B-B-B-BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POLAR BEAR!?

my brother is really into lost and he's always asking me if i've been watching it and my answer is always the same; "dude, that show is fucking retarded." am i wrong? i've seen the first season and i've watched part of the second, and while i thought the first season had its moments, at some point i couldn't fight my suspicion that the writers of the show are utterly pulling dingleberries out of their asses. and how right i was in my suspicions. you know it's true. it's not even a show i can watch for the sheer sake of hating-- it's just too pretentious. this is what kills me about people saying that art is pretentious; sorry, but there are fewer things more pretentious than the overwrought melodramatic morass that is lost. but lost is a good example of how pop culture phenomena can be just as overly serious and dreadfully self-important as any art studies thesis. i mean, the fucking seriousness of it all. do any of these people smile or laugh? i know, i know-- it's all life or death, constantly. every fucking minute. jack, w/ his serious stubble, sawyer w/ his serious stubble and badboy swagger, kate w/ her serious badgirl vacillating between the serious hero and the serious anti-hero. and, then, of course my favorite: locke. so much for subtlety, right dear writers? what as-yet-unveiled "other" villain waits in the wings? a 6'7 demigod named freddy n. who bloviates about being "beyond good and evil"?

what really cheeses me about lost, though, is that it's a textbook example of pseudo-profundity. see, this is why i would choose to watch a michael bay movie over lost, b/c michael bay makes no artistic or philosophical pretense about what he does. he makes movies about blowing shit up and makes those movies look good technically. if you think transformers "raped your childhood," 1., you're an idiot, 2., you're an idiot, and 3., you're a fucking moron. transformers is a fucking cartoon about transforming alien cars-- what did you expect the cinematic adaptation to be? is this, truly, what we've become? face it: you hated the movie and you hate michael bay b/c he reveals the truth about your childhood: that it was a cheap commodity filled w/ cheap, commidified memories that could be exploited by someone like michael bay. don't hate the mirror, hate the reflection. but i'm being tangential. back to lost. the thing w/ lost is that there is so much hype surrounding it and you expect it to sort of live up to that hype, but it doesn't, and to be fair, what could? can't we all just admit that the creators haven't the foggiest idea where they're going? which would be fine if there was a premise, but there isn't w/ lost. there is no predicate. lost is purely (and quite literally) smoke and mirrors. a good example of how this pseudo-profundity fools people is this comment made by a commenter at the lost sucks site:

LOST doesn’t suck. The reason a lot of people think LOST lost it’s [sic] edge is because it is a show you actually have to think about.

er, no. it isn't a show you have to think about. lost, much like donnie darko, is a spectacle that tricks and fools you into believing it's an "experience" you have to think about. it isn't. there is nothing to think about or mull over b/c there is nothing to "get." there are things that can confuse you b/c of metaphor, symbolism, or subtext, but lost has none of these; it merely appears to. there is such a crucial, vital difference. lost fails by its own logic. it isn't a character-driven show. it doesn't explore internal landscapes or emotions-- it is a plot-driven enterprise. as such, it fails one of the basic rules of the narrative formula: of advancing the storyline. this is the hubris of the show's creators. they want to eat their cake and have it, too* but they can't pull it off. they want to break rules and look "edgy" but they really just come off as that sheltered tool in high school who got really good grades and discovered punk rock in his thirties b/c wants to be seen as rebellious, you know, like those choads at gizmodo. fuck that. geeks are geeks. they're not cool. stop trying to be cool, "deep" or "edgy."

lost makes a lot of half-assed allusions and nods to philosophy, but the creators of lost have failed to recognize their true ideological and stylistic counterpart: slavoj zizek.

*i know that sounds weird, but think about it: you can't have a cake after you've eaten it. "eat your cake and have it too" was actually the original form of this proverb.