Lost in Canadian Airspace

Serious Lost Series One spoilers – you have been warned.

Coming from Ireland, you’d think I’d know about rain. I tell you, you haven’t seen rain till you’ve seen a rainy Tuesday in Halifax. I went to the movies. To see Water, funnily enough, the new Deepa Mehta film. She is such a great director. This one was in Hindi, set in Benares, mostly filmed at a ghat on the side of the sacred river, where they burn their dead and purify their souls.

It was about widows. And the lives they must lead when their husbands die. It was wonderful, poignant and angry and sad and funny all at the same time. And the photography got India perfectly. The colour and beauty juxtaposed on the squalor and the narrow, dark streets of the market.

Go see it. It’s great.

Anyway, as it was all about the way women are subservient to men in Hindu culture, it got me thinking about the whole men v women thing again. I had been thinking about it at length while I watched Lost. I took a week out of my life and sat through the twenty-two episodes of the first series in about six nights. And then I remembered I’d written a whole blog entry on it when I was flying to Edmonton, as you do when you’re on a plane. So rather than listen to the rain all night, I put on the excellent Elliot Brood cd and found the article, which was scribbled into the back of a notebook I carry around with me and I am typing it up.

Bruce has just come home and put a six pack in the fridge which is lucky because the twenty four pack he bought the other day is gone – it’s Tuesday for chrissakes - and he has gone into the sitting room to turn the tv on – yup – and he’d go into the other room to play Cotillion on the computer while listening to the tv except Jill has banned him from using it after ten because he stayed on it all night last week sometime. He bangs the keys very loudly, even I can hear him and I’m down the hall.

He’s in a right sulk these days. He sat in the dark on his own for six hours last night watching tv with the sound practically at mute. Except for Desperate Housewives, which he had up at top volume. I presume that he was trying to tell me something. Either ha ha, I’m watching it and you’re not, or why won’t you watch it with me anymore.

Because you had your three chances and you blew all of them dude. And as I said to someone recently, you only get three with me.

Well, nowadays, anyway!!

Anyways, who cares?

So, Lost.

I was sitting on the plane. We were on a commuter hop to Hamilton, after which most of the people on the plane would disembark, and we would go on to Edmonton, and everyone was watching TV. Everyone. It was scary. All around me, people were looking at little screens and watching their suppertime shows – the news, Dr. Phil, or Seinfield. I was sitting there, gob smacked that they had proper telly on the plane. Satellite, apparently. I asked the hostess how the satellite tracked the plane to send the signal and she looked at me like I was a moron.

Well, I don’t know how these things work!

OOOOOOOhhhhhhh! Bruce is using the computer and it’s 10.45pm. I should go in and stare at him until he freaks out and attacks me with his hockey stick.

I am joking.

So anyways, Lost.

Ludicrous plotlines. Just enough supernatural stuff to grab the remnants of The X Files generation. Remember back when, when we loved that show.

Enough totty to get the DH/ SATC fanbases interested.

Enough action to grab the blokes’ attention.

Very entertaining, very well filmed, well written. But I have some issues with it.

Well one in particular.

Why are the blokes in charge on the island?

So, yeah, why are all the blokes in charge?

Why do all the blokes have tragedy written all over their tired faces?

Why are so many of them labouring under the strain of a burdensome relationship with dad?

• Jack and his dad


• Sawyer and his dad


• John Locke and his dad


• Jin and Sun’s dad


• Michael being a dad

Why are all of them made to look like they have suffered from the nefarious acts of others? Even Said, who was a TORTURER, is romanticised because ‘he didn’t really mean it’ and when he found the love of a good woman he stopped. Until his plane crashed on a strange island in the middle of the Pacific anyway.

And why are all the women portrayed as a bit dodgy?

• Kate has a well dodgy past that includes murder, theft and accidental killing through selfishness.


• Sun is a poisoner, a liar and was a right flighty bird before all that.


• Boone’s sister is a spoilt, impetuous brat.


• Danielle is bonkers


• The pregnant Aussie is pregnant, needy and hormonal

And then there’s Walt and Hurley, both of whom seem to be the lynchpins of the supernatural stuff, what with Walt’s ‘seeing eye’ and Hurley’s knowledge of the numbers. As a consequence they are not given any manly stuff to do, and although they are important characters, I felt they were still on the same level of the pecking order as the women, particularly Hurley, who’s made out to be the island gossip, when in fact he’s a really important networker that figured out there was a baddie on the island while all the others were having a big dick competition over Kate.

Then, what was the deal with the ‘ensign in the red shirt’ homage? Was that just a big in-joke? Cos it wasn’t funny. Don’t introduce a new character in the season finale and then blow him up. And was the fact that it was Boone who mentioned it and Boone who then died supposed to be ironic?

If you compare it with that other great ‘band of mismatched brothers’ set of incomparably long DVDs I ploughed through recently, it shows the gaps in the plot quite clearly. In LOTR, Gandalf gets pulled into a bottomless pit by a mysterious creature. In Lost, John Locke nearly does the same thing, but St. effin’ Jack saves him. Instead, it’s pregnant needy girl who disappears for a bit. Why is that?

Granted, they have one thing in common, in both, Dominic Monaghan makes a shite of finding them!

In LOTR, Boromir dies and it’s a big deal in terms of their future survival, as well as being tragic. Well, it was tragic for me! And in the book it’s very serious. In Lost, Boone dies. Tragic, but no biggie in terms of firepower. So again, why do it, other than to tweak our emotions. It doesn’t push the plot along much or cause a huge amount of dramatic tension.

But I digress. Back to my main question.

Why are the men in charge on the island?

Let’s examine their credentials, shall we?

Jack the brain surgeon

Ok, so he’s a brain surgeon and by definition smart and dextrous. But he engages in headless chicken management of the worst order.

• Somebody’s missing – runs off to find them without stopping for a drink of water even


• Somebody’s being a pain – runs off to admonish them without stopping to find out the real problem from Kate


• Somebody’s found something interesting – runs off to tell them what to do without consulting anyone

D-E-L-E-G-A-T-E, dude!

Interesting how he teamed up with paranoid Michael. A true case of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. (John Locke being his enemy).

John Locke the box salesman.

The Special Agent Mulder of the show. Unfortunately, SA Mulder doesn’t do so well without a rational sidekick that can pull rank on him. It is scary how much this guy reminds me of Bruce. Well, Bruce without the bushcraft.

I find it incredibly annoying to have yet another American television show that’s supposed to be good presenting me with a two-dimensional debate between Rationality and Faith. Jesus Christ on a bicycle, hasn’t anyone in Hollywood heard about complexity. No, lots of characters doesn’t mean complexity. It means difficult to produce.

Is it supposed to be a metaphor for what’s going on in the states? If that’s the case, should they not just rerun Twin Peaks?

Said the former Republican Guard turned good guy. Honest

I must say I found that scene very disturbing. Two Americans get an Arab to torture another American to find out something THEY need to know. What was the point of the scene, apart from giving Said the excuse to head off down the beach by himself and meet Danielle? To redeem him? He’s supposed to have turned his back on torture, due to the love of a good woman, and then, first chance he gets, he’s sharpening twigs and eyeing fingernails. Then, when a woman appears on the scene again, he comes to his senses and goes on a big haj around the island, where despite being a top notch RG soldier type, he gets caught and tortured by a madwoman.

And he’s one of the leaders?

So who’s left? Of the in charge ones?

Michael the moaning Minnie

Paranoid, easily affronted, insecure, moaning, selfish. If I were African American I’d weep. Although the boat is nifty.

Sawyer the Grifter

Well of course having learned nothing in thirty five years of dealing with men, this is the one Queenie would go for. If she were on the island. The serious totty. The tart with the heart of gold. The ‘tough on the outside, soft on the inside’ rogue. Who would run rings around her of course.

Like I said, serious totty.

And he’s in line for the leadership when Jack runs himself to death?

Jin the Korean Mafioso

Doesn’t speak the language of the camp. And of course, you can’t be in charge of anything nowadays if you don’t speak English.

I wonder does he speak Chinese. He certainly doesn’t speak female.

Is everyone talking about China the way they are here? It’s as bad as India here in Canada.

So yeah, why are the boys in charge on the island?

More on this later.