No Time Lost

Yes, I’m watching too much TV, but one fortuitous choice I’ve made is to avoid ABC’s Lost over its entire run. (There’s a member of the family who faithfully records all episodes, so I can’t avert my eyes entirely.) Now in its sixth and final season, all questions will be resolved. But just look at the questions:

What was the upshot of the kookie nuclear explosion Jack (Matthew Fox) masterminded to rewrite history and render the series' whole storyline moot? And what's the scoop with the dead John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) coexisting with his very-much-alive John Locke look-alike?

Thank goodness I didn’t invest any of my steadily shortening cranial telomeres in these conundra. Having snapped up Harry Potter and Battlestar Galactica chapters when they came out, I like a good mystery set in fantasy worlds as much as the next fanboy. But I’ve learned to invest the time only if the characters are compelling and their fictional universe is imaginative. Here’s the Lost word from a critic who’s disappointed with these final episodes.

Lost's fantastical elements, like the donkey wheel and the vanishing island and smokey and time travel, were once offset by the plausible-yet-surprising non-fantastical plot lines. This balance made the show somewhat palatable. But now the equilibrium is off because the relatively realistic bits are so predictable—run, Kate, run!So I give up. I'll leave it to Chad to fill in the many dotted lines of parallelism. Sayid the torturer now gets tortured! Ethan is back! And he's giving drugs to Claire again! And Claire is the new Rousseau, stalking baddies on the island and blasting them with her rifle! And Claire is pissed like Rousseau because her son was stolen by Ethan, who helped the young Ben steal Rousseau's son!

Again, thank goodness. © 2010 Stephen Yuen