As I wrote below, I'm not the type of person who really wants to get deeply involved in the "mythology" of Lost. I don't want to try to figure out all the little clues and I am not trying to divine the ultimate explanation for what is happening in the show. In fact, I tend to think that looking for that sort of explanation can hurt one's appreciation of the show. But with a show so mysterious I think it is reasonable to expect some bigger issues will be resolved as the show proceeds to its conclusion in three seasons.
So, I was frustrated last week when the show deliberately brought up the issue of the smoke monster only to quickly refuse to explain it. When I mentioned this over on the AV Club, several people told me that I need to accept that some things won't be explained and that I need to simply accept that Lost will proceed on it's own terms. I was told this by people who view the show in exactly the way I think it shouldn't be viewed--people who are deeply involved in trying to figure out all the little mysteries that can detract from the larger story it has to tell.
To me the discussion just begged the question of what accepting Lost on it's own terms would in fact mean. Apparently, some people have theorized that the island is located under the arctic ice cap, or under Antarctica, or it's Atlantis. Other people think that the people on the island are time travellers, or that time is slower on the island than elsewhere. Others think that the all the characters are in fact dead and the island represents Purgatory. Still others think that the crash and subsequent events were all orchestrated by the parents of the people on the island. Of course it goes on and I hope that actually stating these things shows why I think it is a mistake to look for these sorts of explanations in the show--they are all ridiculous.
Accepting Lost on its own terms requires us to refuse to look for theories like this. If we are to accept the story, we should accept that it is a strange tropical island in the South Pacific, that the island has some personality probably in Jacob; that the island has some sort of healing aura; that some people are able to have prophetic visions; and that the island has some ability to make certain dreams or wishes materialize. Importantly, accepting Lost would mean accepting these things without other explanations. It may simply be that within the show all these things are true without there being some grand explanation of time travel or Atlantis or big conspiracies.
Those sorts of explanations are deeply ingrained in the sci-fi tradition and Lost may simply be creating it's own stories independent of those sorts of explanations. Battlestar Galactica operates in a similar way. The Cylons are robots but they are also in some way biological and potentially capable of reproducing with human beings. If you try to express that to other people, it becomes very hard to explain since people tend to use categories that they are used to and comfortable with. Battlestar Galactica is asking us to accept that some cylons are both robotic and biological, and that transcends our preexisting categories.
Lost is doing the same thing, and to accept it on it's own terms is to accept that many of the categories existing in the sci-fi tradition probably have no utility within the framework of the show. And that is my anti-theory theory: The show will explain itself and will not use time travel, Atlantis, odd locations, or anything along those lines to create an ultimate explanation.
Stop looking for theories and your enjoyment of the show will increase.
