Friday, July 16, 2010

How to fix Lost Season 6!

It's no secret that I, along with most of my friends, were disappointed with how the sixth season of Lost turned out. For the most part it was a great deal of stalling, unnecessary characters, pointless twists, and useless episodes all around. It did have some very great moments, though. And I'd go so far as to say that a couple of episodes were some of the best I've ever seen. The Desmond one comes to mind. And, for all this season's other flaws, the final episode was very great and satisfying....as far as the characters (and ONLY the characters) are concerned. And even then, well, I just miss Mr. Eko is all.

But never-you-mind the could-have-beens. I'm proposing several ways that the last season of Lost could have been better as well as more fulfilling. Because if there's anything that leaves a Lost junkie feeling like he didn't have his fix, it's leaving about, oh, 86 percent of the most intriguing and important questions left unanswered!


First, and most importantly, DON'T MAKE SEASON SIX THE LAST SEASON!

Seriously, the way it was carried out made you think you were watching the closing of one of television's most interesting and cerebral shows rounding out its final lap, but...what if it was just to throw us off the scent? What if season SEVEN is around the corner?! And what if it fills in all the gaps left by an almost completely uninteresting season prior to it?


Second, and let's get a little more realistic, GIVE US SOME FRIGGIN' ANSWERS!!!!!@#$%

Here's how you do it: extend season six by two episodes. Got it? Okay, now, make the first four or five episodes jam-packed with the most easily available answers for all of the most long-standing questions. Why is Walt so special? He was born near radiation or something. Who is the economist? Somebody who is more powerful than Widmore. How did the man in black become the smoke monster? There's a demon trapped under the island and whomever comes in contact with it directly becomes cursed.
Now, I know these aren't very good answers. But they are, at the very least, ANSWERS! Cram all these answers in throughout the first handfull of episodes and, no matter how lame the rest of the season is, viewers will say to one another, "Well, at least they gave us some FRIGGIN' ANSWERS!!!!!#%@"


Third, and this is key, maintain the importance of the mysteries.

I likened the characters and story of lost as two peas in a pod: equal and linked. But then in season six, they dropped the importance of the mysteries and almost solely focused on characters. Why? We already love these people! Why try to drive that point home even more? This kind of thinking turned Lost into exactly what it shouldn't have been: a soap opera. It was supposed to be a thinking person's show and it somehow got shifted into an emotional melodrama.

And here's the kicker.....THEY INTRODUCED EVEN MORE MYSTERIES IN SEASON SIX THAT WERE NEVER ANSWERED! Why? WHY?

Listen Lost guys. We loved the show and the characters. And our infatuation with both happened as follows.

One, you showed us broken characters with troubled pasts from the get-go. And you kept that going for the entirety of the show. Which is great. But...

You also introduced even more mysteries about the island and its inhabitants (both native and foreign)! Why not get some of those out of the way?

It's simple when you think about it. We were going to be emotionally invested in these characters regardless. Because they are us. They embody every type of brokenness common to the common man. They're from all walks of life, just like us. But the mysteries unite us. They're what we talked about when the show wasn't on tv. We said to one another "Hey, I think Sawyer is funny, but what the crapsticks is that smokey thing? Where does it come from?"

You see? The thread holding the show together was the questions. And when you abandoned the thread, the pieces fell apart. And there's no way to put them together again. Yet still you expect us to marvel at the beauty of these broken pieces when all we wanted all along was a complete tapestry.

This would have been the lasting wonder of Lost. And now, with the abandoning of the very fibers of mystery that held the larger character pieces together, the show itself is Lost. It's the most aptly named show I've ever seen. And for all the wrong reasons.

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