Why LOST Sucks

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Phoebe 28116 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2010%2F05%2F12%2Fwhy-lost-sucks%2FWhy+LOST+Sucks2010-05-12+20%3A51%3A54Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebeeating.com%2F%3Fp%3D281

I’ve watched LOST since the middle of the first season. That’s a hundred and eighteen hours of what I had thought were islandy goodness (okay, okay, I probably shouldn’t even bother trying to pretend to count season 2 and most of season 3 as “islandy goodness;” let’s call it 80 hours of islandy goodness). I had hope, so much hope, because for a long time now it’s really seemed like the writers knew what they were doing.

But last night’s episode, “Across the Sea” cinched it for me. The naysayers were probably right.

LOST sucks.

(This blog entry, as you can probably guess, will contain significant spoilers about the series. None of them will be that interesting though, because, as we’re quickly learning, the island is boring as shit. But anyway, you’ve been warned.)

I was unusually excited about last night’s episode. My reactions to season 6 had been mixed so far; I felt the series was spending entirely too much time talking about Jack and Kate (who, if you didn’t know, I hate) and the pacing has been uneven. Since the destruction of the temple, there seems to be an awful lot of people standing around, dithering, and very little interesting character development or plot resolution. But, like the episode on Richard Alpert a few weeks ago, this one promised to be mythology- and answer-centric. The previews told me that it was going to focus on a character I found compelling (no, not Jacob; the smoke monster!), and I hoped for an hour of complex and intelligent television.

I’m not quite sure why I hoped that. It doesn’t really mesh with anything I’ve come to know about LOST.

Early detractors to LOST complained that it was clearly going to be like The X- Files–that the writers were setting us up with mysteries with no larger overarching plan. That the series, if it ever reached an end, was going to be a sprawling, incoherent mess, like the mythology of the older SF series. However, beginning in Season 3, and coinciding with the announcement of the series’ eventual planned ending, we started to get some answers–and some hints that the producers had a plan for the overall story.

The problem, though, was that a lot of these answers weren’t all that interesting.

Take one of the early mysteries, the polar bear that’s shot down in the first season. Turns out there were some people doing experiments on polar bears. Why? I don’t know. Because they’re scientists or something. Please don’t think I’m being flippant because I don’t actually know the answer. This is the answer that’s given to us by the LOST writers and producers.

Here’s another example: what’s with the numbers that turn up over and over again over the course of six years? We learned the answer to that a few weeks ago. These are the exact words stated by one character in the know: “Jacob [the immortal protector of the island] likes numbers.”

Oh.

I could keep going. We’ve heard creepy whispers for years because there are ghosts (GHOSTS!) on the island. There’s a runway there so that Jacob could land an airplane. The button does exactly what this video says it does. Kate’s equally irritating in two universes. The weird VW van with the DHARMA logo was left when this scuzzy janitor died. I could go on, but other people have covered this, and far better.

You might think that my disappointment with the answers, as they’re being offered, is just part of the nature of being engaged with a mystery. That I’m bound to be disappointed after being kept in suspense for so long. It’s true that such build up doesn’t help anything, but quite a few of the choices the writers made have been conspicuously bad–obvious, cheesy, trite.

Like how, in last week’s episode, we see Sun and Jin die in what I assume was supposed to be an incredibly romantic and stirring moment. Sun has just been reunited with Jin, her husband and the father of her daughter, Ji Yeon, when she becomes trapped in a sinking submarine. She told Jin about her daughter’s existence a few scenes before. Jin’s not trapped. He has an opportunity to escape. Instead, he chooses to voluntarily die with his wife so they can never be apart.

Awww. Only, not awww. Because they have a kid, which Jin knew about. And now both of her parents are dead dead dead.

Even the actor who played Jin, Daniel Dae Kim, doesn’t seem completely convinced that Jin was making the best decision. In this interview, he tells us that he had to make up a reason why Jin couldn’t leave: “In the sub, there’s a moment that’s not scripted where I looked away from Sun toward the door and I wondered, ‘Should I go?’ That was my moment for Ji Yeon. I thought to myself, ‘Can I do this?’ But the decision I made at that point was that even if I tried to leave I wouldn’t have made it, because I had no oxygen and the submarine was so far under water. All I can say is that I’m sure Damon and Carlton took the concern of Ji Yeon to heart when they wrote the episode.”

Yeah, well, I’m not so sure. Because Damon and Carlton seem to have the emotional depth of fourteen-year-olds who are convinced that Romeo and Juliet is, like, OMG, the most romantic thing ever, not realizing that Shakespeare deliberately made our famous star-crossed lovers emotionally immature, infatuated teenagers so he could march them towards senseless tragedy.

This was pretty clearly illustrated a few weeks ago during Ab Aeterno, the episode that promised to reveal the back story of Richard Alpert, one of the island’s most mysterious and (I thought) interesting characters. Viewers have been making guesses about Alpert’s immortality since he was introduced–and probably one of the most popular guesses was that he was a slave on the ship the Black Rock who was granted immortality by the mysterious Jacob.

This seemed, frankly, a little obvious to me. I hoped for something a little more nuanced and subtle, particularly in the weeks leading up to “Ab Aeterno.”

Turns out that Richard’s story is pretty much identical to what everyone guessed it would be. He was a slave on the ship the Black Rock who was granted immortality by the mysterious Jacob. We also learned in this episode that he was pretty much OMGTHEBESTHUSBANDEVER and incredibly good and noble and would go to great lengths to get medicine to save his sick wife and the whole thing felt like something out of a Harlequin romance, only with less sexy and more dying. I mean, it was an okay episode, in a treacly sort of way. But it wasn’t very good.

After “Ab Aeterno,” I should have known better than to raise my expectations for yet another integral back story episode. Because, in the end, “Across the Sea” was more of the same. Only much, much worse.

I could talk about the bad writing in this episode–the shallow sibling rivalry, the hackneyed talk about the “bad men” that felt lifted out of my favorite Madeline L’Engle book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet (read it; it’s awesome, and much better than this tripe). I could complain about how three fairly talented actors–Allison Janney, Mark Pellegrino, and the awesome, awesome amazing Titus Welliver–came across as cheesy and overwrought. Instead, I want to talk about the big secret–you know, the big flipping secret–that was revealed last night.

Last night, we learned what’s so special about the island. And, like, I think the writers thought they were being subtle and leaving some mysteries uncovered, but basically, it’s the Force. You know, the Force, like from Star Wars. The source of all life. Men want to get to it because they’re greedy and want to harness its power and maybe think it will make them live forever (sorry, dudes, but it’s the magic wine that does that). Allison Janney’s stuck protecting it, and she wants little Smokey* to take over for her, but he’s all whiny because she murdered his real mom, so it’s up to Jacob, who doesn’t mind because he’s got a major boner for his foster mother, despite her being a murderous monster and all.

And this Force? This life-force that powers the universe? It’s a golden beam of light in a cave. And I laughed every time I saw it. Because it looked like a fucking Thomas Kinkade painting.

Part of me, irrationally, still wants to believe that there’s more to it than that. That maybe this has something to do with complex Egyptian mythology, and that the writers actually respect their audience enough to be up front and discuss that. Or that maybe there’s a spaceship down there, or a Great Old One, or something else awesome. But if I’ve learned anything from six years of watching LOST, it’s that things are, consistently and transparently, exactly what the writers tell us they are–and never anything more than that. LOST‘s problems aren’t anything like The X-Files; in fact, the problems lie in direct opposition. The mythology here isn’t sprawling or complicated enough. It’s simplistic. It’s obvious. It’s childish. It’s bland.

A few weeks ago, I made the prediction that Ji Yeon–Sun and Jin’s kiddie–would be revealed to be Jacob’s replacement. It seemed lightly foreshadowed–the name “Kwan,” not Jin or Sun, appeared on Jacob’s list of candidates, and he touched them both in their past. This could still happen, but I’m not going to hope for it. When it comes down to it, I just don’t think the writers are that smart. And last week, Sayid told us that Jack is Jacob’s replacement. So Jack it is. Because on LOST, everything is always exactly what it seems.

*Since the introduction of his character, the audience has wondered what Jacob’s nemesis was named. Could it be Esau, referring to the Biblical twins? Naaaah, that’s too, like, literary, or something. Last night we found out that he’s not called anything because . . . wait for it! He has no name! Hahahahaha! Heh.

Oh.