I Like to Watch

June 3, 2007 | Some day, everything that we love and cherish will be swallowed up by Procter & Gamble, digested, and then pushed out into convenient, individually packaged, sanitized, deodorized, noncomedogenic disposable wipes. All that is spontaneous and real in the world will be captured on a camera phone, thrown onto YouTube, blogged about by half of humanity, discussed by hair-sprayed TV mouthpieces, denounced by enraged special-interest groups, and legislated against, explicitly, to prevent exposing the general public to anything unguarded or unplanned or not yet vetted by a phalanx of market researchers and product-development specialists.

Today, though, we can still fall in love, and make big mistakes, and speak without thinking. "Fall on your face in those bad shoes," as Frank Black once put it. "Bloody your hands on a cactus tree, wipe it on your dress and send it to me."

Yes, today we drink, for tomorrow we'll all be frozen fresh, vacuum-packed, cryogenically sealed, slated for global distribution, our deepest beliefs crumpled down to a bite-size sampler, our most heartfelt desires reduced to a point-of-purchase impulse buy.

Still smokin'
Maybe that's why it's better for Jack and Kate and the rest of them to stay on the island. Because in the real world, your daddy's not rich and your mama's definitely not good lookin'. Or rather, if we're talking about the world of ABC's "Lost," your daddy's a drunken asshole (Jack) or he's a drunken abusive asshole (Kate) or he's a rich control freak (Sun) or he's a con man who tricks you into giving him your kidney (Locke) or he's a long-lost ne'er-do-well played by Cheech Marin (Hurley).

Are the mean daddies to blame for the fact that once Jack and the rest of them finally leave the island (which we learn in a finale flashback that turns out to be a flash-forward), they all end up bearded and suicidal, popping pills and knocking over displays in the local drugstore? Are these people cursed in particular, or are they simply better off in paradise, thanks to some whim of destiny?

From the very beginning, of course, the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 have embodied the persecuted modern human. Not only does the world turn their hopes and dreams into sanitized disposable wipes, but they're allergic to those wipes. Those wipes make their noses run and their skin break out in hives. Through flashbacks, we're shown that each survivor has had a chance at happiness that was thwarted: Kate left her cop hubby, Locke alienated his true love, Jack was a workaholic whose wife left him, Hurley won the lottery and was besieged by bad luck afterward.

The twist of last week's finale makes some sense, then, given the unrelenting misery the survivors endured before they landed on the island: Kate and Jack would eventually return to their lives, only to find themselves haunted by the notion that they weren't supposed to leave the island.

The question is, do we really want to be hemmed in like this, knowing that even once they're all rescued, everything will fall to pieces and they'll be doomed to go back? As nice as it is to throw in a truly surprising twist, this one feels like another limiting move, like turning unknown creatures into polar bears or transforming the Others into just another group of bickering, bossy lunatics like the ones we already know. Do we need a glimpse of the future to stay invested? What does it do for the story over the long haul? Doesn't it take a little bit of the fun out of seeing everyone rescued, something we've been waiting for all this time? Once the thrill of a good twist wears off, an ennui sets in: If a future off the island is the exact same flavor of frustrating as the past, then what's the point?

There's a heightened sense, after each finale, that "Lost" is some kind of a masterpiece among TV dramas, and while I certainly agreed after last year's finale, the show is no longer quite so deeply, abidingly character-driven. During the first and even the second season, you could argue that the show was character-based: We plunged into extended flashbacks of key moments in each of the characters' lives, during which the worldviews and philosophies that they brought to the island were formed.

In the third season, though, not only have the flashbacks done little beyond retreading old ground, but they're not actually focused on revealing more aspects of the characters' personalities or perspectives; they're simply focused on showing us other stuff that happened to that character. They're plot-driven, in other words: Jack meets a weird, sexy lady and gets a tattoo. Locke's dad pushes him out a window. Juliet gets tricked into coming to the island. Yes, at the end of the better flashbacks, the character in question tends to make a choice that defines him or her at some essential level: Desmond breaks up with Penny, Kate dumps her husband, Sayid apologizes to his former victim. But even then, we're either seeing characters in impossible situations who are doing what anyone in their shoes would do (Hurley trying to break the lottery curse by giving away his money), or we're seeing just one dimension of a character's personality (Sun tells Jin's mother to stay away because Sun believes in lying to avoid uncomfortable situations, Kate leaves her cop husband because she can't commit to anyone, Jack seeks out his ex because he's an obsessive control freak). Not surprisingly, with the character development remaining fairly stagnant, the conflicts between characters on the island feel less and less dynamic and immediate, and are less connected to the essential philosophies that each character embraces.

"Lost" is a smart show with an interesting structure that plenty of other TV writers and producers have tried to imitate with mostly limited success. But given the time devoted to exploring individual characters, couldn't some of these excursions feel a little bit more subtle or artful? Couldn't we learn something truly new about a character's motivations, instead of seeing the same old disapproving fathers, disappearing true loves and fatal flaws? As long as everyone's marching around proclaiming "Lost" the best show on television, a show custom-made for geniuses and the like, maybe the writers should set their sights on trying to touch the emotional resonance of shows like "The Sopranos" or "Friday Night Lights" or "Six Feet Under." If the flashbacks of Sun lying and Kate skipping town and Jack falling apart are simply swapped for real-time stories of Sun lying and Kate skipping town and Jack falling apart, then we really are stuck on an island.

Next page: Hypochondriacs beware!