Lost Sucks.

Heads-up: extremely strong language!

So, the girl got me into watching Lost. A while back I had torrented the first season and part of the second, figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. First episode… meh. Second episode… so apparently there’s this giant monster on the island knocking down trees and whatnot.

First thing I thought was that, if this was a biological creature that falls in line with the basics of physiology, then there’s no way that the island would be quite as lush - since the monster would have to eat enough to support its size and energy expenditure, the foliage couldn’t keep up to well in regenerating. So the monster would have probably had a short lifespan. Anyway, I kept watching, until…

… there’s the big fat guy and the british preggo, and they’re sitting underneath a hunk of flaming plane, rending metal and all. For some reason, everyone around hears a piece of metal about to fall except for the two people sitting under it. At that point, I turned it off.

So, back to the girl. She went so far as to draw a comic of what my life would be like if I didn’t re-obtain Lost and watch it with her.

So, being me, I do.

We watch it, and then they find that goddamn hatch. And I’m like, “Bitchin’!” Finally there’s something juicy, a little surreal sci-fi mystery to the whole storyline. And I sit through all the episodes of the first season until the end, when they open that sucker up. (Oh sorry, did I ruin it for you? Bite me.)

And so began the second season, the first few episodes of which were absolutely awesome. They go into the hatch, find this guy preventing the island/the world from fucking ending, a friggin Commodore Pet or whatnot controlling the armageddon countdown, a lot of arguing about what to do to prevent the countdown, that ridiculous series of numbers finally has a meaning (albeit still unexplained), the beginnings of a backstory about the installations on the island with a whole lot of creepy foreshadowing thanks to a creepy film reel, a huge fucking door with some uberpowerful electromagnetic entity behind it…

… but wait, we need to spend the next N episodes talking about… people.

People are the worst kind, I tells ya.

So there I am, sitting through episode after episode of flashback after flashback. Awwe, the black dude was a lousy father and didn’t fight enough for his child? The british punk’s mommy got him a piano? Awwe, that totally plays into surviving on an island, now I see why person X did action Y and how they feel about it.

Get the fuck out of here.

Who gives a flying fuck why this person speaks English but hides it from her husband? Or why the kid has a hard time bonding with his recently-discovered father? I don’t care. And if you say you care, you’re lying to yourself. You don’t give a shit why, and if you really genuinely cared, a less-than-two-minute flashback would be enough to explain said person’s actions.

I knew I was in deep mung when a few weeks ago, the episode description stated that “…Sawyer gets a haircut.”

“No, stop, you’re kidding” I told Yahoo TV. “Get outta here” I told Time Warner’s DTV Guide. “Surely there’s going to be something juicy, and they just don’t want to let on, right?” I thought.

Oh, foolish foolish me. Sawyer actaully did get a haircut.

And that’s all that happened. Really, that’s it. I could have missed the entire episode and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye come the next week’s episode. Oh, and that next episode totally wowed me when “Charlie has to protect Claire’s baby”.

I’m thinking, “Ooooo, n’er-do-wells are going to bring Claire’s baby to some crazy structure and Charlie has to sneak in, uncover more of the mystery and get the baby out just in time for a nail-chewing cliffhanger! Shuga bean!”

But no. Charlie, the ex-horse junkie has some vision that make him think he has to save the baby. No plot movement, just Charlie freaking out.

If a white pony rider was stranded on an island with me and tried to steal my kid, I’d either tie him up (if there were people around) or just stab him in the eye (if we were alone). No really, you’d do that too. Say you’ve survived on an island for 2 months. There’s no room for doubt or psychopaths - if anything is going to kill me it goddamn better be a monster, or a hurricane, or dengue fever - but not the junkie-with-the-heart-of-gold. Oh, and like everyone was so surprised when they found out Charlie was stockpiling H - he’s a fucking junkie! That’s what they do!

Come on, you know you hate it. Say it with me now: Grrrrrrrrr.

Oh yeah, at one point we get to see the “monster.” It looks like a big black cloud. Guess what, they’re nanotech robots gone mad. Sorry, did I ruin the season 2 finale, that hasn’t aired yet? Well, that’s what they are. I’ve got $20 on it. Read Michael Crichton’s Prey and get over it.

Then there was tonight’s episode. Sayeed, the Insane Iraqi tortures some schmuck that might be an “Other.” Of course, he doesn’t get any answers because Jack stops him Just In Time. And Jack pretty much lets that damn armageddon time run out - that was fucking crazy, I was waiting with baited breath for like, the electromagnetic hanger to open and unleash all sorts of skull-crunching insanity. The timer hits zero, turns into red Egyptian hieroglyphs, a great humming noise spools up, but then that fucker Locke clumsily enters the code to reset the clock.

So I’m all “Too late, fucker.”

Imagine my surprise when, despite the timer running the fuck out, it resets to zero. “Wait a second, that’s bullshit! That thing was at zero!” It was too late! I mean, what the fuck, they threw a fucking McGuffin* into the show! Some sort of phantom “forgiveness” timer just in case you didn’t hear the loud-ass alarm. Bullshit! Once you launch an ICBM there’s pretty much no going back without a whole lot of effort, right? Why should the Lost Armageddon Timer be any different? If the people that installed that bad boy meant business, there would have been serious ass-handing once that sucker hit zero.

So what does this all mean?

Basically, the writers had a really great, deep storyline that just happened to take place on a deserted island. Once the viewers started getting suckered (yes, suckered), ABC told them “Hey, hold on - how long can you stretch that story out? We need to get at least fifteen seasons out of it. And by stretch, we mean giving-birth-stretch. We mean rims-instead-of-gas-stretch.”

Writers said “You got money?”

ABC said “Believe it, bitch.”

And so the writers stretched it to the point where, if you never saw the show and sat down for an episode, you’d think the show was about a bunch of touchy-feely pretty people on a goddamn island that want to screw each other but their feelings keep stopping them. You’d think it was Gilligan, only not funny.

But, I keep watching it. Why? Because seeing those little bits of actual plot are worth seeing Sawyer get his fucking hair cut. Because when all is said and done, and the show loses viewers and ratings, it’s so going to be worth seeing that timer hit zero and wipe these fuckers off the face of the planet.

And when they’re sitting pretty in the afterlife, they can flashback on all the time and energy they wasted being a pack of bitches instead of getting shit done - tie Charlie up, let Michael die looking for his kid, let Sawyer’s hair grow out, and find out what in god’s name is behind that huge ass electromagnetic Door To Hell.

If I was on Lost, I’d regulate.

* Yeah, not the best use of the term here, but as that damn timer-forgiveness-alloance is a device that furthers the plot, I thought it relevant. So there.