First off, tonight's Lost episode was a great offering, as usual. Any Desmond episode is bound to be a great one because it features the best character of the series. We learned that Charles Widmore was once on the Island; that Richard Alpert is apparently the only constant, never-aging Other; that a nuclear weapon is buried on the Island; and that Desmond named his kid Charlie. Yay!
However, before throwing ourselves full-fledged into this new season, we need to touch on the recent callousness of the show. For the first four seasons minus the two-part Season 4 finale, Lost treated the lives of each Oceanic 815 survivor as precious. Whenever a character major or minor died, it was treated as a monumental event on the show, and the remaining characters were obviously effected by the death and carried themselves as such. Now, over the past five episodes, it seems that only about 10-15 survivors matter on the show; that everyone else might as well be a Star Trek extra in a red uniform. Any character without an established storyline is being killed off, and it seems to be done without impacting the lives of the survivors in the slightest. There's been made much to-do about how Jack & Company need to return to the Island to save the people they left behind, but it appears the only survivors left by the time they return will be Sawyer, Juliet and maybe Locke. If that is the case (keep in mind Locke and Sawyer stayed on the Island of their own accord) what is the point of them returning at all? To save The Others?
That being said, this new format of storytelling on the show appears to be a great step forward for the show. In the beginning, the show had a limited number of characters and related the events on the Island with an individual character's back story. Then, the show switched it up and went with individual character's flash forwards. Now, having added and added characters over four seasons, there's so many storylines and backstories that they all can't be touched on in an episode. Instead, the show is jumping between current storylines as they all relate to the same plot strands, forgetting about flash forwards and flash backwards. A similar method of storytelling was used on The Wire, the HBO show that is easily the best piece of television ever created. Now, in this method of storytelling, the viewers lose a lot from episode to episode -- notice Jack & Company's storyline wasn't even touched on, even though there was a fairly significant cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode -- but it is the best way moving forward when there are as many lose ends to wrap up as Lost has.
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