Getting Lost

You know that feeling you get when all your friends start talking about something and you realize that you were the only person on the planet who wasn't present for whatever fabulous event it is that they're talking about? That's how I've felt about Lost for the past... good god, what is it now? Six years? Man alive, I was still in college when I completely missed that cultural phenomenon...

I know, I know, there's something seriously wrong about posting my very first Lost comments several months after the series finale, but, what can I say? I'm finally, finally, finally getting around to watching it.


How did I miss it in the first place, you ask? Well, it's honestly not all that mysterious (unlike the show). As mentioned, I was still in college, so I had considerably less time for TV (I was still competing in the minor leagues and had yet to become a full-fledged professional). To boot, it was back in the dark ages before I had DVR capability, so if I wanted to catch two shows at once, I actually had to tape it (there used to be these things called "tapes" you see) in my bedroom whilst watching whatever else there was live (and actually sitting through commercials... oh, the humanity!). Well, it was the fall of 2004 when Lost premiered... opposite Veronica Mars. I honestly wasn't all that enthralled by the first couple of episodes of Lost, so I turned my loyalties to Veronica instead. It's a decision I don't regret, although ideally, I would have kept them both. Let's face it, Veronica Mars needed my viewership more than Lost anyway... back when there was a network called UPN. God, I feel old.

Anyway, as mentioned, the first couple of episodes of Lost really just... didn't really do it for me. I could appreciate how well-made and accomplished it was, but I simply couldn't invest in it. Had I known it would turn into the biggest show in town, I'd had tried harder, but, well, too late for that. It isn't exactly the kind of show you can start in on half-way through the third season or anything, so if you didn't get in on the ground floor, you were screwed. 2004 was also a time when instant streaming online was only a pipe dream...

Then came Netflix (cue the hallelujah chorus in your heads, please). Instant play... Instant joy, more like. I am now living in an age when there is never nothing on. Valhalla in my living room. Sigh [oh joy, rather than frustration, resignation, and pity--a true rarity on this blog]. Anyway, I started in on the series anew, determined to give it more than two episodes to grab me. I watched the first few, still not all that enamored, and then an assortment of unknown bastards took it off instant play! I'm still not clear on what happened really (or at whom I should be shaking my fist, old wily prospector-style), but the crux of the matter is that it took what little motivation I had and made it non-existent. Sigh [a good ol' frustration sigh]. Well, it's back now, so guess what I did over Christmas vacation?

I'm about 2/3rds of the way through season 2 (episode 15ish, I believe) and am happy to say that I can now see what all the fuss was about. I wouldn't say it's my favorite show of all time or anything, but it's a solid, entertaining (if sometimes woefully paced) serial that should have garnered more of my attention 6 years ago. Even though I'm truly enjoying it now, I have to admit that took till about episode 10 of the first season to even start to care. I'm closing in on the end of the second season and for about half the characters, I still don't care. That's the main problem with the show for me and is the primary reason it hasn't carved out an obsessive place in my heart. With an ensemble cast of this size, there's no way that each and every character is going to connect with everyone in the audience, I grant that, but the format of this particular show leads so some serious boredom depending of who is central to an episode.

Let me count the ways...

PEOPLE AND STORYLINES THAT CAN OFFICIALLY BITE ME

First and foremost...

Michael and Walt: So don't care. Never have cared. Not even a little. Good god, I've learned more about their backstory than I ever would have cared to. Add to that the fact that their current storylines are as annoying as the backstory was dull and you've got a true recipe for fast-forwarding (not that I have, but I've been tempted... seriously tempted). What with everyone's backstories interlacing with everyone else's, I'm too hesitant to zip through the mind-numbiness of the Michael and Walt storyline, so I just sit through it. Again and again. God, it feels like one endless, meaningless, bland custody argument after another inter-cut with Michael prattling on and on about how much he loves his boy, blah, blah, blah. There's an excellent chance that it's just me that can't stand these two (mostly Micheal--Walt doesn't bother me that much, which says a lot of about Michael given my general distaste for children). I can see where parents would see themselves in these characters and could relate to their undying bond in a more poignant way than I can. At the end of the day, they are far and away the biggest drain on the show for me. I usually adore Harold Perrineau is the real kicker! I couldn't care less that Walt got kidnapped. Quite frankly, hats off to the Others for getting rid of all the children on the show. If only they could kidnap children on other shows as well, I think they'd be a lock for the Nobel Prize (you know, as soon as I manage to overhaul all the "peace" and "chemistry" with "television"). What's even worse than my apathy toward Walt's plight is Michael's obsessive, irrational, blustering search for him. Good lord, if his fellow castaways have to go traipsing after him while he implements the worst plans of all time to get his son back, I might just have throw something at the TV. Now, throwing things at the TV doesn't usually produce a whole lot of results for me, but I'm going to assume the island has its ways. Dear god I hope it has its ways...

Next up, everyone else I can't stand/don't care about:

Shannon... will not be missed. Geez louise, show, you kill off Boone before you kill off Shannon? Really? I actually liked Boone! Immediately! (Only about 87% of my instant love for Boone comes from my love of The Vampire Diaries. The other 13% comes directly from his eyes...) In a cast of characters, most of whom I don't care about, losing Damo--uh, Boone was like a kick in the teeth (or a mid-sized plane to the face, as it were). I knew he got killed off (I know a surprising amount about shows I don't actually watch--although I do try to avoid spoilers if I can), but didn't know it happened so soon. Fortunately, this is Lost, so death isn't really death, but still. Shannon, on the other hand, can stay dead, please. Shooting Shannon is the only good thing Ana Lucia ever did (speaking of people who can't die fast enough). Heh, when Ana Lucia was all worried about Sayid seeking revenge for Shannon's death because she "killed someone he loved," all I could think was, "Oh, honey, don't you worry. No one on the planet was buying that ridiculous love story anyway, so you should be in the clear." Seriously, when her sexual relationship with her brother (sort of) is more compelling and believable than her island romance with Sayid, you know you're in trouble. Poor Sayid. I adore Sayid, and he ended up spending an unfortunate amount of time pretending to care about brainless bint Shannon. I'm glad that's over.

Charlie, Claire, and "the Bye-be!!!" Please make it stop. Please? As with Sawyer, I liked Claire and the baby a whole lot more when it was Claire and the fetus. Even then, I wasn't exactly crying my eyes out when Ethan kidnapped her. I know I'm supposed to fear the Others because they're all scary and violent or whatever, but I really just fear that they have truly terrible taste in kidnap victims. Seriously, no one in the camp wants to take Sawyer? Or Sayid? Or hell, Rose? Man alive, Claire's constant caterwauling about the baby and her bickering with Charlie drives me nuts. Her storyline is making me like Charlie less and that's a shame on a number of levels, because I love Charlie, even in spite of the ham-fisted addiction storyline. She couldn't have stayed kidnapped? Really? That was always the problem with Ethan... follow through. You couldn't keep track of a 90 pound pregnant girl? Seriously? Ugh.

Ana Lucia: Saints be praised she flew coach, is all I can say. Had she been on the show from day one, I never would have made it this far. I have never been a fan of Michelle Rodriguez, but if possible, she's even more detestable here than elsewhere. She's supposed to be prickly, I get that, but she isn't the kind of character who's fun to hate, you just hate her. Michelle plays the exact same character in every show she's ever in, so I have to wonder how on earth she hasn't gotten any better at it. I'm a badass who's had it rough so I have this hard exterior, blah, blah, blah, but I'm really just a broken individual who has emotional issues as evidenced by this scene of me crying... Ugh. She can't get killed off quickly enough. That episode that was nothing but the passengers from the tail section was nigh-unbearable. I keep hoping the island is just magical enough (which in this case, must be hella-magical) that it could manage to wipe that scowl off her face, but I'm not holding my breath.

That's by no means the full extent of my annoyances with the show, but those are the key players. With that array of irksome elements, it's no wonder it's taken me this long to dedicate myself to show, but you may be wondering why I'm willing to stick around at all. Well, with Lost, there's so much going on that there's a hell of a lot of good with the bad.

THE REASONS I'M STILL WATCHING THE SHOW

First off, there's no denying that it's one of the slickest productions in town. Sure that polar bear looked like something from Epcot might have, but by and large, the show's production values are beyond reproach. I always give a lot more leeway to serials than procedurals, and quite frankly, it doesn't get much more serial than Lost. Granted, the ongoing story arcs with Lost took longer to take root than I'd have preferred, but now that I'm in, I am all in. I love having to actually pay attention to a show. Even in the flashbacks that might not grip me completely (ahem, Michael), the writers drop in little nods to other characters, subtle pieces of information that have a more comprehensive impact, and characters that overlap from one backstory to another that I'm invested. For example, during a Jack-centric episode, his future wife arrives in the ER, having crashed her car into a Mr. Rutherford. Now, having paid attention to the show, I knew that Shannon's last name was Rutherford, so it was unduly satisfying to have the "A-ha!" moment of putting those things together. Sure, the connection wasn't made definite until a later Shannon-centric episode, but that makes it even more fun. I love a show where I can speculate and formulate theories and Lost has that in spades.

The interweaving of stories has its downside, however, as I learned when Goodwin showed up and I about had a heart-attack. I seriously had to pause the show because I knew I knew him from somewhere, but couldn't remember if he was in a flashback or was on the plane or what. It then dawned on me that in fact, he wasn't from someone else's flashback or anything like that... he's from a different show entirely. Oh, that's right, he was on my other Christmas break viewing selection, Friday Night Lights. What the hell is Tim Riggins' father doing on the island!? Ah yes, that's where I know him from, Dillon, Texas. Sigh. It was a bizarre experience and a sobering reminder of why I shouldn't mix marathons... it always ends bad!

In addition to the overall appeal of the show's set-up, and amidst the bevy of characters I simply can't stand, there are a lot of people to love as well.

Sawyer is delightful on about 87 different levels, although his easy-on-the-eyeishness would make up for any deficiencies even if he weren't. His one-liners are second to none and he says all the things to the characters I hate that throwing my remote at the screen simply can't convey. He's a self-serving son of a bitch with long hair and no consideration for anyone else on the island. I adored him instantly. (He helped get me through the early episodes where I was a little lacking in the caring department. I may not have had cares, but I still had eyes. Oh, so pretty.)

Sun and Jin took a long time to grow on me. Especially Jin. It's only really been in recent episodes that I've grown to love these two, but I'd say, more so than probably any other islanders, their progression has been the most profound and engaging. For a good long while I wanted to punch Jin in the face, but he's come a long way, so I'll keep the face-punching at bay...

Hurley, ever the comic relief of the show, is completely lovable and has one of the best backstories. It's incredibly light and morbidly dark all at the same time and I love it. He adds some much needed levity to the show, but isn't a total joke. He may seem like the goofball of the cast, but he has one of the harder balancing acts to manage and he does so effortlessly. I think that's maybe why he isn't seen as quite the A-lister than others are. He might not have all the bells and whistles and, well, torture and gunplay of other backstories, but his is still one of the best. And, near as I can tell from where I am in the series, one of the most important.

Mr. Eko is far and away the finest addition the tail section made to the cast. He's kind of fabulous... in a truly horrific way.

Sayid is a badass in a disturbingly quiet way. I always enjoy characters who have an unassuming air about them, but are actually uncompromising badasses at the core. He has one of the more unsettling backstories, so his episodes are sometimes a little tough to watch, but he retains such a dignified control of his surroundings that it manages to ground things. Michael Emerson just arrived on the show, and the interplay between the two so far has been electric, so I kinda can't wait to see where things go from here. As long as Sayid is going, I'm there.

Locke is... well, Locke. Kind of like Sayid in terms of tone, he's an enigmatic character who's ostensibly calm and civil, but who isn't afraid to take matters into his own hands when necessary. He plays the back and forth of his own good and evil incredibly well and keeps me guessing as to his motives and allegiances on a constant basis.

And then comes Jack and Kate. I had a hard time deciding just what I think of these two. Jack mostly annoys the hell out of me with his sanctimonious moralizing and insufferable leader-of-the-packishness, but he's certainly handy to have around. I sure as well wouldn't want to be the only doctor on the island, that's for sure, so I can see where he's generally a mopey, pissy ball of moral highground, but that doesn't make it any less irksome to watch. Kate, on the other hand, I want to love, and often do, but then she goes and does something that doesn't make any sense at all and I'm back in conflicted-ville. Oy. When she's playing the role as brassy conniving Kate, I'm on board. When she's constantly apologizing to Jack for everything under the sun, not so much. The Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle is another one of those where I'm so entirely partial to one of side that it's nothing but annoying to watch the third party be all wishy-washy about her suitors. Kate doesn't openly whine about her love life, which wins her a hell of a lot of points in my book, but from where I'm sitting, there's only one winner here, and it ain't the doc. Sure, she has a tortured past that makes her attraction to Sawyer more complicated than that, blah, blah, blah, but as with Stefan, Elena, and Damon, or Angel, Buffy, and Spike, there's complicated and there's there's totally bland. I'll take complicated, thanks, and it's hard to understand otherwise.

This entire discussion is about 6 years late, so I'll wrap things up, but I did want to address a couple more points. I'm guessing if I'd watched the show week-to-week, I probably wouldn't have noticed, but when you watch a season and a half in a matter of days, they're impossible to overlook...

First, I am sick to death of seeing two characters talking, then character A looks at something in the distance with a fearful/perplexed/shocked look, only to have character B ask, "What? What is it? What are you looking at?" then slowly turn to see what character A was staring at. Because yeah, that's totally what would happen. I'm sorry, but when I'm talking to someone and he/she starts staring at something behind me, call me crazy, but I'll just turn the hell around! Seriously, it's one of those dramatic devices that drives me crazy and Lost seems to have gotten a deal at Costco for an entire palette of them or something.

And second, exactly how many hundreds of times do you have to type in Hurley's numbers before you can type them in correctly?! Seriously people, this job is not that hard. Again, heavy-handed dramatic device and it drives me crazy. It's usually Locke at the helm though, and he's pretty old, so maybe he's just not that computer savvy (as savvy as typing in a bunch of numbers requires... oy). Apparently the 40,000 people who just won $150 in the lottery using Hurley's numbers have better manual dexterity... Hey, they had potentially hundreds of dollars at stake, whereas the islanders have... uh, life? No big.

Anyway, I imagine anyone reading this can barely even remember what was going on with the show this long ago, so it's hardly worth even mentioning, but I needed to vent. It's weird because I caught little tidbits and nuggets about the show over the years, but never really had the context for them. Now I have all these little facts in my head, but don't know when to apply them. It ruins some of the reveals and surprises, but it also gives me more to theorize with.

Welcome to the fold, Lost. I'm not sure when I'll finish the series, but I'll get there. I'm currently in the middle of about half a dozen shows (The Wire, Rescue Me, Weeds, Friday Night Lights, and I'll be starting Breaking Bad and Damages or Mad Men soon).

So much TV, so little time. I seriously need to quit my job and finally focus on the important things in life...