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May 23, 2010
Sic Transit LOST
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at May 23, 2010 8:07 AM
Tonight is the series final of Lost, and what a long strange trip it's been. Lost was a rare bird in the mindless wasteland of network television; a series that not only didn't insult the intelligence of its audience, but also challenged it.
Too often, what passes for smart on TV is mere style. Case in point, Mad Men. Once you get past the atmospherics, ("Oh, look it's the 1960s! They're smoking! The men are keeping women in their place. There's a closeted gay guy!") there wasn't really much meat on them bones, storywise. And most TV doesn't even rise to that level, like Family Guy's constant, juvenile stunts to shock the decent folk. ("Oh, Look, a Vietnamese man mocking US veterans We're SO edgy! {We won't make fun of Mohammed though.}")
Lost was smart and literary, not just in superficial ways, like naming prominent characters after different philosophers: Locke, Rousseau, Bakunin... but also in its structure, it's use of symbolism and allusion, and in taking on questions of fate, destiny, redemption, and human frailty. In an age where intelligent debate has been replaced by Democrats dancing around in chicken suits, Lost was a little island of smart in a stupid, stupid world.
Yeah, there were occasions of moonbattery intruding into the plot... like Sayid, the sloe-eyed Iraqi who only became a torturer because evil Americans soldiers made him into one. But not nearly to the degree of Battlestar Galactica's entire Iraq-War bashing second season, or every stinking episode of Law and Order for the past 12 years ("Our suspects are a radical lesbian who was seen with a smoking gun outside the victim's apartment, a black guy with a criminal record who threatened the victim earlier in the day, and a middle-aged white businessman with no apparent connection to the victim." "Arrest the white guy!")
This past season, more than once, I turned to my son and said, "Did I just hear what I think I heard?" in response to something a character said. One such occasion was when Jacob, the character who sort of represents Good (more or less), was asked why he didn't directly help the people he brought to the island. He answered with a beautifully simple statement encapsulates centuries of philosophy about the relationship between God and man .
"I wanted them to help themselves. To know the difference between right and wrong without me telling them. It's all useless if I have to make them do anything. Why should I have to step in?"
Goodbye, Lost. Television will be much dumber without you.
