Oh, you were fresh for a while. I enjoyed the "mystery," even forgave you for stealing my idea. That opening pilot was a bang-up start, and the production values of those flashbacks! All the obvious Abraham/Isaac father/son sacrifices, Jack entombed only to rise again (!). What a thoughtfully conceived narrative thread, I thought, but I have given you a full first season -- 7 discs, 22 episodes, including commentary tracks and other nonsense, but I am really finished.
Finished with unexplained monsters -- it's a polar bear! no, some kind of raptor! OOh! a smoke creature... You can just hear the writers pulling their over-caffeinated all nighter.
Finished with Kate saying, "I'm coming with you! I'm carrying the dynamite!" Has there been a bigger Me-Too since Anybody's in West Side Story?
Finished with Sawyer and his Bennett Cerf's Book of Nicknames and Comebacks.
Finished with hair that doesn't grow, even though that baby appears to be 6 months old.
Finished with the dire absolutes that tend to permeate fantasy/science-fiction and bore me to tears: "It's the only way! If we want to avoid the storm, we have to leave right now! Don't you see I have no choice?! You're the only one who can do it!"
All of which I translate as, "we couldn't think of another idea."
Finished with an island no one has ever heard of, despite people wrecking onto it every 20 miles or so.
Finished with the Gilligan's Island-caliber building of a baby cradle -- with filigree! -- and an entire ship out of aged bamboo. Green bamboo... I might have bought, except there is no reason why Michael the urban cartoonist knows how to build a boat.
Although.... blowing up the science teacher did cause me to say "oh s**t," out loud in my home like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
And all of the flashbacks have been attention-getters.
And the acting is much better than the lines they are given to say.
And if you don't watch them all at once, it does have a way of pulling you back in.
But if you do watch a bunch in a string, you will want to shoot Claire yourself, just to make her stop shouting "My BIGH-bee!"
And when the fishing trawler pulled alongside the raft on the high seas, I just threw it in.
I have been warned, you see, by fans much greater than I, that the current season has gone completely haywire ("sleestak," one friend calls it, which is our jump-the-shark phrase for cheap non-scary scary things that act without motivation and disappear as quickly as they appear. You'd be surprised how handy this term can be for you on a regular basis -- even in daily life) and I could stay through Season Two, but to bail after that.
I'll pass. Because here's the thing.
Isn't surviving a plane crash on an unknown island hard enough?
Isn't sorting through the human struggle for power in makeshift society conflict enough?
I'd say keep the derelict Black Rock, maybe even Rousseau -- she could still be insane and paranoid, only there is nothing there but her own isolation. Maybe she even thinks she has fabricated the plane survivors.
The 6 degrees aspect of the flashbacks is interesting; we can keep that, within reason. You've over killed the numbers already.
Secret skills of contemporary people are also fresh and surprising. (Sun knows herbal pharmacology! Jin can fish! Kate can kill a man with a dollar bill! but not Michael and the raft - I still don't buy that.)
But you lost me. I'm going back to Carnivale.
When "Lost" first began airing, I remember reading a magazine article that was begging the creators not to let the unique perspective and idea behind the show go on too long. Sometimes, a story has to end. However, when there is money to be made, you know those writers can find a way to drag out the story line, even if it means 'jumping the shark.'
ReplyDeleteTime for me to admit that I left Carnivale for these same reasons.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. And like the movie Secondhand Lions (just watched it for the first time), if a film/show is going to involve fantasy (or just very unrealistic occurrences)I'd like to know that from the beginning.
ReplyDeletePS: they are making that s**t up as they go along.
Once again, you've hit the nail on the head. It's work enough just to watch the show, but then I'm expected to analyze, dissect, theorize and decode with a million other people online? No way. The blogs and articles make me loathe the people who write them. That's way too much homework for me.
ReplyDeleteSo, I remain hooked and take each show as it comes and don't think much about it for the 6 days in between. I am as annoyed as you, but as someone else said, "I've come this far..."
Sleestak - brilliant!