About Lost

[sincere]

Tonight's episode of Lost made me feel good. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I do most episodes, but this one more than most because it reminded me that when Lost brings about a fucked up character (or even one that seems innocent but is SECRETLY fucked up), they don't kid around.



Issue the First: Jack Hating
I would like first to address the people who don't like Jack or Kate. Don't get me wrong, I don't like Kate. But if you don't like Jack -- or Kate -- and by don't like I mean REALLY FUCKING DON'T LIKE, and whine and bitch and complain every time they are on the screen, and gloat about every "Jack/Kate free episode"?

Click the off button. Put down the remote. Stop. Watching.

I'm serious. I hate to break it to you, but Jack is the main character. It may not seem like it sometimes. We focus a lot on the side characters. Lost is not a story about the hero and his sidekicks: it is a story around which the characters gravitate. But news flash, Jack is their leader, and Kate is his love interest. There aren't all that many episodes without one or both of them in it, and now that the tail survivors have meandered back into the fold, there are going to be far less.

If you have a problem with people asking Jack's opinions or wanting Jack to give them answers, you are watching the wrong damn show. The show you should be watching is a show Jack isn't on. Invasion doesn't have Jack -- why don't you just set your clock back an hour and watch that instead?

This is a problem I especially have with people who watch something like Naruto but hate Naruto. He's the character they named the show after. I know he's not generally the favorite character and that's fine, but you have to understand that it's ridiculous when you snivel about how why do we always have to talk about NARUTO, gee golly! He's so uncool! And such a brat! LOL. Do you understand irony? I have a brick here with "irony" written on it to club you with. By the time I'm done you'll look more like whatever freakshow from said anime you like so much better than the title character.

I honestly don't know how you dislike Jack, who is the all-American boy scout kind of guy, to the point of joining a community like die_jack_die. (He's not a Gary Stu; if anything, he's a stereotype. It's also not a "choice" between him and Sawyer. If you ever thought Sawyer was going to be King of the Island, you were sorely misguided by your delusional state of fangirlism. Sawyer is not a leader.) But you are going to have to grin and bear it for the rest of the damn show.

Here's what it comes down to: Jack is here to stay. He's the main character. He has significant background plot left to develop (undead dad and mystery wife) along with emotional plot (Ana Lucia vs Kate vs Sawyer) and plot-style plot (this conflict about the island? IT'S ALL JACK) and probably isn't going to drop dead and let [insert favorite character here] turn into the golden child.

If you don't like him, feel free to stop watching at any time. No, really. Please. Because he's staying, and if you can't contain your rage at his continued existence, you'll be happier not watching the show. So will the fans. Your inability to be mature enough to sit back and deal with one of the most fundamental elements of a show you claim to like is just annoying those of us who want to talk about its higher elements.

Speaking of which,

Issue the Other: Season Two, Ana Lucia, and Shannon's Horrible Death
I have a theory, based on the observation that a lot of people claim not to like this season as much as the first. They don't feel like it's as "good" somehow. The vast majority I've seen have no explanation besides "not as good", but a few of the more intelligent ones have complaints about the dialogue or the plot twists.

My theory is that the fans are disappointed because the mystery is no longer omnipresent.

In the first season, I can't recall if a single damn episode explained something to our satisfaction. Even when something was settled, ironclad settled, Ethan is six feet underground settled, we still didn't know about it. Okay, so... who was Ethan? How did he get here? Why was he after Claire (or, it turned out, Walt)? What was his relationship to Rousseau? The Others? Fans were left giddy, eager to talk and trade ideas and opinions and predictions, and then excited when they were proven wrong or found obscure but relevant connections. The mystery kept pulling us back, the OMGWTFPB of it all.

In the second season, those bastards keep giving us answers.

They're not real answers. They're backhanded, halfway answers that ask more questions, or leave more important questions behind. But it feels like the mystery is being revealed. Well, now we know what's inside the hatch. We know where those numbers come from. We know Dharma is behind a good portion of this. We know the people in the tail of the plane survived. We know the invisible mechasaur is a security system. We know that the people on the raft are safe. What's left to know? Everything. But it feels like the mystery is being revealed, and well, that's not so compelling.

Now the fans are falling out of giddy first-love and being less tolerant with elements that, to me, feel no different than before. The directing is still masterful, there's still little silent understandings and bits of significant camera-play and delicate dialogue. The characters are the same. You can't tell me Charlie wasn't neurotic and strung-out in the first season -- don't tell me that now you're surprised when he gets neurotic and strung-out over a baby that feels like his! You can't tell me Shannon wasn't prone to histrionics and determined to prove herself from the very beginning -- it's no different when she tries to pull it on Sayid than it was when she tried to pull it on Boone.

(On the other hand, Sayid is different, damnit. His girlfriend is not dead! He had no reason to be turning into a hopelessly besotted... sap!)

If anything, we're just seeing more of them, new sides. Jack was borderline psychotic about not entering the Numbers every 108 minutes. He was raving and violent. There has got to be something behind that. And who would have thought that Hurley had such anxieties locked away? I didn't see Claire being irritated that Charlie was sweet on her and the baby -- I assumed she'd appreciate it.

This is compacted because a lot of people don't like Ana Lucia. Personally, I think she's a great character. We knew she had depth even before this episode, when she was given background which I think fleshes her out without invalidating her past actions -- if anything, fleshes THEM out too. I knew it from the moment I saw her as the Queen Bitch as opposed to the chatty woman having a drink with Jack. These people dislike her because she was flirting with Jack, or because she was mean to Sawyer, omg, or because she's borderline psychotic with a gun and should never be allowed to have one.

Then Shannon was killed. A lot of fans screamed when this happened -- not just poor gatafairy -- which was partially bewildering, because aside from her, I don't think any of these people even liked Shannon until like the episode before. I saw a lot of people ranting about that evil bitch Ana Lucia.

I wasn't too upset -- honestly, Shannon's usefulness on the show was more or less out. Her original purpose was as Boone's unrewarding motivation to the Physical and away from the Mystical that Locke offered, and once Boone died, she really just sort of drifted around, just mourning and reacting to things. Even her flashback in the episode where she died was significantly undermined by the fact that if she'd only paid attention to Boone she wouldn't have been miserable and, for that matter, neither would he.

Frankly, I don't care if it was Ana Lucia or Claire who shot her. My immediate gut reaction is not "omg that whore!" so much as "omg what's going to happen now??" And this isn't because it was Shannon -- if it had been Sayid, or Jack, or Sun who got shot, I would have said the same thing. OMFG, no way! What now?! Remember that the characters are vessels of the story. Have faith that shooting Shannon was a point in the story and not just a random bit of cruelty or Shannon-hate, even if you've forgotten how complete and twisting the story can be now that the mystery seems to be fading.

But it's going to be okay now. They're all reunited: everyone is back in one place again. That means that there will be less going back and establishing how they got there, what they did while they were away, the nitty-gritty of how they get back.

That means it's time to go back to character and mystery, the way we like it best.

Comments

[gatafairy.livejournal.com]

Charlie has lived out his usefulness, too, though. All he has going for him is the statue of Mary, oh noes, he could go druggie again. To me, that's all that was -- something to basically keep him alive. By his second episode I was tired of him. It felt like filler. Yes, there are moments to be played in the life of a drug addict, but there are also so many beautiful discoveries to make with grief.

And you cannot tell me that Shannon's flashbacks were satisfying background story-wise and actually believe what you're saying. They basically showed us two Shannons -- the cruel woman who would do whatever it took to get what she wanted and the innocent girl who was wronged again and again. The last thing she said to Boone in flashback was that she didn't want his money. How, then, did she come to be this person who did want his money? The entire episode presented a completely different side of the Shannon we'd met in season one, and the connections between them were barely even there. The supposed reasons for her change into this person she was in last season were not strong enough to justify her actions. There was way too much left out for that to be in any way a satisfying episode.

The same argument could be made for Charlie, I'm sure, though at least his second episode wasn't wishy-washy about him like this one was about Shannon. (And even as someone who loved the episode, you have to agree with me that some of the dialogue was downright bad. I don't care how great the plot was.) I wasn't upset because she died, and I wasn't mad at Ana Lucia for shooting her -- it wasn't like she'd planned it. My beef with the episode is the horrible treatment Shannon got as a character.

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

They're not the same situation at all. Charlie is a main character almost as much as Kate. His dilemma and his establishing relationship were hugely important in the first season. Even now, those struggles continue. He also has fairly deep relationships with every character on the damn island, probably including the boars, and Locke has made it clear that this struggle is still significant.

But Shannon really doesn't have anything going for her to that degree.

I do, however, agree entirely that the flashbacks in her episode did her almost more harm than good. Boone was right there for her the whole time but she was so obsessed with his mother's opinion that she didn't bother paying attention to him; she can't seem to decide whether she's a poor victim or whether she's a manipulative bitch. And then her connection to the flashback was "no one ever believed in me" but really, we saw that she went out of her way to shove away the one person who DID believe in her THE WHOLE TIME, and then went on to prove that she'd never stand on her own and needed other people [and their money!] to take care of her.

So I feel like the flashbacks undermined what she said she wanted -- but I think they did add complexity to her character. I can totally see Shannon thinking that it's charity if he GIVES her the money and HER VICTORY if she manipulates him into giving it to her; to me, it showed perfectly how she got into that attitude. Don't forget that this is the woman who thinks that making Charlie catch her a fish = providing for herself.

And the Ana Lucia comment wasn't directed at you; I know a lot of people who got very ANGRY at Ana Lucia for it and are full of hatred for her now on the basis that, um, she held the gun and fired in the direction of the sounds.

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

I also wanted to add that A) none of this babbling was actually directed at you, it's not attacking your standpoint, but all of the above IS stuff that I've heard from fandom as well as from you, so if it seems like I'm trivializing your position, it's not that I disrespect Shannon or anything, it's just my angle on their whining, and

B) I'm totally laughing now because the fish is such a perfect microcosm of her relationship with Boone. She can't get the fish herself. MOM DOESN'T WANT HER TO HAVE THE FISH. She doesn't want to admit that she needs other people to give her fish. So she'll connive a poor sap, such as Charlie OR BOONE, into giving her the fish without realizing that she just wants the fish from him.

[gatafairy.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't worry about it, I never took it as a personal attack. It's just a fandom disagreement, not an insult to honor. ^^; I don't agree with everything you said, but there is also the fact that I love Shannon far more than most of the fandom and grew to expect a lot more for her. I feel that she was as much a major player as Charlie was, and it's not just for purely fangirly reasons. That's one thing that I've always loved about this show -- how it can make everyone a character of, while not Jack/Kate/Sawyer type status, important enough to matter.

So hey. *shrug* Whatever lights your tikis, man.