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Living life one montage at a time
Critiquing the TV show Lost
By Tyler Gaskill
- Lost shows theres no need for hope when there are washing machines available on the island inside a buried bunker.
Its easy to scoff at a show like Lost.
When the pilot was being advertised, the show looked like an over-dramatic Gilligans Island or poor mans Cast Away. A plane crashes on what looks like a deserted island.
Luckily for the survivors, this is a winning lotto ticket of plane crashes.
Many viewers would die to be stuck in tropical purgatory with these people: a doctor (Jack Shepard) who can miraculously heal people, and a walking survival guide (John Locke), complete with an assortment of knives and the know-how to use them.
And dont forget the slew of women who look like their previous careers involved walking on runways and puking in public bathrooms, or the line-up of oily-chested men with stone-cut abs.
Scoffs usually come after the viewer realizes theyre watching a TV show, and not a Bowflex commercial.
As it turns out, there is no bulbous man in a blue polo shirt merrily abusing his powerless skinny counterpart. Instead, Lost has a black cloud roaming the jungle, selectively killing people.
Gilligans Island had whacky indigenous natives. Lost has baby-stealing manipulative creeps with a penchant for hanging people. They conveniently live in the ultimate gated community in the middle of the island. Their gate blows up your brain with sound waves if you try to cross it.
Cast Away showed hope gives people the endurance to keep surviving. Lost shows theres no need for hope when there are washing machines available on the island inside a buried bunker.
Although the washing machines are gone now that the bunker imploded when the button that saves the world wasnt pressed and sent one of the characters backwards in time. Im not making that up, thats what really happened.
Oops, spoiler. Oh well. If ratings are an indicator of anything, no one is watching Lost anyways.
Admittedly, the setup is unbelievable. Who cares? I urge someone to write a TV drama strictly rooted in reality. Go ahead. All done? Heres what youve got: For the 30 minutes, the protagonist is at work. The last half hour of the show they eat with their family, watch TV, and then go to bed “ because theyve got to get up early for work the next day.
Your life may be more dramatic than that, but is it all the time? If your show is going for realism, then it cant have a misrepresentative amount of drama. I guess this means you could consider every TV show unbelievable. Its almost like thats the nature of fiction.
Reality TV was a response to this desire to view reality. Without a doubt, reality TV captures the hard truths of being human: The overweight only exist in competitions trying to fix their problems; smart people, Ugs as I refer to them, are all ugly and visa versa for the pretties; when I come home there are cameras waiting for me to be beamed to the television sets of a nation.
I understand why so many people scoff at unrealistic shows like Lost. Its frustrating enough to walk down the street and see how unrealistic our lives are in comparison to what we see on TV. The last thing anyone wants to watch is an unrealistic TV show.
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