Tag: LOST

  • THAT’S MORE LIKE IT

    One of the things that most Lost wannabes fell short on was the big splash in the first ten minutes. When the inciting mystery of The Event could be figured out just from the marketing in the months before the show aired, that doesn’t really bode well for mystery fans. Threshold, Surface… there was so much odd stuff happening before I knew anything about the characters it was just hard to see anything in it other than show runners trying to parse why everyone loved Lost so much. It’s the smoke monster and the time travel and onion-layer of the mystery, right? Where those previous shows missed the boat is obvious: they were trying to replicate the commercial success of Lost without understanding why the story resonated with the audience, first.

  • I HATE FAN FICTION

    Just hate it, like that pic up-top, there, of The Doctor from Doctor Who in a First Contact-era Starfleet uniform. That’s some obvious fan-fiction I think is just sort of unnecessary. On the other hand, the distinction seems pretty nebulous, what with things like Wes Anderson’s Life Aquatic being pretty obviously Buckaroo Banzai: Against the World Crime League underwater, and at least two professional comic book writers launching their careers because they wrote entertaining slash fiction, or whatever. Honestly, I don’t even know, because I hate fan fiction.

  • OLEANDERS GROWING OUTSIDE HER DOOR

    I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the last episode of Lost, what that means for how I interacted with Season Six as an audience member, and how that colors how I feel about the series as a whole. Superficially, I can tell you I still enjoyed my time with it, but as of right this second I feel like my pal John Singh: “it’s beginning to get me really upset that the Lost folks have turned their back on the whole thing. They (the producers) won’t talk about it, won’t admit that they didn’t cover basics (like, ‘Why Tunisia?’) and won’t cop to any sort of acknowledgement of the disappointment some of us feel. So, rather than build my devotion and faith in Lost, they’re losing it by leaving it to the fans to sort this all out with even MORE wild theories, none of which will ever be supported (or disproved) by anything they say, apparently. SIMPLY PUT: I was in love. They changed and became something I couldn’t recognize. I am resentful of this, and I don’t know if I love them anymore.”

  • ENGLISH MAJOR SUPER BOWL

    On September 22, 2004, a TV show began with the lead character flying home with his father’s coffin. I’d been flying back and forth to Georgia as my father was dying of cancer, and, ten days later, he did. So of course with Lost‘s overt themes of life and death, parents and children, and rampant spirituality, it made a strange sort of sense that I’d become immersed in a show that seemed to be addressing many of the challenges I was living through at the time.

  • AND NOW A MASSAGE FROM THE SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER

    Is it just me, or does everyone think they are getting coded messages from the Lost writers and producers in the dialogue of this show? Last week it was the Nonsense Monster telling us to not worry about asking questions because that only brings up more questions that we won’t get answers to, and this week it was every other character telling someone to just “try and let go.” I am alternately filled with dread and relief that this damn show is over Sunday night. So, yeah, have at it:

  • SAY “WHAT” AGAIN! I DARE YOU! I DOUBLE DARE YOU! SAY “WHAT” ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME!

    Here at the end, the show doesn’t much lend itself to analysis anymore. Especially so last night’s ep, which explained a lot of the mythology and yet had no members of the regular cast. I think that was a ballsy and awesome storytelling choice, and if you disagree, you probably didn’t like the end of The Sopranos, either. So instead of some analysis, here’s just some observations:

  • UH, OH

    All right; let’s get this out of the way right off: I’m pretty sure Lapidus is full fathom five. They made his death a little too Boba-Fett-in-the-Sarlaac pit for my personal taste, and there is hope in that a little something like a flying bulkhead to the solar plexus and an apparent drowning is the sort of thing that Lost regularly throws at its characters who otherwise come out unscathed. Lapidus; you should have had a polar bear bite your head off or wrestle a giant squid so your friends could get away or something. But there’s a few things here at the end that is making it not look too good for my man Frank: 1., He’s not a main character; 2., In terms of the narrative, they’re weeding out everyone they don’t need as they get to the climax of the show; 3., He’s surplus to requirements now that it’s been revealed that Sideways Locke had his private pilot’s license. Sure; there’s a real-world difference between private and commercial aircraft, but, hey! it’s a TV show. So it’s not looking good for Lapidus. Although we haven’t seen him in the Sideways world yet, one imagines he’s out there taking ‘er easy fer all us sinners, like a wiser fella than m’self once said. So who knows? If the whole point is that it only ends once and everything else is just progress, maybe we’ll see Frank again. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals.

  • IF I’D KNOWN THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW

    Because there’s no new Lost tonight (and since I’m one of those guys who’s more absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder than one of those out-of-sight-out-of-mind chuckleheads), I’d figure I’d watch the two-hour pilot and look for stuff that seemed simple or out of place at the time but is completely LOST-tastic now that we’re here at the end.

    Also, if I don’t do this, Samantha Olsson Shear (Congratulations to you and Mike!) won’t have anything to read tomorrow at lunch.

  • NAKED PEOPLE HAVE LITTLE OR NO INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY

    Like Mark Twain wrote: “Clothes make the man.” And like EJ Feddes wrote: “Have we seen Island Christian in different clothes?” Since that is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night, here, at the end of Lost, I went through and actually looked. And like the monkey said to the astronaut: “Don’t look for it, Taylor; you might not like what you find.”

  • IT’S ALL YOU, DUDE

    Right here at the end, there doesn’t seem to be the sort of weirdness we are used to ruminating on. No pictures in the background full of import; no slightly-different prop or costume changes to make note of and chew over. Just half-answers that seem clear at first but disappear when looked at under the lamp.