i09 has a rant on Lost —
In fact, were we supposed to care the Dogen has a magical baseball that reminds him not to fight?
In fact, sure. I’d argue that the baseball is a moral checkpoint, and that somewhere in their minds when they were composing the season, someone thought, “Which is a better reflection of American morality — baseball or fourth-rate Steven Segal ‘ultra-violence’ and what we saw in certain prisons between the years of 2003 and 2008?”
Because the spectrum of strategy put into the show is much wider than lines like this —
Sure he’s a kick-ass ninja, but were we sad when he and his nerdy sidekick were brutally cut down by Sayid?
In a way, this is the kind of argument that was the precursor to the end of The Sopranos — i.e., “He’s kicking ass!” “Isn’t it wrong that he’s killed people?” “He’s still kicking ass!” “What about the lives he’s ruined?” “He’s kicking ass!”
Or — as David Chase is quoted as saying —
The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people’s alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted “justice.” They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly. But these people have always wanted blood. Maybe they would have been happy if Tony had killed twelve other people. Or twenty-five people. Or, who knows, if he had blown up Penn Station. The pathetic thing — to me — was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years”.
In other words — the time for “glee” and a willful lack of foundation is over.
My guess on where Lost is going is that we will be presented with an alternative theory of why God isn’t in day-to-day life — he has to keep the devil on the island.
Also — I only know the plot, but what if the process by which the “candidate” becoming “the New Jacob” happens to mirror something from Piers Anthony’s On A Pale Horse?
The point of the last season is that it is an argument for “the best of all possible worlds.” It is an argument about consistent, active morality, and what that means when good is a constant. And what will be interesting will be the way in which the two timelines start to move against each other — or how you can build an arc when you have — so far — two parallel lines that only hint at a crossover — i.e., “It worked,” the appendix, and so on.
