I H A D T O . (mattson creative)
05.27.2010
Okay, I confess! I watched the Lost finale last night. And yes, that means I'd actually watched every episode up until then. And yes, the glory of my blog is I get to share all my trivial musings and two cents.
In my defense it all began with one of those harmless college break marathon-tv-watching-spells when my sister brought back the DVD set from China. After decoding the chinese numbering to get the DVDs in order, I was glued to days and days of spellbinding trenching and crawing and running, and running, and crawling through the mysterious island that was Lost. Despite the tunnel vision effects of watching almost ANY tv series back to back in which all the drama and suspense is amplified due to lack of interaction with the world beyond couch, I actually got really into the show.
Relevant backstory confession, while living in a selective cultural vacuum of sorts as a twelve year-old British girl in Bangkok, I did become incessantly intrigued and engaged with the desolate islands and cryptic stations of ultra-geek computer games Myst, and Zork (Nintendo was not allowed.) There was something magnetic and terrifying about a solitary land, possessed at unidentified moments in time by an unexplained people and purpose. In middle school I was obsessively consumed by the Aussie writer John Marsden's young adult novel series "Tomorrow, When The War Began" following a bunch of teenagers retreating into the mountains of Australia on a camping trip to return home to a militarized invasion of the fictional town Wirrawee. Forced to retreat and rebuild a solitary camp within the mountains, the characters created their own unadulterated microcosmic society complete with bomb plots and rescue missions that spoke to compassion and survival in the face of isolating fear. As a progression of sorts in high school I wouldn't put down Lord of the Flies, the terrifying picture of human nature within a society-less and isolated land. Pigs head on a stick, shiver.
Basically, I think Lost tapped into some of these themes, and began to create stories between characters that unfolded in a unique way revealing rich backplots, subplots...or endlessly intertwined plots that ended up getting everyone so confused they had to cliffnote the later seasons throughout the episodes. Nonetheless, at some point in the show they really reached a lot of people, and in the end, pissed off equally as many. After endless episodes of character development, flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash - sideways (?), it sort of amazed me that in the last two seasons the show descended into this sensationalistic sci-fi temple of doom time warp complete with cringeful one-liners. All in all, I thought it was kind of a monumental letdown that so much thought could be invested into every detail, character and subplot with the exception of...the ENTIRE premise of the show!! Mommy issues and brotherly tantrums and unexplained mythical nothingness? Even more irritating in the end was when after half a dozen seasons spent trying to escape the island, Jack adopts the same irrational sense of pointless responsibility. I didn't need some phenomenal revelation about life, just something...else. And I don't buy the, "maybe that was the whole point" argument, that life can be a big unfulfilling and unexplained letdown. Sigh. It was fun while it lasted, Jack's island manboobs included.
