Lost Pre-Premiere Warm-Up
Friday, January 29th, 2010 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoThere's a fabulous "pre-season" write-up for "Lost" here at the Onion A.V. Club. Noel Murray has recently rewatched the previous five seasons and has a number of witty and intelligent observations about the show in general. Scroll down the page, and there's an eight-minute video recap of all the action that's taken place so far, minus flash-backs and -forwards.
Murray speculates about the season to come, and has a number of questions that he wants answered.
Whatever happened to the Oceanic 815 stewardess Cindy, and the kids Zach and Emma?
I suspect we will never find this out. There are actually a number of minor characters who I'm very curious about, but I don't think the writers have enough time left to deal with them properly; I shudder to suspect that maybe the writers aren't good enough to answer all those minor people questions when they've let them dangle so terribly in the past. The bigger question, of course, is why were these characters important in the first place? Hell, we know why children were so important to the Others now, but why squirrel the kids away way back in Seasons 1 & 2, only to be all open about them later?
Who are The Others, and what is their purpose? How vast is their reach into off-island affairs? How do they get on and off the island so easily? Who the hell is Richard Alpert?
Please, Lost writers, if you answer no other questions with this final season, answer these!
Is Locke actually special, or has he just been a pawn all this time?
This question could be answered pretty quickly and simply, and I bet it's a small reward we'll get in the first few episodes. OTOH, depending on the writers' willingness to answer the previous set of questions, it could get tied up in innumerable plot complications.
The questions I add to this list are:
* What is the Smoke Monster? Is it an actual monster, or a scientifically explainable phenomenon as the writers have claimed in the past? And where's it been hanging out all this time? (I saw a funny fanvid recently of a Doctor Who/Lost crossover, where Smokey was actually one of the Weeping Angels, just in different form. While it would never work, it's a fun answer to contemplate.)
* Are forces on the Island (well, Islands, plural, really) controlled by those with strong willpower? I think that Ben was in charge for so long because he was focused and purposeful; but then Locke came along and he was more focused and purposeful, and the Island appeared to choose him over Ben.
If we could answer any or some of the above questions, I would be very grateful. But, as Murray observes,
"I’ve had a blast watching Lost, and I trust that the final season will be entertaining at times and frustrating at others. (Such is the appeal of the show; it’s fun to get mad at it sometimes.) I've never been one to get overly dismayed by the notion that the Lost writers have improvised a lot of the show on the fly. There's a place on TV for the kind of pre-planned, tightly controlled narrative (as seen on The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.), but the trade-off is that those kinds of shows are often slow-paced and largely uneventful on any given week. I like that the Lost writers think about what will entertain and surprise an audience from episode to episode, even if that means introducing elements that that prove to be dead-ends. As a pastime, I certainly have no complaints about Lost."
This sums up very well my attitude about this show at this point. Since there's no way the writers can wrap everything up, I just hope they tell a good story, one that's reasonably connected to what proceeded it and that answers, hopefully, more than a few of the big questions. I've had such a good time watching this show, and it's not been a guilty pleasure in the slightest (unlike that one season of Survivor I watched from beginning to end and felt terrible about afterwards). Lost has consistently delivered quality debate material, compelling characters, and I'm glad that the writers have enough foresight to see that a definite end point is a stronger place to be than syndication.
Murray speculates about the season to come, and has a number of questions that he wants answered.
Whatever happened to the Oceanic 815 stewardess Cindy, and the kids Zach and Emma?
I suspect we will never find this out. There are actually a number of minor characters who I'm very curious about, but I don't think the writers have enough time left to deal with them properly; I shudder to suspect that maybe the writers aren't good enough to answer all those minor people questions when they've let them dangle so terribly in the past. The bigger question, of course, is why were these characters important in the first place? Hell, we know why children were so important to the Others now, but why squirrel the kids away way back in Seasons 1 & 2, only to be all open about them later?
Who are The Others, and what is their purpose? How vast is their reach into off-island affairs? How do they get on and off the island so easily? Who the hell is Richard Alpert?
Please, Lost writers, if you answer no other questions with this final season, answer these!
Is Locke actually special, or has he just been a pawn all this time?
This question could be answered pretty quickly and simply, and I bet it's a small reward we'll get in the first few episodes. OTOH, depending on the writers' willingness to answer the previous set of questions, it could get tied up in innumerable plot complications.
The questions I add to this list are:
* What is the Smoke Monster? Is it an actual monster, or a scientifically explainable phenomenon as the writers have claimed in the past? And where's it been hanging out all this time? (I saw a funny fanvid recently of a Doctor Who/Lost crossover, where Smokey was actually one of the Weeping Angels, just in different form. While it would never work, it's a fun answer to contemplate.)
* Are forces on the Island (well, Islands, plural, really) controlled by those with strong willpower? I think that Ben was in charge for so long because he was focused and purposeful; but then Locke came along and he was more focused and purposeful, and the Island appeared to choose him over Ben.
If we could answer any or some of the above questions, I would be very grateful. But, as Murray observes,
"I’ve had a blast watching Lost, and I trust that the final season will be entertaining at times and frustrating at others. (Such is the appeal of the show; it’s fun to get mad at it sometimes.) I've never been one to get overly dismayed by the notion that the Lost writers have improvised a lot of the show on the fly. There's a place on TV for the kind of pre-planned, tightly controlled narrative (as seen on The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.), but the trade-off is that those kinds of shows are often slow-paced and largely uneventful on any given week. I like that the Lost writers think about what will entertain and surprise an audience from episode to episode, even if that means introducing elements that that prove to be dead-ends. As a pastime, I certainly have no complaints about Lost."
This sums up very well my attitude about this show at this point. Since there's no way the writers can wrap everything up, I just hope they tell a good story, one that's reasonably connected to what proceeded it and that answers, hopefully, more than a few of the big questions. I've had such a good time watching this show, and it's not been a guilty pleasure in the slightest (unlike that one season of Survivor I watched from beginning to end and felt terrible about afterwards). Lost has consistently delivered quality debate material, compelling characters, and I'm glad that the writers have enough foresight to see that a definite end point is a stronger place to be than syndication.
