Because I am an idiot, by the time I posted my latest “Why oh why don’t people like Lost the way that I like Lost” screed yesterday I somehow managed to completely forget the whole reason I started writing it, which was this:
I realized yesterday that the constant barrage of Lost-as-game theorizing and “masochistic delirium” and so on we’ve all been subjected to may be preventing me from being able to enjoy those aspects of it–that in some theoretical world where there’s less of that going on to drive me up a wall and interfere with what I find the main attraction of the show to be, I’d be much more into that sort of thing. Am I letting reverse peer pressure blind me to what may well be the genuine pleasures of treating Lost like a puzzle, theorizing madly about it, working myself up into a weekly frenzy? I honestly don’t know. I remember doing more theorizing back in the day, before doing so took on such a manic feel, so maybe there really is something to this.
Anyway, the season finale was last night. So far I’ve enjoyed Mark Coale’s mellow recap. Alan Sepinwall’s relentless naysaying during Season Three is why I stopped reading him on the show, and to the extent that it creeps up in his review of last night’s episode I’m glad did, but I at least discovered this peach of a post in his comment thread. (Via Jim Treacher.)
You are on to something there, I think. I don’t find the tendency of Lost fandom to concentrate on the puzzle aspect of the show as annoying as you do, but I tend to avoid TV fandom and TV criticism as a whole for some time now.
The kind of fixation on exactly the kind of minutiae I deem unimportant most fandoms seem to thrive on can suck all of the fun out of a show for me.
While I like the puzzle aspect of the show (I guessed who was in the coffin back last year) it’s not the puzzles that keep me coming back week after week. It’s the characters who populate the mysteries.
The finale had its “aha!” moments but it had wonderful bits like Keamy’s creepy kill switch speech. Sun’s plaintive, echoing wail when the boat exploded. Sawyer’s rogueish grin as he bailed out of the copter. Ben’s emotional breakdown as he turned the arctic godwheel, so powerful that I found myself feeling sympathy for a man who knowingly caused the deaths of at least 30 people 20 minutes ago. Hurley’s shock at seeing the grown up Walt. And the agonizing realization that Hurley should be so happy to see him, but seeing him reminds him that Michael is gone, gone, so many of his friends are gone. And he doesn’t have the heart to tell him that his father is dead.
As Sloan once sang, “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans.”