The Island of Online Miscreants: Lost on IMDb

I have officially spent approximately 62 hours of my life in the past year or so watching the first four seasons of Lost via ABC.com's online streaming episode player. That alone leaves me with a fair amount of shame about my inability to a) be productive, b) go outside, and c) remain the stubborn self I once was, proclaiming the show to be severely overrated, noodly and convoluted, poorly acted with obnoxiously high production values, and the list of miscast insults goes on. With free streaming at my fingertips and a reluctant desire to find out what the fuss was about, I marched through about 4-5 episodes until I was officially hooked into Lost's tentacles. Sitting here typing alone in the dark after finally finishing the Season 4 finale, opening up my calculator application to come up with that attention getting statistic, I ever so briefly sunk into the notion that I had wasted a gooey hunk of my life with this program. Then I remembered the emotionally catastrophic characters, absurd plot twists, mesmerizing chronology bending, and general WTF entertainment value that made it all worth it. Plus, I finally gave in and Googled "Lost theories" in addition to my habitual check of the IMDb message board and realized there's so many more people wasting so much more time than I, so I exhaled rather triumphantly. Enjoy the very real subject lines for threads about Lost at its IMDb page, along with commentary from someone who has finally caught himself up on one of television's most satisfying (read: magnanimously convoluted) shows...

***I don't mean to ostracize anyone, but hella spoilers follow below. You've been warned.***

"My math teacher looks like Locke": Even though none of my math teachers looked like any beloved fictional characters from the land of television, up until this last season, Locke was my favorite character. His daddy issues were infinitely more sad and complex to me than Jack's or anyone else, his actions and mannerisms were such a mysterious combination of sincere and confused that I couldn't help but just want to hear him talk for hours about the various conclusions and decisions he arrived at. Even when he blew up the submarine, I still deeply felt for him and his rock solid faith in the island, his destiny, or whatever. His eyes are SO sad. Then this season he became Ben's puppy and I was the one with sad eyes. And though after the big reveal at the end of the Season 4 finale, I'm assuming we'll get some awesome Locke episodes in Season 5, it was just sacrilege to give his character so little emotional depth during the nonstop breathlessness of the freighter nonsense. In fact, I liked all the characters much more before the freighter showed up. Except for possibly Ben (and the new characters that the freighter introduced), all the old favorites just became less and less significant. With all that eyeball-popping action, however, I'm willing to forgive, as long as future episodes fix this.

"Every Epsiode Ranked Best To Worst": This is a ridiculous exercise, misspelled or not, but someone had to do it, right? Obviously, the Season 3 finale is probably the best ever, if only because of Charlie's angelic swan song and the clever fakeout introduction of the flashforward. I actually believe it was seeing this episode out of context that made me give the show a second chance. I remember getting severely ticked off when the polar bear came up in the first couple episodes when I first gave Lost a chance, and now I'm realizing that after four seasons, we still only know a couple things about the polar bears. Dammit. Anyway, totally free associating here, but I also love the episodes where Jin becomes a changed man and not a sexist controlling jackwad, where Sawyer kills Sawyer/Anthony Cooper, where Michael kills Anna Lucia, where we find out Libby was in the mental hospital with Hurley, where Anthony Cooper steals Locke's kidney, where we find out Jin's dead/not on the island through the flashback/flashforward combo, and when Desmond says "brother" like a million times during his semi-lame time travel episode.

"Geeeez, this place is DEAD!": Wow, DriveShaft123 got cranky about five hours ago when apparently no one was commenting on the IMDb page (5 other threads were started within the same hour of his/her new thread subject). Speaking of dead, I do not dig the ghost angle. I can handle time travel, but the ghost thing they're not moving toward explaining whatsoever. That may seem like an incredulous thing to expect of a show that basically keeps opening of cans of worms and wormholes at a higher velocity than a Sliders marathon, but c'mon. Ghosts were introduced pretty quickly as a big part of the island in the first season, but no one mentioned time travel until the third season, maybe the second toward the end, and yet that's become pretty much clear as crystal by now (I don't really care if they explain the wheel or the icy pocket or any of that jazz, it's your standard time travel hooey without the Delorean). But other than Miles's magic dustbuster and Christian's association with Jacob, we still know nothing about why the island's haunted, what ghosts get to hang out there, or anything. Can ghosts time travel? Has the island been moved before and when that happens, it goes to hell/heaven and back? Is the smoke monster responsible for the ghosts? Why am I so caught up in a show that has a smoke monster as a legitimate non-ironic villainous menace plaguing the characters?

"If You Could Remove 1 Item Of Clothing From 1 Character...": Now we're talking. However, if we're talking celebrity fantasy in a dark nasty corner of the Internet where no one's looking, I don't see why we need to limit ourselves to one piece of clothing. That sounds like a minimalism fetish. No thanks, let's max it out baby. Well, I know she was on the show for only about two episodes, but Naomi is clearly a million times more attractive than Kate, Juliet, and Claire combined. Also, Charlotte's looking pretty good now too - I'm rooting for nerdy Farady to whisk her away after helping her "learn" more about her "homeland," if you catch my drift. Maybe I am just a sucker for that British accent. Miles acknowledged the power of the accent when he explained why he was concerned about Naomi's well being when he clearly cared about no one pretty emphatically. And Claire, while cute as a button, has quite the whiny Australian thing going on. Malewise, Jack is soggy tofu and Sawyer is red meat that's just a tad too red. Figure it out yourself. Sayid's man-locks aren't to my liking and Desmond's just a guy I wanna say "brother" to all night long. Hmm, I supposed Mr. Eko is right up my alley...ooh and Richard.

"OK, I ran over a MATTRESS on the freeway today, Good LORD": Most pages at IMDb actually contain threads that have some kind of connection (while often minute) to the movie or TV show that the page corresponds with, but apparently it's a big free-for-all over at the boards for Lost. From car meets mattress confessionals to fantasy football organizing to discussions about The Dark Knight that don't even mention Nestor Carbonell (I don't know if they know there's already a page designated for this a mere click away), the threads on this page worry and destroy me on the inside more than those on the Crash page, and that's saying something for anyone that's ever read more than a dozen comments about racism anywhere on the Internet. All these conversations vapidly happening as I compose these words, and I can't find any threads about the prominent role of books in the show (Our Mutual Friend, Stranger In A Strange Land, just to name a couple awesome examples...). Once again, even though here I am blogging about a show that's not even on the air right now at two in the a.m., there will always be geeks more pathetic than I am. Whether or not that's something I can or should be proud of, I am.

This entry was posted by chris, on Thursday, August 14, 2008. You can leave your response.