Okay. I have watched the latest—and saddest—episode of Lost, and I have several questions and thoughts.
Why on earth would anyone—ANYONE—who has spent more than an hour in Ben Linus’ presence ever, ever trust a word he says? I mean, really. The only way this series ends happily for me is if Sayid or Jack or Sawyer or Kate or even Hurley walks up to Ben, say “By the way, I should have done this ages ago,” and shoots him dead. I don’t even want to hear an explanation. Don’t want to know why he did what he did. Because the man couldn’t tell the truth if it walked up to him, gave him a drink and said, “Dude, I’m the truth, and that’s the truth!”
And come to think of it, I think I’d like to see the main writers of Lost. Personally. And hit them on the heads, repeatedly, with, oh, not a baseball bat. Something light, but painful, that won’t leave lasting damage or scars. Like, a yardstick. Or a wooden paddle.
Really. If someone were to ask me to describe Lost in one word, I’d say: Mindfuck. It’s worse than the X-Files, because at least the X-Files had some non-storyline episodes where you could remember that you liked the show regardless of how stupid it got.
I hate that the acting is so good, and the storyline has managed to suck me in so much. Because it makes about as much sense as Alias, which was also J.J. Abrams, and which I watched because it was fun and silly and I never tried to make much sense of it.
I really don’t try to make much sense of Lost, either. Because when I do, my head hurts.
Remember the poison gas from the other season? The one where they did Ben’s history and showed that he was callous enough to let a whole bunch of people die? The fact that there were two rival groups of people on the island? That was never really explained. “Hey, we’re rival groups on this island where weird stuff happens. Let’s kill the other group!” Why? Never explained.
Remember how “The Others” had these, like, superhuman tracking abilities? And superhuman strength? And it turns out that they’re just human after all? Never explained.
The smoke monster? Never explained. The bears? Never explained. The fact that turning off the electromagnetic thingie would destroy the island? Never explained.
Will I watch the rest of the series? Yeah. Because it’s still good, no matter how stupid the things that don’t get explained become. Will I parse every single action and reaction? Nope. It’s J.J. Abrams. It’s stupid. It’s a step above Alias, which was a step above Felicity, but it’s still just plain dumb.
Well, I confess to enjoying being mindfucked more than I thought I would, but then ‘Memento’ is one of my favorite movies and this season reminds me of that more than anything else. Especially tonight’s episode, because I didn’t see the mix of flashback/flashfoward coming until Hurley walked through Sun’s door. And I don’t want Ben dead yet, because Emerson plays creepy so well.
Besides, there’s nothing else cool to watch on network until ‘Chuck,’ ‘Life,’ and ‘Heroes’ come back this fall.
For what it’s worth the writers have said that they’re going to tie up all the loose ends by the series end. I hope it doesn’t go all ‘X-Files’ which was ruined for me in the episode where they announced Mulder’s sister had been dead all along. bah.
Why waste your time. Read a book.
It’s the ‘Jackson Pollack’ school of television. They just throw anything at the screen and pretend that it has value and meaning.