For those with patience, and a strong ability to ignore the sense of being dragged inexorably toward disappointment, “Lost”: on ABC, Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. this season: has provided all the fascination, thrills and pseudo-metaphysical mumbo jumbo of “Twin Peaks” and “The X-Files” while, remarkably, being hip enough to attract hordes of viewers without duct tape on their glasses. Now that executive producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have announced that the show will definitively end with its 117th episode in 2010, the fourth most-watched show on television has a lot going for it.
For those who yet retain their dignity, “Lost,” loosely speaking, is about the survivors of a plane crash: Oceanic flight 815: who find themselves on a mysterious island that attracts some very mysterious people. For the truly curious neophyte, much better than reading this article would be to visit abc.com and watch “Lost: Past, Present, & Future,” a summary show that races through the first three seasons in just 43 minutes.
But for those who have followed the show so far, who have the brain disorder to visit sites like thefuselage.com and Wikipedia’s “Characters of ‘Lost'” chart, who examine freeze-frames for dates on background posters, who read meticulously-rendered transcripts of the creepy whispers which run simultaneously from separate audio channels: in short, for those of us under the vast delusion that “Lost” is actually going somewhere, a lot is at stake. As a devoted yet world-weary Lostie looking ahead to the show’s 44 remaining episodes, I have some concerns.
Personally, I was appalled by the much-ballyhooed third season twist ending, but now I understand its purpose. The flashback gimmick had run out of steam, and The Powers That Be (known as TPTB on any worthy “Lost” discussion board) audaciously decided to effect what has amounted to a paradigm shift at the midpoint of the series. Now we are no longer so much concerned with what will happen as with how what we know will happen will happen. Who are the Oceanic Six? Why is Sayid working for Ben? Why is Kate posing as Aaron’s mother? These have been delightful twists for the frenzied evening discussion board, but I urge the writers to be prudent. Do not sweep us away in an endless barrage of new twists: remember that we are already neck-deep.
Consider IGN’s 2006 article, “The Top 50 ‘Lost’ Loose Ends.” The absurdity of any one show having more than 50 dangling plot threads notwithstanding, what is alarming is that only about half of these mysteries have been resolved since 2006, and the intervening episodes have raised at least as many new questions. “Lost” threads still hanging as of last Thursday include the second-season food supply drop, the DHARMA shark, the demise of Rousseau’s original team, the captured tailies, everything to do with Libby, Eko’s portentous staff, Desmond’s clairvoyance, Adam & Eve, why Beatrice asked Mikhail to kill her, why Richard doesn’t seem to age and the fact that Jack and Claire are half-siblings: and this doesn’t even include fourth-season humdingers like “What is Christian Shepard doing in Jacob’s cabin?!”
What is dangerous about this new season, in all its lovely complexity, is that the machinations of the show’s plot threaten to overwhelm its characters. If I can sum up my advice to Mr. Abrams and Mr. Lindelof, it amounts to this: NO MORE NEW CHARACTERS. The chopper crew has a lot of work to do to make up for taking screen time away from Sun, Jin, Claire, Rose, Bernard and Desmond, even if they do represent answers to some of our more persistent questions. One can say of “Lost,” they built this city on mysterious plot twists: but those of us who have stayed true for three years know that we will only keep returning so long as there are characters worth caring about. At present, I don’t give a whit about Miles and his, er, explosive predicament: but I’ve invested an awful lot in worrying about Sun, and she’s only been on screen a handful of minutes this season.
The danger, as the show spirals outward into long-awaited explorations of the North Pole theory (as in the Tunisian polar bear: see thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=87153) and the Time Lag theory (as in Farraday’s experiment gone awry––––see thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=88477) is that next to the awesome scope of its metaphysical mysteries, the show’s characters may be reduced to running to and fro as all the plot pieces slide into place around them. The trouble with the flash-forwards is that for the first time, Jack, Hurley, Kate and Sayid know more than we do; this creates a divide between us and our favorite characters, which may become a rift if it persists too long.
Let us hope that amid all the deranged speculation of fans with far, far too much time (as one self-professed on these pages), TPTB will remember that their show is about people finding themselves, more than it is about fans finding clues.
