Fucking Lost.

Oh Fuck You

While I wasn't going to admit to my friends that I've been utilizing DVR to watch "lost" on abc, i find myself physically angered over the season finale and am ready to let you know that yes, thanks to tivo technology I am still keeping up with the crap that is infesting pop culture - somehow contributing to the ratings, partially to turn off my brain, mostly to know how I can skillfully market to a dumbed down general public. That said, I do have other means of entertainment ranging from wired magazine, music (obviously) and on to documentaries from NetFlix. And now it's important to me to proclaim a giant FUCK YOU to Lost.

While I realized half way through the pilot that perhaps the writers had not fully drawn out their concept, I was sucked in by the mystery, not unlike an old Stephen King novel back before the hired hands. Where are these people? One of their natural leaders is named John Locke - doesn't get much more overt than that. Other character names which excited me: Walt, Sawyer, Hobbes.... It's Survivor meets Lord of the Flies, thought I. I was in. I used DVR, the only way to engage television now. If i missed an episode, i would happily watch it 2 weeks late, thanks to technology. Eventually i got all caught up. The season finale was last night. I watched it late at night/ early this morning. What a scam.

The beauty of a season finale is that it keeps the audience engaged for another (approx) 4 months, without actively creating a new event. The season finale of....anything....is (or should be) rooted in Pull Marketing philosophy - bring them back. Bring them to you. Pull them in, don't push it on them, no need for overt calls to action until a few weeks before the new season opener. Create a facade of interactivity in the interim months, keep the audience engaged.

But the season finale of Lost just perpetuated the same storyline, without offering any reason to come back. Each week i learn less and less, even as the storyline reveals more about the characters plight prior to their plane crash. It feels like an exercise from English 101 where one person starts a story and it gets passed along the whole classroom, each student adding a new paragraph, a new voice to the story. How boring. Am I overeducated or did i merely outgrow the perceived value of televised drama...

The Lost season finale provided absolutely no pay off, only further plot set up. However, the set up is just as vague as before, the Observer can now continue on with the very same questions she had after the first 3 episodes. There are no new questions. The Characters in Lost are right back where they were in the beginning, barely anything dynamic has taken place. Here is a list of questions I've got about Lost, and they haven't changed since the 3rd episode. I don't feel like I've been left hanging, I feel like i've been duped into watching Melrose Place on an island.

• Strange island people who are evil have a fetish for babies & children. We know they want a newborn or could want a newborn, and we know that Walt has psychic abilities. Now the strange island people kidnapped Walt. Suprised? me either.



• Something mystical is happening on the island. Big invisible monsters, puffs of smoke, strange crazy island people, plane crash which would otherwise render zero survivability, a big hatch with which Locke is obsessed, a few deaths here and there - I get the idea - it's a strange place. And each character has either crossed paths with each other and/ or experienced some sort of epiphany about their own personal velocity - Weird things abound. Stop layering on the oddities and Pull me in, I'm not an idiot, i get the idea it's a weird realm. Stop pushing it on me, the overt part of the island is clear, demonstrate the subtleties and make them attractive as opposed to meaningless.



• Early on in the season an interesting concept arose and was quickly abandoned - a black woman was unable to eat as she had lost her husband in the crash. She remained confident that her husband was still alive, said she could "feel it" and posed the ever-infinite question "how do i know he isn't somewhere else missing me too" - within 3 weeks we never saw that woman again, and the characters never noticed her absence, never spoke of her, she disappeared like so many soap actresses from General Hospital. I'm either on to a major plot point here, or the writing sucks.

While the msg boards and bloggers are going nuts over the season finale, I'm bored with it. Perhaps over the next few months the writers will sketch out a plot and decide to execute it. Until then, it's Survivor meets Gigli.

On behalf of educators everywhere, I'll grade this one with a D+
the plus is because i actually watched it. The D is because it obviously didn't fail completely or i would not have blogged about it.

today's mp3 for download is....so obvious

Le Tigre - This Island