"Lost" TV Show

Janis and I just finished watching the first two seasons of "Lost". We got ourselves a Netflix account a while back and gave "Lost" a look to see what the buzz was all about. And we got hooked. The story line is always full of surprises and they almost always have a cliffhanger ending. So it was a lot of fun.

The basic storyline: an airliner gets lost over the Pacific and crashes on an island. A lot of people inexplicably survive in perfect health, but then find out that the island is really weird, and there are other people on the island (they call them the "Others" ... duhhh) who have some sort of unexplained mission in life.

But there are also some very disturbing elements to it that bothered me more and more as the series went on. Primarily, the "heroes" are really violent people. Quite a few of the main characters have committed cold-blooded murder, either in the show's real-time or in the flashbacks. And there are lots of other killings, too. By my count, the heroes have killed at least 14 people by the end of the second season. Some of them are their own people, too. We're supposed to identify with this?

The relationship with the Others is a central theme. We don't know much about them, except that they lie, are prone to using force, and they kidnap people. To my knowledge, though, they haven't killed anybody, although the "heroes" have killed at least six Others at this point. Frankly, I'm starting to have more sympathy for the Others than the main heroes.

It seems like every time there's a hint of trouble, the heroes go for the rifles and pistols and start ordering people around at the point of a gun. "Others", their own people, doesn't matter. "Do this or I'll kill you" is their main message. It all reminds me very much of the Bush Administration: shoot first and don't even bother asking questions afterward. I mean, if you want to know who the "Others" are, why don't you just leave your frickin' guns at home and go talk to them? Do you think you're going to get very far by stuffing an M-16 in their face and screaming at them? Doesn't sound like a very sound approach, either in TV or in Iraq.

I've heard that the show lost a lot of fans in season 3 because of unlikable characters and unbelievable (even by "Lost" standards) plot twists. I'll see it when it comes out on DVD. Meanwhile, I think I'll stick with re-runs of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway".