TV

LOST has been appointment TV for me and many many others for the past six years. From that first episode on September 22, 2004 (also my birthday), LOST has been an amazing gift to me, small packages of joy that I opened and enjoyed frequently.

Well, if LOST’s finale was another gift, then it was a nice pair of argyle socks. With holes in them.

I really appreciate what the producers were trying to do – I get some of the obvious subtexts (live together, die alone indeed). But that last 20 minutes… Yes, I was moved throughout, and the ending made the room a little dusty.

But… It didn’t ring true.

It’s hard for me to explain, but I’ll try. Yes, everybody dies. I get it. But we don’t need to see what happens next. If everyone lives happily ever after in the afterlife then it diffused the drama that took place in… Well, life. Adding insult to injury, when you spend half of your final season showing viewers events that just really didn’t matter cause they were “dead already”… Well, it’s not cheating your viewers, but it comes close.

Remember the shower season of Dallas? The one where the producers basically said “Oops, we screwed up, we are just gonna make last year a dream and pretend it didn’t happen!” Well I did, and I remember how that angered the core fans of the show, and viewers abandoned the show. I remember, but apparently the producers of LOST didn’t.

My biggest frustration with the ending is that “everyone lives happily ever after”. We don’t need a happy ending. In fact, LOST having a happy ending is the equivilent of Citizen Kane becoming a romantic comedy in the final act. It was a tonal shift that was not consistent with what came before it. It felt out of place, like another show.

It was contrived and, as I noted above, somewhat meaningless.

And just now I read that additional answers will be revealed on the DVD release of the final season. I’m sorry, but that is a cash-grab, pure and simple. The answers shouldn’t be a supplemental feature on the damn DVD it should be in the SHOW. And if they introduced to many coy questions to be revealed in that context then… Well, maybe they shouldn’t have introduced so many coy questions and mysteries.

Did I appreciate “the journey?” Of course I did. My frustrations may be based on my expectations being too high. But when you have a show that has had so many peaks you come to expect exceptional craftsmanship… And when that expected plateau becomes a valley… Well, disappointment happens.

They didn’t stick the landing, and I so wanted them too.

So, LOST, it’s been fun but we have to part ways less than amicably. I wish it was otherwise.

Be seeing you.

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’ll take “News that makes me feel really old for $200,” Alex…

Today, April 8th, 2010, marks the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite shows, Twin Peaks. How much of a fan am I? I’ve made a trip to the original shooting locations in North Bend and Snoqualmie Falls, Washington… twice.

When Peaks came out I was already a “lynchian” – David Lynch had suitably impressed and/or freaked me out with his work in Eraserhead, and The Elephant Man, just to name two – and so I was excited to see what type of odd perspective he could bring to television.
And boy, was it odd.

But what worked – and what still makes me a fan of the show to this very day, is that the oddness made sense. The internal rules were consistent – it wasn’t strange JUST to be strange, it was strange because… well, Twin Peaks was a genuinely strange town, filled with real characters. It wasn’t eccentric just because it could be (I’m looking in you metaphorical direction, Wild Palms).

I consider Twin Peaks to be the spiritual sequel to Lynch’s earlier and brilliant Blue Velvet, a show that delved beneath the surface and showed the “evil that men do” behind closed doors. It was a soap opera that was a parody of soap operas that was also a very GOOD soap opera… and also (again) weird and wonderful.

You look at Twin Peaks and see that it changed television – David Simon had the courage to do dream sequences in The Sopranos, because Peaks set the precedent. Homicide was able to be dark and gritty because Peaks went there first (one of the most brutal scenes on TV ever was the murder of Madeline Ferguson by BOB). You see it’s most direct descendant in Desperate Housewives… a show that even shares the same night and network that Peaks aired… and also features Kyle Maclachlan.

It also was the first of many innovative shows that was canceled too soon (Dammit, I want to see the good Cooper get out of the Black Lodge!) – shows that the networks never gave a fighting chance to gain a respectable audience. Thank God for cable channels, otherwise shows like Battlestar Galactica, Damages, Nip/Tuck and more would never have more than six episodes.

So… two decades later, does it still hold up? Mostly. The first season, and a good half of the second, is some compelling and timeless television. It had peaks (pun unintended), and it had valleys, but all in all it’s eminently re-watchable. And part of me still wishes (as was the original plan) that they had NEVER solved the murder of Laura Palmer, that they just used that to spin Agent Cooper into more and more weirdness… the show could have kept going for a long long time.

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OK, I’m just a fanboy with no connection to the show LOST but I have been there since the beginning, when it first debuted on September 22, 2004 (which is also my birthday, BTW) and after last weeks episode I have a good idea where we are heading.

Think The Wizard of Oz meets “Paradise Lost.”

What I think we have been seeing in the flash-sideways is actually what happens AFTER the Man in Black AKA the smoke monster AKA “Fake Locke” gets off the Island, which IS Hell… the Hell as written in John Milton’s famous poem Paradise LOST… the Hell which is a prison to Lucifer. To get off the island the devil offered everyone a bargain… they got to get their heart’s dreams fulfilled. Just like at the end of The Wizard of Oz.

(Earlier hints: The balloonist who Ben pretended to be in his first appearance? Henry Gale – also the name of Dorothy’s uncle. And the Wizard left Oz in a balloon. And a nickname for Australia, where Oceanic 815 was coming from? Oz.)

So the “Wizard” gives them what they want: Kate didn’t kill her father, Hurley is the luckiest man on Earth, Sayid’s love Nadia is still alive, Sawyer is a good guy, Jack has a son… Except… Not everyone remembers the Island. And they end up living in a world that is NOT the perfect scenario they had hoped for (Kate is still on the run, Sawyer still hasn’t found the conman who destroyed his family, etc.). Kinda like “The Monkey’s Paw.”

Very soon I’d wager that someone (Desmond?) in the “flash-sideways” will let them know that the balance must be restored, and so when the Man in Black is recaptured… Flashpoint.

They are back at square one. The beginning. They crash on the island, again. The cycle continues.

I may be wrong… heck, I HOPE I’m wrong, cause I love to be surprised… but I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m onto something.

UPDATE: OK, so the series is now over and I was wrong… But ya know, I like my ending better.

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I’ve been very right in some of my predictions about LOST (Locke being in the coffin) and very wrong (too embarrassed to link) but I’ve got an interesting theory that, if I’m right, will mean LOST ends the same way that another one of my favorite shows did, over 40 years ago.

One of the shows that JJ Abrams and producer/writer Damon Lindleoff has cited as an influence to LOST was The Prisoner, the groundbreaking 1960s spy show from the late great Patrick McGoohan that confounded viewers as much as entertained them. That series ended with the Village being destroyed (or at least abandoned) and The Prisoner (also known as Number 6) “free.” Until…

You saw the last scene. The last scene of The Prisoner saw the lead character driving his car towards the camera – the exact same scene that began the series. What did this mean? That it was all going to happen again, with the same result? Was he in a loop?

Yes. And No. It was all in the eye of the beholder.

“The Prisoner is ultimately what the show aspires to be,” Damon Lindelof said in 2006. Was this an off-the-cuff comment, or a very big clue? I think the later.

We have seen flash-backs, flash-forwards, and now, with this last season a concept called “flash-sideways” which is supposed to show what happens if they don’t get on the island.
Except they get to the island. They ALWAYS get to the island. They are meant to be. Or, to quote another recently-ended favorite program: “All this has happened before, and will happen again.”

They are in a moebius strip, and we will see both timelines merge by the end of the year, in a stalemate, and almost all will be explained. How does that end? No idea. And only a few people know the final shot we will see of LOST, and one of them is actor Matthew Fox (who plays Jack) – he said on Jimmy Kimmel he knows what it is.

Of course he does, ’cause he’s the only actor in the shot.

The last shot of the series – Jack’s opening his eyes as he lies in the jungle after the crash – will be the same as the first shot of the first episode. The perfect bookend. The end is the beginning is the end. Just like on The Prisoner.

The symbolism of the show has been clear – the record, the donkey-wheel – all are circular, not linear… Heck, they even had the “Oceanic (Number) Six” – They ALL are The Prisoner. And I’m not the only one to see similarities in both shows.

“They have to go back!”

Of course. They have no choice. That is the wheel, and that is their fate – to be forever LOST.

UPDATE: OK, we are now more than half-way done with the last season and I am pretty much convinced we are seeing seeing LOST season six AND “season seven” – the flash-sideways are THE FUTURE, after they get off the island… and only some of the people (members of the Oceanic Six – DEFINITELY Sawyer) “remember” the Island. Basically, The Man in Black AKA Fake Locke granted people their “wishes” and that is the “flash sideways” we are seeing.

BUT… I still think that my ending is gonna happen, because Something Bad will happen if the timeline is not “corrected” (basically, the flash-sideways is a version of the last Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “All Good Things…’, writ large – and Damon Lindeloff LOVES that episode). So, again, “They have to go back!”

And the cycle repeats.

“They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.”

UPDATE 2: Found this youtube video that traces some references to recursion/loops that has been used throughout the show – the author of this apparently shares my theory. Oh, and I just found out what the original title of the show was, before it was changed. That title? “The Circle.” Hmm.

FINAL UPDATE: OK, the show has ended, and I was half-right. The notion that the show would end how it began was correct… in a way. SPOILERS!

Jack’s in the final shot, as he dies, and we see him closing his eyes, a perfect bookend to the beginning shot of the show – I got that part. And, just as I noted, much like Patrick McGoohan’s enigmatic subject-to-interpretation ending to the seminal The Prisoner, the LOST ending brings some clarity as well as some ambiguity… and the reaction to the last episode has been very very varied. Some loved it, some hated it.

My reaction… well, I may save that for another post. But it was passionate. And the show, like all Art, provokes. And that, more than anything else, matters. Was it worth the time, no matter our reaction to the finale? Absolutely.

“Everyone dies, Jack.”

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This is some of the best DVD or bluray packaging I have ever seen, the vintage 1977 Dharma Orientation Kit version of LOST season 5. Here are some pics:

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