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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Lost: So Where Were We?

This week Season 3 of Lost shows up. Apparently The Lost Experience, the off season ARG, ended with the revelation about what the numbers mean, and big surprise - they relate directly to the Valenzetti Equation. This being the big math formula to predict the end of the world.

So, in classic Lost methodology - the big clue for going into this season is really more confirmation than information. It barely makes a dent into what we don't understand ... including the nature of The Monster, the original inhabitants of The Island, what a Violet Sky means, how people magically heal, where The Others live and their real relationship with DHARMA, why the Losties are of particular interest to DHARMA, is Vincent really a dog and so on.

In short, my math might be fuzzy but I'm pretty sure Season Two opened more questions than it answered. I bring this up because in watching a behind-the-scenes clip of Veronica last night, Rob Thomas said something like "I think you need to wrap mysteries up in a timely fasion. String the audience along for too along and they'll get bored.

The Lost writers began Season Two with a bang, and I'm guessing we'll get the same treatment with Season Three. I'm guessing they'll tie in this Lost Experience info with the Other's taking of Jack and company.

There's no fun in not trying to guess a couple of things, so here goes:

Mr. Friendly was posing as Alvar Hanso
Perhaps there's a core group of Others who still think DHARMA is running smoothly. According to some info from the Lost Experience, Alvar was known as Mr. Beardy by fans at one point. Perhaps Mr. Friendly was the frontman to HGI's control.

The Monster gets outed
Some rumors abound that old Smokey might make an appearance early in Season 3. The producers might want to offer up something "big" to appease fans early on. Since they had considered explaining the monster all the back in like, Season 1, The Monster would be a good possibility.

Is There Such A Thing As A Luck Virus?
A luck virus is actually a concept from Red Dwarf. A biological virus which actually makes you lucky. Clearly, this is my wacky theory of the day - but consider all the elements of the plot. Fate plays a huge role. Luck plays a huge role. Genetics and biology play a huge role.

Perhaps DHARMA's solution to the end of world is to simply improve the fate of people with good old fasioned medicine?




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3 comments:

Josh said...

Or ... more creepily (and possibly more in line with the events of the ARG) - the virus is intended to weed out the "bad" people.

Should be noted that by the ARG, Hanso has used a "vaccine" in the past which was actually a potentially lethal virus.

Jeff Freeman said...

Dan Rubenfield hated the flashback scenes - and yes, I told him that at least for the first season those scenes were pretty much the whole point of the series - to the point that he re-edited the show to cut them all out. Little text blurbs at the bottom delivered what tidbit of info about a character's past that you might have missed by not seeing the flashback. 'Joke was it'd be a 15 minute show, but actually they still ran over half an hour, iirc.

Unfortunately, he also ignored my advice to summarize the flashback (now-cut) scene in as extremely sarcastic, humorous language he could muster (which, trust me, is considerable) and heck, cut some of the other nonsense, too! And then he lost interest in the show somewhere around season mid-two, figuring they were just jerking us all around and he refused to play. Especially just to spend hours editing down a show that he could only view himself, and wasn't interested in seeing again in any edit.

Really, right. I was a big fan - even OF the flashbacks - but they lost me. They aren't freaking going anywhere.

I know they aren't - I just had to think about it for a second. Shows that are Going Somewhere in their metaplot, toward making some sort of point in a final resolution that you Must Not Miss, etc. get cancelled long before anyone has lost interest in seeing what the point might be.

So Lost just can't be one of those.

American Gothic, Strange Luck (I think it had a point), Now and Again, Firefly (thanks movie! we got to see where that was going anyway), Babylon 5 (discounting sci-fi's budget-ending entirely), and on and on and on.

We just don't get nice things.

Josh said...

I think the first Locke episode (second episode I think) is the touchstone for the series. If that doesn't grab you, get out. The rest of show won't hold anything interesting enough to justify wading through. The Brother is in that camp, while The Girl watches mostly for the character study and flashback scenes. She could honestly care less about "the mystery".

My guess is that the show's popularity has been it's biggest problem and might even lead to it's downfall. I'm willing to believe the writers had a plot of substance when they first got cracking.

I also think they had it plotted out so that at most - there'd be three seasons. Now that the show has gotten popular they're planning on ... six? more? The fact that they decided to stretch out subplots like The Monster is already starting to wear thin. Some of the factoids (wasn't there a cable or something) are starting to feel forgotten.

At first I'd be afraid of it getting cancelled before it's resolution and we'd be stuck with the Joop Ending. Now, I'm afraid there storyline is going to get smothered under it's own padding.

Season 3 will be pivotal in being able to tell is my guess.

But you're right - we don't seem to get nice things. The fact that shows like Firefly and Sports Night get cut down in their prime just makes me go sigh.

So help me god if Lost survives six seasons and then end in a cliffhanger - I will hurt someone.