Lost in Lost

Difficult as it may be to believe, I was less enthusiastic about last night's Lost finale than JPod. (Spoilers below the jump.)

The flashforward at the end was a neat trick - particularly since it redeemed what was doubtless constructed to seem like just another awful Jack flashback - but I'm very doubtful that flashforwards will work well as a persistent narrative device going forward, and I hope they don't go in that direction; moreover, the possibility that a large chunk of the action in the final three seasons is going to take place off the island seems to me to raise real shark-jumping possibilities. Maybe they can pull it off, but I'm definitely not sold on the idea of spending multiple episodes watching the show's most annoying characters run around the world trying to get back to the island. The island is the show, and the show is the island, and the more they depart from that dynamic, I suspect, the worse things will get.

(Also, I wanted Locke to shoot Jack so much ...)

That said, I think Lost is increasingly fascinating on a meta-level: Whatever comes of it in the end, it should be required viewing in screenwriting classes (or even creative writing classes in general) for years to come, just as a chance to watch a group of extremely talented writers wrestle with how to tell a complicated story to a demanding audience under enormous, real-time, "millions of dollars at stake" network TV pressure. As a story, it may ultimately be a failure, but it's extremely interesting as an exercise in storytelling no matter what.

Comments

Without Lost, my life is losing its shape, meaning, and direction. I have but one lodestar, and that is the January 2008 return of Lost.

And so I've decided to enter a cryogenic menagerie (financed by the Hanso Foundation) where I will Joop and other genetically-enhanced creatures and ride out the next seven months while the rest of the world crumbles.

R.I.P., Charlie Pace. We miniaturized men have few role models, and you went out like a hero. I only hope Evangeline Lilly doesn't leave Dominic Monaghan for a normal-sized human. That would be a slap in the face.

Yes, he'll be able to reach higher shelves -- but Evangeline, let's be serious: will he have the same look of childlike wonderment that you love so dearly?

Posted by Reihan | May 24, 2007 11:49 AM

'a group of extremely talented writers'

Zuh?

Posted by Clifton Smalls | May 24, 2007 12:10 PM

Interestingly, in one of the "flash forward" scenes Jack tells the other doctor to "call my father down here." Does this just mean that Jack was in a drugged/drunken stupor or does it suggest that the chronology of the "flashbacks" is more complicated than we might've thought? Though clearly Jack's father is supposed to be dead when they're on the island since that's what precipitated his getting on the original flight in the first place. Still, the introduction of Desmond and his pre-cognitive abilities suggests to me that they might be planning something freaky having to do with the nature of time.

Posted by Lee | May 24, 2007 12:13 PM

One of my friends thinks that the Jack scenes are actually a mix of flashforwards and flashbacks. For one thing, Jack's beard is sometimes very bushy, sometimes fairly neatly trimmed. Then there is the fact that the other doctor doesn't correct him when he says something about his father in the present tense. I have to go back and re-watch the flash scenes and see if continuity holds up.

Posted by David S | May 24, 2007 1:07 PM

I don't know if anyone's interested in my own theory, but here it is (some of my thinking was spurred on by my obsessive reading of chat room and blog posts last night and this morning):

The flashbacks will be replaced next season by flash-forwards to their lives "after" the island. But we'll eventually find out these are actually potential futures that, thanks to the island's power, can still be altered depending on the decisions they make while on the island. Remember that Desmond's visions have shown that the future can be changed -- he saved Charlie several times until Charlie was able to achieve his "destiny" in a way that achieved redemption for the mistakes he'd made in the past. Did you notice that Charlie crossed himself while he was drowning in the radio room?

I doubt this "rescue" is going to be as clear as it seems right now. Now that the Others are decimated and have lost most of their tough guys, I think Naomi's "people" are going to be the new bad guys. They clearly represent some sort of group that wants in on the island's specialness, and when they realize that it apparently saved the lives of these plane crash victims (remember Naomi thought they were all dead), they aren't going to want to let them leave immediately.

Naomi's people may have something to do with Penny's father, a wealthy industrialist as well as a sailor. This could explain why Naomi told them she was looking for Desmond but that it's "Not Penny's Boat."

Posted by Pat | May 24, 2007 1:09 PM

So who died in the flash-forward? I've seen speculation on the internet that it was Ben, but I'm more inclined to believe it's someone like Locke, Sawyer, or Desmond, perhaps after a falling out with Kate, Jack et al. over the course of the remaining time on the island.

And shouldn't Kate be in jail?

Posted by right | May 24, 2007 1:38 PM

For whatever reason I was sure it was a flash-forward the whole time: maybe the whole "Spock's beard" thing.

I think they might well avoid the "action off the island" scenario you're worried about. Consider this possibility: next season they get off the island (with most/all of the season occurring ON the island) and seasons five and six deal with what happens after a return to the island. You handle the "what-happened-when-they-left-and-how-did-they-get-back" thing with flash-forwards all through season four. Then maybe while they're off the island, Hurley is persuaded to turn his vast fortune, Penny-style, towards finding a way back (since the one thing we know for damn sure is it's not him in the coffin).

And, hey, I knew Hurley would save the day, but not how. Satisfying. I still look back fondly on his episode, over-written though it was: I mean, Hurley, Cheech Marin, "Roger Work-Man," and a Dharma-labeled VW microbus full of stale beer? You had me at "Hurley."

Fer cryin' out loud, Reihan, Ben's short. She could start banging Ben. I would argue that the stock of short guys in general would be better served if the hot Lostie jumps from short guy's bed to short guy's bed, then if she stands faithfully by the one short guy through thick and thin, leaving one to hypothesize that the one guy's shortness was just a fluke thing that was overlooked.

Posted by Sanjay | May 24, 2007 2:43 PM

I am not, for that matter, convinced that Desmond is much taller than Charlie: he only seems to be because he is a hunka hunka man.

Posted by Sanjay | May 24, 2007 3:11 PM

I think the 90 minutes of that finale (two hours interrupted every 10 minutes by huge spans of commercials) was the most infuriating michegoss I have ever experienced. It is my impression that the Frat Boys who write this show are flailing in an attempt to keep from drowning and that this 7 month hiatus is the only thing that is going to save them from an ignominious fate. Lost is beginning to resemble a cross between a Road Runner Cartoon (Whack-a-Mole Mikhail, Rose and Bernard reappearing after nearly an entier season, without comment, Locke's constant dithering) and an old 1960s vampire soap opera called "Dark Shadows" in which characters routinely died and reappeared as their grandparents or grandchildren by virtue of a very cheap wig or moustache. Personally I'd have ended it this season by killing off practically everybody, leaving Rousseau and Ben and Richard on the Island, and sending the few characters anybody can still recognize home to star in spin-offs.

Posted by Appleby Mennym | May 24, 2007 3:12 PM

Best show ever. Completely engrossing storytelling, that is...quite frankly, not for everybody. It's for the detested intellectual elite, and I'm quite proud to be a part of the group that 'gets' LOST.

Posted by Aaron G | May 24, 2007 4:23 PM

I figured it out! The meaning behind LOST...it's to keep you all occupied in mindless chit-chat for several years while the elections are rigged, illegal wars are instigated, innocent citizens from the US and around the world are slaughtered.
I can't believe I didn't see that before! It just hit me!

Posted by nihil | May 24, 2007 5:08 PM

i think this show is truely amazing

Posted by adam c | May 25, 2007 8:28 PM

I think that the only person to be left on the island will be John, reason is that the island has mysteriously "rehabilitated" him at least twice so far. The he is safe on the island. Also that the flashforward is a possible outcome that depends upon what the story leads to.

Posted by ron | May 25, 2007 8:41 PM