Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Lost in Space

Now that Lusht has returned from its 'hiatus' (ie: 'hey guys, how do we make this thing start moving again?'), let's look at exactly how wayward it's become shall we? Firstly the two month break was an insult that no amount of calling it a 'mini-season' could disguise. Don't be surprised if a slew of time-wasting episodes followed by an eight week disappearance affects your ratings, you morons at ABC. Frankly I would have thought that the success of the thing so far would have guaranteed some kind of top-level solutions as to how to get it back on track. But no...
From this you have probably gathered that I'm losing my patience. OK, I've lost it. maybe that was the point of the title all along. They could have a new mega billboard campaign with the words: 'HAVE YOU LOST IT YET?' hovering over the lush jungle. Or a picture of one of Jack's fabulous Jackfaces! Boy, they've been plentiful over the last couple of weeks.
Of course the real problem was that when they started revealing stuff the whole edge-of-your-seat feeling was going to decrease exponentially. Like Pandora's box, no amount of trying to retrospectively stuff things back in will stop its steady decline. Thus we end up with a dismally extended section on the awful 'others' and their 'it's more complicated than that' explanation-avoidance stuff that they trot out instead of actually summing it all up in one sentence and thus making the next two years completely redundant. The people who watch this aren't total idiots (apart from the subscribers to this kind of nonsense) and can only take the same type of disappointment so many times before we know that any question posed will only result in some kind of vague obfustication that delays any gratification for the sake of franchise extension. This week's episode (plot spoil...oh who CARES?) was a fine case in point. Hurley's questions to the returned Sawyer (after weeks in the Others camp) amounted to 'Where's Jack?' (answer: the doc didn't make it) and were left at that. See? Even the main characters have given up hoping for anything but vagueness!
To be fair the series is still high on production values - this week's meteor strike was both hilarious and impressive, while still filling the viewer with the usual post 9-11 dread at it came whistling outta the sky (see pic). Plus it contained some genuine laugh-aloud moments - Sawyer's getting ALL the good lines these days. It still manages to produce a palpable sense of mounting edginess that gets the heart pumping. So, pace, editing etc - not bad, but as I say now we know that one mystery just leads to another, less-interesting one (cf: the Others' 'real' home ferchrissakes. I'm starting to wonder if there's an infinite number of islands now). It means that no matter how many weird bits the writers gratuitously shove in (the brainwashing room, the man with the eye patch, Desmond's life flashing before his eyes, Claire's incredible changing hairdo - in fact EVERYONE'S hair. Jack's appears to have just stopped growing etc.) you can't help shake the conviction that whatever happens will be a disappointment. Oh well, for one and a half seasons it was awesome...
Which brings me to my other televisual obsession, Battlestar Galactica. At approximately the same point in the run (season 3) as Lusht, it may have vaguely gone into hibernation with a couple of holding-pattern episodes about racism and unions in time of war (small-time stuff, then), but it's still the most compelling thing on MY screen these days. (I know, I'm missing Heroes, Deadwood, the Sopranos and err...Primeval out here, but frankly, I've only got a spare 40 minutes here and there these days, and life goes on). I know, I know - I'm even losing friends to this series, I keep banging on about it so much. But it occurred to me - as I wept like a pussy the other night as The Chief got the President's approval to begin union negotiations with the government and Admiral Adama demonstrated gritty determination in the face of Baltar's evil faux-prole scheming (I wish he HAD put Cally in front of a firing squad, mind) - that the big difference between Lusht and BG is the ability to make you care. While BG has just as much manipulation and nonsense it involves you by making you part of the family. Lusht just leaves you slightly satiated and wondering about all the enormous plot holes (and I'm not just talking about the imploded hatch).
There, I've said it; these people ARE like a family, with all their bickering, dysfunctionalism and deep, deep love (Starbuck's a fine case in point: never have I simultaneously hated, admired and just plain fancied a character). I used to wonder why the person who writes the TV Without Pity summaries got so deeply upset by the characters' moral and spiritual foibles until this week, when I realised I was doing it too. It sounds heavy, but frankly it's cathartic and all the healthier for it. PLUS it makes you think about the real world, while you're digging the awesome space-based action. How cool is that? Still on the agenda are the extremes a state/race will go to ensure its survival, the notion of one god verses a pantheon, and the true existence of fate. Such trivia.
Look, you can get the DVDs of the first two series on box set. Do it. You'll thank me. Honest...

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