The Dow Is Up!

Last night, I watched the season premier of Lost, and if you don’t want me to ruin the whole episode for you, you might want to go read something else right about now. I’m a fan of Lost. It’s one of the few shows I watch on TV. Seriously. I’m down to about 5-10 shows. In fact, I’ve even gotten away from CASUAL TV watching. I figure that if I’m going to watch TV, it might as well be something good. TiVo makes that a lot easier, of course. Anyway, yesterday was the season premier of Lost and it was fantastic!

Before I go into last night’s show, I should really start by saying that Lost is one of those shows that continually annoys me. It hasn’t gotten to a CSI-level of annoying, but it comes close. Most of the time, I feel like Lost poses more questions than it answers. I also feel like nothing really happens during a particular episode. And I continually want to scream at the characters, “Answer the fucking question!” or “Ask a follow-up question!”

On Lost, a lot of the characters like to be evasive, answering questions in a philosophical manner. In fact, it’s almost like they’re playing the Question Game on Whose Line Is It Anyway, where you have to answer each question with a question. (E.g. “What are you doing here?” “Why do you want to know?” “What business of it is yours?”) And I just get SO annoyed when people ask questions that aren’t answered. And then I get even more annoyed when the questioner doesn’t follow up. So, if Jack asks Locke a question about the hatch, and Locke says, “Don’t we all have to have something to believe in?” Jack needs to respond, “Fuck you, Locke! I was asking why you ate all the Cheetos! Give me an answer, now!”

But I digress. Yesterday’s episode was great because it actually answered a few questions. First of all, it answered (kind of) who The Others are. The first scene showed The Others in their village as the plane is crashing onto the island. It was interesting to see that all it looked like any other town in any other city. Except that it was in the middle of a tropical island. Another interesting note is that a book club was discussing a Steven King book. I couldn’t see which one it was though. And I’m too lazy to surf through the chat rooms to find the obsessive fan who freeze-framed their TiVo it to find out. My point is that the Steven King book is a lot more current than the music they had in the hatch.

Another revelation was that Juliet (one of The Others that was talking to Jack) said that the Dharma project is over and that they (The Others) were basically what was left over. Also, at one point, Jack tried to escape and flooded the place he was being. Later he said that they were underwater and she agreed.

This led me to wonder whether where Jack was being held was underwater or whether the WHOLE THING is underwater. One of my early theories on where they are was that they were in a BioDome-type of thing, which may or may not be underwater. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because of all the sunlight and whatnot. But they created sunlight in the movie The Truman Show, so maybe they could do it here as well.

I think the thing that really annoyed me last season was that we didn’t really get any perspective from The Others. This season, so far anyway, we have. I think that really helps shed light on the show. From one perspective, I can see how the writers don’t want to let you know too much. They want you to feel like you’re stranded too, that there are some “people” out there and you don’t know if they’re up to any good or not. That builds suspense, but only so far. What builds more suspense (in my humble opinion) is when you know The Others are up to no good. (By the way, from what the Creepy Other told Kate, they are certainly up to no good.) And so far, the writers have delivered on my wishes. Now, if they can just stop the actors from answering questions with questions….