LOST :: Sophmore Slump?

I both agree and disagree with Hammer, er, I mean Stephen on LOST. The last three episodes have been nothing short of boring and mundane. The extreme mystery and drama of the freshman season has been lost (if you will pardon the pun) among the boring stories and flashbacks of this season. The dialog, especially the last episodes’ dialog, was cheesy. “I am Sayeed, and I am a torturer.” How stupid. This season started off on a decidedly more sci-fi trip than last season, but then it has spiraled down into more personal stories of the characters that the writers have been focusing on in the past few episodes.

Here’s where I disagree. JJ Abrams is simply doing what he does best: writing characters. He lets his characters drive the story, as is evident in one of my most favourite shows Alias. Alias had the same problem. Alias’ second season sucks… But it picked back up and drew you in because of all the character stories. So in Lost, he’s started to focus more on the individual story of each character rather than the sci-fi/mystery element that drew us into it in the first place. And that is the problem. He needs to start telling us *how* each character is related to each other (which they are) and how they are all interconnected. He needs to do this fast, or, as Stephen says, people will start to get pissed off and they will start losing viewers…

I both agree and disagree with my friend Hammer, er, I mean Stephen on LOST. The last three episodes have been nothing short of boring and mundane. The extreme mystery and drama of the freshman season has been lost (if you will pardon the pun) among the boring stories and flashbacks of this season. The dialog, especially the last episodes’ dialog, was cheesy. “I am Sayeed, and I am a torturer.” How stupid. This season started off on a decidedly more sci-fi trip than last season, but then it has spiraled down into more personal stories of the characters that the writers have been focusing on in the past few episodes.

Here’s where I disagree. JJ Abrams is simply doing what he does best: writing characters. He lets his characters drive the story, as is evident in one of my most favourite shows Alias. So in Lost, he’s started to focus more on the individual story of each character rather than the sci-fi/mystery element that drew us into it in the first place. And that is the problem. He needs to start telling us *how* each character is related to each other (which they are) and how they are all interconnected. He needs to do this fast, or, as Stephen says, people will start to get pissed off and they will start losing viewers…

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1 Stephen Donner Feb 19th, 2006 at 10:07 pm

Not only that, but the “interconnection” among the characters MUST NOT BE ARBITRARY. That sort of writing reeks of “Aw, shucks, it’s a small world!” sentimentality that is sophomoric, in my mind. This being a sci-fi driven show, it’s expected that the characters are assembled for some common purpose–in fact that’s been eluded to by John Locke’s character, “The Island, Jack, the Island brought us here for a reason.”

Don’t get me wrong; this is by _far_ still my favorite show. But they’ve got to keep that balance between character-driven plots and mythology-driven plots done right. Too much in either direction will inevitably alienate one type of viewership. There are those who watch the show for its Sci-fi, and there are others who watch it primarily for its character-driven elements. I happen to enjoy both, with a preponderance of the former.