Island of significant return

Well Here's a doozy of a conundrum wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, that came in the same box as a mystery: no, not the plot of LOST - but rather why on earth I have seen every episode of a show which, truth be told, annoys the living piss out of me.

Okay, for those of you who've been trapped on an island (ho ho) for the past 5 years, the show is about a bunch of annoying people whose plane crashed on a mysteriously hard to find island filled with unlikely and spooky dangers, including but not limited to polar bears, mindreading smoke monsters, and the remnants of other castaway groups, all inhabiting/contolling bizaree sets of experimental science stations left behind by a new age utopian initiative that at one point tried to "harness" the wierdness of the island for everything from medical research to time travel.

The show follows a strict format, each episode providing about 20% "now" plot, combined with a character-specific flashback. Through these we learn that no only does hokey coincidence tie all the main characters together, but so does the island, the people from the island, and some kind of struggle for control of the island. More recently we begin to realise that parallel timelines and an amount of time travel is central to not just these coincidences, but the Island itself, and perhaps even the fractured back-and-forth narrative, as we begin to get flash-forwards, and a definite sense of two or three parallel timelines.

I mean okay I'm a big classic SF fan, so it's obvious why I keep watching: for every 8 bloody years of hokey exposition, there is always a tantalising  microglimpse of something cool: mostly the simply gorgeous, sinister 60s retro apparatus hidden all over the island. It is cool looking, and it is very nicely devised so as to suggest any number of possible explanations as to the main theme of the show: what the FUCK is going on? Also the time distortion - tied to the more interesting characters - is very cool indeed.

And indeed you'll have the occasional (as in, there's been all of what? ONE of them) simply great classic episode that really puts it out there. I'm talking about season 4 episode 5 here... he said, embarassing himself. 

See, I didn't even need to look that up. Why do I know this shit? And I mean, that's not even a cool thing in itself, cos I don't get to run across a tropical island with a funky 70s rifle and point it at some sinister dude's head and go "How do I know this???" because I'm not a character in the show... I'm just a wanker on the internet.

(haha - or am I??? Ooooooeeeeooooo...)

But in order to get these teensy weensy glimpses, you have to wade through awful, awful, mawkish, unlikely crap establishing the labyrinthine intersecting lives and motivations of the characters, 99% of whom I honestly want to stab to death with a broken soup bowl. I mean, these people are Fuckers. Every time their annoying eyes fill with tears and their slappable little ballbag faces screw up... ohh, god. 

I'm obviously way off FOX's demographic here, cos it would appear that I hate them in direct inverse proportion to their popularity. Jack and Kate (look up the actors' names yourself if your so curious) are just seriously the most annoying people in the world, with their full range of 3 facial expressions and their repeditive, go-nowhere love triangle crap. How come the almost equally annoying Sawyer hasn't given them more appropriate nicknames like Arsecandle and Fuckface?

One thing that is NOT interesting about this series is who-snogs-who.

And sure, I could get LOST (ho, ho) in an itemised list of these bumheads, but I won't. Suffice to say I have one major objection to everyone in the series... sorry, everyone in the curious clique that actually *does* anything - there are after all another 40 nobodies who only show up when the word "everyone" used - and that is this: they are all superpeople.

Even Hurley - the token slob - is a superslob who won the lottery. Sayed is Iraqi national guard. Jack's a supersurgeon, kate's a superfugitive, locke is a superloser... can we have some mediocrity please? The whole thing rests on this kind of commodified drama, this 21st century notion that in order to be real you gots to have real drama in *spades*. Sun and Jin are the supertroubled couple... meh. Even hobbit boy is a supermusician. And implicit in this is the notion that more dramatic people get to lead... because everyone else is just in the background to get shot or worried about.

And okay I do like one of two of them: specifically Hurley is kinda likeable, while Sayed and Desmond are kinda cool (okay, Desmond's regiment is the regiment my Da was in, sorta sentimental, sorry) yet very selective in how they're allowed to be cool... the writing *is* inconsistent and many characters flick from ultra competent to ultra useless as it requires.

But the one truly great character who just keeps me coming back? Ben, leader (or perhaps ex leader) of the island's "hostiles". Not only is he just an epic character actor, enjoying the shit out of his role and getting *all* the good lines, but he also kinda hates everyone and that'll do me. Shame about his ridiculously hot daughter buying it, but ah well...

Look, anyways, enough rambling. I guess if you lived in a time warp (oho!) and you don't know the show, you'll have guessed that in many ways it's kinda sorta rewarding watching... sorta...

Suffice to say that with season 4 halfway through (and this whole half-series thing? Deserves a whole other rant actually...) the show does seem to finally be working, finally actually going somewhere, and making a twisted amount of sense. The only thing that rivals last-man-on-earth SF for me is time travel SF, so I'm no longer embarassed to like the show. It finally has SF meat on its bones, thanks to S04E05.

The production design, as already said, is genuinely tasty (those training videos? Great stuff) the direction is reasonable, and the script finally getting there. The concept, all told (thouigh I hate to admit it) is genuinely clever and I only feel like half a loser for knowing the show inside out like some big fat dorito munching internet turd (lose the "big fat" and substitute "tall skinny" and I guess that's me anyways).

But yeah... I'm conflicted. I reach for an episode with the guilt of a junkie breaking open his daughter's piggybank for a fix. I know I want it, I know it's no good for me... but that piggy's getting broken open and that's that.

My verdict?

An even, undecided five lost little piggies.