Newsweek article about LOST
Feb. 7th, 2007 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spicedogsI personally don't agree with everything that this article has to say. For instance, I still enjoy LOST. I never stopped enjoying it. I love to speculate and play guessing games as to what the story is about. I know that I won't have all the answers. If I did, LOST would be over. The attraction about LOST is the mystery. If the mystery is solved, then there's nothing there. I don't like the shipper stories that much. Unfortunately, I read that there will be a heavy emphasis on shipper stories.
If shipper stories will be prevalent this season, guess what? I still will love the show. I invested a lot of time on the characters themselves. It will be nice to learn more about them. Besides, if a plane would have crashed on such an island and if the surviving passengers would have found themselves in the same predicament as our castaways, there would be a lot of pairing by now anyway.
What would I not want to see? Overabundant sexual exposure. As far as I am concerned such exposure is done for shock value. LOST does not need that. The faithful viewer has been defined and a good portion of them are in it for the duration. And let’s face it, no new viewers will be obtained. You’ll have a straggling few who will join to view the sex and will just as quickly leave.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I am ready. It is 11:30 am as I write this entry. LOST is on 10 pm. I can hardly wait. I will finally see my favorite show. It will be the first episode after a long 13-week hiatus. I don’t know how I survived it. But I can look forward to 16 marvelous uninterrupted consecutive LOST-viewing weeks.
TV: How to Keep Enjoying 'Lost'
Feb. 6, 2007 - When the third season of “Lost” got off to a bumpy, wandering start last fall, folks in my profession began writing heartfelt user manuals about “how to save” the show. The suggestions were pretty uniform: cut down on the flashbacks, weed out some dead weight from the cast and, for God’s sake, give us some answers already. The only part I disagree with is the original assumption—that “Lost” can still be “saved,” which is to say, restored to its early greatness. It can’t be, and it’s high time we made peace with that reality. We got a season or two of thrilling, original television—genuine popcorn art—and now “Lost” is onto its commerce phase. In spurts, it can still be enormously entertaining, but it’s no longer groundbreaking because being groundbreaking, by its very nature, is hard to sustain. At this point, “Lost” is merely in the business of being fun to watch. And what’s so terrible about that?
Anyone could’ve seen this coming. As the supremely clever creators of “Lost” began piling on more weirdness and more characters, their giant spider web was bound to start sagging under its own weight. Back before the season two premiere, I predicted that the island was getting so crowded, survivors would soon start falling out of trees. But the writers one-upped me: they didn’t fall out of trees—they came from a whole other island, right next door to the first one. Touché. (Here’s a theory for all you “Lost” nuts: we know that the show is filmed in Hawaii, but maybe the survivors are actually in Hawaii and don’t know it. At the very least, that would explain how the Others’ book club gets service from Amazon.com.) Fans of the show keep begging for some clarity and some closure, but that simply isn’t how hit television works. There’s nothing dramatic about an unbroken string of “eureka” moments. At its heart, “Lost” is a mystery series, and when it comes to serialized TV mysteries, the money is in the clues, not the solution.
And frankly, though it may aggravate devoted fans, executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof—“Lost”’s two-headed creative monster—are still really good at thinking up spooky scenes, wacked-out twists and enigmatic characters. So as the minutes tick down before Wednesday night’s season 3.5 premiere, here’s something in lieu of yet another manual about how to save “Lost”: a three-step guide called “How to Keep Enjoying ‘Lost’.”
1. Stop clamoring for answers. Sure, they’ll come, but only in drips and drabs, and usually paired with a fresh batch of questions. And even though Cuse and Lindelof keep insisting that they’ve got a master plan, that every loose thread will eventually be tied up, I don’t believe them, chiefly because it’s impossible. Hundreds of little details, filed away and catalogued by obsessive followers, are bound to remain unresolved, like cowlicks that simply won’t lie down. And you, dear “Lost” fan, need start being OK with this. If you think I’m joking, go find some “X-Files” fans. Those sorry clowns are still waiting for answers, a decade after the show ended; they’re going from geek convention to geek convention trying to find them. Don’t turn out like this.
2. Stop trying to figure it all out. That splendid first season of “Lost” was a rare example of participatory television. The creators handed all of us the same giant puzzle and invited us to put our heads together and figure it out. Not since “Twin Peaks” had a show been so playfully engrossing. And like everyone else, I joined in, trading e-mails with friends about our grand unification theories of “Lost.” But at some point during the second season, as the effort began to seem futile, my head started to hurt and I gave up. Smartest thing I ever did. For me, “Lost” has gone from active television to passive television, and I’m much happier this way. My advice: pick a theory, either the “Wizard of Oz” theory (they’re all dreaming) or the “Sixth Sense” theory (they’re all dead), and stick to it until you hear otherwise. You’re probably wrong, but you’ll sleep easier.
3. Just watch the darn show. If “Lost” is no longer revolutionary in form, it’s still well-made television: great characters, nice writing, cinema-quality storytelling and, especially, first-rate acting. If you stop expecting the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, the parts can still satisfy. Take Wednesday night’s episode, the first in a nonstop sprint to the season’s May finale. It’s the backstory of the Queen Other, Juliet, played by the delightfully placid Elizabeth Mitchell, and though we learn a ton about her during this hour, it’s still a mystery whose side she’s really on and what her angle is. But the episode is nevertheless engaging, emotional and, in small doses, enlightening. And even though there are way too many characters on “Lost”—remember John Locke? What happened to him?—that doesn’t mean the new ones aren’t exquisitely crafted. Consider what we do know about Juliet: she’s either a ruthless, stone-cold Lady Macbeth … or Jack’s new love interest. That’s quite a gulf of possibilities and, as usual with this cast, Mitchell makes it fly. So instead of trying to guess which way the writers are going to swerve, just watch the darn thing. You’ll enjoy it more—I promise.
Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17013874/site/newsweek/page/2/
