Feb 24 2009
The top five reasons why LOST is grand
Frequent commenter Laneerg, who writes, on her Single Frugalton blog, about how to enrich your life with kind deeds and pancakes, honored me with a Life is Grand award. Thanks, Laneerg!
The award is intended to prompt people to count their blessings by writing posts that give five reasons why life is grand.
Being the nerd that I am, I opted to do a nerd version and write five reasons why LOST is grand.
1. It rewards patience. Most TV shows dole out their rewards after 30 minutes or an hour. LOST makes us wait for six years. The best part of anything is the anticipation, and LOST, which has the longest build-up of any show ever, gives us that in spades.
2. It gives us pretty things to look at. While horrific things happen in LOST — you never know who will get a flaming arrow through the chest or an arm torn off by a CGI monster — the scenery is so gorgeous, and the actors so much better-looking than any real-life planeload of passengers, that the show is able to function, among many other things, as a pleasant form of escapism.
3. Many of the actors are amazing. Has any other show, ever, had a better character actor than Michael Emerson (Ben)? It’s thrilling to hear what character actors Emerson, Ken Leung (Miles), and now also Fionnula Flanagan (Eloise Hawking) can do with their lines. Among the more rounded characters, Jorge Garcia (Hurley) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer) also put a distinctive spin on what they say — Dude! Yunjin Kim (Sun) gives a more subtle performance that doesn’t draw attention to itself, but is convincing in its portrayal of a woman who changes from a meek abused wife to a revenge-seeking mogul. I also give credit to the directors here, because when there are so many performances from so many actors that are this good, it’s not a coincidence.
3 (a). The overall quality and attention to detail are outstanding — the writing, the music, the cinematography all are wonderful. It’s the kind of quality I expect from a top-notch movie, not from a TV show.
4. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the producer-writers who are often the public face of LOST, are funny and smart. The first time I heard them do a DVD commentary (which was only recently, as my hard-core LOST nerdism didn’t start until after I began writing this blog), I knew I was in good hands.
5. The show is like a novel on steroids. It packs in almost any big literary theme you could think of — faith versus science, free will versus destiny, redemption, family, love, betrayal, the nature of time, the meaning of death. It has a cast of characters worthy of a sprawling Russian novel. It has more time to develop the characters than even the fattest book. And then it lightens it all up with monsters and shirtless stars.
