LOST – my theory July 2, 2009
Posted by clintcarter in Beets.trackback
For years we’ve had people telling us that we needed to watch the TV series LOST. With this fall being the final season – we decided to start watching the old episodes this summer and be in a position to finish out the series with the rest of the world.
Sat down to watch the first episode and I was done. The two things I can’t stand in entertainment are 1) blood and 2) tense situations. The first episode was nothing but those two things.
Even though I backed out, Carey and Debby have continued to watch and are now to Season 3. They talk about it regularly and because I was curious I decided to read all of the episode summaries. That way I knew what was going on without the tension and the blood. Here’s my theory as to what is going on.
It is indeed a social experiment – however not for the people on the island, rather for all of the people in front of their TV’s each week. What the producers of this show want to find out is “How many random, off-the-wall elements can we introduce into this story line and still have people trying to figure out how all of the pieces connect?”
It reminds me of the way I tell stories to my kids. I’ll make up a story where they get a new chapter each night. Sometimes these story arcs last for 3 days, sometimes they go on for weeks. I don’t ever have an ending in mind when I begin. I just talk about whatever pops into my head. But I always fit it into the universe or the character’s past as if I planned it that way from the beginning.
I challenge you to look at all of the random elements in the LOST series. “Oh-no! We killed a character we still need.” No problem, he didn’t really die. “Oh-no! We’ve backed ourselves into a corner with the story line”. No problem, just introduce time travel – that will fix everything. And so on.
As my friend Tommy would say “I guess that’s your theory”.
I couldn’t agree more. They “lost” me when the characters had to push a button every 90 minutes or whatever to keep from blowing up. Come on, seriously?
Clint, I’ve never watched LOST either, but your penultimate paragraph reminded me of DALLAS. Bobby’s death was “just a dream.” Soaps do this all the time!
Well, I believe there may be an exception in this case. In an interview in the first season, the writers stated that they had this nearly all (multiple seasons) written when they started filming. As an avid fan – I must say there have been parts that felt like the random letsjerktheaudiencearound twist, but things are coming together in some pretty bizarre ways which could not be afterthoughts.
There has been some grit that I would label unnecessary, but there is some great depth – see Mr. Echo.
I also appreciate the spiritual under currents that show the characters tied to their identity in life and in death, and that the issues in their life MUST be addressed sooner or later. Plus the puzzle that no one is ever totally annihilated and gone for good?
We are all linked somehow, we are all just LOST or FOUND.
We would totally be building a sermon series around this if I still lived in St. Louis wouldn’t we?