On a Facebook site devoted to Lost
fans there's this humorous meme. We see two angry people yet at each other.
One face had an image of Game of Thrones over it; one has an image of Breaking
Bad. Standing off to the side is a third face with a smile on it and an
image of Lost over it.
A little explanation based on what
I've been able to learn about this meme. Apparently a few weeks ago in regard
to the most recent episode of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the most recent
Game of Thrones spinoff the fans gave an episode a perfect 10 on
imdb.com This outraged the Breaking Bad fans because apparently the
landmark 'Ozymandias' episode, justifiably considering by my fellow critics one
of the greatest episodes in TV history, is apparently still the only episode on
that site with a perfect score.
So illustrating the maturity that until
recently I only associated with those online forces who hated whenever a show
connected with sci-fi was considered 'woke', they spent the next few days
reviewing bombing it until it wasn't. In return the Game of Thrones fans
chose to retaliate by review bombing 'Ozymandias' until it fell first below
9.9, then 9.7 and who knows how much further they'll go.
It's things like that the critic
in me just wants Graham Chapman to come down from heaven and say: "Right,
this is getting silly." To be clear I think the entire reviewing bombing
procedure on sites like this represents the inverse of the left's attitude of
cancel culture. The small-minded people online feel that by making it clear
that trying to make any part of the Star Trek or Star Wars universe
more woke is tantamount to treason and feel a need to make it clear by making
sure before the shows even air an episode that they will not tolerate. As of
this writing the only series that has been fully spared their childish wrath is
The Last Of Us, which no matter how hard they try they have been unable
to reduce such episodes as 'A Long, Long Time' below an 8. Seriously guys its people like you that make my
job a lot harder.
There may come a time when I
comment on this practice but this is not it, mainly because I've never used
imdb.com or indeed any other site to determine whether a show is worth
watching. I make up my own mind and have never been swayed by the masses. I
also think that these practices are useless because what the internet thinks
about pop culture and what the rest of the world thinks has always had a huge
disconnect and always will.
More to the point as my readers
know well I don't have shows or episodes where I want to call the
greatest of all time. I acknowledge that there are some series and episodes
that will be all-time classics but I'm never going to make an argument that it
is absolutely perfect. Indeed I judge heavily even my fellow critics who do so.
Recently, for the record, The Atlantic had a critic who picked eight
episodes that they considered perfection and nothing from Breaking Bad or
Game of Thrones was on the list. What was on the list was an
episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, an episode of Girls and two
reality show episodes. That critic made my fellow critics look even
worse then this imbroglio.
And finally my colleagues know
that I never liked Game of Thrones and just get into it, so for me to
weigh into this feud would be pointless because I'd be looking like an amateur.
What I would like to do is explain that particular meme and why I think all of
us Lost fans hear this feud going on and have this fond smile on our
faces.
Now I'm not going to comment on
whether Lost is a better show then either of the two above because I
don't think its fair to any of them. What I will argue is why all Lost
fans like myself would still prefer to rewatch more and more than either of
the two shows, regardless of their brilliance.
No one's denying that all of three
series are on the shortlist for the greatest of all time. This is despite the
fact that Lost had a problematic series finale that many fans debate
ruined the whole show even now, Game Of Thrones had such a problematic
final season that many thought it ruined the whole series, and Breaking
Bad absolutely stuck the landing in a way that is more or less the gold
standard of how series should end from this point forward. (As far as I can tell, no Game of Thrones fan
would try to review bomb Felina to death. They can't throw stones here.)
Game of Thrones certainly won on the matter of the
Emmys, having broken the record for most Emmy nominations and wins of any
series at such a level that may very well stand forever. (Whether it deserved
the last one for Best Drama is debatable but honestly the Emmys track record
with that is bad for so many shows its not a flaw singular to Thrones.) Breaking
Bad, to be sure, did very well: with 16 total Emmys, including Best Drama
for its final two seasons, four for Bryan Cranston, three for Aaron Paul and
two for Anna Gunn. And Lost did win 10 Emmys including Best Drama for
its landmark first season. It finished with 51 nominations across six seasons which
for a network drama, particularly during its era, is pretty impressive.
But none of that really makes one
show better than the other. Breaking Bad had its first three seasons
overlap with Lost's last three and honestly it was basically a draw,
considering Mad Men won Best Drama every one of those years. When Game
of Thrones debuted it was defeated by Mad Men in its first year. The
next year it faced off against Breaking Bad for the first time and both
shows were beaten badly by Homeland. The last two times they
competed Breaking Bad dominated. Only after Breaking Bad went off
the air did the wins for Game of Thrones come – and its worth noting
that not long it basically left George R.R Martin's books behind and in
hindsight even the most devoted fans believe it started to lose its way. We
can't discount the possibility that the Emmys was making up for lost time when
it honored it the first time in 2015 – and then in keeping with its
institutional laziness just kept honoring it season after season.
I mention the Emmys and the shows
that were nominated mainly because there were a lot of great shows during this
period competing. Lost had to go up against The Sopranos, Six Feet
Under and Deadwood during its first three seasons along with 24 at
its peak. By the time Breaking Bad came along both shows were competing
against Dexter, Damages and Friday Night Lights, all of which are
on the shortlist for greatest shows of this period. By the time Game of Thrones
came along streaming was entering the game and both shows were competing
against House of Cards and Downton Abbey. (I'll stop after Bad
left the air because I have my own biases about the shows Game of
Thrones beat during this period and I don't want it to show.)
With the sole exception of Downton
which I never cottoned too, all of these shows are great series and I've
made an attempt to rewatch many of them during this period, along with many of
the shows that were ignored such as The Wire and Battlestar Galactica.
And I have rewatched a couple of them from start to finish a few times. But
of all of them, the only one I will rewatch like clockwork every few years is Lost.
And its not until recently I finally realized why and maybe in a way that
explains that meme I talked about.
Objectively Breaking Bad and
Game Of Thrones are two of the greatest dramas of all time and that's
true of all the series I listed. But even by the standards of all of those
shows, they are by far the bleakest. I'm not per se saying that's necessarily a
dealbreaker for me when it comes to rewatching a show: it wasn't when I
rewatched Damages a decade ago and it wasn't when I did so for Deadwood.
But the thing is I'm not sure
there's the same motivation for people like me to rewatch Game of
Thrones or Breaking Bad that there necessarily is for Lost.
Game of Thrones is one of the bloodiest shows in
the history of television when it comes to killing off characters remorselessly.
I'll be honest, that would be enough to make it a dealbreaker for me and it’s
the same reason I'd never be willing to watch The Walking Dead which has
a similar ruthlessness. I'm used to characters being killed off on regular
basis but at a certain point, this makes character not flesh and blood human
beings but essentially cannon fodder.
And that's before you get to the
brutality of the show in killing people off. This is a series where one of the greatest
episodes of all was 'The Rains of Castamere' a title they had to choose in
order to hide the fact that in Season 3 they were going to do the infamous 'Red
Wedding' Now I do realize this was canon and at this point the show was following
the novels of Martin closely. But there's a different between violence and gratuitous
violence and at a certain point the show really leaned her into the 'gratuitous'
part. That was true for all of it, the nudity, the sexual violence, even how it
basically turned incest into something acceptable for the readers. But it had the effect of making you watch
less to see how the series played out and more to see how many characters would
die. That never set right with me with
any show and Thrones was just to most obvious example.
Breaking Bad wasn't nearly as violent, mainly
because it was on basic cable rather than HBO. But it doesn't change the
fact that so much of our 'pleasure' in it seemed to be watching Mr. Chips
become Scarface. I don't deny that it wasn't a great show for that reason and
I'm far more willing to rewatch it then any other series. What I question is
whether it was an enjoyable series to watch.
Because for all the argument that
Walter White was an antihero, let's not kid ourselves. The longer the show was
on the air, the more of a villain he was clearly becoming. He was also becoming
increasingly petulant and childish with each new season, showing an arrogance
that seemed to overpower his better judgment, particularly when it came to Gus
Fring. This was a man, who for all his chemical genius, was not as clever as he
thought he was. He had one great ability: to lie. That was more his superpower
than his science.
And let's not kid ourselves: I
really never liked the fanbase's toxic masculinity to characters who we should
have been sympathetic too, particularly Skyler. Even Gilligan admits he never
understood why her character got so much hatred and visceral contempt. No
matter how nasty and unpleasant Walter became, particularly to those who loved
him, the fan base basically seems to hate Skyler because she was a wet blanket
and kept reminding the audience how much of
a monster he was. This is a guy
who could poison a child just to save his own life by the end of Season 4, and
the fanbase was still willing to say: "Well, he had his reasons."
Skyler tries to protect the family from the IRS, which was a government branch
that could have been just as dangerous, and everybody jumped on her.
I should mention that's part of
the reason I was looking forward so much to Better Call Saul. The longer the show lasted, every scene between
Walter and Saul became so unnerving as Odenkirk made it clear each meeting that
he was genuinely afraid of the monster he'd created. By the time of Gus's death
you could tell that Saul realized he was in over his head but couldn't find a
way to get out. In their final interaction in Bad when Walt was still
trying to control the situation and ignoring anything Saul said, I genuinely
felt sympathy for him. (For the record I will rewatch Saul at some point
and try to look it at with fresh eyes, independent of what happens in Breaking
Bad first.)
And that brings me as to why I
keep rewatching Lost. Because what is vastly different between this
series and not only Thrones and Bad but all of the shows I mentioned
above (with the exception of Friday Night Lights) Lost was never
the kind of show where you liked it when something bad happened to one
of the characters or when they did something bad. And its also the real reason why in the
aftermath of it becoming a hit show, so many of its successors could not
duplicate what it accomplished during its run and in a way almost none have
done since.
Lost was a mythology show, I won't deny
that. But unlike all other mythology shows that came after it, it made it very
clear it was about the characters first. Yes we were always trying to unravel
the mysteries week after week, yes we wanted to know the truth about the
Monster or why the Black Rock was in the middle of the woods, what the Others
were, what the Dharma Initiative was and why Oceanic 815 crashed on the island
in the first place. (For the record all of these questions were answered
by the time the series ended.) But it was never as much about the mysteries of
the island then everyone we met.
In guides to the show many have
argued this was its strength and it proved it early on. Emily St. James makes
this clear in her review of the Season One finale Exodus. In the midst of
explaining why one of the most famous sequences on the show – the launching of
the raft' works so well she gives a long list and eventually a simpler reason:
But mostly, it's the dog.
See as the raft heads off into the
Pacific, Vincent the dog paddles along with it trying to catch up to Walt, the
boy who has been caring for him these last few weeks. Walt calls out to him to
go back and still Vincent keeps paddling away…Finally Walt convinces the pup to
return to shore and he turns around and paddles back. It should be cheap to
rely on a trope as corny as this but Lost understands very well that
this kind of earnest sentimentality can be enormously effective when deployed
well…The raft sequence needs this little extra spice to push it over the top
and it finds it in one of the oldest stories there is: a boy and his dog.
And to emphasize how well this still
works on here, St. James adds a footnote:
I'm struggling not to tear up at
the thought of poor Vincent trying to catch up to Walt as I right this. He's
such a good dog!
(Yes I know the reputation Vincent
has among Lost fans. Doesn't change it.)
When explaining why so many shows
that tried to replicate Lost in the aftermath failed St. James after
giving a long explanation gets back to the point.
Mostly those other shows forgot
the dog. By that I don't mean they all should have a dog. (Footnote: Though all
TV shows should have a dog.) I mean that they don't have those tiny but
significant moments of sentimentality and feeling which by the audience's
goodwill and allow the series to keep pushing it into darker, weirder
territory. A viewer will forgive a show for a lot if they get to see a moment
like Vincent swimming after the raft. Lost understood that, but too many
of its imitators did not.
Now think about that in regard to Breaking
Bad, Game of Thrones or indeed so many of the shows that I've mentioned
above. I'll grant you many of these series were brilliantly written, directed
and starred. I'll grant you that I love watching many of them over and over.
But do any of them have a dog in the way St. James argues?
The 21st century has
been a place for great television perhaps because it reflects so much of our
nature. Certainly Lost was more than willing to do that in quite a few
of its storylines. But it never forgot it was a show that it needed moments of
sentimentality in order for its viewers to forgive some of the weirder and
darker and mysteries.
This was also, as any fan know all
too well, the most romantic show of any series during the 21st
century. This was a series that made it clear practically from the first season
that it was going to be a show as much about love stories as it what about
mysteries even before it introduced to the greatest of all: Desmond and Penny.
(Now I'm tearing up as I think of Desmond saying "I love you Penny' as
he's about to turn the fail-safe key. Damn you, Lost.) Love became
something that has been basically less and less relevant in great television
series and if it does come up its done in a cynical and often bloodthirsty
fashion. We certainly saw in both Bad and Thrones how love caused
its characters to commit horrible acts of violence, which irrevocably tainted
it.
That was never the case for Lost.
Indeed I'd argue part of the reason we loved the show so much is because it
made us care about the characters and how so many of the things they cared
about the most were taken from them in regard to the island. Here I'll quote
Nikki Stafford in the final volume of Finding Lost:
Almost every character in this
series has lost the one thing that mattered most to them. For Sun, it was Jin.
Jack lost Kate. Kate & Claire both lost Aaron. Locke lost his faith and
then the island. Sayid lost Nadia. Daniel lost Charlotte. Sawyer lost Juliet.
Desmond lost Penny, but he stands apart because unlike everyone else, he got
her back again.
And that's not counting how Ben and
Danielle both lost Alex, Richard lost Isabella or Hurley lost Libby.
Most of these losses were through
death but unlike so many of the shows above Lost made you feel these
deaths in your gut. Every time a character died on Lost even on the
island, there was a funeral of sorts. I don't think I've seen this in any of the
shows above in the same way. Lost went out of its way to take the time
to bury its victims and have those who were still alive say a few words and
mourn their departure. When a character died on one of the previous two shows,
their loss was barely noticed and in many cases mourning was not an option. Lost
alone made you feel the loss of the characters in a very real way.
I suspect that's another part of
the reason I keep rewatching it. I know which characters are going to die, when
its going to happen and how. But that doesn't make them any less painful or hit
it in the gut any less. When we watch Charlie die after going through all of
Season 3 wondering if it will actually happen, it's arguably one of the most
moving and profound sequences in TV history. You feel it in your gut and your
heart breaks all over again. I defy anyone to say they feel a similar kind of
emotion whenever they rewatch a wedding in Westeros or when we see what happens
to Jane or Gus Fring on Breaking Bad. I've seen the latter quite a few
times; it's not the same thing at all.
I think its telling that the
episode all Lost fans think is the greatest of all time is The Constant.
Unlike any of those in Bad or Thrones we aren't waiting for a
moment of tragedy but to see love conquer all, even time and space. This isn't
a struggle for power that ends in bloodshed or one character losing everything he
ever had; this is a story about love and the power it has to cross over
everything. There are other episodes in Lost I think are superior to
'The Constant' but I do understand why Lost fans feel that way and why
it was once named one of the greatest episodes of the 21st century.
You come away with your brain and heart aching and happy in a way you just aren't
watching 'Rains of Castamere' or 'Ozymandias'. When those episodes aired the
first time you no doubt needed a week to recover. When 'The Constant' aired you
counted down the hours and minutes for the next episode to see what happened
next and you stayed up all night because you were overjoyed. There aren't a lot of shows you feel that way
about and fewer that give you that feeling after nearly twenty years.
That's why I know that while I want
to rewatch many of the shows at the start above, Lost is the only
one I know with certainty I will rewatch. It has nothing to do with it
being a higher quality show then Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or
even favorites that mean more to me like The Americans and Damages. They are all great shows and they all have
power. But Lost is one of those shows that resonates with my heart far
more than my brain or my gut. In other words
it's the kind of show that leaves you smiling when you watch it.
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