I will admit that I first started watching Lost because of Lord of the Rings. That might not make sense to most people out there, but it did to me: Domanic Monaghan, who played Merry in the famous trilogy, was a prominent cast member in a pilot that, as far as I knew when it began, was about a plane crash.
I’ve stuck with Lost through thick and thin, hungrily watching each episode, waiting for clues and researching online message boards. I followed all the viral videos and websites, the subliminal hints hidden in each frame, things that most people might not pick up on but the online Lost fan community did in a second. There’s the essential Lostpedia, a wiki-site containing most of the knowledge about the show that exists. There’s lost-tv, which contains an always useful message board. I’ve followed them all, faithfully taking mental notes and remembering tiny details.
Blacklight picture from the hatch.
I was dumbfounded and unbelievably intrigued by the Dharma Initiative and the Others; they were such a mystery to me I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around their mere existence or presence on the island. Walt’s supernatural powers drove me crazy with questions of why and how. Desmond and the machine he controlled filled my thoughts all the time, constantly questioning what he was doing. What did the stations mean? What was that crazy blacklight writing all over the wall in the hatch? Why were the animals stamped with the Dharma logo? Who was Charles Widmore? Who was Marvin Candle? What the hell was going on?
I might not have known what was happening, but I was hooked. I breathed and slept Lost and spent my free time online searching for answers. I went through every single aspect of the “Lost Experience,” and immersed myself in the mystery. I dove deep into the oddities of the Hanso Foundation Website, part of the “experience” (which has now been officially dubbed a “game”), and tried to decode its meaning. I watched all of the “Rachel Blake” videos and followed along.
There was even a fake book with a fake author, all a metaphor for the show. There are mysteries Lost has never even bothered to explain to us, things they’ll probably never explain to us, but that’s been okay with me. What isn’t okay is that the show has completely lost its shit now. I get it, the whole time-travel thing. It’s exciting, it’s weird, whatever. But it explains too much. It’s a catch-all, just as if they had shown Desmond waking up at the beginning of this season saying, “thank god it was all just a dream.” I don’t want the answer to everything to be, “oh, they could time travel. Duh.”
Never forget!
I do feel to some degree that the show “jumped the shark” after they left the island. They were never supposed to leave; I say “supposed” not in the sense they mean on the show, I mean to maintain any mystique they weren’t supposed to leave the island. They were supposed to deal with being on the island and the mysteries it held. I don’t care about Juliet and Sawyer, I don’t care about Miles and his ability, I just want answers and more mysteries and answers and more mysteries. I never want to stop being confused and enthralled by the show, and I don’t want to feel pissed off at the end of every episode, saying, “but they can’t do that!”
At least we know who Marvin Candle is. And at least we know who Charles Widmore is. But who is Alvar Hanso? What is the Hanso Foundation? What was that giant foot of the statue? What’s up with all the different stations around the world? I never wanted to know what the smoke monster was. I just wanted it to keep working its magic. Just the same, I never wanted to know about a lot of things on the show that they decided to reveal; by doing so, they chose to ignore the more important questions I still had. Lost, I’ll never forgive you if you blame every single thing that’s ever happened on the show on time travel. You don’t get a free pass on everything that you made up and wanted people so desperately to become invested in. Now that we are, those of us who stuck around through the hard times deserve better from you.
Robin
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Hey Robin, i stumbled onto your blog. I can tell you one thing about Lost. I never watched it, but i know a lot of people who did. And they all said the same, it became different at one point (towards the end of the third seaons i think, but again i never watched it, its what i picked up.) I will tell you a secret, it all went different once J.J Abrams left the project. J.J. Abrams is well know for his well knitted scenarios, his inter season mysteries and things that all lins and unfold in the end. thats why i loved Alias and i love Fringe. Lost i never was drawn to it, iwanted to watch it when i learned it was by J.J. Abrams, but i lost my interest when i learned he left the project. Just a hint here
. Have a good day.
Comment by Phil March 20, 2010 @ 1:00 pm