More Questions

One day to go. Here's an interesting pre-season 6 article from the A.V. Club by Noel Murray. If you're not fully caught up on Lost, I'd avoid this post.

I agree that Lost's Season 4 wasn't as well developed as it should have been due to the writers' strike, but I don't think it fails to move. It zips along as well as any season (though I prefer season 5).

Like any Lost fan, Murray has questions he wants answered! His main one a lot of viewers are asking:

Of all the questions I feel need to be answered in Season Six, the foremost one is this: Who are the good guys here? We’ve heard Ben, Widmore, The Shadow Of The Statue people and I don’t know how many others say that they’re on the side of the angels. But consider: Lost is a show that for most of its first two seasons had us spending time with a band of killers, con-men, thieves and selfish pricks, and had us siding with them over a group of natives whose motivations have yet to be explained. For all we know, we’ve been rooting for the bad guys all along. I mean: who’s to say that even Jacob is a righteous dude?

True, we know nothing about Jacob. There are those who theorize he's the ultimate bad guy. Let's not forget he ran the Others, whose leaders have been Widmore and Linus, hardly the greatest group.

Here are Murray's other questions, with some of my responses:

What is The Temple? (I’m still holding to my theory that when we see it, it won’t be ancient at all, but will be super-technologically advanced. Like a spaceship.) What did Richard do to save Ben there?

The temple is central to the island's mythology, and questions about it will be answered in due time. The Others have talked about the temple a lot, but the show has intentionally kept us on the outside. It does appear to have a serious effect on people who are taken in. (With a powerful being like Jacob involved, I'm not surprised it could heal Ben. It's hardly the first healing Jacob's done on the show.) I'm guessing it's what explains much of the fanatical devotion to Jacob we see in so many Others.

Who are The Others, and what is their purpose? How vast is their reach into off-island affairs? How do they get on and off the island so easily? Who the hell is Richard Alpert?

One of the weaknesses of the show is the Others seem to change as the plot demands. Sometimes they're fairly normal people who just support a different ideology. Other time they're like easily led homeless people. Still other times they're like cultists with great powers and talents.

I subscribe to the theory Alpert was captain of the Black Rock (who went through the temple treatment). Once again, we'll find out soon enough.

Is Locke actually special, or has he just been a pawn all this time?

I think he's been a pawn, but he better also turn out to be special. All the main characters who have made it this far better be special.

What connection do our heroes’ parents have with the island? Or grandparents? (Surely Darlton didn’t throw in a scene with Jack’s grandpa last season for no reason.) Why do people like Miles and Walt have special abilities? Will Aaron and Ji-Yeon grow up gifted?

These questions hardly matters to me at all.

Why are there two islands?

As a cool plot convenience to keep Jack, Kate and Sawyer from escaping. I'll go so far as to guess the producers didn't know about the second island in the first season.

If Jacob and The Man In Black have played different versions of their “progress” game before, how long has the current version been going on? And what changed this time that allowed The Man In Black to subvert the rules?

I think it goes back at least to ancient times. What changed this time was the MIB found his loophole. While I don't know all the particulars yet, it apparently involved tremendous amounts of manipulation of the regular humans on the island, especially Ben and Locke, so that a fake Locke could appear on the island (who's actually the MIB) along with a Ben who'll do Locke's bidding and is primed for revenge. This allowed these two to get close enough to Jacob to do the deed--the MIB can't do it himself, and Jacob would never have had anyone close enough before who could do him harm.

I don't mind failed attempts at "progress" in the past. In fact, I like the idea. The only thing I couldn't stand would be if the lostaways have all been through this before and are trying to break out of a loop. It cheapens the whole show, and was already tried (and failed miserably) in Matrix Reloaded.

Finally, Murray makes a questionable argument:

There’s a place on TV for the kind of pre-planned, tightly controlled narrative (as seen on The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.), but the trade-off is that those kinds of shows are often slow-paced and largely uneventful on any given week. I like that the Lost writers think about what will entertain and surprise an audience from episode to episode, even if that means introducing elements that that prove to be dead-ends. As a pastime, I certainly have no complaints about Lost.

But as a piece of art? Well, I’ll be honest: I look forward to Lost as much as any show on TV, but I don’t think that it rises to the lofty literary level of a Wire or Mad Men or Breaking Bad.

You can prefer one over the other, but it's a mistake to make close comparisons of Lost to the shows listed above. For all their plot twists and extravagant character, The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mad Men are set in the real world. For all its personal drama, Lost is a fantasy. It can pull off very dramatic moments, but plot-wise, even dialogue-wise, expectations should be different.