All That Nerdy Stuff » Nerdy TV

Beautiful Cacaphony: the Lost Series Finale

Jason Ward — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:11:37 +0000

**SPOILERS BELOW, BEWARE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LOST SERIES FINALE BUT PLAN TO**

It’s a shame, really. I do love the cast and characters (except Kate–I hate Kate for being a stereotypically weakfemale lead, always making stupid decisions that seem to illustrate that “if she’d just listened to the man” things would have been better), who’ve managed to grow on me, each in their own, wonky ways, over the course of the six seasons leading up to the Lost Series Finale. The drag is that the resolution was disappointing enough that I really will never recommend anybody start from the beginning of the series and watch it. Great acting is always wonderful, but without a well executed overall story, what’s the point?

But enough about the cast and characters; everyone already knows those are wonderful. The problem with Lost was always in its plot, or more accurately, lack thereof. In the end it sort of works out, in some sense, because Cuse and Lindelof successfully managed to explore a number of interesting themes both in the main body of the series and in the finale, not the least of which are those about personal choice and sense of self in the formation of identity.

Like life itself, Lost ends with no real revelations, no magical key to sudden knowledge or wisdom, and with countless plot threads utterly ignored. Lost can be summed up as a “beautiful cacaphony,” leaving you starved for a melody, yet mesmerized by its absence. As a series, Lost is chaos incarnate, with very little meaning in most of its machinations. It’s like Cracker Jacks: tasty by the handful, but ultimately you really do need to eat a real meal.

Is it worth the time investment? If you got into the series at the very beginning and already had a sizable time investment, say maybe, the first 3-4 seasons, I’d say yes. If you’ve never seen Lost and are wondering if you should start, I’d say no. Why? Simply put, you can get all the major philosophical themes of Lost via countless other stories or films and understand its meaning in a few short hours, whereas the series will leave you, most of the time, confused and spinning your wheels. I submit that life does that enough already.

In the interest of helping you, dear reader, avoid spoilers in the event you haven’t seen the finale but plan to, this is your last chance. Beyond the break you’ll find a list of top Likes and Dislikes about the finale, and I hope you’ll share your thoughts on this non-event Event in the history of television.

Top things that disappointed me:
1. No mention of Walt. He went from being so UBER important to being an “also ran”
2. No “special revelation” of knowledge for characters who accepted being the Island’s guardians, they’re as clueless as everyone else.
3. Very little explanation of the alternative universe. Was it really JUST for them? Were they the only “dead” people in it or was EVERYONE in it “dead”?
4. When the Man in Black went into the hole with the Magic Lightbulb, he became a Smoke Monster. When two additional people went into the same hole, nothing happened to them. Why did the Man in Black become a smoke monster, exactly? Because he wore black?
5. No explanation for virtually anything that happened on the island over the years. Christian’s empty coffin, the Time Travelling, the Polar Bear, Walt appearing to people in visions, women unable to have babies, the Dharma Initiative–everything appears to have been a dead end.

Top things I ENJOYED:
1. Thematically, the idea that YOU have to decide the person you are, and not fall into the trap of what other people TELL you you are.
2. Thematically, the idea that the people in your lives, whether friend or foe, are there because you need them and they need you, to help shape the course of your life.
3. The “connection” of the living characters to the dead and the reunions of people who loved but had lost each other; those scenes were SO effing sad, I love it!
4. That all the characters died in the end. No possibility of “Lost: Return to the Island!” in five years.
5. The urge to wonder and criticize: Lost did a lot of things well: connecting the dots of a coherent story is not one of them. What’s an interesting emergent from the chaos, though, is the desire to think about what happened, how and if any of it connected or didn’t connect, and to think about abstract ideas such as identity of self, relationships, etc. It’s unsatisfying, but at the same time cool, and in a sense it mirrors life–there are no easy and guaranteed answers; from childhood until death we must always question, always wonder. That’s a decent moral.

All in all I feel both cheated by and glad that I watched it. I wouldn’t recommend the series to anyone else because thematically the whole series could easily be summed up in a 2-3 hour movie (See: Pleasantville, among others), but, having gotten on board not knowing what to expect, it was an interesting–if frequently frustrating–ride.

Why Heroes was Cancelled–and Deserved It!

Jason Ward — Tue, 18 May 2010 07:14:52 +0000

I remember when I began watching the first season of Heroes, a little nervous of this seeming X-Men Lite show from the very beginning. But over the course of that first season I found that very shortly I could scarcely wait to watch the next episode as the mystery of the villanous Sylar and his role in destroying New York City unfolded. The show seemed to have everything it needed: an engrossing plot, a frighteningly powerful villain with a plan, a cute girl, comic relief, political tension, the mysterious Mr. Linderman, and of course, a character with the proper soul of a Hero, Peter. I’ve talked about Heroes before, of course, and like the show itself my hopes and thoughts for its future have fluctuated from the positive to the abysmal. So goes the nature of a show that nobody had a clear vision for, and as much as I sort of wish I was, I’m not remotely surprised that it’s now officially been cancelled by NBC.

So now the question is, why was Heroes cancelled? This is a topic that could go on forever, and I’ve already reviewed a few other blogs and media outlets dishing ever so briefly on the topic, so now I think it’s time I had a bit of say, myself.

1. Let’s start with the obvious: following the first season, the show failed to ever execute a cohesive, well-planned plot or villain again. Sylar, in season one, was a masterpiece of a television villain, played to near perfection by Zachary Quinto. Season 2 didn’t really have a villain at all, Season 3′s “Villains” arc suffered a similar fate (Arthur Petrelli was OK, but really just a crusty, much less intimidating retread of Sylar), and while Season 4′s Samuel character was an interesting character, he was a useless villain with an ability so lame that all anyone had to do was run away from him in order to take it away. And while it was clear early on that the writing team on the show really tried to make the final season much better, and to a large part they succeeded, there were simply too many other problems, which we’ll get to.

2. Character development. Perhaps only a little less annoying than its plot issues was the show’s character development, specifically because, there pretty much wasn’t any. By the end of the final season, Claire was still the same whiny, self-flagellating brat she’d been since season one, only by then it had gone from being the endearing mark of a character going through something new and scary, to that place where you’re just sick and tired of hearing her whine about being different. Come on, Claire, get over it and move on, already! The same was true of One-Note-Nathan, who like any living politician stereotype, wobbled endlessly between the side of good and the side of evil. By the time he died, I was glad to see him go, and a lot of other people were too. There are only so many times you can watch the same character flip-flop back and forth. Pick a damn side and let’s get on with it.

3. Meaningless deaths. In the first season, we got some real deaths, and they were pretty damn sad. Charlie, Isaac, Simone, all were reasonably well developed (less so in Charlie’s case, but she was developed very well in a short space) and that worked out. Unfortunately, nobody ever died and stayed dead again after that. Charlie ended up being brought back during the fourth season, which really served no greater purpose than to ruin the original story’s sadness; Nathan, even after being killed in season 3′s finale, kept right on coming back to life via Sylar in season 4; Nikki, the show’s most annoying character from the very first episode, came back as a clone. Time after time, characters were shot, beaten, maimed and blown to smithereens, only to somehow return again. If there are no real death stakes, what’s the point of killing the character at all?

4. Stakes and consequences. The stakes rarely got any bigger on Heroes, either in the sense of devastating plots or in the sense of transformational character events. No, Arthur draining off Peter’s powers does not count. What characters needed were life-altering events like you’d find on better shows such as Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was unilaterally a superior Superhero show to Heroes. There, we watched the writers do horrific things to established, recurring characters, killing off some, utterly reshaping the character of others. No character on Heroes ever faced stakes where they would have no choice but to cut down the person they love the most in order to save the world. No character on Heroes ever fell in love only to have that loved one brutally murdered before their eyes. And when Heroes characters died and returned, there was no price to pay, no shift in the balance of the world’s power, no consequences. When Buffy died while saving the world and was (months later) resurrected, there were consequences first for her character, which was fundamentally transformed by the trauma of death and bliss of Heaven, and later for an entire season as her return had triggered a shift in the balance of the world’s power that ultimately lead to the deaths of several of her allies and goodness knows how many additional innocents. Heroes never played with stakes like that.

5. Lack of advance planning. Heroes creator Tim Kring has said publicly that they do not plan the series very far in advance, preferring to write by the seat of their pants so as to always introduce new story possibilities. I suppose as theories go, that’s all well and good, but it’s still no excuse for not establishing an overall framework for where your story will go. How can you possibly write a series that says something if you don’t have anything in mind you want to say? And therein lay perhaps the root of Heroes’ problems: it doesn’t really have a message. Buffy was about female empowerment; Angel was about the neverending battle between good and evil; Star Trek was about an optimistic view of the future and humankind’s ability to succeed in it; Veronica Mars was about both female empowerment and the ability to understand and deal with the world logically even when it wasn’t very logical; Battlestar Galactica (new version) was about how humankind is a screwed-up mess with no true direction, just a fantasy.

What is Heroes about? I have no idea, and really, neither do its creators. And that was ultimately its biggest failure, and the most prominent reason why not only did it fail, but it earned its failure.

Why Dollhouse is cancelled

Jason Ward — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:00:47 +0000

By now, you may have read that Joss Whedon’s most recent show, Doll House, has been cancelled, though with a bit more ceremony and respect than most cancelled shows ever get. Unlike said other shows, Doll House will be allowed to complete its second season as planned, with every single episode airing, in order, as promised. I’ve got to give Fox props for trying-they’ve given the show almost every opportunity to succeed, with the one exception being that it’s been stuck in television’s worst time slot since the day it launched. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps a Sunday night slot might have yielded better results.

The immediate trend I’ve noticed on the topic has been one of blame, and specifically, blame for Fox. I have yet to see many people blame the show’s writers, who I think carry a significant burden of blame, nor the show’s audience, who certainly deserves blame a-plenty. A lot of things happened to conspire against Doll House, not the least of which was DH itself. The concept is, without a doubt, effing brilliant. The problem is that during the first season, the show’s primary characters-the Actives-were completely and utterly unrelatable. From the first episode to the sixth, it was very difficult to care about any of the characters. Yes, there was some good action, and yes, we got to look at some nice boobies in tight or revealing outfits, but those things alone do not make a show interesting. Well, at least not interesting enough to watch religiously.

It wasn’t really until episode six, “Man on the street,” that any characters really became interesting. From that point onward, several of them suddenly became a lot more interesting, not the least of which were Ballard and his beautiful neighbor/Doll, Millie. We got a lot more flavor of the season’s plot and the story’s characters from then on, but the problem was that in order to get to that point you really had to go through the first five hours of the series, which were boring and mediocre. Unfortunately, very few people will actually wait that long for a series to become good; if it can’t grab them from the first or maybe second episode, they’ll tune out and move on, and that’s exactly what they did.

Season 2 has been phenomenal so far. Every single aired episode has been great, and I’ve enjoyed watching it immensely. The characters have finally become rich and full of promise, and the stories told have made me actually give a rat’s ass about the Actives. Unfortunately, this has come too late; before the season began, the viewers were already gone. It’s a shame, of course, but you can’t really blame Fox for that-they were generous to give DH a second chance at all. If I have one wish, it’s that they should have tried the show in another time slot, where I really do think it could have done better. Niche shows in niche timeslots are a recipe for-get this-niche audiences.

Doll House has not been Joss Whedon’s best work, but it really could have been. I can’t blame him, of course-the concept of DH is very difficult, and few writers would be willing to tackle something so sophisticated at all, much less in episodic television. The show, for all its problems, flaws and weaknesses early on, really has been shaping up to be something rather extraordinary, and if the episode descriptions online are even remotely accurate for what’s to come, we should be in for one hell of a ride come December. I wish the show had been as good from episode one as it is in the current season; maybe we’d be looking forward to season 3 if that had been the case.

I love Joss Whedon’s work with a fairly epic passion; I’m always evangelizing his great work in Angel, Buffy and Firefly, and I regret that, like Firefly, we’ll never really see what DH could have become. But with any luck it’ll be a lesson learned, and Mr. Whedon will take it and do something even better for his next project. I’d love it if he got naked and sweaty with a network like Showtime or HBO, where he could really go wild and deliver something completely unhooked, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Whatever happens, he’s got a lifelong fan in me and many others.

Goodbye, Doll House. We barely knew ye!

Heroes keeps on surprising me

Jason Ward — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:36:45 +0000

Heroes, as I recently discussed here, has made it a habit this season of making me eat my hat. I’ve been shocked to observe that, following a very mediocre intro episode that got the season off to a battered limp, every single episode subsequent has been very good. This week’s was no different. The show caught me off guard on three separate occasions, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet and don’t want to know, you’re hereby advised to avert your eyes.

The first surprise I found involved Blank-Sylar, who quite unexpectedly reverted to the form of Nathan-complete with Nathan abilities and memories intact-who promptly realized he was standing in Freakshow, USA and flew away. Subsequent to Nathan getting his ass shot to death a few episodes back, and the recent news that Adrian Pasdar had been canned from the show without even being told by the producers until he read it in the script, I really didn’t expect to see him back. Of course, I should have accepted by now that Heroes only rarely kills off characters for really-reals, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. In any case, I was.

The next surprise was really a two-fer, and came when the ever-annoying Matt Parkman, whom I believe should have been killed off a long time ago, finally manned up, stopped whining, and acted like a Hero instead of a crybaby. If you’ve seen the episode, you know by now that Parkman manipulated Sylar-now in control of Parkman’s body-to write a murder note on a napkin at a diner, which resulted in his being surrounded by cops. Shockingly, Parkman then forced Sylar to act like he was pulling a gun, which of course lead to his being shot repeatedly, apparently falling to both their deaths. Sylar hit the ground with a soggy thud, and Parkman disappeared. In a perfect world, this is the way these two characters-both long past their usefulness-meet their ignominious ends.

In any case, the episode went off extremely well, and the final few minutes were practically dripping with a sense of foreboding about the future. A major conflict appears to be brewing, and as I realize we’re 8 episodes into the season, I’m actually a little shocked that there’s no sign of it involving some character travelling to the future only to uncover some horrific event that they have to stop. Bravo to Heroes for breaking out of a very weak plot trend!

Unfortunately there’s also some worry that comes from having now watched the trailer for next week’s episode. There are SPOILERS after the jump, so if you don’t want to know and you haven’t seen the trailer, stop here and enjoy life!

So, the sad truth is that the writers-utterly unable to keep a secret or kill off a major cast member with any permanence, apparently, have already revealed the return of both Parkman and Sylar. The trailer for next week’s episode features the two quite prominently, alive and healthy thanks to Peter Petrelli. Evidently the cops in Texas have decided it might be a great idea to rush their would-be-murderer to a hospital in New York City, where Peter works. Evidently, NYC is just a hop, skip and a jump away. From Texas.

While I can’t be too surprised about this move, I am very, very disappointed in the writers. Not only have they ruined, in the space of less than one episode, what was a poetic and shocking death for two of the series’ major mainstays who really have needed to be put down for awhile now, but they’ve put us right back where we were two episodes ago: with Parkman being haunted by Sylar, a plot thread that was stale the moment they introduced it.

Perhaps they have something better planned, but I don’t know and I sure don’t bet on it. Although Heroes is in the middle of enjoying its second best season to date, some of the inherent problems of the series remains. Why it is that the writers are unwilling to permanently end the lives of major characters is beyond me, and utterly disappointing. They really should look to shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for inspiration, both of which were not only better written shows about superheroes, but they both used the deaths of major characters to superb effect.

Tell us what you watch, win a game!

The Web N3rd — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:57:25 +0000

I’m just going to admit it right now: I am lazy and forgetful about certain things. One of those things involves giveaways, and this is one that I meant to do waaaaaay back during E3 of this year. Sadly, I suck, and I tucked these snazzy little cards into a backpack pocket and promptly forgot about them. However, you’re in luck: they’re still valid!

So what I’ve got are three copies of Battlefield 1943, which is a digital download. I have two copies for Playstation 3 and one copy for Xbox 360. The way this will work is simple: In the comments, tell us what your three favorite nerdy shows are and a sentence or two about why you watch them. We’ll sift through the comments and choose from those who make their case with the most…I dunno, I want to say “elegance,” but on the other hand, maybe “humor” would be a better criterion. In any case, get commenting and we’ll select the three luck winners on Halloween!

Heroes: I’m eating my hat, dammit!

Jason Ward — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:01:24 +0000

OK, so I admit it: I don’t wear hats because they make me look goofy. And like hats, Heroes is now making me look goofy, and it’s doing it in a very unexpected way: it’s good again. I know, I know-I’ve spent a fair amount of time giving the show shit-which it’s deserved-only to suddenly find myself nibbling at the tasty feathers of crow while the show carefully and meticulously crawls out of the hole it spent the last two seasons digging itself into.

So here’s the recap: in the three episodes since the lackluster season premiere, Heroes has demonstrated once again that it knows how to build a careful narrative in which its characters can demonstrate a little growth, a nugget of exploration, and, as is desperately needed by a show about people with super powers, a surprising glow of humanity. In the time since the now infamously ill-received premiere, every episode has been carefully plotted to bring the show’s core characters back into the foreground while some of its more useless or annoying characters and their shtick remain conspicuously absent.

The ever-annoying Nathan Petrelli appears to finally be permanently dead, Ando has been left behind in Japan while Hiro rejoins the New York division of Heroes, Inc (OK, I made that part up) as he tries to make right some wrongs from his past before his tumor kills him. We’ve only had to tolerate Matt-I’m-such-a-whiny-bitch Parkman for (I think) one episode, and although his “Sylar is in my brain” storyline so far has been a little cliche (and more than a little reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica’s vision of Cylon #6 in Gaius Baltar’s head), it’s been done to surprisingly good effect as the “evil Sylar” has Parkman hard at work systematically destroying his own life. Now if they just kill Parkman, things will get even better in the Heroes-verse.

In any case, it appears that things are finally approaching a turning point as we creep toward the midway of this volume’s 12 episode story arc, “Redemption,” with all of this season’s major cast members showing what can only be described as “impressive growth” (it’s like the stock market, but with super powers!). Luckily our core cast has shrunk significantly, with the ousting of such fan-non-faves as Mohinder and several of the throwaways of the last two seasons.

We’ve watched Peter both embrace his nature as a hero and yet return to a more “mundane” life as an EMT. We’ve watched Hiro continue on his hero path even as he faces the fact of his own impending death. We’ve watched Noah flounder as the older man looking back on his life to see how the choices he’s made have caused more harm than good, particularly to himself and those closest to him. And of course we’ve watched as Nathan’s past came back to bite him in the ass for the last time, causing the face and abilities of Gabriel Gray to re-emerge with a mind and personality so completely blank that even when confronted visually with the physical memories of his past as a monstrous villain, he’s refused to believe or return to that form. At least…so far. I have a feeling that the new villains, now attempting to re-awaken the old Sylar, are going to end up having that bad choice’s consequences demonstrated on their own hides.

Next week will mark the halfway point for this volume’s story arc, and if it holds up this will be the fourth consecutive good episode-something Heroes hasn’t had since the first season. They’re on a roll right now; let’s hope they can keep up the good work and, going into this season’s second act, show us something that will make us keep wanting to come back for more. If we’re very lucky, the end of this volume may just have fans asking once again, “more, please!”

Heroes Season 4: On the way to the grave

Jason Ward — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:22:07 +0000

I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: Heroes’ season 4 premiere was a masterpiece of mediocrity. I had high hopes when I heard that Brian Fuller had returned, but those were of course dashed to pieces when he left again, and as the premiere demonstrated, for good reason. Let’s talk a bit about what’s wrong with Heroes and what might have made things a little better.

1. Sylar. He was an awesome villain in season 1 and a complete waste of time in season 2. He was tepidly interesting in season 3, and in season 4 he’s a Cylon #6 ripoff embedded in the brain of one of the show’s least interesting characters, Matt Parkman, while his real body is waltzing around under the control of Nathan Petrelli–who should have died 2 seasons ago and stayed that way. When they first put Nathan in control of Sylar’s body they could have done something interesting–let the audience forget he was really Sylar.

Explore Nathan as Nathan for half the season while the new villains do their worst and just when things seem to be at a low point, worsen them–by letting Sylar re-emerge as dominant, with no warning whatsoever and no sign of an underlying Nathan. Instead, though, we get to endure Sylar as a hallucination to a boring character while Nathan starts to feel powerful enough to, no doubt, do something stupid yet again.

2. Claire. OK, look. In season 1, it was cool: Save the Cheerleader, Save the World. Catchy line, smartly written concept, made sense when you finally got all the puzzle pieces. Our heroes saved the fucking cheerleader. They saved the world. Now send her the fuck away. She’s BORING. She’s WHINY. She treads on two sidewalks: I love my daddy, I hate my daddy. Boo-fucking-hoo. Clair-bear? Go away. I don’t care where you go, but stay there.

3. Nathan. OK, I get it: We’ve written ourselves into a corner where it’s impossible to kill Sylar, but everybody WANTS Nathan dead. So we kill Nathan…and copy him into Sylar? Why do that, especially if you’re not going to bother using it well? Nathan is annoying and stupid and utterly predictable. How many episodes until he once again flips like any other politician and does something stupid again?

4. Hiro. In the beginning, Hiro was my favorite character. I enjoyed his child-like excitement and devotion to being the good guy. He was a great counterpoint to some of the other characters on the show, but now it’s old. He’s no different today than he was at the start of Season 1, even after experiencing the defeat of being unable to save the waitress he spent 6 months falling in love with, after losing his father, after finding out his childhood hero was just a bunch of bullshit. How can he be unaffected by these kinds of events? We’ve had this fantastic glimpse of a future bad-ass Hiro who’s been tainted by pain-and by now, he or something damn close to it should be the Hiro we see every episode, now the goofy 10 year old. In the finale of Season 1, we really should have had Ando be killed-brutally-by Sylar, only to die in Hiro’s arms and change him forever.

5. Powers-Why the hell does every character have to get powers eventually? Giving abilities to Ando and Mohinder was just stupid. Let’s spell this out clearly: For a super powered hero to be somebody the audience can relate to, we need normal people to counter-balance and ground these characters in reality. This is a lesson Tim Kring and friends should take from what is arguably the best superhero show of all time: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was super powered, and aside from a couple of side characters like Spike and eventually Willow, nobody else was. These characters helped keep the show on an emotional level that was real and something we could connect with. Heroes had that in season 1 with several non-powered characters, but now who do we have? Just Noah. And he’s not exactly a fount of emotional depth, is he?

When I first watched the premiere season of Heroes, I was blown away by how well it was executed (for the most part, anyway; it did have a few misfires like most shows do) and how each episode made me eager for the next. Then the ending came and…well, it was pretty much underwhelming. Not a catastrophe, but more of an “Oh. Is that all?” And it’s been downhill ever since. Now all I feel is apathy at a brilliant concept that’s been so poorly executed I just don’t know what to make of it. If only Joss Whedon had been in charge instead.

Nerdy TV: Lost is truly, truly Lost

Jason Ward — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:27:13 +0000

Let me preface this with some fundamentally important information.

1. I am just at the end of Season 3. I have now seen seasons 1 and 2 twice in their entirety but am not yet caught up to season 5.

2. I love great character development. Lost gives me this by the acre.

3. I love great plot development, which even the best characters need in order for me to care about their plight. Lost is devoid of plot.

With all that said, I’m going to start blogging about each episode as I catch up from here. Recognize, therefore, that I’m a little behind and will catch up shortly. When I began watching Lost, I was quite entranced. The show was rich with character development (and it still is) and in the first season there was a fair amount of plot development as well. Most of the time, it even related to the character development in some way, which was pretty cool. I’m not at all sure there was any kind of epic point to it, but nevertheless it was quite enjoyable.

Season 2 came along and that was also very good. Not quite up to the first season, as I thought it was a little too…convenient that the cast suddenly took it upon themselves to press a button and save the world, but hey, there was food and music in the newly discovered hatch, so whatever. Sometimes I’d do wacky shit to get my hands on a bag of chips, too. I enjoyed, in both season 1 and 2, that the writers did a good job of getting us attached to a character (even ones as shallow as Boone and his fuck-buddy sister, Shannon) and then killing off said character. The only time I saw this fail was with Anna-Lucia, who was a horrible character whose death couldn’t come fast enough for me. When she died, I cheered. Come to think of it, if they get around to killing the Juliet character, I’ll cheer then too.

But then Season 3 came along and brought with it questions but very few answers. Is there a time traveler on the island? Who the fuck knows. As far as we’ve been shown the dude might just be an unhappy Medium. At the end of Season 2 we were teased that his former girlfriend somehow knew something about the island, about the fact that Desmond was on it, and aside from the arrival of a chick in a chopper late in the season we haven’t heard another peep about it. The first 6 episodes of the season were painfully slow and boring, with virtually no plot development whatsoever. The next several episodes became pretty good–and then the bottom fell out as the previous “go to” good guy, Jack, became an untrustworthy prick, Locke’s quest for truth got him shot by a man it’s been clear was a liar and a sociopath for, oh, the entire fucking season–and that’s just about when the ghost showed up. Either that or Sociopath Ben is secretly a ventriloquist to boot.

It’s bizarre enough that we’ve watched the cast get chased around the island by what sounds like a robotic dinosaur yet mysteriously looks like a whisp of smoke (and how does smoke make any of those robot sounds or stomp the ground or dig holes, by the way?). It’s also pretty damn odd that we keep seeing polar bears on a tropical island somewhere in the pacific, that now we’re told that flight 815′s complete wreckage was found with all passengers dead several miles underwater and oh–we’ve heard no mention whatsoever of the “very special boy” Walt since Season 2′s finale. Apparently this kid was uber-important to the mysterious “Others”, and yet now he’s nowhere to be found nor heard of (yes, I know he left the island in a boat with his jackass of a father) and mysterious crap keeps happening. Seriously, I haven’t seen a plot become this convoluted and pointless since the X-Files crapped in its own corn flakes not too long before Mulder left the show.

It’s fairly evident what’s happening on this island. For whatever reason, and contrary to all laws of reality, people with intense desires or thoughts for certain things can make them come true on the island. It’s why Walt was able to make Polar bears appear. It’s why Shannon saw flashes of Walt when he had gone missing and she was feeling all guilty and shitty for doing a sloppy job taking care of the dog he’d left her. It’s why Locke is able to walk again. And it’s why Ben, who clearly has some mommy and daddy issues and blames his own birth for the death of his mother, is subconciously making it impossible for women on the island to have babies without dying. Where the ghost fits in is anyone’s freaking guess.

For a time after getting past those first 6 episodes of the third season (you know, the pointless ones where almost no plot development occurred) I was beginning to think that the writers had gotten something figured out. Now I’m starting to think they’ve just hit the paote pipe a little too much. Beyond the increasingly ridiculous amounts of coincidence (now Claire is suddenly Jack’s half sister? WTF?) Let’s just get down to reality here, people: wishing and dreaming for things to happen doesn’t make them happen. Actively pursuing a goal and accomplishing the steps needed to get there is what makes things happen. That process is also known as “working your ass off”. Believing otherwise is living in a fantasy world, and if you’re going to buy into that kind of crap you might as well sign yourself up for the nearest cult waiting for the next Jesus-Comet to fly by, and kill yourself so you can hitch a ride to Heaven.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate fantasty and science fiction a great deal. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were both a pair of sci-fantasy shows that I think remain among the very best television ever produced, but both were always clear that theirs were worlds of fantasy. I’ll also add that both had vastly superior plot development to accompany their rich character development (and I’ll be fair here: Lost’s characters have much more backstory development, with the possible exception of the title character in Angel; unfortunately there is precious little plot advancement to go along with it).

I intend to give Lost a fair shake. I’ll keep watching and catch up, and will follow it to the end. I can only hope that the series gets better, because right now all I feel is a bit disgusted by the stupidity of it. Oh, sure, there’s a fair amount of philosophy underpinning the show, but very little of it is well acted upon by the writers, and primarily that’s because there appears to be no real focus or direction. More than anything else it seems like we have a long series of stumbles from one weird event to another, with a desperate grab for something just a little bit weirder every few episodes. Where this is going and why remains a complete mystery, and I’m not convinced that even the writers know. Like so many other shows that dabble in the fantastical, it appears that Lost has become, as its title announces clearly…lost.