Lost premiered last night, and I am glad it's back. The writer's strike is going to be hard to get through so long as the networks keep putting crap like celebrity Apprentice on the air. Lost is arguably the show that started the recent renaissance in quality television, and that renaissance is part of the reason I have begun to think that TV should be counted among the arts as film is. When there is no significant qualitative difference between the two media, they ought to be susceptible to the same sort of criticism.
I don't want to worry about at right now, however. Instead I simply want to argue that one doesn't have to be a huge Lost nerd to watch and enjoy the show. Lost is known for being a long running mystery. The main characters are survivors of a plane crash on a tropical island who are confronted by mystical experiences, tangential connections, monsters made of smoke, and the unexplained existence of a group of menacing "Others." The series essentially begs the question, "what the hell is happening here?"
The producers of the show occasionally provide obscure clues and have intentionally left many questions unanswered. Building the mystery around the show has in no small part helped to create a strong base of fans who tune in each week to scrutinize every episode for any new information that will shed light on the story.
Stop and think about that for a second. It is remarkable in itself that a television show can create such a devoted fan base. The fans aren't tuning in simply because the show is well written or because of good acting or because of any of the other technical areas in which Lost excels. These fans watch the show because they have become invested in the characters and the plot. That alone is a proxy for the quality of the show. It may not be a precise proxy since people often become devoted fans of programs that are of lower quality, but it doesn't happen very often.
It can be tempting to think that the fans of the show ought to be dismissed out of hand for being sci-fi nerds and television geeks. After all, they are seriously invested in a fictional show that is about things that could never happen. But that would not be fair. The goal of drama ought to be to bring the audience into the world of the characters so that the audience has some stake in the final outcome. When the audience has a stake in the outcome, the drama can actually matter. It is only when a play, movie, or show is very good that we actually care about the characters and their lives.
If you are to like any show or movie at all, I think you have to be ready to believe that the characters have lives--that they aren't simply actors playing roles before a camera. In other words, that is the minimum suspension of disbelief necessary for a drama to succeed. A recent failure on this standard for me was Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst. While watching that movie I had the distinct awareness that I was watching something that was being filmed. Most of the time I can watch a movie as something that is happening and not something that has been staged or filmed, but I couldn't get past that roadblock with Marie Antoinette. And I simply didn't enjoy it.
When it comes to Lost, I am able to suspend my disbelief that minimal amount. Again, I think this is remarkable in a television program For most of television's history, programs have been obviously staged. Your typical sitcom--Friends, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, all the way back to The Dick Van Dyke Show--is shot on a static stage. Three cameras are placed in specific locations before the stage in order to provide the necessary variety of angles and the actors simply perform a play before the cameras. While that can work well enough, it also degrades the reality of the shows. In the past few years we have seen the proliferation of single camera sitcoms such as Sports Night and sitcoms that aren't shot on traditional soundstages such as The Office, 30 Rock, and My Name is Earl. Most of the time I would much rather watch those shows than the traditional three camera sitcom.
Lost does the same thing. It takes the drama out of a sound stage and puts it on a tropical island. Yes, there are indoor and sound stage scenes, but the show is a large improvement for the simple reason that it shoots on location so much. Almost all the other major dramas from the past several years have gone in the same direction. The Sopranos shot on location in New Jersey much of the time, and The Wire has made Baltimore into a character.
If it is possible to become involved in Lost in a serious manner, is it bad to take it too far? Over it's three seasons, Lost has become notorious for creating more story lines than it resolves. To that end, being a Lost nerd may be more a hindrance to appreciating the show. If you are wrapped up in some subplot, you may become frustrated with the show when the producers decide to discard it or otherwise change their focus. While Lost succeeds in part because it is a long form mystery that can draw in strong fans, it may be better television if appreciated from an arms length.
If you get deeply involved in the details of Lost, it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees. The essential truth of Lost is that as human beings we will face conflict and challenge in our lives, but no matter what we have done in our past, we can survive those challenges if we stick together. It is at bottom a show about friendship in dire circumstances and managing to care how you survive and not merely that you do. In the end, Lost is a well made human drama, even as it teases the audience with indefinite clues and leads us down paths that go no where.
That is why I think it is possible to watch Lost without being a fanboy: even if you miss all the details, it is still possible to appreciate the show for it's themes and the story that is being told.
