Lost (again)
A while back I wrote a review of the most recent season of Lost and came to the basic conclusion that, at that point, it had been a huge disappointment. But the producers still had 5 hours of TV to try to redeem themselves, so now that the season has ended I thought I’d update my thoughts. Unfortunately, the show never turned around from its general lethargy and dullness that had encompassed the entire season.
(As before, spoilers from here on in.)
As I stated in the last review, the main problem with this season is the pacing. It’s just become incredibly slow and while it’s clear that the producers are trying to draw out the explanations of what’s really happening on the island, they haven’t managed to find an interesting or entertaining way of doing it. They have “Point A: People crash on weird island” and “Point B: Explanation of crazy stuff” but they seem to have few ideas on how to fill the gap inbetween.
In the last review, I talked about how the castration of John Locke deliberately impeded the show’s forward momentum, as he was one of the first season’s most pro-active characters. But there are plenty of other examples that clearly show a lack of original ideas: the tail end survivors had several episodes dedicated to their introduction, but Ana-Lucia and Libby were killed off, Bernard is completely inconsequential, and Eko may or may not have survived the finale. Similarly with relationships: Ana-Lucia muddied the waters between Kate and Jack before permanently being taken out of the equation, Hurley gets with Libby who then gets shot dead, Claire and Charlie have a spat mid-season but kiss and make up in the finale. Likewise, the hatch is introduced properly at the start of the season and seemingly destroyed at the end. Everything just seems to be going around in circles.
Now, anywhere else, this would be a perfectly sensible storytelling technique: establish status quo, disrupt status quo, re-establish status quo or establish new status quo. But where the producers have opted to re-establish the status quo, they really needed a new status quo. Re-establishing a status quo is equivalent of revealing nothing and the main drawing power of the series, after all, is the mystery of what is going on with all the general weirdness and for that they need to move forward and have people making discoveries and a concerted effort to find out exactly what’s happening. If people are completely passive, not striving for revelations and the new status quo that they will put in place, the series is nothing more than a cat chasing its own tail. What the latest season has become is nothing more than a sometimes excruciatingly dull exercise in killing time.
Even when the many questions that were left over from the first season were resolved, they lacked sparkle. Kate’s original crime was revealed, Claire’s flashbacks to what happened when she was kidnapped, and Jack’s marriage break-up were shown but all somehow lacked any real drama, feeling rather workmanlike in execution, as though they were something the writers felt they had to address rather than something they truly wanted to. But perhaps the most frustrating aspect is the constant deluge of unanswered questions, many of which may prove to be inconsequential red herrings: Rose’s cancer, Sin and Jun’s baby, the foot statue, even more questions about Dharma and the ‘Others’, and the Walt storyline which was supposed to be resolved in the finale but wasn’t in a satisfactory way.
Another problem which plagued the last few episodes of the season was the fact that the writers began pointing out the blindingly obvious. Despite what American TV producers seem to think, sometimes mysteries don't need to be explained in agonising detail. One of the reasons I watch (and therefore review) so much Japanese stuff is simply for the reason that Japanese films and TV don’t patronise the viewer; they show the viewer what they need to know and let them work out the rest for themselves, thereby assuming that the viewer is smart enough to come to some reasonable conclusions based on that information. This is certainly the tactic that this program takes with character development, and I could talk at length about characters' actions and how that gives an impression of their personalities, an aspect of the show that seems lost on many judging by what I’ve read on various forums. Perhaps they should just have the characters wear badges describing their character traits (Sawyer – bastard with a heart of gold, Jack – he just wants to help people, Hurley – overweight everyman), as this is certainly the tactic they took at the end of the season with the plot.
At the end of episode 20, Michael shoots Ann-Lucia and Libby dead, an action which is very much out of character for Michael, unless, thinks the reasonably intelligent viewer, ‘the Others’ have got hold of him and coerced him into doing something in order to see Walt again. Everyone assumed that he was being blackmailed in some way, and yet we get an entire episode explaining exactly that. Similarly, at the start of the season when Jack and Sayid were exploring the hatch, the find the big magnet, leading many to speculate that it caused the plane to crash, and 20 very slow episodes later, it’s revealed that – shock horror! – it caused the plane to crash. The tendency has even invaded the dialogue, as after seeing the impressive visual of a statue of a huge, four-toed foot, Sayid kindly explains: “I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes.” As if it needed explaining...
The series has jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned. The writers are clearly a lot of hacks who don’t know how to write an interesting, properly paced television series. There are still some interesting ideas lurking behind the poor execution, but I doubt I’ll invest any more of my time in the tedious wait for them to reveal what will no doubt by that point be blindingly obvious.
(As before, spoilers from here on in.)
As I stated in the last review, the main problem with this season is the pacing. It’s just become incredibly slow and while it’s clear that the producers are trying to draw out the explanations of what’s really happening on the island, they haven’t managed to find an interesting or entertaining way of doing it. They have “Point A: People crash on weird island” and “Point B: Explanation of crazy stuff” but they seem to have few ideas on how to fill the gap inbetween.
In the last review, I talked about how the castration of John Locke deliberately impeded the show’s forward momentum, as he was one of the first season’s most pro-active characters. But there are plenty of other examples that clearly show a lack of original ideas: the tail end survivors had several episodes dedicated to their introduction, but Ana-Lucia and Libby were killed off, Bernard is completely inconsequential, and Eko may or may not have survived the finale. Similarly with relationships: Ana-Lucia muddied the waters between Kate and Jack before permanently being taken out of the equation, Hurley gets with Libby who then gets shot dead, Claire and Charlie have a spat mid-season but kiss and make up in the finale. Likewise, the hatch is introduced properly at the start of the season and seemingly destroyed at the end. Everything just seems to be going around in circles.
Now, anywhere else, this would be a perfectly sensible storytelling technique: establish status quo, disrupt status quo, re-establish status quo or establish new status quo. But where the producers have opted to re-establish the status quo, they really needed a new status quo. Re-establishing a status quo is equivalent of revealing nothing and the main drawing power of the series, after all, is the mystery of what is going on with all the general weirdness and for that they need to move forward and have people making discoveries and a concerted effort to find out exactly what’s happening. If people are completely passive, not striving for revelations and the new status quo that they will put in place, the series is nothing more than a cat chasing its own tail. What the latest season has become is nothing more than a sometimes excruciatingly dull exercise in killing time.
Even when the many questions that were left over from the first season were resolved, they lacked sparkle. Kate’s original crime was revealed, Claire’s flashbacks to what happened when she was kidnapped, and Jack’s marriage break-up were shown but all somehow lacked any real drama, feeling rather workmanlike in execution, as though they were something the writers felt they had to address rather than something they truly wanted to. But perhaps the most frustrating aspect is the constant deluge of unanswered questions, many of which may prove to be inconsequential red herrings: Rose’s cancer, Sin and Jun’s baby, the foot statue, even more questions about Dharma and the ‘Others’, and the Walt storyline which was supposed to be resolved in the finale but wasn’t in a satisfactory way.
Another problem which plagued the last few episodes of the season was the fact that the writers began pointing out the blindingly obvious. Despite what American TV producers seem to think, sometimes mysteries don't need to be explained in agonising detail. One of the reasons I watch (and therefore review) so much Japanese stuff is simply for the reason that Japanese films and TV don’t patronise the viewer; they show the viewer what they need to know and let them work out the rest for themselves, thereby assuming that the viewer is smart enough to come to some reasonable conclusions based on that information. This is certainly the tactic that this program takes with character development, and I could talk at length about characters' actions and how that gives an impression of their personalities, an aspect of the show that seems lost on many judging by what I’ve read on various forums. Perhaps they should just have the characters wear badges describing their character traits (Sawyer – bastard with a heart of gold, Jack – he just wants to help people, Hurley – overweight everyman), as this is certainly the tactic they took at the end of the season with the plot.
At the end of episode 20, Michael shoots Ann-Lucia and Libby dead, an action which is very much out of character for Michael, unless, thinks the reasonably intelligent viewer, ‘the Others’ have got hold of him and coerced him into doing something in order to see Walt again. Everyone assumed that he was being blackmailed in some way, and yet we get an entire episode explaining exactly that. Similarly, at the start of the season when Jack and Sayid were exploring the hatch, the find the big magnet, leading many to speculate that it caused the plane to crash, and 20 very slow episodes later, it’s revealed that – shock horror! – it caused the plane to crash. The tendency has even invaded the dialogue, as after seeing the impressive visual of a statue of a huge, four-toed foot, Sayid kindly explains: “I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes.” As if it needed explaining...
The series has jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned. The writers are clearly a lot of hacks who don’t know how to write an interesting, properly paced television series. There are still some interesting ideas lurking behind the poor execution, but I doubt I’ll invest any more of my time in the tedious wait for them to reveal what will no doubt by that point be blindingly obvious.
posted by Ryan Stephens at 7:24 AM
1 Comments:
I agree, I agree. It's all right. Except, of course, for all those wrong bits. Tsk tsk.
The last couple of episodes really pulled things together, I thought. Now, granted, storyline wise this series is *really* stuck trying to string out a few interesting ideas. Problem is the network (as usual in genre TV) Network want big, genre busting show to last forever. Big genre busting show writers want to maintain the original premise over however millions of episodes they're produced to make. So they slow the whole thing down so every - plot - development - takes - ages. Season two has had two basic strands: other survivors and the Hatch. And, I think, the finale does as good a job tying that stuff up as it can.
What I loved, loved, *loved* about the last episode was how the Desmond/Penelope storyline shoved the whole series into perspective. Here we are, merrily watching our friends Jack, Kate, Sawyer et al. going about their little lives on the island and we've gotten used to them being the centre of this universe. Suddenly, that whole universe is burst wide open and we realise that these people are only its smallest part. There's an epic story of a man and woman separated and desperatly trying to find each other again which may well turn out to be the reason for many of the mythology aspects of the series (there's already the explanation of the plane crash; and who thought we'd get *that* after only two short years? In TV mythology terms, that's nothing.) It was audacious, it was interesting and it *worked.* Just.
I'm not convinced for one secound that the third season will continue the round of resolving issues and drawing the universe together; that's a gift TV reserves for season finales and maybe sweeps episodes in February. But when a show puts a supporting character front and centre and makes you care as much for them as you do for anyone else there in the space of an hour when they've been there two years, you know something's good with the structure. But if the wonderful Henry Ian Cusick isn't around next season then I'll be pissed. And then you'll be right, because that'd mean the Lost producers suck.
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