Lost (As required by Internet Rule #47854b)

Ramblings Post #101
I don't watch as much TV as I used to. I have a job, take classes, study, and for the hundred some odd channels I have on my satellite, there surely is very little worth settling in and paying attention for an hour or so. And that's coming from a man who sat through a whole episode of E!'s the Soup on multiple occasions, and watched Tosh.O not because I couldn't find the remote. That said, I have a television confession to make.



I never watched Lost.

I think I watched a part of the first episode, and then maybe a part of an episode where they went back to the first episode where this time you saw the plane split in half from the outside, and then a part of an episode where some folks had made it off the island. Oh, and one where some folks were in a cage, maybe 5 minutes or so. That's about it. The rest I discerned through fanboy articles and attempts to recap the story beast that more and more I think was written on the fly by guys on 'shrooms. .

I never really liked Lost for that reason, that it looked like it was written on the fly. I don't mind the 'shrooms.

I only found out reading the recaps that there are some crazy numbers, a nuke went off, the immortal guy died, and that they're now time travelers or alternate worlders or something which makes me ever more certain that the writing group really is a group of manatees in a tank somewhere pushing balls with words on them into a bucket. It wasn't the kind of story you could tune in one week and pick it up, you had to watch every episode...in slow motion. Two or three times. Which made me wonder how it stayed on the air.

I actually like a lot of science fiction/fantasy/alternate reality stuff and I didn't like this. I realize that television is a odd medium, you don't really know if you're coming back the next season or what actor is going to balk so you tell the story in quirky chunks. I personally prefer a more complete tale..I liked Babylon 5 - where they admitted they had the entire story written before hand - more than the redux of Battlestar Galactica - where at times it looked like they found out they weren't being canceled so they have a big meeting and decide what to do next. I like good story telling, and I didn't think this was it.

I don't know who these people are...

Today, I looked at the National Post's Lost app, and the sheer number of characters is ridiculous, and the number those now dead is even more insane. I haven't seen this many characters developed then bumped off ever. The body count reads like a Rambo movie, only there I believe they're listed in the credits as "dead guy 1" and "dead guy 2" and don't get speaking roles, unless you count screaming to death. I'm going to generously attribute that to actors always looking for the bigger better deal and drunken story writers, and maybe at some point someone will write it all down in novel form so I can read it start to finish so I can see the big picture, but I doubt it. It doesn't look to me like a story for that particular medium.

There are fanferific message boards, mash-ups, multiple maps and time lines...you would think it was Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or something.

Now I hear they're going to simulcast it around the world, so there are no spoilers. So folks in England have to get up 5am to watch. That, and I heard that the producers really really admired the ending of the Sopranos.

Really.

At whatever time it comes on where I'm at, I'm hoping that I'm busy doing something else.