« HypoChristians in the midst of us | Main | Priorities, priorities »

November 17, 2005

Last night's "Lost": Welcome to the class war

Read below the flap if you want the spoilers.

Ever since I got hooked on the show, I bit my snark back over all of the resources our beleagued castaways had. Penecillin! The flight manifest, which somehow survived a fiery crash. Water bottles. They didn't even have to look for water for a few days. Suitcases and personal effects.

And last night, when we saw what the talies went through, it really hit me: those fusies have had a trip to summer camp in comparison. Sheesh. The most wrenching moment for me was when the psychologist went to Ana Lucia to tell her about the injured man's infection. Ana Lucia looked at her and said something like: "What do you think we can do about it?"

Just wait for him to die. Because they have no penecillin--so he didn't even have a chance. On the other side of the island, people died, but they also had a fighting chance, what with a doctor and meds and an herbalist. (And opiates now. Bless those painkillers, if Charlie can manage to stay on the wagon.) They didn't have a doctor, or an herbalist, or even the raw numbers of the fusies. They had kids, which brought out The Others, and they had a lot of fear. They had no water. Nothing. Hell, despite all of the claims of an extended episode, they only got an hour to tell their whole story, unlike the fusies. Bah. Then again, I doubt they had time to engage in any soul-searching or angst. Their predicament was the real deal. They just needed a basketball to call Wilson.

They relied on guesswork to figure--wrongly--that Nathan was one of the Others. There was no flight manifest, which was how the fusies figured out that Ethan was a menace. Seeing what they went through, I can't say I wouldn't have done the same things Ana Lucia did. I probably would have thrown him into the hole. But I still flinched when I saw that someone gave him a banana to eat and he hid it--because she was trying to make him talk by starving him out. And you knew, you just knew, that he couldn't be one of the Others, that was an irritating but ultimately innocent guy who was being tortured (and the cutting the finger off bit? Twitch, twitch. Look, full disclosure: I'll commit to crucifying Jesus all by myself if you cut off my finger, which tells you how much a confession under torture would be worth--and if peace corp man used his brain, he'd have known that and saved himself the trouble of killing Nathan). I'll assume they gave him water--he would have been dead or damn close to it after four days with no water.

Here's what I think: something in Ana's past is really involved with kids. She either had one and had to give it up, lost one, or was involved in a tragedy around one.

Okay, them's my thoughts on the only TV show that I watch with any regularity.

Posted by at November 17, 2005 07:02 AM