Crazy Lost

LOST SPOILERS AHEAD

Over 5 seasons ago, Lost exploded onto our televisions. There was a crash, there was mass panic and there was death, but it was all conventional- entertaining, but conventional. We met ten ordinary characters struggling to survive extraordinary circumstances, but realistically imaginable extraordinary circumstances. Jack Shephard, a willing hero yet reluctant leader, was unofficially tasked to lead a group of frightened plane crash survivors until rescue. Considering everyone watching the pilot knew they would be stuck on the island during the course of the series, no one was surprised that intrigue surrounded the plane crash that would prevent a rapid salvation. Immediately, mysteries manifested (e.g. what caused the plane crash, what was the giant beastly noisemaker in the forest tearing down trees and dismantling pilots, and why in the heck was a polar doing on an island in the middle of the South Pacific, oh and how did 50 people survive a plane crash littered about the island.)

But even though there were undercurrents of the supernatural, the show lured us in with characters. These characters were complicated and flawed. Interestingly, they were all liars, and not just liars who deceived to protect themselves, but rather they were all incredibly illogical almost pathological liars. They didn't discuss the mysteries, which was an obvious story-telling device to reel in viewers for longer periods of time... but it worked. We got to know the people. There were comfortable archetypes and predictable defiances of those archetypes. We learned their histories from flashbacks and how their past circumstances affected their current lives on the island. We reveled in the beauty of the island's newest inhabitants, even as there was more to the show.

By the fourth episode, we already started to appreciate the foibles of the characters and their very human plights. In episode 4, the series took its first major leap into the supernatural. That was before the show dropped the hammer on us and revealed Locke's secret. Locke was already a mysterious character because of his sparse cryptic conversations, but the revelation of the secret confirmed that the show was a fantasy or at the very least had an air of the supernatural. Other mysteries surfaced from the unique mental abilities of Walt to the powers of the numbers, but the show was fueled by characters who loved and lost and loved again and stories of small victories of island survival.

The second season started by introducing us to Dharma's contribution to the island. Dharma magically transformed the show from a fantasy Island to a science fiction Island (i.e. science principle X can explain these unusual phenomena) and brought the Island into a larger history. After a season of watching human flashbacks, the viewers longed for island flashbacks, so we could learn about what these scientists discovered researching the hatch (and as we subsequently learned, studying polar bears.)

Season 3 brought us into the world of the island's natives, referred to as "hostiles" who purged Dharma off the island. The magnificent trick of the third season was that by introducing a larger corporate war between Ben the tyrannical manipulator and Widmore the ruthless executive, the show was able to maneuver its mysteries into new themes. In the third season, many people, including myself, thought Lost had some of its worst episodes as the show floundered grasping for purpose. Yet it kept me riveted with its magnificent gobbledygook array of references, from religion to philosophy to science, from literature to film to pop-culture.

I was also able to postulate that although there were a litany of themes, (free will vs. destiny, good vs. evil, science vs. faith, civilization vs. wild,) the predominant theme was that everyone is bad and we all rationalize by thinking we are the good guys just doing what is necessary because we had to, because we were told to, (by our religion, by our politicians, by our superior officers, by our bosses,) because preserving an island's miraculous resources is good, because harnessing an island's natural resources is good. So, I saw Ben as something of a Kurtz going into the Heart of Darkness.

Season Four started by introducing us to our beloved characters off the island. We also meet a slew of new recruits who are Widmore's people chosen to cleanse the island. None of this did anything to dispel my theory of an overarching war between treacherous murderous protectors of the sanctity of the Island sanctuary and exploitative imperialists seeking to share the island's bounty with the world.

Season 5 was the enigma because the creators made the show extremely difficult for casual watchers to follow. After years of masking the geeky sci-fi fantasy elements of the show under the guise of relative realism, the show unveiled itself. The underbelly or the veneer was exposed as the ultimate nerd-fest melding fantasy supernatural with high tech science mumbo-jumbo (a technical term).
For years, the show played with its location in time and space, whether it was flashbacks, flashforwards, different locations around the world, but now the premise of the entire show was time travel. And the power behind the island was unveiled as a pseudo religious-pseudo spiritual weaver.

Season 5 made my head hurt (not just because of the flashing bright light) because after 5 seasons, after getting to know about 50 (FIFTY) important characters (including new 1970's Dharma scientists and Jacob's body guards,) with varied yet occasionally intermingling story-lines, some of whom died, but none of whom ever lose their relevance, (particularly because of how the show manipulates time,) with various personal issues, interpersonal rivalries, group struggles, international intrigue, supernatural and sci-fi storylines*, the show then ALSO played on multiple time lines where each one affects the others. It's like Back to the Future times fifty (times fifty).

Now, we come to Season 6, and do we return to the character roots so we could get some individual ark payoffs? Nope, it looks like they took the sci-fi fantasy angle to the next level by depicting... alternate realities (ala Fringe.) Now, in addition to keeping track of how these character's prior-Island decisions affected their present disposition, we also have to keep track of how their past selves in alternate existences affected their current disposition. Let's say Alterna-Kate decides to knock out the U.S. Marshall, is it because our Kate has a propensity for flight (as does Alterna-Kate) or is it because Alterna-Kate remembers our Kate giving Sawyer the gun to kill the Marshall or is it because Alterna-Kate has a separate history of running or a distinct alterna-Kate memory of the Marshall's cruelty?

Then of course, Season Six has Fake Locke and now probably Fake Sayid, so who knows who is possessed by spirit demons and who is still themselves? (Christian Shephard is notably missing on all time lines.) And then there are the characters themselves that are so torn apart from their suffering and the constant reliving of their own mistakes that they do not remotely resemble the people we met in Season 1. So, who should Kate choose, broken down Jack or broken down Sawyer?

And of course, there are new characters, the temple-dwellers who appear to be in league with Richard Alpert, (the ageless wonder or the mascara man,) who was once in chains (on the Black Rock?). The temple leader is some sort of a martial artist who undervalues the English language and who is unnecessarily quick with the trigger... (By the way, I think the symbol in the guitar case was an ankh, which according to Logan's Run is an Egyptian symbol meaning sanctuary. If so, interesting on many levels, on the staying power of the Egyptian religion theme, on the relevant meanings of sanctuary, on the possible film reference to Logan's Run, on the show's running theme of hiding materials inside religious relics like heroin in the Mary statues, which is packed filled with philosophical and psychological implications regarding Carlton and Cuse.)

But the new (fascinating) overarching rivalry is grander than Jack and Sawyer or Jack and Locke or Jack and Ben or Ben and Locke or Ben and Widmore, but rather, now it's Jacob and the Man in Black (presumably Fake Locke who is Smokey the Monster.) So how big is this fight? Is it good versus evil as the light and dark shirts would have you believe? Or is it fate versus free will as their conversation would have you believe? Are these gods, angels and demons, spirits, metaphors? And who do we root for? Sure Smokey killed Islanders and manipulated Jacob's death and killed his body guards, but he just wants to go home. Isn't that what most of the Islanders want, particularly Juliet (and didn't he save the Islanders from Keamy and Widmore's boat)? That doesn't sound too evil. But, I guess, throughout much of Judeo-Christian lore, the Satan's goal is to return home- to heaven after being banished for questioning God's plan for favoring the humans because of free will. For a guy that may not be evil, he sure did some bad things and happens to resemble Lucifer. The contempt that the Man in Black felt in Jacob's presence reminds of my favorite lines (which happens to be from Paradise Lost and was quoted in The Crow): "Abash'd the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is" (and continues "and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely").

Oh and by the way, it appears, Jack and Faraday were right. Their plan to nuke the island worked, but so what? A new timeline may have formed, but a Jack and a Sawyer still exist on the island. Those Islanders still have to suffer the indignities of the Island even if other versions of themselves are free to roam about the country.

*If someone told you 5 seasons ago that a show with storylines including a smoke monster, an island with miraculous healing powers, a boy with mind control, two people who commune with the dead, magic numbers, psychics, ghosts, shape-shifters, bodily possession, time traveling, alternate realities, would any non-X-Files fans be watching? Probably not, right? But you're stuck now because you care about these people and you need a resolution. Back to the fishing analogy: Lost lured us in with character, it reeled us in with story and now, with their introduction of crazy, we're wriggling and flailing in all directions.

But, as for me, I'm not just trapped, I'm in. I'm all in. Whatever they sell, I'll buy. Whatever they pedal, I'll hawk. I am stuck in a cycle of appreciation- not only because Lost took me on a magnificent journey, not only because I can't imagine a scenario where I am sufficiently let down as to be disappointed, (not even the cop out that is alternate realities,) but also because I am now living and reliving the show in my own mind to the point that if I don't like the ending, I would only be disappointing myself.

Years of thought, years of imagining, years of connecting, of interpreting, of analyzing, pouring over scenes and dialog and data and examining and studying references and principles over and over again--- I've created a mental map in my mind so intricate that it would easily cover the floor, ceiling and padded walls of a roomy cell. It's no wonder that the show's most relatable characters, Hurley and Libby, were both inmates at an insane asylum. So while I was utterly confused by the initial episodes of the sixth season, I was riveted through every scene and I am eagerly anticipating every crazy moment of Lost. I hate that it's ending, but it has to end.