Culture Blues

Tempered Reaction: “Across the Sea”

Man, I wish it was Sleestaks all along.

SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE MOST RECENT LOST! ALERT! ALERT!

So, there it is, the origin of Jacob and that other guy. The episode that, well, it explained their origin and a little bit more, but not too much. I can handle not getting much of an explanation for the mythology stuff, for all the mysteries. I would certainly be accepting if the show were going down that road. If they were delving into all this electromagnetism, reversed pole stuff, blah blah blah. The nitty gritty of that could be fun, but once they introduced ghosts they pretty much ruled out explaining everything in a scientific way. Regardless, that’s clearly not where this show is going.

The problem is that they’re not exploring that stuff in depth AND they're not giving us very good dramatic character/plot development stuff either. I have seen commenters on the internet today state that the main characters lack "agency" these days, which is a good way of putting something I've been feeling for a while. Our castaways, who are still the main characters of this story despite numerous distractions, haven't been behaving like the functioning personalities we got to know early on. They largely seem out there just to serve the plot. And even as they slave under the rule of this methodically paced plot, things don’t really seem to be coming to a head.

If this is all leading up to Jack taking over as protector, then they've done a pretty good job with his transformation, and I think that would be a good ending. But if that is what they had in mind all along (and it seems reasonable to imagine they did), then it seems a little unexplored still. His jump to “man of faith” status is largely accounted for by the unaccounted for 3 years after leaving the island.

One of the biggest drawbacks to the later Lost is how disjointed the narrative has become. The first 4 seasons took us through 100 days (and a few post-midnight hours), primarily focused on our core group of survivors. They were all reacting to basically the same situations and problems. It was very intensive, day-to-day stuff and we got to know these people pretty well. They were fleshed out characters with some nice nuance.

Then, all of a sudden, it's 3 years later. Some people have been off the island, some have been time traveling and living life on the island. We come back, and these characters are changed significantly, but we never really get to know them again, especially because we jump back into intensive, day-to-day stuff that is super plot driven: gathering people to go back to the island, stealing nuclear bombs. And then, pretty suddenly, its endgame. And in case, that wasn’t convoluted enough for you, here’s a helping of alternate realities.

This season, I've often felt detached from the proceedings. When looking at characters we've known since Day 1, I find myself having trouble remembering who they are, what they've been through, what they know and what drives them. This seems shitty for a show that spent, I don't know, a third of the episode time from seasons 1-3 telling us just who these people are and what drives them through individual flashbacks.

It seems that here at the end, I'm more interested in talking about their storytelling techniques and process and the development of the show than the story itself, which is sad because it's been a pretty great story overall.