Saturday, August 30, 2008

seventeen and strung out on confusion

I never actually thought I would be posting something related to the title of this blog, but here we are.

I just finished Lost season 3. A few episodes before the end, it actually got interesting with the Desmond flashback, and got further interesting with the Jin and Sun episode following it (confirming my belief that the show should be composed entirely of Desmond/Jin/Sun flashbacks). The last episode was a bit anticlimactic, because having missed out on an entire season's length of time I've heard numerous people speak of it. It was still alright but I have a couple issues as I start pushing into season 4.

First, and this is one of the reasons I gave up on the show for so long, I hate artifically created conflict. I would say the bulk of the inter-character drama on the show stems directly from the fact that none of the characters ever talk to each other. Something big will happen, that will either directly impact another person or the relationship with another person, but they will keep it to themselves, either saving it for a "dramatic" episode down the line or leading to conflict which leaves you saying "why the hell didn't they just tell them a long time ago?" If this was coming from one character, I would buy that it is just a flaw of that specific character, but when everybody in the show does it, I start to think it's due to lazy writing.

Second has to do with the end of season 3 and a recurring plot device in season 4. If you haven't seen the finale of season 3, I would avoid this, but it's up to you. I'm not sure what to think about this flash forward device. It could be cool, I suppose, but the first instance of it in the finale of season 3 directly addresses my main concern with it. Jack's flashback in the final two episodes is revealed to be a flash-forward, when a drunk and distraught Jack meets with (a hilariously dolled-up) Kate, who shows no affection for Jack, is apparently with somebody else, and promptly leaves him on the runway.

The show continues on in present-day, while we have this knowledge of the future. This Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet thing seems to be one of the main dramatic threads of the show. How am I supposed to get into the back-and-forth of it when I know Kate winds up with somebody else and Jack is a drunken wreck? I realize that knowing the end isn't all there is to it. For example, while I knew Charlie drowns at the end of season 3, I still didn't know what lead up to it. However, even though you still don't know how we get from A to B... doesn't B seem not quite as cool as it might have been if you hadn't known of it ahead of time?


We'll see how season 4 is. People tell me it's good.

Edit: Now through with s04e01... yeah, it's pretty good so far, lol. Glad to see some of the sci-fi elements coming back into play.

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