Ruminations on LOST (before the finale)

OK I’m hooked on LOST too. Each episode was well-directed/acted/written, intensely mixing drama, pathos & hungry curiosity. As a writer I don’t believe all questions must be answered! (See my earlier posting: Land of the LOST!)

No, what bugs me is the “Yoda Effect.” Persuading millions that a “good wizard” (Yoda/Jacob) is good, just because he says so, when his every action and effect is near-pure evil.

But let's hold that thought and start with the issue of LOST leaving a million questions unanswered. Sometimes it is good to answer everything at the end of a story cycle. For example, I tied up ALL of Isaac Asimov’s loose ends in Foundations' Triumph! And the Asimov fans were very happy. But I don’t expect that from a saga like LOST, where the writers, though brilliant, were also clearly passing around a bong at every story session, shouting at each other “Hey, wait! What if they then turn around and see THIS!!!”

I was frustrated, of course, by unanswered questions. Some were small, but grated endlessly, like the AIR DROP OF SUPPLIES that landed near the hatch, allowing the castaways to eat a while… supplies from a Dharma Initiative that did NOT seem to be defunct and that indeed could find the island by air! I kept waiting for their counter-attack! Okay, it’s a small thing that rubbed like a blister in my boot. Far worse, from a storytelling point of view, was the utter absence of a persuasive voice speaking up FOR the Dharma Initiative, and its very human ambition to satisfy human curiosity about the island and its powers. Hey, at least let’s hear their side once?

Ah, but even the Dharma Initiative was stupidly secretive. Oh, sure secrecy can help propel a plot (ALL Michael Crichton “science is foolhardy” novels depended on dumbass-secrecy to propel their Big Mistake scenarios and to prevent science from simply correcting the problem.) Still, shouldn’t somebody, some time, speak up for just telling the world about the island? Telling people, all the people (like those millions watching the show), about something wonderful, that might elevate us all and be better handled by open institutions than a few, self-selected, pompous “island protectors” who always act viciously, leaving corpses and mountains of regret in their wake?

As it turns out, there is one character who did that – speaking up for openness and trusting people, a world, humanity, civilization. The only character with a scintilla of actual wisdom in the whole show. The fellow who always turned out to be right, even though nobody would listen to him.

Hurley. Hugo Reyes, who kept saying “Hey, dudes, why don’t we just tell everybody the truth?” Heck. Just as you cannot name a time when a policy of Jacob or his followers did not lead to evil, you cannot name a time when Hurley actually proved to be wrong.

In contrast, poor likable but unwise Jack is nearly always wrong, nearly all of the time, but we trust him. Why? Because he’s handsome and sincere? Tellingly, he is at his best when performing his mission in life. Not as island messiah, but as a doctor.

Which brings us to this parallel world riff… which BTW is charming and enjoyable! But can you name a character who is not better off in the world where the H-Bomb sank the %%$$#! Island? There is one, poor Rose, who now will die of cancer. And Kate is not in great shape in the normal world. Still, everyone else is happier and better off in the reality where the island’s dumb old “light” got extinguished.

Oh, there will be illogical tidbits that rankle. Didn’t Miles’s Dad stay on the island after sending his wife and baby Miles away, just before the H Bomb went off, so wasn’t he doomed in BOTH universes? And what about the KIDS on Oceanic 815? They were “pure” and taken to the Others. What’s with that purity, eh? Who were the murderous Others to judge it? And the fatal-pregnancy effect and the “disease” and…

Okay, let it go. (Anyway, I am writing this before watching the Sunday 2 hour finale.)

But really, I can dig it. The writers are pot-heads, but not coke heads. They routinely lose memory and focus, but no actual brain cells. They are creative wizzes and they do characters very well and they gave us all a great time.

No, what bugs me is the same stuff that finally turned me against Star Wars. A matter of very very very basic morality. I will not follow the allure of the Yoda Effect. Just because a wizard is pretty and claims to be a “good” protector of light, that does not free him from responsibility for the evil that he spreads, and that is done in his name.

Moreover, as in Dune and Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, having a terribly evil enemy does NOT automatically get you off the moral hook, just because your brand of oppressive nastiness is a little less openly murderous than the version practiced by Darth or Palpatine, or the Harkonnens, or Sauron, or Voldemort. Or a smoke-monster brother

Setting up a sneering/awful, mass-murdering (and ugly-looking) villain is NOT enough to make your “good wizard” truly worth rooting for! It is lazy, romantic trickery. And while Yoda and Jacob may fool millions that way, they do not fool me.

A plague on both their houses. And I am with Hugo. Here’s to civilization! An open civilization. The one that invented democracy and science and television and TV shows and an Internet to discuss them on! The civilization that gave the writers of LOST absolutely everything they ever valued or loved and the opportunity to dazzle us with their wit. A civilization that will someday actually be shown some gratitude and love, by screenwriters and directors in Hollywood. (Yeah, right. As if. Ever.)

But then… maybe the finale will make me happy! Yep. Hope springs, eternal….

[See my earlier posting: Land of the Lost]

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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Land of the Lost

I am going to break with my typical "bad blogging" habits... my penchant for writing long, carefully edited and punctiliously argued screeds dealing with serious topics (everyone says that is NOT the way to blog!)...

...and instead issue a short, ill-edited rant on popular culture.
(Ah! Now Brin is catching on top what the Internet is FOR!)

The topic? That infuriating television show LOST.

I'm going to list the inconsistencies and frustrations that most vex me in this series. They are probably not the same as what you'll read at, say, one of the fan sites, because I view it through the lens of a professional plot-smith.

First, I do try to view art in the spirit that it is offered -- and I know that the writers and producers of LOST are engaged in the art form known as the Grand Tease. Hence I won't complain about the fundamental premise -- that no character ever asks any crucial questions, not even when they had the leisure of 3 years to ask them. No, that is a central theme of the series and anyone who can't abide it simply should not watch.

But some things were revealed and made explicit. earlier. They should have been kept in mind as the series developed. They were huge clues. They deserved payoff. And, although some may seem minor, ignoring them should be cause for the producers to be (figuratively) shot!

1) The children and stewardesses etc of the crashed Oceanic flight. They were taken away by the Others. Dozens of them We even glimpsed them, near the Polar Bear cages, in one episode. A major plot element, they are now (in show-year 2006) the main group of survivors left. Above all they are the only true INNOCENTS left, and hence the ones who deserve any loyalty or attention or moral duty in the story.

2) Plot elements left hanging: The "disease"... the mysterious lethality of childbirth... the SOURCE of the "others" -- who apparently were recruited by "a magnificent man..." the deGroots and Hanso and their goals...

3) The air drop of Dharma supplies. Yes, when the Oceanic survivors found parachuted supplies meant for the last Dharma outpost in the Hatch... sure it only happened once , but the implications were HUGE! It meant that there was still a Dharma initiative out there! It implied another route to the island than by submarine. Did it bother ANYBODY else out there? It ought to.

4) Heck, what happened to the Dharma and the guys backing them and the group in Ann Arbor? Did they learn ANYTHING after all that expense and effort?

An side -- what IS it with the obsession in all TV series, of leaving contemporary society unchanged? STARGATE was a great show, but their excuses for NOT FREAKING TELLING THE WORLD that Earth was fast becoming an intergalactic imperial power started getting really, really lame. Would it have hurt to show what WE might have done, reacting to such news?*

5) There is only one character in the tale who is not relentlessly clueless and stupid. The one character who is always, always right. Hurley. The writers always show him suggesting openness and wisdom, and getting contemptuously, patronizingly spurned by his friends. He's the only one who wanted simply to tell the world about the island! And thus... render all sides in the silly "war" moot and let all humanity learn all about something miraculous that we could all share.

Is Hurley EVER going to be listened-to?

6) What the $%#! have all the governments of the world been doing, all this time? Not ONE person, anywhere or anytime, ever told any responsible group of adults about all the shenanigens going on, with incredible powers? Sure, it's more dramatic to leave the government out of it. That is... unless a pair of FBI agents - looking suspiciously like Mulder and Sculley - were to arrive and speak out for telling the world....

6) Death guilt. There were hints, throughout the first two seasons, that you were either chosen by the Others - or not - depending on whether you had killed somebody or done something else that caused you to feel guilty. Jack and Hurley felt INDIRECTLY guilty, and so we left on the beach. Locke at the time had no guilt and I thought that was his reason for being "chosen". He even avoided "re-killing" his own father...

...that is, till he outright committed unprovoked MURDER by hurling a knife into the back of an innocent woman. Wha???? HAve the writers forgotten all about that thread? When Ethan told the murderer female cop "you're not worthy" they made this point very clear! Only, then they show the Others committing murder like crazy! So, WTF?

7) Speaking of Locke's father... wasn't he taken out of a "magic box" by Benjamin Linus? What ever happened to that?

Okay okay... I should have just turned off the damned box, a couple of years ago. The last season is already filmed (though a few minutes of spliced in conversation is still possible). Maybe we are best served simply by boycotting the final season, to teach a lesson to Abrams and others like him, who do not care about fealty to plot.

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* I'll go see DISTRICT 9 soon. I hear good things. Still, I think the same concept, done in the 1980s, was intrinsically more courageous. Rent ALIEN NATION and see how that brave film did something no other ever even tried -- either before or since. It portrayed our civilization -- and its citizens -- actually behaving as they might, if such things ever happened for real.

In other words... a majority of us actually trying to behave decently and well, with tolerance and courage and smarts and a will to face the future.

Hollywood, it seems, not only cannot ever portray such things... people there cannot even seem to wrap their minds around the idea! Hence, alas, we come full circle to poor Hurley.

He represents the rest of us. The ones with more brains and heart than movie star looks. The poor schlumps with common sense.

--See also Ruminations on Lost (before the Finale).

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