Why LOST is fun to watch again.
88 MPH
First, a bit of housekeeping: as you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been blogging much these days. This is almost exclusively due to the fact that I am in the process of moving from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee, and frankly haven’t had time to watch much television (aside from Lost and The Wire), let alone formulate thoughts on said television and then actually type those thoughts out and click “publish.” This pattern of non-activity will likely continue for the next two or three weeks as I get situated in my new city. Feel free to track my progress on my personal site, as I set-up shop.
OK. With that out of the way, how great has Lost been these past five weeks? SPOILERS: It’s been really great. More on the “why” after the jump…
This week’s episode, entitled “The Constant,” was such an unapologetic mind-melter of an episode it actually felt like it was from an different series altogether. For the first time that I can think of, the past and present (or the present and the future, depending on your angle) were actually working in tandem to tell the same story, not just to compliment one another. And no, it didn’t make a lick of sense, but that doesn’t really matter as that last scene was so heart warming and genuine and most important reminding us that Desmond/Penny is really the one plot line that can actually propel the story as Penny seems to be the only person trying to find the island not affiliated with some shadowy organization.
Jack and Sawyer and Kate and Locke are all crucial to the story, but their actions can only go so far. It is only Desmond (with his viewing of the future last season and his simultaneously living the past and present this week) who seems capable of making things happen. This leads to what makes the series so damn fun this year: the formula has shifted. Last spring we knew this was going to happen when we finally flashed forward, but over the past few weeks it has become abundantly clear that the flash-forwards were only part of the series’ transformation. Lost, for all of its narrative innovation has always been a by-the-numbers television show. This season the creators aren’t just looking for plot-twists that can keep us guessing, but genre-twists that actually affect the form. From the “Sayid as 007″ storyline from two weeks back to this week’s Primer-esque space-time-conundrumatron, Lost is again as watchable as ever simply because the series has replaced the often-cited “they never answer any questions” complaint with the far more interesting gripe of “the show seems too schizophrenic.” When most people can set their atomic clock to the beats of your average network drama, I’m happy to sit back and gawk at the totally bizarre and borderline series-suicidal maneuver of new-wave storytelling.
Lost may have jumped the shark this week, but why does that always have to be a bad thing?
Tags: ABC, Lost, Time-Travel
