Lost: The Allegory's Allegory

Jeff Jensen, a writer from Entertainment Weekly, might be the first writer to turn TV criticism into an art form unto itself. Kids have been hip to movie-critic badassity for decades - James Agee made it chic, Pauline Kael made it sexy, Ebert brought it to the masses and Anthony Lane brought it back to the cocktail party. Now Jensen, with a twice-weekly column (one preview for the episode and one exhaustive review/analysis) is making reading about TV almost as much fun (and twice as intelligent) as watching it.

Jensen came up with the idea - both ludicrous and brilliant - that Lost is an allegory for itself - that the castaways' confusion and pursuit of answers (about their own past, and about the island) mirrors the audience; the Others (or the Natives, or whatever we want to call those mysterious locals who have thankfully returned to the shadows), with their elaborate conspiracies, their constant dress-up (recall that we used to think they were primitive tribalists with torches and Van Winkle bears), their bizarre ability to know everything about the castaways, are the writers, laying more mysteries in our path at every turn; that the island is a metaphor for TV land, with its endless supply of ghosts and guns and girls and boys.

Part of the fun of this theory is that it is utterly simplistic - you could argue (as a Film Studies major, I often did) that something can mean anything while meaning the exact opposite and deconstructing everything else. But it's important to remember that "Lost," despite its outlandish genre trappings, is ultimately one of the most straightforward narratives in TV history - its just a bunch of people on a strange island, and we have seen pretty much every day of their lives for over three months now (from what Jack said in the last episode, it's been exactly 100 days).

That simplicity is, paradoxically, what may give the show so much metaphorical force - just like "Lord of the Flies" imagined an island society where all of modern culture was stripped to its straightforward animal basics, so the Lost island cuts the whole medium of television down to its bare essentials. This does not excuse the show when it goes wrong, but it does present an interesting prism through which we can see that, even at its worst, "Lost" has something interesting to say about itself and about television.

Take, for example, the "Hydra" storyline which began season 3. That would be: Jack trapped in a dungeon behind clear plexiglass, Kate and Sawyer trapped in polar bear cages, Ben staring at them on remote monitors behind big Peter Parker glasses, Juliet looking hotly mysterious and non sequiturly tense, and a bunch of Others generally acting like dull, thoughtless assholes (like Danny Pickett, the most unnecessarily angry human being in the history of the modern world). This storyline was, without a doubt, one of the least successful in the show's history, but in its own strange way, "The Hydra" cycle is a fascinating portrayal of just how television shows go wrong - an analysis of why the old open-ended narrative is slowly being evolved out of television (or at least, why a show like "Lost" needs to have an end date).

Remember that old episode of "The Simpsons," where Itchy and Scratchy, in an effort to juice ratings and public interest, add in the character "Poochie," who adds absolutely nothing to the show and, indeed, takes away from the mayhem of the original cat and mouse? That's what "The Hydra" was. "Lost" is a show about people trapped on an island, so what could be a more bizarrely appropriate idiotic twist than adding in ANOTHER island? You could see it going on this way indefinitely - why not have a whole row of mysterious islands, one after the other?

So maybe the "Hydra" storyline is, in a way, a self-portrait of writers' block, of rehashing old ideas - "Say, why not another island?" Is it any coincidence that all three main characters in the plotline are quite literally trapped? Jack overhears the occasional piece of wisdom from the old intercom, but it might just be his imagination (or one last bit of creative inspiration), and meantime all he can do is sit in the dark and wait for someone else to come save him. Kate and Sawyer have nothing to do all day, except when the Others come and make them help with building... something.

Except they aren't really building anything, they're just moving stuff around, and vaguely digging into the ground, as if in preparation for building something. Apropos of nothing, the Others give Kate a dress - you can almost hear them, using producer voices, whispering to each other, "She's a cutie. Can't we put her in something nicer than jeans and a tank top?" (I can't help but believe that just one of the "Lost" writers wasn't a little in on the joke here). Ben, meanwhile, watches all of them, and seems just about ready to maybe do something... or maybe just watch, and wait. And lest you think this was all some complex mind game that was building to some major revelation, it turns out that Ben planned everything - this whole strange cages-within-cages plotline - so Jack would cure his cancer. You'd think that, when you had a terminal illness, you might think of something more direct. Like asking nicely. Or not putting your doctor in a cage.

"The Hydra" storyline is all about stasis, but it is a particular kind of stasis - you can feel the writers wrestling themselves into unnecessary permutations, just like Ben makes the whole "please cure my cancer" needlessly complicated. Even the mythological reference indicates a certain frustration. Cut off one of the Hydra's head and another takes its place. Answer one mystery on "Lost" and three more spring up. We don't really learn anything in "The Hydra" saga, even though we see more of the Others than we ever thought was possible.

By comparison, consider a similar behind-the-curtain twist on "Battlestar Galactica," where the Cylons - who, like the Others, spent most of the first and second season lurking out of view - suddenly became main characters on the show. You could argue that aspects of Cylon culture were hokey (I don't), but dammit, we at least learned a hell of a lot about them. With the Others, you could sense the writers stretching the characters' dialogue so as to reveal as little as possible - rarely have so many practically omniscient, seemingly evil, one-would-hope-intelligent people spoken so obliquely among themselves.

Take another example of this self-allegory - the death of Mr. Eko. The characters' first two flashback episodes made it clear that, like everyone else on the island, he was seeking redemption - for past sins, for the men he had murdered, for the loss of his brother. He was building a church; he was hitting the button and doing God's work; he was the voice of reason on the island, even when (as usually happens on "Lost") that reason could shade delicately into madness.

But Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje wasn't satisfied with the character. He had been told that he was playing a priest, and although Mr. Eko was one of the more impeccably drawn characters on the show, it must have worn on the actor (recently seen playing an evil drug dealer on "Oz") to be playing another drug dealer. Akinnuouye-Agbaje was a fan-favorite character on one of the highest-rated shows on TV. He was supposed to be happy, but he wanted out. Akinnuouye-Agbaje to the writers: "I'm not playing your game."

In "The Cost of Living," we watched Eko's fall from grace - moreover, we saw that it might have always been there. We thought that, after he became a priest, he tried to live a good life - but no, even taking his brother's place, he was a murderer, killing men (bad men, but even so) in his brother's old church. Okay fine, we think - one more reason why he's seeking redemption.

But no! Eko faces down the man/thing/smoke-monster-made-flesh that looks like his brother and refutes the whole notion of redemption - refutes the entire good/evil balance which seems to recur so often on the island and on the show (Ben's statement that he and his friends are "the good guys," the black/white dichotomy), argues that he only ever did what he thought he had to do, and that his first murder (his original sin) was justified, because he did it to save his brother's life. It's an argument for moral relativism - it's a fuck-you to every ideal Eko had tried to force himself into living. Eko to the island: "I'm not playing your game." Eko is the only main character (besides Nikki/Paolo, who are their own allegorical meta-story, and Libby, who will return someday...) to die without some kind of redemptive final episode - whereas Ana Lucia, Charlie, Boone, and even Shannon all went to their death having gained some sort of grace, Eko went down kicking and screaming, ignobly (yet awesomely) killed by a giant smoke fist. And, we might note, he is one of the few people to die without ever coming back (Ana Lucia, Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Libby - they all appeared, in dreams, sweat-lodge-acid trips, flashbacks, or flashforwards), and Akinnuouye-Agbaje is the one former actor who seems uniquely opposed to appearing on the show again.

Everything is everything. You all everybody. You know?