The 10 Worst Things About LOST
I’ve frequently been accused of being an apologist for the TV show LOST. To some, it seems that I’m just someone who drinks the Kool-Aid. This last accusation is particularly inaccurate. In fact, it was Flavor Aid laced with cyanide, and not Kool-Aid at all, that Jim Jones passed out to members of the People’s Temple in Guyana on November 18, 1979. Look it up. These kinds of details matter, people. The part about me being an apologist for Lost, however, is correct. I think it’s the best series that has ever been broadcast on network television. But it would be an exaggeration to say that I watch with an uncritical eye.
So to prove my point, clear the air, and score some credibility, I offer the following list of the ten worst things about LOST.
10. The many deaths of Mikhail. C’mon people, he’s not a cat.
Just die, already.
9. The whispers. I’d be willing to take them off this list if we get a full and fair explanation of what they are, but I’m not holding my breath. When we first heard them in season 1, I thought they were way creepy in a good way. Now, I’m not as freaked out, and occasionally I’m a little bugged.
8. Kate’s Trial. It didn’t actually bug me that much at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I think this was lazy work by the writers. As a lawyer, I often find legal dramas unwatchable. Of course, some are better than others. The original “Law and Order,” for example, offers a reasonable facsimile of a criminal trial. Kate’s courtroom scenes made no sense at all. Why was she being tried in a California state court for crimes that happened in Iowa? Why was the defense allowed to interrupt the prosecution’s case-in-chief with a surprise witness? How did Kate’s lawyer make key trial strategy decisions without consulting his client? Hopefully, they’ll have the good sense to stay out of trial for the remainder of the series.
7. The fresh food in Othersville. This is a minor quip, but how did Ben and his folk get all those groceries, anyway? Did they rely on the DHARMA drops? And oh yeah, what was up with those DHARMA drops anyway? If Ben gassed the DHARMA people years ago, why did the drops continue? These are examples of the sorts of loose ends that I’m not convinced the writers will manage to tie up. I doubt they’ll even try.
6. The Crazy French Lady. I like Danielle Rousseau, but her character is just not that believable. I mean, supposedly she’s been on the island for 16 years, but before she snared Ben in her net, she’d never seen an Other? How realistic is that? And she’d never stumbled upon a DHARMA station, even though those things are popping up like one of Ben’s white rabbits lately? Let’s face it, that desert island is not so deserted. What seemed credible during season one just doesn’t make much sense now. Here we have what might be an example of a plot line that arose and simply got away from the writers. Though I’m not convinced that Danielle is dead quite yet, maybe the writers would be better off if she was.
Danielle was interesting at first, but her existence on the island has become awkward.
5. Paulo and Nikki. They’d be higher on this list if not for a couple of things: 1. They really weren’t on the show that long, and 2. Their episode was actually pretty good. It kind of reminded me of a classic “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV episode. But, let’s face it, they sucked. The represent a failed experiment. The writers attempted to incorporate new characters from the background 815 survivors, but it just didn’t work. Being buried alive was a fitting end.
Fading into the background…that would have been a good thing.
4. Locke the perpetual chump. I loved first season Locke, the mystic with a unique, insightful and intuitive take on the island and its nature. The contrast between his faith and Jack’s empiricism made for good drama. Then we find out that Locke has been duped over and over again. And then again. Locke needs some redemption, and I’m not sure it’s coming. He’s probably my favorite LOST character (and Terry O’Quinn is beyond a doubt one of the show’s best actors), but Locke’s been severely neglected and I’m starting to think that his credulity is beginning to strain … well, credulity.
3. The Tailies’ version of the Others. According to the Tailies, the Others were some kind of freakish superhumans who do not leave footprints and can attack at any time in any place. Yet, this story didn’t really seem based on any actual events, even from the perspective of the Tailies. I thought that was weird and it’s bothered me ever sense.
2. Eko’s death. The smoke monster has never been adequately explained. At first, it was some hulking giant that made loud noises, knocked down trees, and ripped the pilot right out of the cockpit and flung his corpse up into the jungle canopy. Then it was a security system, or a cloud of black smoke capable of seeing into the consciousness of its potential victims. It’s also capable of taking on the form of apparitions from a person’s past, such as Eko’s brother, Yemi. All that is well and good, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with the smoke monster, per se (though I’m starting to doubt we’ll ever get an adequate explanation for what exactly it is). But Eko’s death was a low point for me. He had already stared the smoke monster down, and that was very cool. But this time, Eko, the island’s biggest bad ass, got tossed around like a rag doll—the monster drank his milkshake. And the episode as a whole was very unsatisfying. The flashbacks didn’t tell us anything about Eko we hadn’t already seen, and what it did tell us didn’t prepare us for his death. Lame.
1. Bai Ling. Really, I don’t think I need to say too much more here. Anyone who saw the epidose “Stranger in a Strange Land” knows what I’m talking about. She’s a notoriously bad actress, and she’s pretty obviously Chinese, not Thai. (Consider this: she’s such a bad actress that even George Lucas, a director that seems tone-deaf to bad acting, left her on the cutting room floor.) I can’t think of a mystery I cared less about than, “Hey, I wonder what Jack’s tattoos mean.” I didn’t really understand what was going on there, but apparently, the Thai folks don’t like it when their extra-special tattoo artist practices her craft on the tourists. Not sure why, and the show didn’t really bother to explain. Now, I can hardly look at those tattoos without getting upset.
Please go away and never come back.
Honorable mention: Christian Shepard. If he’s got some sort of continuing significance and presence on the island, I’m going to be bugged. He was dead before he even arrived on the island. The fact that his corpse happened to fall out of the baggage stowage and land on the island shouldn’t be significant, at least not according to my own personal sense of metaphysics.
Notably absent from my list are a couple of the complaints I keep hearing from some: that people on LOST don’t act the way normal people do, and that the writers show contempt for their audience by constantly trying to trick us. Neither of these bother me at all. I actually like that the characters don’t do a lot of sitting around asking each other questions and explaining things to each other. Exposition is boring and overused. And I like a clever tale well told, even if I’m the one getting suckered. For me, that’s part of the fun.
So, yeah, it’s not perfect. But LOST is still a hugely entertaining and looks like it will manage to keep everything running at a very high level through to its conclusion, even if the conclusion might not manage to wrap up ever mystery the island has to offer.
Posted on March 28, 2008, in Television. Bookmark the permalink. 24 Comments.
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my biggest complaint is how dang gullible these Losties are! Especially Locke. The guy is just utterly gullible and so easy to use. There are a lot of aspects of season one that have been discarded as the writers have taken the story in the direction they have.
This is one of the problems of a J.J. Abrams story. Alias shows this too. The first season of Alias is phenomenal. In the second season, you start to see the writers stretch the credulity of the story as they attempt to answer new questions, and then you get into very silly plot points. And once again, the main characters are some of the most gullible characters ever, allowing Arvin Sloane to lead them again and again and again and again. Now, if that’s really how the CIA works, well, no wonder our Intelligence community is so screwed!
Nice list, Greg. Lost proves why systematic theology is so difficult and why the Bible is full of contradictions: it’s impossible to keep your story straight all the time.
Locke’s character and intelligence are definitely questionable. For a rather obscure reason he takes the drastic step of hucking a knife through a woman’s back but he leaves the most obvious clear and present danger (Ben) alive.
Will Lost tie up all the loose ends? Maybe this post shows there is no way that is going to happen. The question I guess I have is how diligently they will try. Is this show going to culminate in some answers that cover most of the territory or are they just going for complete random weirdness that could never be explained?
I’ll be disappointed if this show doesn’t come to some kind of solution to many of the questions that have been raised. If they pull that off, then I’ll consider it, as the poster wrote, to be “the best series that has ever been broadcast on network television.”
As a side note, I’d completely forgotten about the episode with the Asian actress Bai Ling. I wonder how many odd little tangential episodes there have been like this on Lost. It seems there are episodes that are central or core storyline episodes and then there are little jaunts that focus on a specific character. I’d be interested in reading about the actual ratio between the two types of episodes.
danithew,
Here’s one.
I’m hoping for a 2-hour sit-down with the producers after the series finale where the only thing they’ll do is answer viewer-submitted questions. There’s just no way they’ll be able to answer everything within the show itself.
10. Mikhail is dead, I believe. But I bet we’ll see him again in s flashback to explain his glass eye (I presume) that was found in the Arrow hatch in Season 2.
9. Whisper transcripts suggest that there really is something to the “dead” sticking around. They don’t make a lot of sense but I think there will be a big payoff, probably not until the very end of the series.
5. I agree on Paolo and Nikki. Their dialogue was always useless and overly expository which really didn’t fit with the way the rest of the series. It was like they were there to help new viewers catch up to what was going on. Fortunately they weren’t a big deal and their episode was great. Plus, I loved the way how Sawyer never knew who they were.
4. Keep the faith in Locke. He will be redeemed.
1. The last thing that needed a flashback or explanation was Jack’s tattoos. I think the whole story served as a setup to trick (at least me) into thinking that the season finale was taking place after he returned from that trip to Asia. Other than that it was useless.
Pretty good list. Most things that I would add have already been brought up by me before. One thing I don’t think I’ve complained about though is the occasional 1-2 minute sappy slow-mo ending to an episode. The first couple of seasons they did this every fourth show or so. They seem to have eased up on that technique – which is nice.
I am very afraid that many questions will not be answered. It almost seems as if early on, they would present something cool and creepy, and then when they got bored with it, they just moved on to something else.
I can’t say Lost is the best TV show ever. But it is the best one around these days, that is for sure.
The mist, the sonic fence, the polar bears, the whispers, etc. etc. None of these “characters” have a place anymore. And now everybody roams the island free of the fear of being scooped up by the mist or eaten by a bear or having his eardrums blown out by crossing the fence. It’s just lost its mystery to me.
And it’s starting to bug me that they make up “stations” on the island when convenient, although I lament saying that somewhat because I’m excited to know what “the temple” is like. Fifty bucks says Ben also copied Masonic ritual… any takers?
#6. Yeah, the Rousseau character really bugs me too. It seemed to me that she was at first presented as some kind of frightened hermit which explains why she wasn’t very familiar with the island. But then we find her wandering all over the place. She never knew about the second island?? Whatever.
But I did love the scene when she randomly showed up getting dynamite in the Black Rock when Locke was there with his daddy.
Just had a thought… (maybe not original)… they wouldn’t make Christian Shepard come back to life from the healing island powers, would they?????
“Just had a thought… (maybe not original)… they wouldn’t make Christian Shepard come back to life from the healing island powers, would they?????”
It’s a popular theory, actually. I’m very much against it. The producers have flat out said that: 1) Christian Shepard is dead; and 2) Characters on LOST who die stay dead. I’d be pretty disappointed if they bring him back to life.
On the other hand, we know that characters who have died do interact with the living as apparitions/ghosts/hallucinations, and I suspect this is going to be the case with Christian, if it hasn’t already.
Well done Greg. Great stuff.
I HATED the courtroom scene! Most dramas that don’t exclusively deal with legal stuff as their bread and butter need to leave it alone, or get some writers to make it reasonable (this is one of the main reasons why I really didn’t like the finale for BSG, Season 3). But, perhaps others don’t see it that way. Perhaps the lawyers are just annoyed the same way Doctors are annoyed with shows like St Elsewhere or ER…
I am OK with some of the mysteries NOT being explained. One of the producers recently said that there would be some answers, but that people shouldn’t expect FULL theories here. He cited Lucas’ explanation of the Force in Phantom Menace. He finished his thought by asking, “Happy now???”
I do miss some of the mystique that had been set up in Seasons 1 and 2…but, a lot of that went out the window when we saw the cultured and sophisticated society of the Others.
Ugh. My husband and I are rewatching the entire series with our children (pointing out all the bad words not to say and going over in laborious detail what blue screening and make-up effects are)…
And anyway, yesterday we watched the Bai Ling episode and tonight we watched the Nikki and Paolo episode, and I commend you heartily on both these additions to your list. The Thai episode is the all time worst one. Worst!!
Oh yeah, and we had just finished watching Hitchcock’s Frenzy when we watched the Nikki and Paolo show. I said, “Now there’s a Hitchcock ending for you!” Funny!
The “Charlie trying to baptize the baby” episode that someone mentioned earlier gets my vote as the worst episode, but the Thai episode’s pretty close.
As the show progresses, the “worst things” list continues to creep up on the “things I like” list. They’ll be running even pretty soon if this keeps up. I’ll still watch, but I find myself getting more and more frustrated with the proceedings. At this point, I could probably make a “10 Worst Things” list comprised of nothing but characters that I hate. That doesn’t even include the other, big-picture kind of stuff that such a list should contain.
I really, really liked the “Fire + Water” episode. I thought Charlie’s surrealist dreams, the religios iconography and the tension in the episode were fantastic. So, no, it’s not going to be making my list.
“S.O.S.,” the Rose and Bernard episode is the second worst episode, but there’s nothing particularly bad there to make the ilst–it’s just weak.
The Thai episode knocked a good friend of mine off the Lost bandwagon for months. That was an incredibly powerful episode in a BAD way.
The Nikki and Paulo idea was a good idea (to introduce new characters from the crash instead of out of nowhere) they just used awful characters, actors, dialogue and back story. Those were their only mistakes.
Doesn’t Christian Shepherd send Vincent over to Jack (directly post-crash) in one of those “webisodes”? How does that work?
My problem this season is – what is Sawyer’s relevance anymore? He hasn’t had much to do lately.
I think Sawyer’s still a major player. I think he’s been in every episode this season so far. His decision to go with Locke was an interesting one, and he told Kate he doesn’t really see much reason to leave the island. I’m not sure if he’ll have a flashback/flashforward episode, but I think Sawyer’s still very much in the hunt.
My problem this season is – what is Sawyer’s relevance anymore? He hasn’t had much to do lately.
He’s a placeholder in the “I hope it’s not coming but I suspect it is” resurgence of the Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle (another item that would certainly be on my list). Actually, I can’t decide if I would include the love triangle singly or if it would be lumped into what I would probably dub “the soap-opera crap.”
One other thing – why no more about the numbers? I liked the idea that the numbers had ties between the world of the island and the outside world. One of the best episodes was when we were shown the numbers in Hurley’s life, the numbers on the computer in the hatch, etc. That sort of mystic portrayal of the numbers is now also conspicuously absent.
There are some reasonable gripes about Lost. The last Eco episode was very, very disappointing for instance. But most of the above seem odd…
My #1 is still explaining the whole Claire – Charlie thing which makes zero sense.
Juliet, she’s one of the worst episodes. Simpering botox acting be gone!
I forgot about Bai Ling. That was a bad episode. A lot of Jack & Kate flashbacks/forwards suck because they are just the most melodramatic of the bunch.
Early Locke flashbacks are good.
Eko leaving reeked of TV actors jumping on the Lost train and then getting picked up for better work. I hate it when Hollywood starves the story for some contract.
“My Baby!” I’ll be happy if Claire never screams/whines that again.
My mom brings up the fact of make-up on the island- how does Kate re-applky her lip gloss so readily? And Claire? If Claire was really raising a baby on the island, she would be doing diaper laundry constantly, and she wouldn’t be wearing white, or at least it would be stained. And no, despite how excited Sun is to have a baby she wouldn’t do diaper laundry for Claire.