1 post tagged “lost”
Before I make my review on LOST, let me just make a statement about Vox's latest update: Customized banners.
The Team Vox blog says that it is one of the most demanded features. Look, Six Apart, you've got my respect for making this great service. But when people say "We want to customize our banners", they don't mean "We want to put our own images to replace the banner above a bland theme". People want to be able to put their banners above EXISTING THEMES. Listen and learn, this is a case of, not customer knows best, but I know best. Which brings us to tonight's word.
Cue the canned cheering and clapping.
LOST. I'm of course referring to the TV show, produced by some large producer, probably FOX or something, because that is Jamie Foxx's last name. It was titled LOST because JJ Abrams obviously contacted a psychic before he began this venture and was told that his writers would get entirely LOST in their own work. Evidently, interpreted this as "My writers will work so hard they'll metaphorically get buried in their work". Guess he didn't realise the literal meaning. Let me preface the rest of this with this statement. I was a fan of LOST until I had the epiphany of the psychic.
Season one of LOST met critical acclaim. There were plenty of exciting and intriguing sub-plots, along with a mysterious main plot. I italicized "mysterious" because that's often a word used to describe a situation where nobody has a fucking clue what's going on. This is the case.
We were introduced to the characters, and throughout the season, we became familiar with several backstories of the characters.
Throughout the series, we've seen the main group assemble a boat, sail away on the boat, get a child stolen by pirates, return to the beach and get caught by "The Others", talked with the Others, talked with a crazy French lady, killed a polar bear, got attacked by a giant black smoke that can destroy forests with it's insane meta-physical strength (Again an italicized word, this time indicating that meta-physical is another phrase for "dutch voodoo" or "mysterious". Read: bullshit.) and been punished with the poor writing of a round-table of mental-trauma patients, being forced to carry out their will. We've also been teased with several conspiracies, invoked by the Dharma Institute and Hanzo Corp. (ignore the fact each conspiracy founded from these organisations were quickly dismissed in interviews by the writers. They're trying to kill their own story).
I was watching a documentary about LOST today called "LOST: Uncovered" or something boring (boring like a fish hook) like that. A frequent mention was that with the mysterious black smoke and other foes on the island had led the writers to a point where there are so many open-ended opportunities that the writers could go anywhere. Let me interject this summary of the show with an analysis of the writing:
1) They wrote in ambiguous monsters
2) The ambiguity of the monsters allow them to go anywhere with the story
3) The storylines of LOST keep getting more bizarre without any solutions being found to anything
I don't claim to be a writing expert (but I do consider myself a decent writer), and I'm not saying that they are bad writers. Well actually I am, but here's why; they are the wrong writers for the show. They evidently don't know how to write fiction of this caliber. These writers have so many places they can go, but they don't seem to be able to settle on a solution to ANY of the questions viewers have about the show. "Oooh, but Jake, that's the intrigue. It's mysterious, and the pull of the show is the lack of solutions". No, it's not intrigue. If you are still following this show, you need to get a hobby. I recommend reading 43folders or Lifehacker, because they might be able to get you to find a way to do something productive with your time rather than wasting it watching a show which could be likened to a book full of blank pages. There were just so many opportunities, so many things, that the writers of the book could put into the pages, but they didn't put anything there. Why? Because they decided to leave it up to you. Memo to writers everywhere: YOU ARE A WRITER AND YOU TELL A STORY. DON'T ASK FOR PEOPLE TO TELL YOU WHAT TO WRITE, YOU SHOULD BE TELLING THEM WHAT TO READ. Sorry, I got a little bit angry there, I'm back.
LOST ignores all opportunities to provide a solution to every question you have of the show. I will surmise why they don't.
These writers aren't writing in solutions for a couple of reasons. First of all, they've built up this grandiose story, and realised that they're all inadequate to write a solution to them. To write an end, good enough to match the journey there. Writers of LOST, you must realise that a journey is always far more satisfying than the result, than the end. They also haven't written in any solutions because they're too pussy-whipped by the audience, that they've lost their arc (if they ever had one). Did they ever have a vague idea where the point would be that something would be explained? Let's assume they did. However, now that they've written their story, they've been cruising the boards, trawling the web, and realised that everybody is saying "Ooooh, I bet this means this, and therefore this will happen at the end". However unlike any good writer, and seen the opportunity to surprise their audience with something that they hadn't thought of, they panicked. They thought "If the audience want this, we should give it to them instead of our planned ending! We don't know if they'll like our ending, but they seem to like this ending". However, like I said before, nobody enjoys the result as much as the journey. You can't do it, admit it and write yourself out of the black hole you're in.
Now for my conspiracy. I stopped watching the show after I realised that the writers were being "mysterious" (we all know what that really means in this context by now, I trust?). Personally I want to be told a story, not have to make it up. If I wanted to make up my own story for LOST, I'd write a teleplay and send it to the executive directors.
My theory is that it's all in Jack's head. Whether he is in a coma, or if some sort of false images are flashing before his eyes in the seconds following a fatal car-crash, or something similar I'm not sure, but I am convinced that it's all in Jack's mind. I will tell you why this would be the best solution.
First, it sends the viewers the message that the LOST writers have actually been trying to tell since the start, but lost along the way, the message which follows the old proverb "perception is reality".
Secondly, it explains why there's a fucking polar bear on a pacific island near Australia. How do you think a polar bear travels half way around the world? It doesn't, ice doesn't travel that far. Most ice melts within a mile of the iceberg it broke off from. Actually, I have a theory as to why it's in Jack's head.
In the documentary I was watching, they mentioned Hurly was reading a comic with a polar bear on the front. Therefore, Jack fell asleep on the plane, or had a heart attack, or some sort of internal trauma which lapsed him into a near-death state, where this dream was created. We all know that dreams create output by input created during the course of our lives. If you watch twelve hours of a certain show before going to sleep, you will most probably have a dream to do with the show. Therefore, aspects of Jack's life have become a part of the dream world. Did Jack have a traumatic event with a bunch of black smoke? Was one of his siblings possibly killed in an explosion? This would explain why the black smoke is in the dream.
LOST. Aren't we all?
This just in
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