(no subject)

[proximoception]

That brainwashing scene was one of my favorites, actually. As was the appearance of the map when the lights went out in the hatch in season 2. Sudden treasure troves of information that can't be assimilated in time--absolutely wonderful effect. Analogous to the finding of that other hatch in The Road. All audience needs met at once, except not and we knew it. But in both cases, not a tease--not coming across as a tease--but a taste of the withheld and so needed reality, just a taste then gone. Not a tease because we had it: a fulfillment, a bit of life that died. Much to be learned from this, storytellers among us.

I've thought for a while that Lost is dirty, muttering, meandering John the Baptist to something greater to come. It's opened up wonderful new ground, ground it often seems astonished at, pokes with a stick, makes a pretty woman and big man quarrel and make love on, and then maybe there's a bomb that's going to go off and then a mood montage set to music and also Jack is there.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Do you think Lost took on too many major characters? I think some of the habitual stalling (the show's biggest flaw imho) could have been avoided. I don't want to annoy any fans, but I think, for example, Sun and Jin's story could be completely eliminated from the narrative w/o losing anything. And that's how many hours possibly saved and given to something else? So many threads that could be tied or untied in fascinating ways. What would we lose by dropping the back story of Michael and Walt?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I guess those were seen as a resource at first, back when they had little idea what they were doing (JJ Abrams: "I think what would be cool is if there was a hatch there")--more places from which to introduce new mysteries, more distractions for when they couldn't think of any, more human interest stories to keep ABC and the ABC-type viewers happy. But yeah, a point comes when a lot of them get in the way.

They tend to recognize this and 'spend' uncentral characters with sacrifice-type plotlines--Shannon and Boone, Charlie, Ana-Lucia, Eko, Michael. They do need love conflict stuff happening, that and revenge are surefire, easily-written short term interest creators (like unrequited passion's the moneymaking long-term one), so Sun and Jin are going to stick around. They put Claire and Walt on the backburner because the child stuff is near the heart of the plot--they'll figure heavily in the last half of the last season, presumably.

Keeping both commercial and cult audiences interested at once can't be easy.