Erik Lang

Murder, monsters, unity, and magic are all regularly seen on the exciting show Lost.  Every episode either ends on a maddening cliff hanger or a warm feeling of love and peace among all the stranded people on the island.  While Lost is intriguing and enjoyable to watch, there are many issues I have with the program.

A great deal of events or key things the show makes a point to center on are just not tied in well to the plot or just dropped all together.  When Desmond Hume is first seen on the show, he is working out in the first hatch, makes breakfast, and then injects himself with some sort of serum from a cabinet.  Again in the show, when Desmond runs away from the hatch and leaves the button-pushing to Locke and Shepherd, he grabs food and supplies, including the mysterious serum from the cabinet with a pneumatic injector.  What the serum is used for is completely unknown.  After continuing to watch Lost, no mention of this serum ever arose again.  There was one point where a pneumatic injector was used to treat Claire’s sickness, but the serum used for the treatment was not the same as Desmond’s.  The writers didn’t use the serum again or explain it for the rest of show, which I find annoying because they made such a point to film it and its use.

Michael’s son Walt was another writing error by the staff of Lost.  He was abducted by “the Others” after Michael, Sawyer, and Jin tried to find the shipping lanes after constructing a raft out of bamboo and plane parts.  While the abduction was occurring, “the Others” stated Walt was a special boy, and they had use for him.  Later in the plot after Michael went out into the island alone to look for Walt, he was captured by “the Others.”  They again told him his son Walt was a very special boy.  Michael and Walt left the island soon after that incident, and Walt and his father were gone from the story for a while.  Walt later resurfaced in a vision to John Locke and told him to finish his job.  Why did John Lock see Walt and not someone else?  For Locke to have seen the ghost of Boone would have made much more sense.  Lock was actually close to Boone, not so much Walt.  What was ever special about Walt in the beginning to merit abduction by “the Others”?  These are the kind of gaps in the writing of Lost that reflect the writers’ negligence.

Throughout the Lost series was a main recurring theme: everyone is equal, and we can all get along no matter what our backgrounds are.  Consider the evidence.  In the plane crash is an Iraqi Muslim soldier, an American doctor, an American murderer, a conman, a crippled man, and a Korean couple as the main characters.  As the show progressed, oftentimes the episodes would end playing slow inspiring music showing all of the characters looking out for each other, loving each other, living in harmony.  In and of itself, it’s not a bad message; in fact, the opposite: it’s an inspiring message.  What the writers of Lost were trying to do was show the pettiness of fighting over trifling things like race, background, or preferences.  In the end we’re all human.  The writers went too far when in the final episode of the final season they directly compared Eastern mysticism, Islam, and Christianity as equal.  Jack Shepherd was talking with his father in the back room of the church in front of a stained glass window.  On this window was a Christian cross, the Islamic crescent moon, the yin-yang, and the Star of David, among other religious symbols.  They finally reached the crux of their main point: all religions are the same, and all paths lead to heaven, their heaven being unity and fellowship in their own personal heaven where nothing goes wrong for them.  Christ said “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me.”  The Bible clearly says that Christianity is the only way to salvation, yet the writers of Lost ignore that.

What is the bright light that must be guarded from misuse by evil mankind?  No one ever knows.  In fact, Jacob doesn’t even know what the bright light is, what it is used for, why it exists, and why it must be protected.  Those same questions were asked enough by the characters themselves, but the customary responses were, “It doesn’t matter,” “We have to keep moving,” or “You’re not ready to know yet.”  Ignoring the question all together was also another response.  Did the writers just not want to explain it, or did they just not know what to make the light be without it being too absurd?  Another loose end in the Lost plot, I suppose.

My biggest issue with the plot of Lost was the portrayal of Jacob’s brother, also the Black Smoke Monster, as evil.  What has he done that’s so evil?  He’s killed people, yes, but only because he was provoked to do so out of necessity.  When Jacob and his brother were born, their mother was murdered by a woman on the island guarding this mysterious light in a cave.  She raised the boys as her own, but then Jacob’s brother discovered the truth about his origins and tried to go back across the sea to his homeland.  His mother’s murderer knocked him unconscious and destroyed his means of getting home.  All that Jacob’s brother wanted to do was go to his real home, be with his real mother (impossible now since the woman killed her, for no reason at all, and if so, left unexplained) and see the world.  Those were never bad things.

Jacob’s brother then killed his mother’s murderer and in turn was murdered by his own brother.  If anyone is evil it should be Jacob.  He was jealous of his brother because his fake mother loved him more than she did Jacob.  Jacob threw his brother into the bright light, which turned him into the Black Smoke Monster (another fact unexplained).  So, the main characters of Lost are being directed and ordered by Jacob, a man who killed his own brother out of a jealous rage because he avenged the death of their real mother and only wanted to go to his real home.

All in all, Lost is enjoyable, interesting, and a fun show to watch.  Six seasons of 45-minute episodes with only these discrepancies is not that bad of a review.  If you can’t stand dropped plot points then don’t watch it, because the end of the series will be a severe disappointment to you, and all the countless hours you’ve spent in watching it will seem like one big waste.