Thursday, February 12, 2009

Oh so Lost.

Dear "Lost" writers:

I've been with you since Season 1. I've never found TV particularly fascinating but your show was very intriguing and entertaining. Not because there were a bunch of people suddenly stranded in a remote location, trying to figure out how to survive and get home. Any generic horror film does that. Ho-hum. What made "Lost" so worth watching were the people whose back stories and personalities were so carefully crafted. I watched "Lost" because these people were real to me, and I cared what happened to them. I stuck with you faithfully through season 2 even as your network nearly killed the show by repeating most of season 1 instead of showing new episodes. (Plot was secondary but still necessary.) I have never been as interested in finding out what the mysteries of the island were except as how the characters dealt with it. Does knowing that the "smoke monster" is a type of "security system" make it any less terrifying to the people on the island? It was more fascinating that these Western, intelligent, mostly well educated people would automatically refer to a frightening unknown as a "monster" than what the "unknown" turned out to be. (BTW, isn't Cerebus also a type of "security system"? Does that make it easier to understand?)

Admit it. You were making this st*t up as you went along, playfully experimenting with the 'fish out of water' theme...'hey, what if we put in a polar bear on a tropical island?  How about a shark with a Dharma logo?'  But the show was a huge hit and you felt compelled to force an story arc about the "mystery of the island" instead of "how are the desperate castaways dealing with such stuff that they could have never have imagined?"

So...here are some of my issues that are making it harder and harder for me to tune in every week:

1. Ben has never been a very believable bad guy. A manipulative and possibly evil man, yes. But he grew up in isolation in a small community. How could he know how to maneuver in the "real world", to "outcon" other con men far more experienced than he ever was?

2. The time travel thing? Not buying it. It has the unpleasant whiff of a Deus Ex Machina.

3. Overarching conspiracies are so 1990s. The X-Files already did that, and much better.

4. With the exception of the smoke monster, none of the mysteries of the first season are answered--the polar bear (an escapee from the Others' zoo?) Why was Rose cured of her cancer? Why the hell can John walk (not that you haven't injured his legs several times since). Why was it so important that Claire's baby be born on the island? The frakkin' numbers? 

5. If the island turns out to be Atlantis, I'm sending you hate mail. 

That will be all for now,

Luneray

P.S. Kate is not very believable in business suits and heels. Put her in jeans and shoes she can run in.



 

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