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Another De-Spoiler From LOSTI don't publish normal "spoilers" here -- I respect the process. No one needs to know the details of an ending or to have a shocking revelation presented as a throwaway line in a blog.
But I have published what I call "de-spoilers" -- and I define this as warning viewers that a television show's writers are planning to unfairly and unreasonably screw their viewers over.
If you'd rather be screwed in the way the writers intend, stop reading now.
OK?
To continue: Under the de-spoiler philosophy, I ran with the item when the producers of LOST said more than a year ago that the numbers were meaningless and would never be explained on the show.
Here's another cold splash of water. The character connection will never be explained. Lindelof told EW this week:
That's the one thing that when the show ends, you won't have a causal explanation for why did all these people interconnect. Why some, why not others? The answer is just that they just do. The show is a massive Rube Goldberg device, in which all the components of the machinery are humans.
What is WRONG with these people? They're (apparently) committed to explaining what the Monster is and how the Others connect to the Dharma Initiative. Frankly, the connections (and the numbers for that matter) both demand explanation in a much bigger and more profound way.
Don't they see? Don't they understand the show they are creating?
The monster is ultimately just A MONSTER. What KIND of monster hardly matters. It's a monster and we get it. The Dharma Initiative is ultimately just a conspiracy. What KIND of conspiracy hardly matters. We get it. Who cares?
Now, the numbers and the character connections... THOSE are weird. THEY demand a full explanations. They are the part of the show we don't get and do care about.
Lindelof often comes off as being tone-deaf to his audience, and this interview is no exception. One might hope these promises to never explain are misdirection, but it's hard to imagine the point of telling viewers they will leave the show unsatisfied.
The slow burn continues, and the equation of "whether to watch" edges closer to the tipping point. LOST producers give lip service to the idea that this is a character-driven show.
Carnivale was a character-driven show -- LOST is not.
Circumstance -- aka plot -- is the sole force holding this group of people together. The investment in the show is largely about the mystery of those circumstances. Most importantly, the producers have made the point that every individual character is expendable and anyone could die at any time.
That makes Lost a plot-driven show -- albeit with strong characters.
As such, the damn plot matters. But maybe it's too late to try to explain that to the show's creators, who in their comments sometimes seem to fundamentally lack understanding of their own beast. I suspect -- or rather hope -- that they're just confusing things out of a desire to keep people on their toes. But if they keep it up, they're going to drive away the very fans they are trying to engage. Better to keep silent than infuriate the people who are paying the bills.
Technorati Tags: Lost, Lindelof, Dharma Initiative, connections, spoilers
Posted by J.M. Berger || Permalink
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