Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Lost

The Wire be damned! Why J.J. Abrams creation is the TV show of our time.

In anticipation of tomorrow’s next week’s season premiere, here, in no particular order, are the reasons Lost will teach you everything you need to know. (Yes there will be spoilers.)

1) Power doesn’t say ‘No’. It asks you to say ‘Yes’:
“Jack: You want me to help you?
Ben: No, Jack. I want you to want to help me.”

Ben and ‘the Others’ are masters of manipulation. Rather than forceful ‘conversion’, they work on people’s vulnerabilities and fears to coax them to behave in particular ways. In John Locke they find a willing accomplice – but not because they coerce him into joining them. It’s because he is made to believe it is in his best interest to do so. This is exactly how power works in society – it is far more effective to convince someone that ‘this is good for you’ rather than telling them that this is what you must do. Repression always fails because people rebel; beckoning someone to consent is always the best method of control.

2) We never escape our past: TV shows, particularly in America, are notorious for showing how people overcome their past to forge a new future. I call ‘em “transcendence narratives”. Every happy ending – of the ex-con gone good or she who was lost now being found – always misses out on the hard stuff of rebuilding a life and the constant back-and-forth of ‘escaping your old self’. From Jack’s obsessiveness to Mr. Eko’s guilt to Sawyer’s emptiness after killing Locke’s father, no character gets a fresh start on the island. Even Locke, who miraculously walks again, struggles immensely with betrayal by his father. No-one just walks away from who they were – they only learn how to confront it or deal with it, and even then, it never fully goes away.

3) There is no ‘state of nature’: From Hurley’s status as ‘the fat guy’ to the isolation of Korean-speaking Jin to Jack’s “I’m a doctor” leadership, social stratifications don’t disappear, they just get morphed and transformed on the island. There is no “pure state” – social dynamics and power relations never disappear.

4) Evangeline Lily is ridiculously, insanely hot: Wait, what? How did that get in here?

5) People’s actions are as determined by their circumstances as by their characters: There is no way in hell Jack would have let Sayid, Bernard and Jin die in another ‘normal’ situation (Even though they live, Jack believed them shot). It is only the insane conditions brought on by the island and the Others that force him to act that way. This could be applied to other characters too – Sayid, Locke, Kate, Charlie, anyone really. Lost lays bare the myth that we always control our own actions because it so clearly shows that actions only happen in reaction to something, not in a vacuum.

6) People will have sex at the weirdest – and thus most appropriate times: See Sawyer and Kate. ‘Nuff said. You could also, if you wanted, make some point about sex being the ultimate form of human connection – but that would be just silly.

7) There is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person: No-one on the island is free of some crime. Everyone has done something wrong and everyone has done something right. The ambiguity of Lost – its refusal to box people in, whether Juliet, Kate or Charlie – is its greatest and most honest triumph. This, perhaps more than any other reason is why Lost is the show for the uncertain and morally ambiguous 2000′s.

If you would like to disagree – you shouldn’t. If you insist though, hit the comments and let me know what you think.