Monday, March 8, 2010

mission accomplished

Lately I've been having trouble accomplishing things.  It's come through here in the blog, as my post frequency has slowed, and I've got something like five drafts of partial posts that I can't seem to finish.  It's come through in my reading life, as one of those post drafts will recount in too much detail if I ever get it finished.  I haven't knitted much since the snow days when I finished that baby hat.  My house is a mess, perhaps even more than usual.  And even though I'm moving all my possessions to a new place later this month, I've done almost nothing to prepare for that. 

The one thing that I have been accomplishing lately has been mentioned a couple times here, and I'm proud to report to you today, imaginary readers, that I can cross it off my list.  After countless hours wasted in front of my laptop, I got caught up on Lost.

*******SPOILER ALERT: If you continue reading, you may encounter plot points from the first five seasons and the first few eps of season six.  I won't even begin to put myself through figuring out how to write this spoiler-free.********

Honestly, I'm still not sure exactly how I feel.  This past weekend, when I was only a couple of episodes into season 5, I was at work which meant I could only think about Lost instead of watching it.  I tried to really pin myself down about why I had gotten so tired of it and quit watching.  The only thing I've ever been able to articulate about it is that the show got stupid.  I still stand by that.  The crazy physicist and the temporal displacement and the island-moving just took things too far.  My suspension of disbelief was stuck back in Jacob's cabin with Jack's dead dad and the smoke monster, and I couldn't take any more ridiculous.  When I forced myself past the ridiculous this time, I found more crazy waiting for me, but maybe, just maybe, it did redeem itself a bit.

My favorite thing about the show has always been the characters, their backstories, their personal agendas, and all the "coincidences" of their pre-island lives.  Sayid and Jack are my faves, but I love nearly everyone.  And even with those that aren't my favorites, I can appreciate all the work that the show has done creating these people and showing us their lives and flaws and motivations.  They're seriously well-drawn characters--they make me care, perhaps more than is strictly healthy when we're talking about fictitious folk here.  So the more the show moved towards the island as a character, the less interested I have become.  Plus my innate nosiness could only survive so many years without answers before I had to make a break.  And Ben Linus irks me, though I appreciate that someone has to be the antagonist.


But I realized something more on Saturday before I was caught up, and perhaps it's the real reason I got so fed up.  Everyone's miserable, always.  Perhaps more accurately, Sayid's miserable always, and Jack's miserable, except for those two or three scenes in a season four flash forward when he and Kate and Aaron are playing house, before she does the favor for Sawyer and he gets hopped up on pills.  And I guess I could only tolerate three and a half seasons of abject misery before I got tired of it all, and I had to quit watching to save myself from being miserable too.  Rewatching it this time has been easier because I haven't had to wait a week or through an eight month hiatus to find out if these characters that I learned to love back in 2005 ever catch a break.

Now that I'm caught up again and have seen the twenty-four episodes that aired since I quit the show, I still don't know exactly how I feel about it.  I think the focus has shifted back to the characters more, which is good.  But the misery is still alive and well and beating everyone up all the time.  Poor John Locke.  Poor Sayid.  Poor Sawyer (who, by the way, I'm never going to call James).  They make my heart hurt.  And I have questions streaming from my pores about the "flash sideways." 


I know I'll be able to finish out this final season now.  But let me promise you now that if the ending is as vague and hopeless as I am afraid it may be, I will be so sorry I ever let myself care, and I'll think twice before trusting J.J. Abrams again.

On the bright side, now that this catch-up session is complete, maybe I can accomplish things in my life once more--but perhaps only after I kick the stupid cold that decided to attack me on Sunday.

4 comments:

  1. I can't say much about this post, since I don't get to watch much tv. I have been catching reruns of Friends and Scrubs after the kiddos are snoozing --good times. But I'm not current on anything, not even Wizards of Waverly Place. I mostly wanted to comment about the new photo. You are too cute! This picture even makes you look sweet. Is that some miracle camera you bought? jk lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. Putting It Together Blog Style
    I've spent a lot of time working on this.
    It's time to get to work
    Blogging isn't easy.
    A blog is just a vision if it's only in Ellen's head.
    If no one gets to read it it's as good as dead!
    It has to come to life!
    word by word, putting it together
    word by word, only way to make a work of art
    Every moment makes a contribution
    Every little detail plays a part
    Having just a vision's no solution
    Everything depends on execution
    Putting it together, that's what counts!
    word by word, putting it together
    Small amounts, adding up to make a work of art
    First of all you need a good foundation
    Otherwise it's risky from the start

    Michael Scott

    ReplyDelete
  3. Where are Mac, Shane, and Robyn on this one? I am a big Lost fan. I love the characters more than the crazy island as well, but as evidenced by the Pilot episode (Locke walking/smoke monster) the island has always been a "character". I generally don't like misery in my entertainment, but if the story is done really well and there seems to be hope of something better, I stick with it. I also like unique storytelling like the information-revealing flashbacks and character-centric shows. I have really enjoyed the information they have shared about the island/Jacob/Man in Black. The scene with Jack and Richard in the Black Rock was awesome. I have some sadness about some of the characters and were they are, mainly Locke and Sayid. Can't wait to see the finished product! This mission of yours was definitely worthy of delaying some opinion-sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've never watched Lost, but I think that I'd like to some day, so I don't read stuff about it so as to preserve the surprises in the story.

    ReplyDelete

what do you think?