A lot of articles about how Lost has lost it are popping up lately, so when I saw that a similar critical blog post had ended up on the frontpage of Digg, I decided to take on the many complaints and show why Lost hasn’t lost it.
The complaints are addressed one by one with quotes from “Clever WoT”’s blog post.
The Lost Experience
The biggest nail in the coffin for me was the ill-conceived (and tremendously arrogant) Lost Experience. Average, busy viewers like me didn’t have the time or inclination for an optional multimedia snipe hunt. One hour a week is plenty, and besides, I figured anything important would surely be revealed within the show itself.
Instead, after sticking carefully to the show for two seasons, I discovered that many of the questions I had been pondering were answered in between seasons in The Lost Experience. In order to get up to speed, I had to read an online FAQ about what was revealed in the course of the game (easily the least fulfilling plot experience of my life).
While I agree that The Lost Experience in itself could have been better, the fact is that we don’t know if it actually has anything do with the Lost storyline. If I’m not mistaken, the producers have even said that everything important will be shown on the show.
The Lost Experience could have revealed things about the island and The Dharma Initiative which we will learn later on in the Lost story, but it’s also possible that The Lost Experience was an independent story simply created to entertain the hardcore fans and create some buzz.
In Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof’s favorite graphic novel Watchmen, there is a story within the story in the form of a comic book about pirates called “Black Freighter”. Pages from the comic book are seen throughout Watchmen and if combined, make up a story of their own.
Maybe “Lost” is the story within “The Lost Experience”, maybe it’s the other way around, or maybe I’m wrong and they are both part of the same story. Either way, I don’t think it is necessary to know a thing about The Lost Experience to enjoy Lost. If you didn’t enjoy following it, then you shouldn’t have done so.
Stupid Producers
On the topic of the producers being idiots, let’s turn to their inability to understand the strengths of their own show. Here’s an instructive quote from producer Carlton Cuse:
“We don’t allow the characters to focus on the mythology. But when we sit down and we work on the stories, we’re primarily spending most of our time talking about these characters and how they interact. And I think that if the characters became focused on the mythology, a lot of people would drop out. I think there’s a much larger audience that’s much more interested in “Who is Kate going to choose?” than the details about who Alvar Hanso is.”
Maybe there is a “much larger” audience that cares about a clumsy, cliche love triangle than an innovately mysterious island, but I seriously doubt it. My interest in Lost, like many people’s, was centered around the “mythology” and not the ham-fisted characters. I like character development more than most, but a show like Lost needs to keep its characters well-rooted in what is central to the show: the mystery.
Lost is a mysterious show and needs to stay true to that, because let’s face it, there already are too many Desperate Housewives and “Gray’s Anatomies. What you need to understand is that Lost is a character-driven drama about mythology, mysteries and basic questions like life, death and survival. It is necessary to develop the characters on a personal level for us to care about what’s happening to them.
If all the characters did was run around in the jungle shooting at the Others, investigating hatches and playing Sherlock Holmes all day, we wouldn’t care when Ethan almost killed Charlie, when Shannon or Boone were killed or when a crying Kate was forced to leave Jack with The Others two episodes ago.
The producers aren’t stupid. They know exactly what do to create a emotionally engaging and suspenseful drama. I agree that it wouldn’t hurt if the characters talked a bit more about the mythology though.
Characters
If the producers turn all of their efforts toward turning Lost into a Passions-like soap opera, then why, pray tell, are all of their characters crap?
Jack has trouble with relationships. We get it. We’ve gotten it since the first season. Message received. The flashbacks started as an interesting storytelling device, but quickly devolved into just another way to hold back on as much of the plot as possible. Now, we get multiple flashbacks with the same “character development.”
Look, Kate’s a manipulator who always runs from her problems! Look, she did it this other time! Oh look, it gets her into trouble a lot! Oh my gosh, it happened again, and it totally parallels what’s happening on the island! Flat characters make for boring TV.
So that fact that characters behave according to their personality makes them flat? The characters do develop and they do overcome their obstacles, but they often do that in the island storyline. Besides telling us about the characters’ past, the flashbacks help illustrate why the characters react like they do on the island. If the characters resolved their problems in the flashbacks there wouldn’t be any point in showing them since they would be irrelevant to the plot on the island.
Tell me another show where we learn as much about the characters as we do on Lost? On almost every other show we only know as much about the characters as we see in the straightforward storylines, but on Lost, we have the combination of the island storyline and flashback information and as a result we learn a lot about the characters.
Compare Jack to any character on CSI, Desperate Housewives, 24 or even Heroes and you will discover that you know a lot more about the characters on Lost.
As for the characters being boring, say what you want, but personally I think a con-man who has become the man he hates, a former altar boy who has become a drug addicted rock star and a former manager at a box company who couldn’t walk but is now running around in the jungle with a big knife searching for his destiny, are some pretty great characters.
Plot Holes
Stop giving excuses and start giving answers. I’m not talking about wrapping up all the big mysteries, but for crying out loud, give us something. With so many completely unanswered questions about the island, there’s no reason every episode shouldn’t contain half a dozen new, tantalizing tidbits of information. Go back to Black Rock, show Jack’s dad again, give us anything. You can berate people for lack of patience, but the bottom line is that a compelling plot needs to have constant motion. And instead you gave us Sawyer and Kate fucking in a bear cage for three episodes.
Last week we found out what happened to Desmond when he turned the failsafe key. We’ve found out a lot about The Others. We learned what Kate did. We have discovered Rousseau’s daughter Alex. We know how Juliet became an Other.
A lot of questions are answered all the time, but as soon as they are answered everyone forgets about them and screams “where are the answers!?”.
How to fix it
Kill Jack. Kill Kate. Kill Nicki and Paolo (or whatever) and never, ever, ever make such a grade school attempt to introduce new characters again. Make Charlie interesting again instead of the whiny, jealous infant he became. Don’t screw up Desmond. Cripple Locke and bring back his mystic bent. Let Sayid loose. More Sun & Jin. Make Sawyer say something besides “offensive attention-getter, unimaginative nickname. Sarcastic comment and/or question.” Oh, and maybe explain where Danielle is after all this time.
I’m sure no one would complain if Nikki and Paulo died, but personally I’m hoping that there was a point in introducing them. Maybe they are Others or they have some other purpose, either way, I’m willing to wait to find out.
Killing Kate and Jack proves that you have no idea what you are talking about since Lost would lose a large part of the audience if they died. Besides, they are great characters.
Are you actually watching Lost? They already made Charlie interesting again by having Desmond explain that Charlie is going to die. Now he doesn’t just have to take care of Claire and the baby, but he has to do so while knowing that the grim reaper has put a price on his head.
Get the Others jacked into the mythology again instead of turning them into a Melrose Place-style tangent. Let the characters talk, explore, and care even remotely about why everything is so bizarre, and let them LEARN SOMETHING. Go back to Black Rock. Try to explore the security system’s infrastructure. Go to the other stations intentionally instead of accidentally. Give us something about Walt and Michael after they left. Give us serious internal conflict between the “names” and the “no-names.” Aren’t they sick of sitting around on a beach while Jack and Co. fight pirates and polar bears? Bring on Lord of the Flies mayhem.
I’ve already addressed part of this, so let’s go straight to exploring the security system. I don’t want to to into spoiler territory, but I can almost guarantee that the security system and other hatches WILL BE intentionally explored. Locke even said that he was planning to go to the Flame station. These things will happen, but you need to have some patience, everything can’t happen at once.
Regarding conflicts between “names and no-names”, that was the reason why they introduced Nikki and Paulo, and I thought you didn’t like them?
It will never happen. The producers’ explanations of their goals for the show make it very clear that they are hellbent on ruining everything that was compelling about it. They don’t have the imagination or skill to pull it all off and, on top of all of that, they have also made it clear that they disdain the majority of their audience. So, despite its potential, “Lost” is halfway down the spiral and never returning. I suggest you follow myself and 10 million other viewers by turning your back now before the producers waste more of your time.
So the fact that the producers are going against the system to get ABC to set an end date for Lost to make sure that the story doesn’t get dragged out is bad? The fact that they are trying to please both the hardcore mythology focused fans and those who prefer the character interactions is bad?
The eight episodes so far in Season 3 have been great, and if anything, the last two have proven that the Lost writing team have both the skill and imagination to create very exciting television.
Update: Clever WoT has posted a reply answering my reply.
