And now for a little detour...the ripoff that was LOST

 I had planned to spend the next few posts talking about my journey through sci-fi to what I'm watching now, but then I remembered one show that utterly let me down.  When the last season of LOST aired earlier this year, I was incredibly excited.  When it ended, I was disgusted.  I don't think there was ever a show I liked before LOST that I utterly hated by the end.  I despised it so much that I wrote one big tirade to a couple friends, one of which was Karate (mentioned in my previous post; by the way Karate blames ME for getting him back into Lost).  Anyway here is my take on the ending of Lost:

I had my problems with the BSG ending, but my problems with it were more personal (more on this on later posts, folks).  That being said, BSG's ending far outshined Lost. At least BSG stuck to explaining its story in a well-crafted manner. I cried. I laughed. I stewed. It worked.

The ending of Lost, however, was like one big "Kumbaya" with very little real resolution.

WARNING: This is going to be really long

I keep trying to organize my thoughts on this but it's really difficult. Alright, so I'll start with broad interpretations:

In the beginning…
we had a group of plane crash survivors on an unknown island. They were hurt afraid, and waiting for rescue. While they waited, they searched the island for food and other necessities and encountered strange things like a polar bear, a smoke monster, and Jack’s supposedly dead father, Christian Shephard. As the show went on, we watched as people from another part of the island threatened our Losties. The Losties began referring to them as “The Others.” As we learned more about The Others, we found out that their leader was a tricky, conniving, malevolent individual named Ben. Ben quickly developed a love/hat/ rivalry relationship with John Locke, who, out of all our Losties, was glad to be on the island. Part of his reasoning was that the island returned his ability to walk and his purpose in life. However, Locke also felt some special affinity to the island, and Ben was jealous of this “specialness” that Locke possessed. Eventually, Locke won leadership over the Others and Ben plotted against him.

Later, we learned that Locke wasn’t Ben’s only nemesis. Years ago, Ben and Charles Widmore had a rivalry. Widmore lost, and was banished from the island. Widmore never gave up on returning to the island, however, and he, Eloise Hawkins, and their secret love child, Daniel Faraday, each had pieces of information about the island. Later, in a face-off, Ben called Widmore’s bluff, and Widmore had Ben’s adopted daughter, Alex, killed, sending Ben into a rage.

Questions: Why was John Locke “special?” Why was the island special?
What did Eloise know? Why did she leave the island? Why did she allow Daniel to return? What was her role?
What exactly happened between Ben and Widmore?

Ben had brought others to the island from time to time during his leadership. One of these new arrivals was a young doctor named Juliet Burke, who had been coerced to the island to deal with the problem of why pregnant women on the island always died in childbirth. Juliet eventually defected to the side of our Losties and showed Sun what would be her first view of her future daughter, Ji Yeon. Luckily, Sun was able to subvert the danger of giving birth to her island-conceived daughter on the island by leaving the island before the birth.

In a related storyline, Claire Littleton, a woman in the late stages of her pregnancy, gave birth to her son Aaron, on the island. Although Claire survived the birth of her son and bonded with him as well as with Charlie, Claire disappeared, leaving Kate to take Aaron away from the island with her. Later, Kate experienced an extreme level of guilt over abandoning Claire and decided to seek the island out and bring Claire home. Before she left, she had a dream of Claire warning her not to bring Aaron back to the island.

Questions: Why were the pregnant women dying? What actually happened to Claire in her absence? Why was Aaron important? And what about Ji Yeon?

The Losties eventually found information about the Dharma Initiative (who preceded the Others, and who were massacred by Ben) and found their hatches. They learned through these hatches, that the island possessed and electromagnetic field that had brought about their original plane crash when a button containing the energy was not pushed. Desmond, another character, allowed the button not to be pushed again, plunging the island into instability and eventually leading to a series of time jumps. Juliet later attempted to reset everything by setting off an atomic bomb. She reported to Miles, after her death that it had “worked.”

Questions: What “worked?” Why was Miles able to hear/feel the dead? In fact, why was Hurley always able to see dead people?

What should have been:

Given these happenings, it was evident that the island was a powerful force that many men (Jacob, Ben, Widmore, Locke) were fighting for control for. Jacob was somewhat of an ambiguous figure, almost in the vein of a God, but in the background. There was also the side mystery of the smoke monster. So, the set up appeared to signal a) powerful forces of the island itself and b) a battle between Ben and Locke or Ben and Widmore/Eloise or both. Jacob and MIB/Smokey were side mysteries. Instead of capitalizing on these factors and answering at least a few of the questions posed above:

What played out:
The island was a special place full of electromagnetic energy that allowed it to perform miraculous feats such as making Sun fertile and allowing Locke to walk again. A protector has always been appointed to protect the island and its special properties. Most recently this line of protectors included MurderingMama, who was succeeded by Jacob, who subsequently filled the position for a long time. Jacob assumed the title when MurderingMama was murdered by his twin, MIB. MIB learned the truth of his and Jacob’s birth as a teenager and subsequently left their dwelling. Jacob, despite knowing the truth, stayed with Murdering Mama. MIB spent the next few decades living among “his” people and trying to get off the island. MIB finally murdered MurderingMama after she smashed his latest invention to get off the island, a wheel of some sort. Murdering Mama for her part saw that death was coming, and handed her position of protector off to Jacob. Jacob, in his grief, threw his twin into the heart of the island, and MIB became the smoke monster.

Over an indeterminate number of years, Jacob and MIB battled each other, but due to the magic imposed by Murdering Mama, could not directly kill each other. Jacob constantly searched for his own eventual successor, and eventually took a deputy, Richard Alpert, whom he awarded eternal life for his services. Richard was Jacob’s agent within and outside of the island, and he and Richard brought “candidates” to the island that had been scouted out beforehand. These candidates lived miserable, largely meaningless lives according to Jacob. They went through several groups of candidates (presumably including Dharma, Rousseau’s Group and the Others) before the Losties arrived. Jacob didn’t lift a finger to help or save any candidate, and MIB killed many of them in his own quest to be free of the island. The island and its protector served as a cork for MIB.

Question: How did Ben use the wheel to move the island? Was it a different wheel than MIB made?

Jacob manipulated the Losties lives on and off the island until he died and passed the position to Jack Shephard. Jack succeeded in killing MIB and ending the cycle, but died in the process, and Hurley became his successor. Ben became his adviser.

Mingled in with that, Desmond was somehow special too (how and why?) and ascertained the relationship between their lives on the present island and the limbo/purgatory in which all the Losties lived lives that were ignorant of their shared past until a certain point where they all remembered one another, ended up with their soul mates, and were sheparded by , amusingly, Christian Shephard, to a new place.

Sooo….

Excuse me, what? How do the last three paragraphs actually have any resemblance to the first several? I was watching two completely separate shows sharing a common cast. I felt as if my six years watching Lost were a complete waste. The island, which should have been the heart of the story and the explanation for the presence of the characters, was relegated to the backburner.

Of course, I had no expectation that every question would be answered (and indeed the ones I presented were a small sampling of the actual questions that weren't answered), but I expected that a superbly crafted show would be given a superbly crafted ending that made sense in light of its past history. Instead I got a touchy-feely piece of nonsense that didn’t resemble the show I’d watched excitedly for six years. The producers announced two years ago that Lost would end this season. They had more prior warning than anyone. There was no excuse for this load of utter crap that they delivered, and I had every right to be upset.  Some people argued that the answers were there.  Could you say it was pretty much all due to the special energy of the island?  Sure you can.  But what kind of answer is that, given the complexity of the questions? Sorry, I'm not buying it.

I’m done with Lost. I will never watch any of it, including reruns, ever again. What a terrific example of BAD sci-fi.

The beginning of a love affair...

When I originally created this blog, I was mourning the end of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. You have to understand - I came to the world of sci-fi/sci-fantasy fairly late. I had always gravitated toward the genre in books, but my first experience in sci-fi television did not happen until about 2005. I suppose I had watched things close to the genre like Charmed or BtVS or Smallville, but honestly those are more mainstream than shows like Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Babylon 5. Anyhow, it was 2005 and I had recently graduated from college I was working in a small bookstore in a large metropolitan town (let's call it Metropolis for fun). I wanted time to prepare graduate school applications and take care of some personal details, so working at the bookstore almost full time was perfect.

I found myself with a little more free time than I had expected. My coworker, Karate, had just finished watching a television series on DVD called Babylon 5 and spent quite a bit of time talking to our manager, MovieBuff, about it. I was intrigued by the snippets of their conversation I overheard, but I still felt that sci-fi was "too weird." Eventually, both MovieBuff and Karate noticed my growing interest, and MovieBuff convinced me to give Babylon 5 a try. He even offered to lend me his DVDs. Moviebuff only asked one thing - that I stick with Babylon 5 for an entire season before deciding to give it up. He and Karate both warned me that season 1 was slower, that it essentially functioned as a prologue for the rest of the series and would pay it off later.

They were right. I trudged through Season 1. At first, I was admittedly a bit put off by the strange looking aliens but as I kept watching, I found myself transfixed by the differing cultures and their dealings with one another, their motives, and the mysteries surrounding the station, it's history and yet unknown enemies.

I watched seasons 2-5 at an alarming pace. I couldn't believe how well constructed the storyline was, how rich the characterization was, and how many themes, ideas, and philosophies the show tackled. I fell in love with the characters, anguished over their struggles, and felt joy at their triumphs. I knew it was just a TV show, but for the first time, I was watching something that made me THINK. I was astounded.

When I was finished with the series, I was at a bit of a loss. I wasn't sure I'd watch anything so profound again. Luckily, I was wrong.

As Kosh would have said, "And so it...began."

This blog will be a platform on which I can discuss sci-fi that has caught my interest. It will mostly contain reviews, but will also serve as general commentary. I may occasionally discuss other things like books, psychology, or funny encounters, but this is a sci-fi TV blog.