"Lost" - An Analysis from the Beginning of Time (2004)

Have you all signed up for Western Civ 101?
 

Peter Ames Carlin - Originally published Dec 14, 2004

You don't have to study philosophy to appreciate "Lost," ABC's fantastic new drama about the spooky desert island travails of the survivors of a plane crash.

Go ahead and thrill to its potent mix of action and mystery. Ponder the characters' lives and the secrets they've brought to their accidental home. Get a charge from its sly humor, and keep track of its many cultural references. ("Star Trek," VH1 and the title of a fairly obscure Pete Townshend solo album from 1983 played a part in the most recent episode.)

But if you really get into it, you should at some point consider the connections between survivor John Locke, a paraplegic until he rose, literally, from the flames of the wrecked airliner, and the 17th-century philosopher who shares his name and, as it turns out, a few fundamental ideas about pre-social man.

Like the show itself, this will leave you with plenty of loose ends to tie together. The moment you think you get it, the next episode will change everything. And that will only make it all seem cooler.

Have you missed "Lost" so far? No problem. ABC repeats the two-hour pilot tonight, followed by several weeks of repeats.
So this is the perfect time to get up to speed. Or, even if you've seen every episode, an excellent time to go back and look for what clues you might have missed the first time around. Either way, let's consider seven fundamental questions regarding "Lost."

* How did they get so lost? The central characters were passengers on a flight from Australia to Los Angeles, which ran into some turbulence powerful enough to rip the whole tail section off the plane. The wounded plane crash-landed on the beach of a remote island in the South Pacific, which, the 40-odd survivors learn from a (briefly) surviving pilot, is so far from the plane's original course (something to do with malfunctioning electronics gear) that the nearest search party will probably be a thousand miles away.

* Does any of this make sense? Not literally, no. The author of the "Ask the Pilot" column at Salon.com has already debunked the "Lost" crash sequence for its vast array of factual impossibilities. But this is a show on which a polar bear can and will stampede through the verdant tropical jungle like a bat out of Hades. And that's before things get truly strange.

* Why should I care? Because once its setting and core mysteries are established, "Lost" combines flashbacks, snatches of dialogue and moments of action on the island to give its characters incredible emotional depth. What we begin to understand is that all of them were, in some spiritual way, lost before they even set foot on that doomed airplane.

In other words, the mysteries they confront are both physical (see also: the polar bear; that creepy Ethan guy) and metaphorical.

* Are you, perhaps, over-interpreting here? No, blast it all. Consider Dr. Jack, whose natural skill as a leader (his super-competence, his emotional detachment, his need to prove himself over and over again) is so clearly fueled by his tempestuous relationship with the father whose alcohol-related death prompted his trip to Australia. Or Sayid, the former Iraqi soldier still reeling with guilt for the crimes he committed while working for Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. Or Charlie, the faded rock star who had long since traded his love for music for the temptations of fame and drugs. Or Kate, the lovely fugitive who wore shackles on the plane and who hasn't even begun to explain why the marshal guarding her spent his final breaths warning Jack to be afraid, very afraid, of her.

And those are just a few examples. Every character, it seems, was propelled onto that airplane by forces of destiny and desire that are just as recognizably human as they are beyond any human's control.

* OK, that's fascinating. Yes, exactly. And this is where "Lost" departs from virtually every other fantasy/adventure show. For while it's one thing to invent a spooky island stocked richly with unfathomable creatures and inexplicable human presences, it's another thing to elevate it all into a metaphor for the everyday mysteries, horrors and wonders of life in the real world.

* What about this Locke guy? He's not one of the marquee stars: You're not going to find his bald, middle-aged visage on the cover of TV Guide or in the middle of a love triangle. But the hunter is the key to everything on "Lost," because he's the one character with a visceral understanding of the island's transcendent possibilities. Indeed, Locke is not just an accomplished tracker and hunter, but he also has astonishing insight into everything from the ever-shifting weather to the magical properties of the jungle itself.

Locke's mastery of the island's physical world is all the more striking when you realize (courtesy of a flashback story in the fourth episode) that he was bound to a wheelchair before the plane crashed.

* Which brings us to . . . yes, that's right, the connection between John Locke, the formerly paralyzed outdoorsman, and John Locke, the 17th-century-philosopher. Locke-the-hunter is the personification of Locke-the-philosopher's belief in the human as tabula rasa, or a blank slate that is filled entirely by what it experiences via its five senses and its powers of reflection.

Thus, the crash becomes a kind of birth process, and the survivors, a newly born community personifying Locke's pre-social man, naturally coalesce into a civil society pursuing their mutual interest in life, health and liberty.

What lurks in the primeval jungle, the thing that growls and roars and whispers and taunts, may be a monster or a ghost. But it's the kind that lurks just outside every outpost of human civilization, or within the darker corners of us all. It's the grim world Thomas Hobbes described as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Which is why "Lost" is the best drama on broadcast TV, and one of the four or five best shows on the whole dial. The more closely you look at it, the more you'll find.