently the world’s leading expert on island affairs (second only to her son, perhaps). She informs them that the island is constantly moving through time, and that her son and his team have invented a way to track its movements through time to a high degree of probability. It has something to do with a big pendulum like the ones you see in science museums (so if you see one of those, look for islands).
So, as the island moves, there are apparently “windows” in time that open, allowing objects–say…planes maybe–to pass through. This is the key to getting back to the island.
Now, in discovering this key to returning to the island, which in this particular case involves a plane flight from the US to Guam, they also learn, thanks to Mama Faraday, that they must try to “recreate” the original flight as closely as possible.
???
See…you lost me. You had me for a second. I was getting intrigued because it sounded like we might actually be getting some answers at last, some glimpse of the grand vision of the show; but then you lost me. Why on Earth would it be necessary to recreate the original flight? What possible difference could that make? Are you saying that if you don’t recreate it, it might not work and you might not get back to the island? If that’s true, how could it possibly work when at best you’re going to have all of six of the original, what…200 plus passengers? They have the wrong dead guy (Locke instead of Jack’s dad), too. Oh, but you gave him something that belonged to Jack’s dad, oh…that makes it ok then! (hint: italics = sarcasm.) Ok, so maybe the requirement is not the dead guy, just a dead guy. Fair enough, but what about Claire? Kate didn’t have Aaron with her (who once upon a time had some special significance to the island), so at least shouldn’t there be a pregnant lady? To top it off, Ben was on the flight with them, which wasn’t the case before.
See, there are so many holes, and beyond that, the requirement to “recreate” the original flight feels to me much more like weak and uncreative writing in an attempt to explain why everyone is going back (i.e. extending the show) than it does coherent story telling with some overall vision.
So consider yourself on notice, Lost. I’m not sure how much patience I have left for this kind of laziness, or worse, ineptitude.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Oh great, you totally stole my thunder! OK, not really but I was just about to do a Lost post when I saw yours, so now I would just be a copycat. So forget it!
Now to your point… I agree that it sounds pretty ridiculous. I was not terribly impressed with the method by which the 6 returned. It did feel a bit unimaginative. The time jumping thing in general is all too convenient a plot device for my taste. Thank goodness it looks to be over now. However, I have been happy enough with the show that I am willing to give them a pass now and then (e.g. the first half of season 2). Heck, I even overlooked it (albeit with some difficulty) when, in the previous episode, Faraday made the unfathomable statement that (referring to the time jumps) “It does make empirical sense that if this started at The Orchid, then that’s where it’s got to stop.” Huh? How exactly does that make any kind of sense at all, much less empirical? Oh well. Just swallow hard and pretend you didn’t hear it.
I would be bothered more by the “science” of the show if it weren’t for 2 things: 1) I really don’t know enough about time travel and such to be an informed skeptic. 2) I gave up any connection to scientific reality in my mind the moment that Ben spun the wheel of fortune to move the island. The good news is that now I don’t have to believe that smoky is really a swarm of sentient nanobots anymore. Phew!
All that said, now I’m going to throw the writers some rope. I still have enough faith in the show (foreshadowing) to believe that they know exactly what they’re doing. They are manipulating us. We’re like Jack. We don’t really buy any of the BS that we’re being served but we keep going along with it, because we’re invested. Now the writers are asking us to believe something even more unbelievable. They’re pushing us to accept a truth that defies all logic, which for us (Jack) is particularly difficult. Here’s the kicker, none of it is true. They’re building up our faith on purpose so that when they pull the rug out, the collapse will be all the more dramatic. It really is all BS. Look at all the manipulators on this show: Ben, Christian, Widmore, Richard, Jacob, Eloise, etc. Basically everyone at some point has manipulated circumstances to their benefit. The entire show is about belief vs. fact and how both can be manipulated against each other. So when Eloise Hawking tells them that they must recreate the original flight, it’s just a smokescreen for her real motives (TBD). The fact that it sounds ridiculous makes it all the more convincing to those who are blinded by their own desire to get back to the island. They’ll believe anything. Which is why we find ourselves (Jack) putting our daddy’s shoes on Locke’s dead feet (eew, btw) without really believing that it means anything. That it does actually work is tangential to the real reason. Does that make it a fact? We certainly believe it does. And now we have the empirical evidence to back it up. So from our (Jack’s) point of view, the fact is proven. Truth (or rather, scientific truth) is really just a matter of perspective. It can all be manipulated. That’s the power that the writers have over us. So watch your step, because eventually that rug is coming out.
It’s a theory anyway. Though a pretty dang good one, if I do say so myself. And I think somewhat proven by the fact (HA! did I just fall into my own trap?) that the importance of having everyone on the plane seemed to diminish when it was apparent that it wasn’t going to happen, even though it ultimately did. If it was really that important, I doubt Eloise would have caved so easily. Plus she just looks like she’s up to something.
Now here’s a question: if Locke was proxy to Jack’s dad (rather than acting for himself, which seems like it would have made more sense), why did they not simply plan to use proxies for Kate and Sayid? Is it because you can only proxy for the dead? Hmmm. Of course, that would only matter if it wasn’t just a bunch of BS anyway, which it is.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Interesting. Once again Atticusser’s superior Lost analytical reasoning skills have introduced a ray of hope on an otherwise darkening horizon. This rather lengthy and very thorough theoretical treatment proves one thing above all else to me: I don’t expend nearly enough intellectual energy in deconstructing the show. At least not nearly enough to develop such cohesive proposals as this.
I’ll tell you one thing, though: if you turn out to be correct, and the whole thing is a load of hooey, I’m going to be pissed. Well, I guess that kind of depends on why they have gone to such great deceptive lengths. If it’s just another big non-supernatural, non-scientific conspiracy of men, boy will I feel ripped off.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:25 am
whaddayamean lengthy? It only took me 45 minutes to write!
February 20th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Also, even though I think basically everyone is a liar, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some real power (scientific, supernatural or otherwise) that is the driving factor behind all their lies. All those manipulators need to have some motivation for their choices.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Okay, so I’m late to this party, because, in all honesty, Lost has dropped way down the priority list of shows to watch when we have options on our DVR. I’m still watching because I’m invested in the characters, and I still think the show is well-made, but I’m finding myself caring less and less about these people, and I have a couple of things to say about that.
The problem I see with Lost is, unfortunately, the same problem that most every good show runs into eventually: it has outlived itself. Just like Alias and X-Files and all the other shows that I’ve really liked when they started, they ran out of runway, but tried to carry on anyway. Let’s go back to the beginning of Lost and view the overall sources of tension that made the show fun to watch. First, they crashed and there was something weird on the island that was killing them; the tension was trying to survive and get rescued. Second, the others came into play, and this was the height of the show. The island was still really mysterious, and now there was this group of very dangerous “others.” Still the survivors were trying to escape the island. The Dharma thing was interesting too. Now a bunch of them have finally escaped, the others are kind of a non-factor, half the original and most interesting cast members have died…so now what? Now they HAVE to get back to the island. Why? I’ll grant that some of these answers are forthcoming, but why are the six going back? The only one with a compelling reason is Sun, and maybe Hurley. Jack’s just a mess and has to fix things. Who knows what’s driving him back.
My point is that I think the writers are as Lost as MrHattyHat originally asserted, and to be perfectly frank, I think Atticusser’s lengthy justification has given way more thought to the current predicament of the show than any of the actual writers have. I know Atticusser is a big fan, as I have been, and props for loyalty and hoping for that kind of intelligence that the show originally showed potential for, but I’m afraid I’m calling BS on the theory. I just don’t think the writers have that level of control over their own beast anymore. That’s right, I think the show has gotten away from them, and they’re just scrambling to keep their audience.
It all feels too reminiscent of the period of Mulder’s disappearance when Robert Patrick came on the X-Files, or that portion of Alias when Sydney was gone for two years and came back to find Vaughan married to some other chick and all that. They want to make big leaps to keep the show alive, but they don’t follow the thread to see where those leaps will take them, so when they realize they’ve made a bad jump, they try to undo it.
Lost is still interesting to me, but nowhere in sight of the way it used to be. It’s a shame too, because there were so many interesting questions being raised before that have fallen by the wayside. Remember the numbers? Remember Walt? Remember Claire surviving giving birth when no one else could? Remember everything before the time travel gimmick?
Yeah, it’s kinda hard to keep all that stuff in mind and still care that the six have magically come back to the island.