I haven't blogged much on the TV show Lost lately, which is something I was doing on a weekly basis back in the fall. You can find some of my prior posts here, here, here and here. I took a break over Christmas when there were no new episodes and picked back up on January 5th with the new episode and the Alias season premier.
Suffice it to say that I am not much of a TV watcher, but I am a J. J. Abrams junkie. Lost and Alias are the only shows I regularly watch, aside from Monk, which I watch semi-regularly.
Lost gets more and more confusing all the time, which from watching Alias, seems to be J. J. Abrams standard m.o.. During the fall I was eagerly trying to figure everything out but I've settled in now, realizing that the show is going to string us along for awhile before revealing too much. It has been good to find out the truth about Kate, that she really did kill someone, and this past week to see what was really going on between Boone and Shannon. However the big issues are still up in the air.
What does seem more clear to me is that those who think the island is some kind of purgatory are correct. Some have advanced the theory that this "purgatorial" existence is one where people have gone to finish up or deal with some business from their prior lives.
We see this in Locke, who was healed of his paralysis on the island. Charlie is getting off of drugs. Michael and Walt are getting back together as father and son. But the January 12th episode gave the biggest confirmation of this.
Locke "gave" Boone an experience that he needed by conking him on the head and tying him and Shannon up and causing Boone to have to rescue her. After Boone rescues her though, the monster comes and kills Shannon. Boone seeks vengeance on Locke for putting them in the situation that led to her death and we find out that it didn't really happen. Shannon is alive and well. Boone imagined the whole thing, yet it was more than a figment of his imagination.
Locke asked Boone how he felt when he realized that Shannon was dead and Boone said "relieved." This was the aha moment for Boone - Locke told him he needed to let her go. The backstory on this is that it appears that Boone was secretly in love with Shannon, who is actually his stepsister. Somehow this experience that Locke gave to Boone is to enable Boone to let her go.
So now we are left wondering where reality ends and imagination begins. The island does seem to have some kind of magical power that will purify or assist these people in this purgatorial state. And, Locke seems to be the ambassador of the island.
One other thing is that somewhere, someone has said that we will find out that all of these castaways had some kind of connection before the island. We saw the first hint of that this week in Boone's flashback where Sawyer appears in the police station with Boone.
So I'm going to wait for more pieces of the puzzle are revealed before I speculate any more on what is really going on. I do want to say a big thanks to J. J. for the January 5th episode where he gave a wonderfully sympathetic portrayal of a person of faith. Rose's exhortation to Charlie to have faith, her statement that she is not the one who could help him, and her prayer for him that begins "Heavenly Father . . . " are all wonderful portrayals of faith and are very consistent with the Christian faith. Thanks to J. J. for making her out to be one of the good guys.
As to Alias, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I still like the show, but I fear it may have jumped the shark. I could be very wrong on this - before blogging this post I looked up the ratings and it apparently has pulled down some very good ratings for it's first two weeks. I'm going to keep watching it, but it seems a bit odd to me that this season has basically started with a re-union of the whole Hee-Haw gang, a la SD-6. With very little explanation we have a whole new organization called APO which has Sloane at the top, Jack as right hand man and Sydney, Dixon and Marshall back together. Vaughan has now been added to the organization, as have Nadia and now apparently Weiss. But with last season being less than stellar it looks like the show is simply tring to return to the first season and the first half of the second season to recapture interest. I could be wrong about this - it may turn out to be real good, but it does strike me as a bit odd.
I think season 2 was the best and that Lena Olin as Irina Derevko made it so good. This whole mother-daughter spy thing was a terrific plot. Now it looks like Lena isn't coming back to the show and they have been scrambling to cover her loss.
There are also a whole lot of loose threads in the show that I don't see how they are going to pull back together. What has happened to K-Directorate? What has happened to the Covenant? How does Rimbaldi fit into all of this?
Anyway, I'll keep watching. The second episode was better than the premiere, mainly because it didn't end with Sydney in tears. That's getting old. Here's hoping the show keeps it up.
Allow me to ask you a personal(ish) question. Given that Lost contains some material that is not suitable for all viewers (which generally means it is not suitable for any viewers) do you suffer any pangs of conscience watching the show? When they show love scenes, near-incest scenes (ie step siblings) and so on, does that bother your conscience?
Please do not think I am incriminating you or calling your testimony into question or anything of the sort. It is merely that I struggle with shows like this and wonder how or if you reconcile watching them with what you profess as a believer.
Posted by: Tim | January 16, 2005 at 04:34 PM
Tim - I have been influenced by Brian Godawa, author of Hollywood Worldviews. A few years ago I read an article he wrote for Cornerstone Magazine where he discussed some of these issues - his basic point is that it is not so much that these shows portray sex and violence, but the important point is the context in which they portray the sex and violence. His most basic example of this is the bible which gives some of the most horrific portrayals of violence and some of the most explicit portrayals of immmorality in all of literature (think of Ezekiel 23). Biblically, evil is portrayed as evil and is not portrayed to titilate.
So, I don't have a problem with those things to some degree, unless they glorify evil.
However, I do turn my head or look away when things get explicit - viewing too much skin will cause problems for me.
And I also have to admit that when I watch some of these shows I also often watch them just for the fun of it, without giving it too much thought.
Here's a link to Godawa's article:
http://www.geocities.com/[email protected]/hollywoodworldviews/BeyondSexandViolence.pdf
Posted by: David Wayne | January 17, 2005 at 04:28 PM