Archives For Kate

Lost without LOST

Chris —  May 27, 2010

It’s four days later, and I’m still mulling over the LOST finale.  Sure, it was a mostly cheeseball montage of memories from the past five years with some Baha’i cosmology.  And, yes, it failed to answer a lot of questions.  But it does provide meaning that grounds the series into a story of heroism and redemption.

From polar bears to hatches to full island flashbacks, LOST was known for it’s constant mind-benders.  But it was the dedication to telling the stories of the characters that made the unique.  Looking back, we see that each character was broken and alone.  The Island gave them the power to become a hero or a monster.  In the end, many of them died a much more heroic death than they could have lived had they not crashed.

I spent most of the final season upset.  The idea of an alternate universe invalidated the redemptive choices made on the island.  But even there our heroes were far from perfect.  Kate was still a criminal, Claire still a single mom, Jack still incapable of relationships, and Locke still stuck in a wheel chair.  The Shyamalan-ic final twist showed that every sacrifice had a purpose.  Evil was defeated, and the Island survived. Even if they had never crashed, they would have still lived disastrous lives.

In the end, LOST is a series about people who are redeemed by having a purpose and adventure in their lives.  If we want to have meaningful lives, and become the person we know deep down inside that we can be, we must seek an evil to conquer and an Island to save.

For those of you who are itching for more, I suggest the brilliant inspiration for LOST, a classic 60s drama called The Prisoner, which you can view online for free.

Be seeing you.

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Life after LOST

Chris —  May 21, 2010

After Lost, I think I will probably watch less TV.  At least for awhile.

I’ll feel a little lonely, wondering how my friends are doing.  Did Sawyer ever meet his daughter?  Does alt-Jack and his supertalented son continue to exist?  Is Freckles still single?

Whenever I meet a polar bear I’ll wonder if he likes the tropics.  If I see a string of numbers, I’ll do my best to forget it so it doesn’t drive me crazy. When I see black smoke I’ll listen closely for a strange mechanical noise.  I will stay away from the shadows of statues.  I will hold up black lights to doors in search of secret maps.

Will I ever had watching parties full of screaming and theorizing ever again?  Will I ever experience instant kinship with a stranger who is also wondering what’s behind the hatch, why food pallets fall from the sky or how Jacob’s house keeps moving?

No, I have a feeling that I’ll keep an island sized hole in my heart next to the Battlestar shaped chasm.  I’m hopeful that no one will try to fill it soon.  With the valiant yet unsatisfying  exception  of Flash Forward, Hollywood has avoided trying to clone the beguiling mix of storytelling, character development, science fiction and mystery that set Lost apart.  I hope that no one tries to do it again anytime soon.

The saga may be floating off into syndication, but don’t worry, I’ll keep pushing the button to keep from destroying the world.

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We HAVE to Get Back!

Chris —  January 24, 2009

After months of grieving the death of Charlie and Locke, LOST has finally returned.  But it’s return is bittersweet. 

LOST is a unique in many ways, but what makes it stand out it that it has an undeniable overarching storyline, with a beginning, middle and end.  Up until this point, the key characteristic of LOST was it’s complicated storyline and characters.  Each episode was filled with new surprises that only deepened the mystery.  While it was confounding, it also kept drawing you back.  But in the two-hour season premiere, it was clear that two key things have changed.

First is a shift from being biographically focused to being plot focused.  For the first four seasons, each episode followed one character, and filled in their back story (or forward story.)  But this season seems to have ditched the straight-forward character focus to begin tying together the loose elements of the plot.  Secondly, it seems that the focus has shifted from creating questions to resolving mysteries.  The relatively new character of Faraday, an humble but obsessive scientist, is less a meaningful character, and more a device by which to reveal the nature of the island.  Instead of weird hatches or polar bears in the tropics, we see arrival of that mysterious airplane from season two and the get clues as to why Richard doesn’t seem to age.

It’s exciting to see the loose ends being tied together, and being able to claim to your friends “I knew it all along!”  But it’s also kind of sad.  It’s almost like watching someone grow up.  While they are maturing and becoming who they are supposed to be, the excitement of childhood is diminishing with time.  As the complexity of LOST diminishes, I don’t think the ratings will.  We’re hooked, and we’re going to keep watching as long as it take to get back to the island…or back off again…or killed by a smoke monster…

In case you’ve been under the impression that the 85 hours you have spent watching LOST were worthwhile, here’s a recap, that make you might feel ridiculous.

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