I missed the episode tonight, but shall buy it from iTunes and watch in the next couple of days.
The use of flashbacks on Lost was always going to hit the breaks eventually. You can only tell us the same thing so many times or add so many twists to someone's background before you lose all credibility and just end up wasting air. Some of the characters have very simple concepts that work best with a few straightforward flashbacks. Jack is not really a complicated character. He's a jock surgeon with a god complex. We knew all of this by the time his second flashback was over. Hurley is a loser that won the lottery and is still a loser. You can't gild these too much.
I think by the end of season two, flashbacks for the main cast had completely run their course. Some of them were pushing it well before this, but the story potential of the device was done. It was very effective with Juliet, but she's a new character. It was amazing with Ben, but again he's a new character. But it's a signature of the show and the writers seem to see it as a part of their branding, so we have to have something to replace them. Enter flash-forwards.
This was fine as a one-off, but I don't know that the show can stand two years of having them in every episode. We didn't learn anything in Hurley's flash-forward that we didn't know from Jack's flash-forward last year. Yes, there's some guy who appears to be affiliated with Dharma, Hanso, or somebody sinister. I'm not going to call that anything substantial until they decide whether or not to develop it, though. I'm realistic about Lost. They're not writing to a metaplot; it's being made up as they go. That's rough for me since I don't really care all that much about island romances. I want to know more about the magic island. But it is what it is and one guy complaining on his blog isn't going to get the producers and writers serious about answering persistent questions. That's a shame too. I still want to know where everyone changes on this little minisubs on seaQuest, which I need to get back to watching.
I think my preference relates to my general attitude about mysteries. I don't like mystery for the sake of mystery. I like mystery which is unfolded, explored, and solved. Mystery is a place to start asking questions, not to stop and coo about how neat it is. I have gotten the impression over the years that a considerable number of people aren't like this. I don't get why.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Mmmpp.
So you think they're making this stuff as they go along?
To some extent, I think early on, Lost was doing that. Now that the series has a set number of episodes to finish, I think they have the series arced out. I guess I want to believe they already know how the show will end.
But, you could be right.
I'm just worried that they'll answer all those question in the last handful of episodes, all a while fustrating me because they're always adding new wrinkles to the mythology.
Still, got to give them props. They're keeping me interested, unlike the last few seasons of The X Files, which just got boring.
"To some extent, I think early on, Lost was doing that."
Yeah. The show was written in a hurry quite late in the season. I do think they have some plans and some questions will be answered reasonably. But I also think we'll be asked to forget or ignore a lot that wasn't convenient to the mythology that developed. I can't really blame them; I just wish they put a bigger priority on developing the mythology earlier on.
"Still, got to give them props. They're keeping me interested, unlike the last few seasons of The X Files, which just got boring."
Amen to that. I'm not into the relationship dramas, but they're not awful and they do help carry the show sometimes when the plot itself isn't really moving along. I really liked how they did Charlie's death. Sayid is a genuinely interesting character in his own right and they seem to have a good handle on how to write Ben to make good TV.
The X-Files... I didn't get into it until it was over (too busy with seaQuest, I guess) but I know what you mean. I lost all interest about the time that telepathic boy's arc finished out. Scully was fine, but Mulder was never much of a character. If they had ended the show with the big reveal episode where the conspiracy explains exactly what it was doing and then everyone gets killed that would have worked much better.
Post a Comment