Lost: Of Science and Magic



The Lost finale is this Sunday and I, like the rest of the viewers of this show, want answers. I think, however, that the answers I am looking for aren't necessarily the ones that are being discussed on the entertainment sites. I don't need to know what the island is. It just IS. I don't need to know the Smoke monster's real name. What I need to know is how you make science and magic exist in the same reality. More specifically: how will the writers resolve the role of Desmond in both bringing the Losties to the island in the first place (he forgot to push the button, remember) and traveling through time and multiple dimensions (OMG Desmond is Scott Bakula!) with the role of Jacob. Fundamentally it comes down to this: how much of this show has been scifi and how much has been fantasy/ religion. Because I gotta tell you. I LOVE the scifi stuff. "The Constant" was seriously the best episode ever (ok, maybe "Some Like It Hoth") and I really dug the bits traveling through time and Daniel Faraday and his creepy mom (who also travels through time?) and the Dharma people and the teleporting bunnies and the electromagnetism stuff. What I'm not so digging is Jacob. In fact. I freaking hate Jacob. Because basically, he crashed a plane, killed a bunch of people, and destroyed the lives of a ton of others so that he could get a replacement. And sure, yeah, Jack and Kate and Sawyer were kinda having a crappy time of it back home, but what about all those folks that just died on that plane for no reason? If Jacob is so high and mighty, couldn't he have manipulated it so they all got on a private plane with only the people who actually mattered and let everybody else go on their merry way? Nope. He's just a dick like that. At least Desmond was SORRY for crashing Oceanic 815, I mean he couldn't have actually known what the button did. But anyway... But my dislike of Jacob aside, I wouldn't care so much about him if we didn't get all mixed up with this magical religion nonsense.

Before this season, I always saw Jacob/ the Island as sort of like one of those omnipotent floaty aliens on Star Trek that don't allow the Enterprise crew to mess with things or cut the the ships power to keep them out of their space or suck on its warp core cuz it thinks its a boob. I totally envisioned that all the "ghosts" that were appearing were just like when Riker goes down to that planet and the kid makes him think he's his son and all that cuz he's lonely or something. And yes, I knew that they weren't going to go with aliens. And that's cool. Adding weird mythological elements are ok, but only if they jive with the essential structure of the show. Tell me that the island is unstuck in time and I'm all over it, tell me that there is some wacky stuff going on with electromagnetism that makes people age backwards and that's why women can't have babies. But if you are going to tell me that all that is because a djinn or demon or whatever has been released and some asshole needs to put it back in its bottle or magical glowy cave or whatever then try... TRY to make that not completely lame. Seriously as soon as they brought up the whole glowy cave and the smoke monster coming out, all I could think of was "Ali Baba Bunny" where Bugs finds the cave of jewels and Daffy tries to steal the jewel and the guy is like Hassan chop up in there and then Daffy gets all shrunk by the genie and stuff. Looks like Jack Shepard took a wrong turn at Albuquerque on his way to Pismo Beach.

So here's my final thoughts on Lost. I don't need you to explain everything. I don't mind if what is going on is some sort of power play between two ancient deities or something, though.. yeah.. I kinda do mind. But, like in the book I read a few months ago "The Gates" there is a way to effectively combine technology and science with the supernatural. But you have to try.

What the "F" Lost, What the "F"?!

Ok, so this isn't going to be a comprehensive review of last night's episode of Lost or anything. Rather it is going to be a very specific complaint about something that happened in that episode.

::SPOILERS::

..

..

..

Ok... have I put enough spaces to that people won't see the spoilery stuff in the preview?

Alright...so I'm really really mad that the Kwons died. I wouldn't be mad if one died, I wouldn't have even been mad if they both died in a different way, but I am VERY mad that they died the way they did. Here's why. THEY HAVE A FREAKING KID!!! Now, maybe you think "hey, maybe they just forgot they have a kid back home to take care of" but they were JUST talking about how Jin found the camera that had pictures of their little baby girl. So you know they had it on their mind. And THEN after all that, Jin decides to just go ahead and die with his wife because he can't live without her. Guess who else can't live without you? Your KID! Or are you perfectly happy having her raised by.. by who exactly? Sun's mom? My husband called me after seeing the episode (and before I did) and said that he would do the same thing (meaning he would stay by his wife). Really, because I would much rather have you try to get back to take care of my baby thank you very much. Somebody has to. How selfish to just choose to die and not think about this little infant that is living alone. Both poor little Ji Yeon and Aaron have the worst parents on the planet.

Oh... and not only did they have to die, but they had to do the lame ass Titanic-y way of almost holding hands then then floating away. Where was the Celine Dion?

Otherwise good ep, and I'm not saying that they needed to live. Just the whole "I can't live without you" think is SOO Twilight. These aren't things that adults would do. Adults would think about responsibilities. If Jin and Sun were teenagers then maybe I could forgive their immaturity. But come on, get real.

End of rant

Things That I Read

This Week: The Gunslinger by Stephen King [audio read by George Guidall]

Grade: H for Huuuuuuuuh?

I have never read any Stephen King books before. There, now that's out of the way. Therefore, I really had absolutely no idea what to expect when I sat down to listen to this book. Based on the movie versions of many King books I've seen: Shawshank Redemption, Carrie, The Green Mile, The Shining, etc, I knew that King had sort of a dual personality; he can be both terrifying and also very lyrical and sad. The Gunslinger was something else entirely. It caught me completely off guard and made me actually think while I was listening, which was entirely unexpected. I consciously tried to avoid reviews or blurbs about this book before I started it, specifically because I wanted that element of surprise, and I'm very glad that I did. I am going to try my best to not reveal any major plot points in this review specifically for that reason, so I apologize now if this is too vague.

First thoughts when I start listening: Holy Cow! Ian McShane is reading this book! Oh... huh... its not Ian McShane. Weird... I wonder if Ian McShane is related to George Guidall. Is George Guidall a pseudonym for Ian McShane? No? Huh. Part of what made this book for me was the reading. The guy really really does sound like Ian McShane which made it work for me since I love Deadwood so much. When I went on the Freedom Trail tour in Boston our tour guide sounded EXACTLY like Paul Giamatti in John Adams so maybe these actors just purposefully put on voices that are approximations of other people. Who knows. Anyway, I definitely recommend listening to this book for a couple of reasons. First of all, the guy gets it just right with the voices, and second, its the kind of story that might be told over some whacked out post apocalyptic campfire, and just sounds better aloud. Anyway... on the review.

The Gunslinger is a post apocalyptic fantasy. I guess. The genre is really hard to pin down. Most of the book feels like a Western with a scifi bent, typical end of the world wanderings. Then there are elements of the story which are very traditional for high fantasy stories, specifically flashbacks to the gunslinger's childhood which takes place in a sort of pseudo-medieval castle where people use guns instead of swords. Last year I read Lamentation by Ken Scholes which is also sort of post apocalyptic, in that the bulk of the story takes place after this major city is destroyed and people are trying to pick up the pieces, etc. But that book made it very clear to the reader that you were reading about a fantasy-type place after a disaster. The Gunslinger on the other hand, throws in references to things in our own Earth's past mixed in with the fantasy stuff. Example: the "old tune" someone is playing on a piano is "Hey Jude." This was very disconcerting. Later on, the character of Jack is introduced, who is this boy who somehow ended up in this barren landscape. He can only vaguely remember his own past, but it seems almost identical to our own. This poses a lot of questions also. How did the world get from how it was in the gunslinger's childhood? How did the boy get there in the first place? Is there some kind of metaphor I'm missing? Are we in Hell/ Purgatory? I'm assuming that some of the answers come in the later volumes, but I can tell you that this book ends without any clear sense of what year it is, what sort of alternate reality these characters are living in, or what the heck everybody is doing.

But the thing I liked the most about this book was the uncertainty. Things genuinely surprised me because I had absolutely no idea where the story was going to go. A similar post apocalyptic story, like The Road by Cormac McCarthy, can only go so far in terms of its storytelling. Roving bands of marauders who kill people? Sure why not. Cannibalism, desolate landscapes, fragments of lost civilization? Naturally. Zombies? Ok, not in The Road, but certainly World War Z has done the whole zombie-pocalypse thing. But The Gunslinger includes all the traditional end of days tropes in addition to some seriously strange, mind bending fantasy. That means that at one moment characters can be walking along in the traditional desolate nothingness and come across a talking crow for some reason. Or, they could encounter people who have been raised from the dead or possessed by demons. That stuff is kinda odd. The moment I'm convinced that the story just takes place after the classic Christian apocalypse (i.e. The Stand), there's another flashback to Roland's childhood and I think "what! ok, this is so not normal Earth we are talking about." Oh, the gunslinger's name is Roland, by the way. You don't actually find out until the second disc on the audio, and I'm not sure what page that would be equivalent to in the actual book. I liked that off the bat. The story starts out and he is just "the gunslinger" like Clint Eastwood in Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Anyway, bottom line, this book is really really good. I hear that the version I listened to is the revised one, but I can't tell you how it differs from the original. Apparently The Gunslinger is the shortest of all the books in the series, which I'm actually happy about. The sparse language worked to jump me right into the story, but I couldn't help but wish there were more descriptions of things, more background information, more plot. Plot actually was the weakest thing in this story. Roland chases this Man in Black across the entire country for reasons that never make themselves clear. He wants to find this Dark Tower apparently, but why does he need the Man in Black to find it? Reading/ listening to this book is definitely like watching the first season of Lost. You have some of the major pieces in play, but you haven't even met Desmond or The Others yet. Remember when the Tailies came? Why the heck are there polar bears?! Looking back as Lost starts its final season, you take a lot of knowledge for granted, even as questions remain unanswered. That John Locke used to be in a wheelchair was such a revelation. Seeing the smoke monster for the first time was really crazy, not to mention the first time the gang jumped through time. I have a feeling that reading the Dark Tower series is going to be a similar experience for me. I really hope so. Oddly enough, there are some of the same themes, both science fictional and religious in both The Gunslinger and Lost, in particular the Man in Black himself, who is much like Jacob's nemesis/Other-Locke. I wonder if in reading/ listening to this series and watching the final season of Lost at the same time will give me any additional insight. Or maybe I'll just have twice as many WTF moments.

On to The Drawing of The Three

Afterword: Started listening to Drawing of the Three on audio and its a different guy who doesn't sound very good at all. I have a few other books on my plate right now, but I'll get around to reading it in actual book form soon.