By Daniel Strauss
Cultural historians will look back on this decade as a time of extreme paranoia in American culture, a time when the very specter of our own shadow sparks rabid paranoia. Why wouldn’t they, considering shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost, which wreak suspicion and mystery? Both shows are hot-shit right now. What’s more, both shows have a serious philosophical layer to them. Common hot topics include torture (the easy way to getting a “it’s actually a really deep show” response from viewers and critics), the value of democracy, and whether the peaceful olive branch or the belligerent sword is more effective.
Just to recap for those who don’t spend their Fridays watching Battlestar Galactica or their free time downloading episodes of Lost, Lost is about the passengers of Flight 815, whose plane from Australia to Los Angeles strangely falls off course and crashes on an anonymous island. At first our heroes wait patiently for rescue, but time passes and two truths become clear: one is that rescue isn’t coming anytime soon. The other is that they aren’t alone. After three completed seasons and half of a fourth, viewers can only speculate about the “others” on the island who kidnap survivors of Flight 815 in the night – some light has been shed onto this mystery but only a twinkle.
With every hint at an answer, ten more mysteries appear. We still don’t know why the others are on the island or why the island is dotted with special “hatches,”‘ which are bunkers and part of an experiment called the Dharma Initiative. We do know that the island has a number of supernatural attributes which directly affect the lives of anyone on the island.
Besides that. though, the Lost writers have a lot of explaining to do. As it happens, Flight 815 had an exotic cast of passengers, including a lottery winner who serves as the show’s comic relief, two vigilantes, and an ex-Iraqi Republican Guard member.
Some of the characters are cliched, like the strapping gun-toting surgical physician Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox), whom the islanders nominated to make most of their decisions. He’s good looking, he’s charming, he’s heroic, he’s cautious, or, in one word, he’s boring. To break the monotony of a character that’s been on what must be every ABC show ever, we learn through flashbacks that Jack has a somewhat dark past, full of beautiful women loving him and then breaking his heart.
Thankfully, and unusually for a prime time television show, Jack is countered by a quality character named John Locke played by gifted actor Terry O’Quinn. Where Jack is the logical voice of reason, Locke is a man of faith and daring. He’s the counter to Jack in oh so many ways. Where Jack is ruggedly handsome, Locke is ruggedly . . . not; where Locke is old, Jack is young, Jack is educated and Locke is not. The list goes on. We have learned from flashbacks that Locke has been around; one minute he’s a mild-mannered box manager, the next minute a marijuana farmhand. Oh and I shouldn’t forget to mention that his father is a master con artist who took one of Locke’s kidneys before abandoning him.
O’Quinn’s Locke is truly a pleasure to watch, even when the episodes turn to ideological questions like whether torture is right or wrong, with opposing views represented by either Locke or Jack. The two stars are supported by a cast of beautiful twenty- and thirty-somethings who are marginally interesting. Some have made it through the past three seasons and will probably survive into the fourth, some didn’t and some won’t. It’s hard to care about the rest.
The real appeal of the show is the concept: trapped on an island, no easy escape, but there’s something odd about this island. It’s a frightening kind of mystery with a slight believableness. Well, believable in the sense that J.K. Rowling was on to something in writing about a parallel world of wizards in the Harry Potter series.
Sadly, it seems the Lost writers aren’t putting their creative backs into the show anymore as more and more strange things happen on the island with the strong inference that it’s magic. Well, the show is slated for only one more full season so might as well not leave ’em wanting more for now.
The last episode, which I watched online, was sort of a plot thickener as the outside world finally made it to the island, but these particular newcomers may have a few other things in mind, the particulars of which we probably won’t find out soon if ever.
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Many diehard Lost fans would rather quickly deny that a science fiction series called Battlestar Galactica has any similarities to their beloved hour-long obsession. But it’s true; BSG and Lost are like family. Excuse the fact that Lost is set on a tropical island somewhere between Sydney and Los Angeles and that Galactica is about a battered battleship leading the remnants to humanity to Earth in an unknown time – it could be set today, could be 10,000 in the future or a long, long time ago.
Like Lost, Galactica is filled with the unknown. About 50,000 humans escape the nuclear holocaust on their home planet Caprica caused by the Cylons, robots humanity created to serve them. Now they’re searching for Earth while the Cylons – whose full plans are somewhat of a mystery – are trying to kill them. We think. After three seasons, we know the robots believe in a Christian God while humans put their faith in a polytheistic pantheon of Greek gods. Besides that, the models of Cylons that look like humans want to mate with humans to create human-Cylon hybrids. Mmm, human-Cylon hybrids . . .
This is the final season of BSG, which has been advertised as the one that will reveal all the various mysteries. What do the Cylons want? Why do they believe in one God and the humans in many? What year is it? Why doesn’t humanity know where Earth is?
And then, of course, there are the particular character mysteries. In the last season it was revealed that there are five Cylons hidden among the human fleet who don’t know they’re Cylons. At the end of the last season, four are revealed and one remains unknown.
The past three seasons have been filled with the theme of distrust because the human form Cylons could be anyone. This season uses the new Cylons as a way to explore identity. How do you continue the life you lived knowing that you’re radically different than who you thought you were? And what makes a human a human?
There’s also Katee Sackhoff, who plays a rebellious fighter pilot, call sign Starbuck, who has inexplicably risen from the dead. Between her death and unexplained resurrection, she seems to have visited Earth and knows the way there. What’s more, she says the human survivors are going the wrong way. Sackhoff’s acting seems to have waned after three seasons, but there’s still heavy hitter Edward James Olmos, who playes the stoic Admiral William Adama. With his battered face and masterful silences he’s just a pleasure to watch.
The last episode built on these mysteries with Starbuck and a ragtag crew on a sanitation ship “scouting” for Earth away from the fleet.
Meanwhile, in an ironic Frankensteinian twist, the more robotic versions of the Cylons have gained independent thought and are rebelling against the human form models, much the same as how the original Cylon rebelled from the original humans. I liked this partially because it broke up the monotony of the same old storylines that have carried the show for the last three seasons, and it’s unclear what’s going to happen next.
Surely, though, the next episodes of Galactica will do exactly what it’s done so successfully in the past three seasons and what Lost has also done: nurture mysteries and approach modern day cultural concerns such as terrorism, whether democracy works, and if torture is effective. At first it’s hard to admit that these shows have serious depth, but as I watched more and more episodes it was hard to deny.
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See what else our Beachwood correspondents are watching.
Posted on April 21, 2008