Lost in TV

[dotinthesky]

I have finally watched Season 4 of Lost. If you are on the same dinghy boat as me, you must also be asking yourself whether this is the best TV show ever made. Well, in terms of American productions it certainly is at the top (can't say for international shows since Brasilian soap operas are still Da Bomb.) Is Lost better than Six Feet Under though? Perhaps not character-wise, but it certainly beats Six Feet Under with its many twist and turns, and its gorgeous cinematography. What about Twin Peaks, the ultimate American TV show? Well, there are actually a lot of similarities between the two shows - especially in the way they work to hook the viewers.

Twin Peaks and Lost flirt with America's B-movie past, which is why I think both shows are popular in America. Perhaps their popularity across the world has to do with the height of American imperialism coinciding with the popularity of sci-fi and horror movies - how we have all grown to think of that time as America's golden age, and therefore feel a strong attraction to any TV show or movie that flirts with it. And I'm sure we can all make a strong case for American culture being pure kitsch - something that David Lynch loves to explore in his work, and which I think also pops its head in Lost (the Godzilla-like island monster, for example). The B-movie aesthetic relies on mystery to drive its narrative forward. It shocks in order to seduce its viewers and propagate its narrative beyond the screen like a meme. How can anyone forget the first appearance of Bob in Twin Peaks? Or Michael freeing Benjamin in Lost's second season? Both Twin Peaks and Lost rely on setting - a remote place that can stand for a dystopic vision - to build its mystery. They also have a central character that focuses the mystery. In Twin Peaks, it's Laura Palmer, the popular cheerleader whose murdered body opens the show. In Lost, it starts out as the island itself bringing down Oceanic Flight 815 and behaving like a hostile Eden, then brilliantly shifts onto Benjamin Linus from Season 2 onwards.

The dark side of small town America. The dark side of Paradise. The characters in both shows are trapped in this setting for one reason or another, some intentionally so. Underneath each character's perfect facade lies a secret past. They are bound together by a type of paranoid schizophrenic reality, and with every mystery revealed in their small world new ones are created, like a spiralling psychotic fantasy that has no resolution. In fact, I think the makers of Lost must not try to wrap the show up when they decide to finish it. They must keep the hint of mystery, of unsolved questions, if they want to retain what has always been strong about the show. Solving the mystery in Twin Peaks was what killed it and drove away viewers.

I like how Lost is a homage to The Twilight Zone too, but also accidentaly apes that great example of kitsch TV from the 80s, Fantasy Island. The island's old technology, left behind by the Dharma Initiative, directly references America's sci-fi past; and each episode is structured with a reversal in the end which throws into question what the viewer knew up until then (like perfect golden age sci-fi/horror short stories). Some of the more popular episodes of The Twilight Zone (and the bread & butter of Fantasy Island) were the ones where ordinary people had their wishes granted. I believe Amazing Tales, from the 80s, also did the same; I particularly like the episode of the woman who found a necklace with the power to stop the world at will, and the child with quarreling parents who gets to then pick a new set of parents from a family zoo (remember Jack and Kate stuck in the cages, gaped at by the children of The Others?) So it's no surprise that the same happens to the characters in Lost, whether it's the wish to walk again, to escape prison, to find love, to be cured by cancer, and so forth. In Twin Peaks, the Twilight Zone episodes referenced tended to be the ones centred on murderers and freaks - a blend of noir with kitsch (again, seen through a disturbed lens, like a paranoid dream). Many characters in Twin Peaks would feel perfectly at home on Lost. Can't you just see the Log Lady stepping out of Jacob's cabin? Or the giant peering down at Locke as he lies inside the Dharma Initiative shallow grave?

The only thing that lets the show down, in my opinion, is Jack. He's one of the dullest characters because he plays such a two-dimensial "hero". His whining and tantrum-throwing in the fourth season, however, has turned him into an unlikeable character, and his screen chemistry with Kate has strangely died. Perhaps his character won't get to leave the island alive when the end finally arrives.

I remember how many fans in the past thought the writers were making things up as they went along; but I have now read somewhere that the writers knew all along how the story would begin and end, but it was a matter of stretching the plot once they realized how popular the show had become. Will the next season be the final one? And how brilliant was it of the writers to turn the flashbacks into flashforwards?

A few questions I need answered:

- The statue foot with four toes.
- The white-haired woman which Benjamin referred to as the real leader of The Others.
- Why did Charlie have to die if Desmond's vision was wrong? (i.e. it was not Claire and the baby he saw get on the helicopter?)
- The Dharma Initiative polar bear in the Sahara.
- Did Jin survive the boat's explosion?
- What happened to those survivors on the boat who the physicist was taking back to the ship?
- How did Locke get off the island and what's all that business with him being dead?!?! (or is he? I wouldn't be surprised if him and Ben put a wax head on another corpse, just to trick the Oceanic 6 into returning to the island.)

I'm assuming that the next season will start 3 years later on the island, with plenty of flashbacks to show what happened to Sawyer, Juliet, etc, during that period. It's going to be GOOD!!!

Comments

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

i love you for posting this. such good topics to ponder about now. i have many of my own, but i just woke up and my brain's not processing properly.
i can't wait to find out about this c.s. lewis story.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

What c.s. lewis story? shake that brain of yours and come back here to give me some of your theories!!

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

c.s. lewis = charlotte staples lewis. the actress that plays her was in samantha: an american girl holiday story and my old roommate dillon and i used to quote her all the time. i can't wait to find out more about her character. next to ben and ben's beat stick, she's totally my favorite character.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

She's very interesting... I thought at first she was going to be a mega bitch (<333) but I think she's just defensive and hiding stuff (like all of them.) I think Ben tried to kill her because he knew too much about her.

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

yeah, i was seriously hoping for mega-bitch status. she was on the edge there for a while and i really loved not knowing whether or not i could trust her. that fight between her and juliet was so frickin rad.
gosh, do i have to watch them all again? ben tried to kill her? do we think that has anything to do with her possible exile from the island?

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Oh oh oh!! Tell me what you discovered when re-watching from season 1 onwards! I remember you mentioning this to me before...

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

i should have been taking notes. i'm going to have to rewatch some this summer. mostly just the way people reference things and the way the writers use foreshadowing and how you can tell when they're definitely just fucking with you and when they're actually leading into something.
did you see cloverfield? j.j. abrams put a dharma logo in the beginning, just for a second, then in a q&a referenced that at the end of the movie, you can see a splash in the water when they're on the ferris wheel at coney island, again, only for a brief second, but he said that it "may" have something to do with lost. some strange tie-in that i'm now almost certain was a "fuck with you" thing rather than an actual hint.
supposedly they had three different versions of the end of the s4 finale. i haven't checked out the other ones, but i'm curious. locke can't be dead. i'm still waiting for that twin theory to come about. cloning perhaps? make yourself appear dead in the real world, then be able to live your life out on the island without fear of widmore searching for you in particular... i don't know.

[deathrockboy.livejournal.com]

The other three versions of the finale were just alterations on who was in the casket, and I believe they were only shot to keep spoilers incorrect.

The other two in the casket were James (Sawyer), and Desmond.

Oh, and Locke is dead. I'm sure we'll find out why next season. Just watch his flashbacks, the guy just has the worst luck.

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

i figured they would have just filmed those to keep the cast and crew unable to spill the end. so the scene was completely the same until the pan over to the casket? lame.

of course locke has the worst luck. that's why he has the best luck on the island. how the hell'd he get off? don't you ever get that twin theory from ben? like when he was talking on the phone with michael, he never said who he was, just assumed that michael would recognize his voice. there's a lot to be said about what people don't say. like when ben told locke not to come after them until he'd killed his father, but then locke had james do it, which worked out well for everyone, but when locke showed up at their camp with his dad slung over his shoulder, he never said that he did it. he just dumped the body and said something like "now tell me what the fuck's going on." the island smiles favorably on that kind of thing, i think. the clever ruse still keeping some kind of bizarre moral code in tact. what could locke have done to get himself killed? i'm riveted either way.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I did see Cloverfield, but didn't catch the references... will have to watch it again.

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

i had to freeze-frame the beginning. it's not really worth watching again for those things, but the end is kind of neat with the splashing-in-the-water thing. looked it up on youtube, but's it's totally impossible to see with such crap quality video. you can try this though.

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

ooh, and i want to hear more about regina.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was a wasted character! I somehow don't think we'll hear from her again. :-/

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

nooooo! you can't waste zoe bell on a vague jacob marley reference. we've got to know more about what happened to those people on the freighter. something was seriously up with her and i don't want to let it go.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we'll see more of her in the helicopter people's flashbacks?

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

dear effing god, i hope so. there was way too much going on with that freighter. and her with the crazy and the book upside-down and such.
plus, i just have a love for zoe bell because of xena and death proof.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I think you should start emailing the producers every day until they fulfill your wishes.

[beeorkendurkey.livejournal.com]

an idea, but i have little to no (leaning more toward the "no" side) faith in petitioning for change. i really should, but i just don't. i don't sign things, i don't vote, i don't think i have much of a say in anything and i tried to be more optimistic and self-assured, but then i just felt like a fairytale asshole. i don't think everyone should agree with that, but my spots, they just ain't changing. grawr. what i should do is brow-beat someone ELSE into emailing producers until they all fulfill my wishes and become my faithful minions and then i will control the media and hence, the WORLD. don't worry, i won't make you bow down. you can have your own country and fleet of planes, trains, and automobiles. as long as you use your clout to continue making me smile.
i'm not sure where this rant came from.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Hehehe... the rant is very welcome. I"ll totally take you up on having my own country - island - when you are world ruler. :-)