(no subject)

[proximoception]

Astonishing - it's all Lindelof all the time but one end of every ambiguous detail wraps up. Works almost like a satire directed at Lost viewers. It's like HBO contractually made him provide a plausible, rational explanation for everything that happened in his teleplays. So the show's simultaneously a nonstop critique of religion and our other tendencies to overinterpret and it's a parade of conspiracies and miracles. The hardest thing about this is tonal - the ordinary explanations have to be so plausible, and rooted in a consistently unsettled texture of reality, that we don't even find the pileup of ambiguities unusual. And not only do acts that feel divine have to also feel ordinary, and not only does the frequency of these ambiguons need to not seem jarring, and not only does it all have to emerge seamlessly from our moment to moment troubles interpreting an odd and cluttered time-planet ... but the actual acts of God in this after-all created world, the ways events shape into stories that tell us something, have to fit themselves in such that THEY don't seem obtrusive, or themselves miraculous. Or rather just obtrusive enough: it is a subtle show. And it wraps up as a whole! Every single detail has a plausible explanation, even the dreams. Basically the season story is complete; one wonders if that too was contractual. (If I were a network I'd stuff in the Hannibal Lecter cage as a final measure.) It's almost too complete, viewed from the "sane" end of the telescope. But those other ends, assuming any are permitted to exist, can run all over the place, provide any number of sequels. And given that initial premise it's not like we can yell "no fair" if anything supernatural does occur. Reminds one a bit of arguments that the existence of the world is miracle enough, or of consciousness. To prove ... what though? And Lindelof says, "Exactly."

I have a lot of favorite bits, but the pigeons in the priest episode are maybe the best. There's one pigeon on the church steps he has to shoo with his broom - well, sure, of course there is. Normal. There's two pigeons on the roulette table and everyone's vaguely confused. Well, maybe the casino magician got drunk and careless. Or they just flew in because doors were open. Abnormal but not unheard of, at least as a category of thing that can happen - the tone of the croupier dudes is perfect, the just right pitch of moderate surprise. I've had to save a chipmunk and a lizard from cats in different states when each had run up onto the curtain rod and clutched it for dear life: animals get in. Three pigeons on the traffic light, next. Vaguely abnormal, sure, but at that point if you share his mindset you'll be looking for pigeons - and in the Westchester area you will see them soon enough. In total it's juuuust implausible enough to make you think "wait, just how implausible is this," without letting you then conclude "it is super implausible!" And the whole damn series is like that. Oh, and the pigeons mark places where he'll make decisions, and the decisions are all both dramatically bad and dramatically good depending on your angle of interpretation, and all of that feeds back into how the childhood decisions that made him become a priest were based on arbitrary interpretations of majorly bad and majorly good events as being somehow caused by his behaviors. Suppose this is just a world where both happen, the writing hints. All we have a right to say is that they do - to go further is to desire attention from forces larger than yourself that either they don't seem able to give or you don't appear to deserve. The relevant S. Crane poem is quoted in a later episode. The universe one, which is itself comically ambiguous, since the universe does in fact sound like it feels obliged to deliver its caveat.

(Also the whole thing is about loss and what it does to us and it's often very moving, but what of that.)

There are suitably ambiguous allusions to a couple other poems - ambiguous in the sense that I'm not sure they really are allusions. "In the Waiting Room," given the way the stories in that National Geographic issue contribute one suggestion each. And later a dubiously messianic figure responds to an unspoken wish by saying the word "granted" and dying, a la Herbert's "Redemption." Not in a place of murderers and thieves, exactly, but a diner bathroom is close. And of course he himself is the thief, and his murderers burst in a moment later.

The Nat Geo of course also serves as callback to the comic book in Lost. The careful editing so that we don't see if Hugo has it on the plane is delightfully repeated with the concealing of the faces of the back seat figures when the women in the car ask Theroux if he's ready. For the rapture, or pseudo-rapture or whatever? They've mistaken him for someone else, though - they could be asking about anything. Similarly the GR leader, pre-Departure, feels that previous "bad feelings" were just tremors leading up to this one. But wouldn't someone with this brand of anxiety always see false alarm willies that way? Given the series' renewal, the writers can't not cobble together something further out of these moments, but in a sense it's all gratuitous. This show is a Lost that is ending-proof. And if that's not redemption what is?

Why it was renewed is beyond me, though. Its target audience is basically me: godless but believer-sympathetic (shh) overreaders who once loved Lost with a passion matched only by their present hatred of Lost. It's a delightful dialogue, with Lindelof constantly saying, "But what if I doooo THIS again" and you saying "Nooo don't you dare do that again," and him saying "Nah, just kidding, I wouldn't do that to you again" then adding "But also I kind of did though," and you're like "Aaaaah you got me again ahahaha" but then you add "But I will seriously kill you if you do that for real and then fuck it up which if you do it for real you apparently can't not do" and he says "Haha I won't but I'm glad you're only kidding" and then you look at him real hard and then he swallows.

Wait, "Leftovers" anagraphs "Lost fever." We need to kill him.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

The audience is probably bigger than we think. Ambiguons. Like it.