[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Beaches look comfy a bit at a time. But have a look at the toll island living takes on the cast of Survivor. The sun beats down like a bugger, insects at night can be horrible, your feet and legs get chewed up, etc. Finding a big concrete building with electrical power wouldn’t just be a ‘this is interesting’ moment, it would be a, “holy crap! We found a place to live!” moment.
No one would leave abandoned a large, clean, powered building and willingly live exposed on a beach. Especially if people kept dying under mysterious circumstances and getting snatched by mysterious people.
If this show had a shred of real character behaviour, they’d all be crowded into those buildings, with guards stationed out at night to protect them from various threats.
And of course, a real Kate or Sawyer would have taken the very first opportunity with that kid to sit down find out everything about him. How long has he lived here? How do they get supplied? How many are there? What is their purpose in being there? Why did they capture the children? What do all the stations do? How come Alex’s mother is running around in the jungle like a crazy person? What does it all mean?
A show like Lost has to be very careful to make sure that the characters are not in a position to discover all the secrets just by asking, because then they have to write themselves out of that box by making the characters behave unrealistically. That’s the problem with Lost. It would have been a MUCH better show if the Losties actually behaved rationally.
Imagine how interesting it woud be to see them actually organizing, making plans, sending teams out to map the island, discovering mysteries, working out what’s going on, etc. I’d love to see an episode focused on ‘expedition team 2’, who were charged with climbing a mountain because a glint of something shiny was spotted. Have them uncover mysterious things, get in trouble, etc.
It’s more fun to watch people in a tough spot using their wits to get out of it, than it is to just have endless ‘character development’ and romantic triangles and random mysterious behaviour while every character not currently speaking dialog behaves like a bored automaton.
[/QUOTE]
I wish someone would write YOUR show.
You folks have summed up my issues with the show quite thoroughly, and maybe added a couple things I hadn’t thought of until they were mentioned.
It seems like a lot of the BBC shows I’ve seen have an outrageously short run; one (or less) of what would be our TV season. Our shows drag on forever. It would be nice to see a compromise in situations like this, where a program would greatly benefit from a clearly defined arc. Babylon 5 did this, and was considered by many to have succeeded, even though the near-constant threat of cancellation caused early resolution of major plot points, much to the detriment of it’s last season.
