Slowly Going Bald

I know I expressed some concerns recently about the internal consistencies of Lost, and though I still maintain that some hygiene issues are just too big to be ignored, and that Jack's hair should really be noticeably longer, I've got a bigger bone to pick with the show.

Nothing's happening.

Sure, on the surface there seems to be plenty going on, especially compared to most other shows on network TV. But creator J.J. Abrams sets the bar high, and the show's not living up to it. The first season of Abrams' Alias was a phenomenal display of action, mystery, and emotional conflict; except for the random clip show episode where Sydney is interrogated by the FBI (repped by Terry O'Quinn), the entire season is tight, and almost flawlessly paced. Lost took the same mix of soap and sci-fi to epic new heights in its groundbreaking first season, a year that may prove impossible to top. Maybe it's because Abrams' energies have been focused elsewhere of late, but Lost is definitely suffering from a sophmore slump. The best evidence of this?

Nothing's happening.

The show's myriad plot lines, once so tightly interwoven, have become almost helplessly unraveled. Michael's been off in the woods looking for Walt for who knows how long, and except to make a few cameos to welcome Shannon to an apparently pretty Twin Peaks-ish afterlife, Walt hasn't been seen all year. Sawyer finally went bad again and swiped the island's stockpile of guns, an arc which was summarily dropped the next episode when Sawyer spent his time chasing a tree frog.

We're 14 episodes along in season two. At this time last year, Locke and Boone had already found and begun to excavate the hatch; it was revealed that Sawyer knew Jack's father; Claire had been kidnapped; the anagrammatically evil Ethan Rom had made his presence known; Sayid had already been captured by Rousseau and escaped; Charlie had already kicked the monkey off his back; and, of course, Walt was psychically manifesting giant polar bears, and possibly the daily rainfall. Last season was packed with drama, while this season has slowed to a crawl.

Maybe it was impossible for the show to continue on the stellar trajectory it charted its first year. But rather than continue to push the characters forward, to have them grow, the writing this season (again, with the exception of "The Long Con") has been stuck in neutral. The best dramas are ones whose characters show marked change over time, which Lost pulled off in its first year: The characters weren't the same at the end as they were when they started. But this entire season has felt like one long, turgid answer to the question posed in last year's finale of just what's down the hatch. The answer, it seems, is less than we hoped.

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