Lost: Fraught With Peril

About the only thing I didn't like about the season finale of Lost was just how everyone's plan was clearly fraught with peril. Hike across the jungle with a known traitor (and really, it was pretty obvious Mike was up to no good). Sail into the enemy camp when you don't really know how to sail. Blow up a blast door with two sticks of dynamite. Smash up the only computer which controls some mysterious device.

People ... you're trapped on a mysterious island with an invisible monster, crazy natives and polar bears. Sometimes the best plan is to chill out, have some DHARMA wine and stop running around trying to blow stuff up.

Pretty much all of my guesses proved to be for naught. Desmond is clearly a Lostie. Perhaps there is a disease, but it's nothing Kelvin (who we can assume probably knew more about the island than most of our button-pushers) was too concerned about getting. Henry Gale Imposter did, at least, push the button.

Apparently the "protocol" was to keep the EM generator thingy from going all Vesuvius. By the by, as a note for just how unrealistic the show actually is ... nobody could withstand being awake once every hour and a half or so for too awful long. REM sleep generally takes longer to set in and with REM people start going pretty crazy crazy. But I don't think we should hold a show with an all-knowing smoke monster too close to reality.

Anyway ... so the EMG (electro-magnetic generator, it's the only generic term I can think of without inviting a debate into the difference between magnetic fields and EMP's, etc) is capable of bringing down a plane. Many are making a case that since Desmond's system failure was an accident then the plane crash and everything surrounding it is clearly just coincidence and not part of some grand plan.

I'm not buying it. I think this just shows that somehow the Dharma Initiative is capable of some impressive precognition and is sitll capable of it. It's not congrous that a plane accidentally falls from the sky and a group of people know exactly where it will crash and who is on the plane (and possibly who is "good"). And while some are poking fun that someone like Charles Widmore would orchestrate all of this just to get rid of his daughter's suitor ... I think they're forgetting that it might have simply been a convenience that went with the plan.

And I still think that plan is all about defeating the Valenzetti Equation.

I'm not sure if the Giant Hurley Parrot was a dig from the producers or more evidence that some of the animals aren't quite what they appear (Hurley Parrot, Kate's black horse, Sawyer's boar). It's a pretty recurring theme. My only guess is that the EMG is connected with the "life force" hinted previously and is going to be part of the weirdness involving the whispers, hallucinations and talking animals.

Next season certainly looks interesting. Oh, and I'm starting to dig the extraneous material the producers are feeding, like Hugh McIntyre's appearance on Kimmel Live. Gives the show a better sense of depth and more for us to chew on while we wait for new episodes.



tagged: lost, television