Locked, Loaded, and Why It All Might Go To Hell
"There is no story that is not true . . . The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others."
----Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart
LOST has shed viewers in the past nine months even as it airs episodes that creatively surpass anything viewers have seen in previous seasons. Critics and fans who’ve noted the creative resurgence parse the ratings decline and scratch their heads in puzzlement.
Some blame the ratings decline on a lack of answers, as if fans really wanted them. No. What many fans want is a continued weekly fix of those nerve-rattling, head-exploding moments such as when a grim-faced Mrs. Hawking turned to Desmond and told him he was doing it all wrong, luv, moments that blast open the metaphorical hatch to pulse-pounding new mysteries, not slam the bear cage door on tired, half-forgotten, old mysteries.
Others (you know who you are) blame the rating’s nosedive on this season’s focus on the Others. Or too much filler. Not enough Jate. Too much triangle. Not enough shirtless Sawyer. Or everyone’s favorite whipping posts, the pooping pair, Pikki.
But nothing in the season-long blame-game yet speaks of the obvious: LOST is growing up and not everyone is ready for the game to change. Like one of Walt’s unexplained growth spurts, the show has suddenly matured. However, its newfound maturity has come with a price. Doesn’t it always? Instead of Hot-Young-Things-on-Spring-Break with a few creepy mysteries stirred into the strawberry mojitos, now the show is grown-ass men tossing back three fingers of barrel-aged McCutcheon scotch, neat, in Baccarat tumblers, and nary a drop spilled despite the trembling hands.
I, for one, am thrilled. Good riddance to the viewers who won’t let themselves grow up to be cowboys.
So who are these dangerous old men and what are they doing on LOST? Or more precisely, how did they steal the thunder from the Hot Baby Bads bedding down on the beach?
Just for starters, this season had Christian Shepard, Charles Widmore, Edmund Burke, Mr. LaShade, and a guy so old and dangerous he doesn’t even have a first name, Mr. Paik. Then there’s Anthony Cooper who deserves the Golden Mop Bucket Lifetime Achievement Award for all the delirious mess he’s created this season. Coming up fast, a new contender for dangerous old man, the seemingly ageless Richard Alpert. Does he use that eyeliner because he’s as old as the Sphinx? You remember birthdays, don’t you King Toten-kohl-man?
But nothing more clearly marks the maturing of the show this season than the rise to preeminence of its two heaviest hitters, John Locke and Benjamin Linus, both of whom have long since left behind childhood’s illusions. While I’ve no doubt their sperm counts are still as ridiculously elevated as that of any other man on Testosterone Island, Locke and Linus leave the impression that they’re more interested in legacy than legs, more interested in reading “Crime and Punishment” than “Thongs on Fire.” Indeed, Locke and Linus are men in their prime, played by actors at the peak of their prodigious powers, and when they’re on screen together it’s simply electrifying. You might even say it’s epic.
But what sort of epic?
J. Woods reminds us that "In Joseph Campbell's hero's journey monomyth, the hero crosses from the safe world over a series of thresholds into a dangerous realm.…The hero can either emerge changed, or can die and someone else takes on the hero mantle."*
But since this is LOST, let's take a more complicated look. There are different types of heroes on different types of journeys.
Carolyn Martin tells us that "An epic hero, like Odysseus, is typically set apart from other characters by his capacity to endure many trials and tests. A tragic hero, like Hamlet or Oedipus, is typically a man of consequence brought down by an insuperable conflict, or through his own weakness."**
And then there’s King Lear who was brought down by his own weakness, but the story doesn’t end there. Lear emerged forever changed after he spent a night on the moor and LOST in the fog. And I do mean lost and I do mean changed. He became ethereal and fairly glowed with an OTHER-worldly luminosity. But to this day, no one, including the Shakespearean scholars, knows exactly what happened to Lear when he was lost in the fog that FATEful night.
Thus, are Locke and Linus heroes? If so, are they epic or tragic? Have we seen enough to decide once and for all who is who and what is what? Or does a night lost in the fog await either, neither, or both?
You tell me.
Whatever the case, their stories are far more fascinating than the comparatively simpler heroic paths to redemption being trod by the young Losties on the beach, no matter how on fire their respective thongs might be.
I should probably end here because that last sentence is an ender if ever I wrote one, but I can’t close without mentioning what might be the most dangerous old man of all. Jacob. Ancient of chair, ancient of voice, spirit, and countenance - something happened to him. His voice sounded like a rusty-hinged door creaking open. A door that’s been shut for centuries. If there is a King Lear on the island, Jacob has my vote. I can’t wait to see his story.
But is all this potential story greatness going to go to hell? Will LOST continue a path to rival the greatest Dostoevskian and Shakespearean tragedies? Or will LOST bend over and set its thong on fire for the sake of ratings?
I’m guessing we’ll know after the season III finale.
* J. Woods, Lost’s Greatest Hits.
http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=2094
**Carolyn Martin, Cornell University
http://reading.cornell.edu/reading_project_05/study.html
