Don’t Mistake Coincidence For Storytelling….

February 20, 2006

Don’t Mistake Coincidence For Storytelling….

The good news is that feeling is returning on my right side around were they performed the operation – the bad news is that I now actually feel like there are 25 metal staples down there and I’m out of painkillers.

So, not much moving around today then – leading me to watch 9 episodes of Lost Series 2 in two days – all worthy loafing material, well, apart from the ones where they feel they need to do an hours worth of some lighter, insignificant non-relevant plot malarkey and remind you about the fat guy winning the lottery and how sad it made him.

I suppose they have only been there 45 days or so, but you’d think he’d show some signs of being less of a chunky butler – he’s on a desert island with meagre food rations and running around the jungle all the time – yet he still looks like the kind of guy for whom they remove the sides of houses to get them to go outdoors – turning up on Jerry Springer saying things like “I am magnetically drawn to cake in all it’s many forms – God appeared to me and proclaimed that I have to destroy the worlds cake supply in order to save America – I must eat every last crumb so no other will suffer – I’m cursed I tell you”

While I do enjoy Lost’s air of menace and mystery, I also worry that they’re promising more than they can deliver with the ever mounting questions and suspense – the whole scenario of “don’t mistake coincidence for fate” opens up a lot of possibilities for story telling as once you’ve got the audience buying into this theory you can pretty much chuck anything in there and get away with it – from the constant recurrence of that sequence of numbers, to the revealing of character connections in flashback – but the longer you string along the build up, the more grandiose and significant an answer everyone will expect.

I mean the X-Files started out as a few kooky freak show tales – modern day campfire stories coming to life and detectives sent to investigate – a bit of a back-story about Mulder’s sister getting abducted by aliens, but nothing too serious – then, the more it went along, the more it disappeared up it’s own backside - alluding to numerous hidden agendas at work and higher powers pulling all the strings - then finally it played too many cards and everyone lost interest and went off to watch something else instead – once it got to series 6 or so who really gave a monkeys what the secret behind it all was? we were all too bored, tired and confused by then.

“Don’t mistake coincidence for fate” – hmmmm don’t mistake the use of coincidence for a chronic lack of imagination I say – hopefully the people behind all this engrossing survivor story desert island kookery know that as well – don’t get me watching three series and then finally reveal that the government has been hiding the descendents of Christ on an island all these years - their day of rescue predicted in ancient scrolls that have foretold the identity of their rescuers to be a kid with hidden magical powers, a sexy fugitive chick you can’t quite trust, a doctor do good, a mystical bald wannabe army guy, a jolly nice Iraqi chap and a red-neck that all the women want to sleep with coz he’s a bad motherfucker who just don’t give a damn.

At least that’s what I think is going on anyway.

Spo | February 20, 2006