More on Lost Season One

[weewarrior]

My foray into the dark depths of Lost Season 1 continues!

A few more scattered observations:

- What surprised me most is that it really feels like a different show, mostly due to the way the people interact - you at least feel that they're using the ensemble better, although there are a lot of people that don't get developed much. Claire would be such an example - she doesn't have any plot points that don't revolve around her pregnancy or her budding relationship with Charlie. She's the classical damsel in distress, and other than being sweet and innocent, she seems to have no real personality traits. A worse example is Rose - as selenak pointed out to me when I last wrote about Season One, she really gets used for nothing except to dispense advice to the younger, male and white crowd and always disappears conveniently when there is no need for that.

However, at least the regulars get some scenes with everyone else, and nearly everyone seems to appear in every episode, even if it is for just one scene. It's a stark contrast to Seasons 3 and 4, which arguably could have send most of the supporting players home in between their centrics and the final stretch of episodes.

- Despite the better use of ensemble, I'm hardly emotionally invested, because I really don't care about the majority of the players. Boone is boring, Charlie is annoyingly clingy, Claire as said above is sweet but has no personality to speak of, and Shannon is tragically far less interesting than I remember.

Kate fares marginally better than in later seasons, and Sawyer actually is more layered than I thought, but both of them are so melodramatic, that I find it rather difficult to care about either. Jack... is pretty much Jack, though he seems rather less overbearing than later on. I don't necessarily understand why each of these (and Charlie) needed two to three flashback episodes, but that goes back to me not caring for what were obviously meant to be the main players at that point.

As for the rest, I admit that I never liked Michael, and that didn't change on repeated viewings - I hate that he is alternately aggressive and whiny, and the moments where he is friendly to anyone other than Sun or Walt are really few and far between. Walt is no problem in himself, but I'm not incredibly interested in TV children as characters, and he's certainly no Molly. My biggest negative surprise was Sayid - I didn't remember that he was quite this emo. Fortunately, he is also allowed to have a sense of humour, so there is a bit of a balance.

My favourite characters are definitely the Kwons, Hurley, and Locke, and apart from them I'm mostly interested in the mythological aspects and the atmosphere. I had forgotten how wonderfully creepy Ethan was, and how visceral the threat of the monster felt at that point. It's also very interesting to watch knowing all that comes after: from Rose being convinced that Bernard is alive, to Boone joking about redshirts, to Charlie pondering if he was meant to die there are countless elements of both deliberate foreshadowing and seemingly clever retcons. All in all, it's quite enjoyable.

Pointless addition: I'm typing this with a 14 pound cat sitting on my wrist. It's a very exciting experience.

Comments

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Whee! Your reactions have been interesting to read.

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

Thank you!