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Originally posted by Craig Childs:

The publication date is August 2006, which would be shortly after the conclusion of Season 2.

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Season two is set to conclude in May, 2006. It won't be -that- shortly after.
 

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Posted by Craig Childs (Member # 5382) on :
 
It looks like this book has been published. My copy from Amazon.com is in the mail. I wonder why there is no mention of it on the hatrack website. (Usually I try to navigate to Amazon.com from Hatrack, so that hatrack gets the "click through" credit -- which I assume generates some sort of financial kickback for the admins).

Anyway, I'm a big LOST fan and I'm looking forward to OSC's essay
 

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Posted by JoeH (Member # 5958) on :
 
Has Craig or anyone else read the book yet? Any thoughts?
 

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Posted by Craig Childs (Member # 5382) on :
 
Yes, I have read the book. Here is my review:

Of the 16 essays presented in this collection, only three were worth my time:

(1) Orson Scott Card's Introduction is a very informative and thoughtful analysis showing how TV has evolved over the last half-century and how LOST may be the next "evolutionary" step.

(2) Amy Brenner's "Double Locked" illustrates how the fictional character John Locke closely echoes the teachings of the real-life 16th century philosopher with the same name.

(3) Glenn Yeffeth's "The Art of Leadership" is the highlight of the collection, which discusses how Jack, Locke, and Sawyer are all really bad leaders. And it puts forth a pretty good argument that Hurley may be the best leader on the island.

Some of other 13 essays fall into the category of Comedy. "The Same Damn Island" points out the show's similarities with Gilligan's Island. "LOST Connections" attempts to concoct a conspiracy theory based on which actors have appeared on film together throughout their careers.

"The LOST Book Club" and "Have You Been Framed?" examine literary allusions and shared themes with classic works. "LOST in Love" tries to analyze every love pairing on the show. Surprisingly, only the essay "Game Theory" actually attempted to explain the mysteries; but I really hope the show doesn't turn out to be just one giant video game.

"Oops" and the Encyclopedia are both out of date, due to events that been aired since the publication of the book.

Overall, I guess I wanted more of these authors to present their theories to explain the mysteries. Instead, I felt most of these pieces were just fluff and "talking head" analysis.

[ October 12, 2006, 09:26 PM: Message edited by: Craig Childs ]
 

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Posted by Craig Childs (Member # 5382) on :
 
Oh, and I forgot to mention, if you do read this book just skip the essay "All Hail Hurley". The author has some sort of I-dont-get-any-respect chip on his shoulder and his analysis of Hurley (one of my favorite characters) is totally off the mark.
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
I haven't read it yet, but it *is* on my list. I was really hoping for more insight into how a show's writers can develop such quirky, interesting characters, and how they can make the audience willing to tolerate and even enjoy five flashbacks per episode.

But I'm even more interested now in OSC's reported thought of this being the next step in TV evolution. I think it is, in these ways:

* the characterization.

* the use of characters that aren't American and aren't essentially American. Star Trek boldly desegregated where no one had desegregated before, but their human characters -- Scotty, Uhura, Picard, Troi, Kim, whoever -- were really all Americans. Sayid is not an American with an accent. Echo isn't either. Neither are Sun and Jen. For that matter, even Charlie is a little different, despite the small cultural distance from US to UK.

I didn't think TV or Hollywood could do this. When there's an alien invasion story, the aliens always invade New York, LA, London, or sometimes Kansas -- never Congo, India, or Tibet. (The exceptions I can think of are in Antarctica, with American characters, and Predator, which also used American characters). I've been wanting to see this for some time. It's working.

* religion. They didn't make Sayid particularly Moslem (which disappointed me), but there are echoes of Christianity in Echo, Charlie, and Rose, the fact that the first two of these don't lead a particularly good lives to me just makes it all the more interesting. OK, sometimes I'll see this elsewhere (Places in the Heart), but it's rare. The only place I saw a true exploration of spirituality in a TV show (I don't count Highway to Heaven or Touched by an Angel) is once again Trek, specifically DS9: a show that was to a great degree an exploration of Bajoran religion. Since it was a made-up religion, they could explore it however they wanted. But Lost has just shown that TV can do this even with real religion.

It almost feels like I'm watching a show made in a different culture. America is diverse, but until Lost, I don't think TV was nearly diverse enough.
 

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Posted by Craig Childs (Member # 5382) on :
 
I have to take issue with a fwe of your points.

Granted, the show does have international diversity, but that doesn't make it more realistic. Let's face it, aside from Rose, Benard, and Hurley, everybody else on the plane is young and beautiful.. and I'm talking Hollywood, put-me-on-the-cover-of-Vanity-Fair beautiful, not everyday beautiful. And, aside from Locke and Benard, their professions are a stretch as well... brain surgeon, torturer-turned-spy, rock star, drug lord-turned-priest, korean hit man, etc. I do a lot of flying in my job and I've never ever been on a plane filled with people such as that...

I do like how religion plays a core element of the show, but why is Christianity always represented by Catholics or very liberal protestants. What about fundamentalists and evangelicals and well-meaning pentacostals? I'd like a show that had real Christian believers, in all their varieties, that didn't make them look like judgmental fools or people trying to escape a horrible past (ala Mr. Eko).

But these are quibbles. Don't get me wrong... I love the show
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
Well, I certainly didn't say it was realistic! Good, but not realistic.

[ October 13, 2006, 10:24 PM: Message edited by: Will B ]
 

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Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
 
Well there are a whole lot more boring people on the island that never get explored, too. Don't forget that the show is only concentrating on a few of the people there--which is actually a point that bothers me sometimes.
 

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Posted by Princess Leah (Member # 6026) on :
 

quote:

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I do a lot of flying in my job and I've never ever been on a plane filled with people such as that...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Princess Leah:

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I do a lot of flying in my job and I've never ever been on a plane filled with people such as that...

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How do you know? *eyebrow wiggle*

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Trust me, I'd notice if I saw any women that looked like Kate and Sun.
 

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Posted by Craig Childs (Member # 5382) on :
 
And since we're on the topic of LOST...

I have loved Seasons 1 & 2 of LOST, but I am getting the feeling that some of my questions may not ever get answered now.

What bothers me is that Season 3 is going to be all about the Others and Demond's new psychic ability. But now that the hatch is gone, the writers need to tell us what season 2 was all about --
(a) what was that electromagnetic anomaloy?
(b) what was the purpose of the hatch -- did it cause the electromagnetic anomaly?
(c) how did everybody survive the implosion at the end of Season 2?
(d) now that the hatch is gone, what happened to the electromagnetic anomaly?

I've watched thousands of hours of tv in my lifetime. & I can usually tell when writers are saying to themselves "Viewers may be getting bored. Let's wrap up this storyline quick and move on to something else". Did you notice how even Hurley was making fun of Desmond's "magic key" or how he jokingly said something about nobody blowing up inside the hatch? It was kind of like the writers were saying to us, "Ok, ok, we know it's implausible but we're ending this story and getting back to the mysteries of the island, which is what you really want to see anyway."

I think the hatch may have been a maguffin that the writers just oversold.

[A maguffin is a film device where the writer creates a situation only to get the characters from one place to another, or to create an artificial source of conflict for the characters. If you've ever seen Psycho, the first 30 minutes of the film involves a woman stealing money and then trying to avoid getting caught. This plotline is not actually important, except that it gets the woman into an abandoned hotel run by the serial killer Norman Bates. In the movie Pulp Fiction, the whole plot revolves around two assassins trying to retrieve a stolen briefcase. The contents of the briefcase are alluded to, but never explained because its not essential to the rest of the plot.]

The electromagnetic anamoly may have been the same sort of thing. It created conflict between Locke and Jack, it introduced Dharma and the research stations, it gave Locke a "mission" to pursue. But was it really important to understanding the other mysteries of the island? probably not

The writers couldn't explain it all that well so they gave us incomplete and insubstantial answers. They gave us a "failsafe button" and some mumbo-jumbo about magnetics and electricity that really don't make sense... and then, the hatch is gone, everybody's captured, and desmond has psychic powers. No more hatch. On to bigger and better things.

But it's a cheat. It's a very, very long setup to a mystery that has no explanation.

I hope I am wrong.
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
I think we have good reason to trust. The reason I say that is because of something that didn't make sense in the first 30 seconds of the pilot: that Jack wakes up in a bamboo forest, having fallen out of a crashing plane, and he wakes up -- he isn't dead.

Then, in season 3, episode 3, we see something similar happen with Locke. They didn't forget.
 

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