I’ll be the first to admit it, my Battlestar Galactica review earlier in the week took a lot out of me. It was an emotionally draining experience. I don’t find it easy to come down against shows that I usually really enjoy, but I had no alternative with their season finale. Really, I didn’t.
But, last night’s Lost seems to have brought me out of my funk and to the brink of madness. It was great, it was genius, it was well told… it had absolutely nothing to do with freakin’ series as a whole as far as I can tell. I liked the backstory, I liked learning about who Nikki and Paolo were, but the fact that the producers went back and showed us scenes from earlier episodes and focused on Nikki and Paolo in them was a little much. If I was a slightly bigger geek than I am, I’d go back and rewatch those episodes (like the pilot) to see if Nikki and Paolo are really there in the background. Though some will disagree, I’m just not that big a geek. Not that I am denigrating all you other geeks out there, it’s good to be a geek, but I’m still not going back and checking it out.
If Nikki and Paolo are there in those early episodes, I applaud the producers for thinking ahead, or, I would except that they (and this is a spoiler, but not too big of one because it happens in the first 5 minutes last night) they killed them night without ever telling us why they were there to begin with. So, then what’s the point in wasting my time on them? They seem to have been completely unimportant. It requires a leap of faith I’m not sure I’m willing to give the show anymore to state that there must be a reason for having included them all season long and now having killed them.
There was a time I’d have given Lost the benefit of the doubt on this sort of thing and said to you and everyone else that would listen: no, no, Lindelof and Cuse and the boys have a plan. They’ve done this for a reason, they had it worked out ahead of time and knew last year or the year before they were going to do this. I don’t think that anymore.
Article comments
1 - Ty
"If I was a slightly bigger geek than I am, I’d go back and rewatch those episodes (like the pilot) to see if Nikki and Paolo are really there in the background. "
They aren't because they were not part of the cast when those original episodes aired.
2 - TV and Film Guy
And you know that they weren't extras then (even uncredited)? I'd agree, but I don't know it without checking.
3 - Phillip Winn
TV, they weren't there. I played a fun game -- well, fun for me, though it annoyed my wife -- in which I mentioned at each camera change whether the scene was old or new. The trick wasn't that those two existed back then, but that they brought Maggie Grace, Ian Somerhalder, and the guy who played Arzt *back* to film new scenes. At some points the scene switched every two seconds, from old to new to old to new again. Amazing work on their part.
But you're right; this was not planned. I'm sure of that. And still I loved it.
4 - STM
What's going on? A: don't know; something; nothing; no fu.ken idea (tick whichever is applicable).
Where am I?: A: absolutely no fu.ken idea, again mate, what about you?; a desert island in the south pacific; nowhere; a parellel universe; some other place in the time/space continuum where poor acting is not only acceptable, it's encouraged; a black-hole vortex of really bad plot/script development.
I/we have been: A: conned; sucked-in big time; voting with my/our feet; voting with my/our remote; switching off in droves.
What am I?: A: about as useful as tits on a bull; the small-screen equivalent of mogadon; Lost (the TV series).