A Little “Lost”

A Little “Lost”

Apr 15

I seriously am in bed most nights by 10 p.m. EST.

Man, at least when I lived in the central time zone, that meant making it till the news. Now it means making it to the hour-long drama that comes before the news.

On some nights, I don’t even make it that far, and as my wife has made a habit of pointing out to me weekly, I’m especially bad at making it through Wednesday night’s 9 p.m. episodes of Lost.

Which has led me to realize that it’s maybe not so much my weak-ass ability to stay awake that’s tripping me up as it is the fact that, honestly, I’m just not into Lost anymore.

I know, Frank! I’m as surprised as anyone.

Man, remember when Lost was fresh and new and just blowing your fucking mind on a weekly basis? Okay, so maybe it’s doing that for you now, I dunno…but those early episodes. That first season. It’s always been a show of questions, even as they give out answers, but early on, question got piled on top of question and it was all wrapped up in this perfect episodic action/horror/sci-fi confection that tasted so goddamned delicious.

And yet…there was something more. Something real amid the smoke monsters and polar bears and spanish-language Flash comic books. There were characters, bringing the full weight of their pasts to this mysterious island, and we learned of these pasts through elegant flashbacks that often echoed and commented on the action at hand.

When it got tiresome to constantly spend so much time looking back at characters, and moreso the same characters over and over again (how many times did we need to see Jack Shepard break down in a hospital or his kitchen anyway?), I was hot for the flashbacks to go away and to finally get some ANSWERS for a change. Enough with the constant looks backward; let’s see what’s happening here and now.

The show delivered that, in spades. The season three finale, “Through the Looking Glass,” has to be regarded as that turning point, introducing the flash-forwards that would help define the show’s next significant phase and framing the very broad outlines of the Rest of the Story (RIP Paul Harvey).

Since pretty much that point, I have slowly lost interest in the show, even as I continued to get the answers I hungered for, and even as those answers fulfilled and intrigued me. I think it’s because the show itself has slowly lost its emotional center. The writers have moved away from character-driven chunks of plot to plot-driven installments that move the pieces around the board, even as they attempt to explain everything that has come before. It’s become more of an intellectual exercise than an emotionally realistic story.

Right now, they’ve clearly teed up the Sawyer/Juliet//Jack/Kate love square to stoke the dying fires of the show’s romance quotient, but to me it’s just hitting with a dull thud. I’m intrigued by the new seventies setting, and really curious to know how Ben Linus and Charles Widmore continue to fit together, and I love Terry O’Quinn as Locke, especially after his resurrection. Of course, Michael Emerson as Ben Linus is still the most watchable actor on TV; people always say they’d watch their favorite actor read the phone book, but Emerson? I would seriously watch that, because it would become an EVIL phone book in his hands.

I just wouldn’t say I CARE much about the show anymore, and I think there was a moment early on when it really seemed like they’d pull it off, “it” being an episodic science fiction adventure series with real emotional substance and developed, flawed characters. More importantly, one that told a long-form, layered story that would unfold over many hours of television to tell some gigantic tale full of nuance and depth.

Maybe such a thing isn’t even possible. Has it even been attempted before, by any show, in any genre? Certainly series have followed the same group of characters in the same storyline over several seasons, but even in the most evolved of these shows, each season tends to be its own “arc” with a beginning, middle, and end. You could say that’s roughly true of Lost, but even so, the end of each season really doesn’t function as any true “end” to the series; you need what is to come to complete the tale.

Whether Lost ever had hope or not, it doesn’t seem to have much now. I don’t think I’ll stop watching it (or TRYING to watch it, at any rate) because I’m invested now, and my wife watches it, and I am genuinely fascinated by the mental gymnastics of keeping up with the plotlines and following the sci-fi twists.

It’s just not about people anymore, and that’s why Lost has lost me.