Lost Season Opener Has Us Wondering if ABC Writers Are On Creative Strike

If you’re a Lost fan, it’s hard imagine what next after a season finale which featured never-before-seen previews of the life after the island (yes, they do manage to get off somehow); a climactic showdown between the show’s two bitter rivals/archenemies; the death of a beloved, yet flawed character who left us with a fateful message or one that’s construed as such anyways; and a possible pregnancy forcing the Jack/Sawyer/Kate love triangle storyline to its near breaking point.

With build-up in tension like that, it’s easy to see the rationale behind ABC waiting 8 mos to launch a new season of their most popular show and even more so why there was no way the premiere could hold a candle to the fireworks that ignited back in May.

Still, my biggest pet peeve about the Lost season premiere on Thursday was the lack of imagination and forethought into the characters’ development. And most of all, this overplay of the same 2-dimensional theme that the island holds some magical force which perpetuates good and that once you’re off the island you become dysfunctional and your entire sense of equilibrium gets shifted off-kilter to the brink of insanity.

Case-in-point: the anti-burly Hurley aka Hugo.

SPOILER ALERT

We learned in past episodes that Hurley had at one point won the lottery and ended up in a loony bin prior to his stint on the island so it’s quite possible the man isn’t the most stable of sorts mentally. But we also know that on the island, Hurley is depicted as the most compassionate, level-headed person around - capable of cutting through the crap and getting to the heart of the matter. In short, his sense of social responsibility could render him mayor of the island if the island had the governmental infrastructure in place with which to democratically appoint a mayor.

Knowing all this makes it harder to watch Thursday’s episode as we see Hurley tread the line between sanity and insanity as he reels from Charlie’s death. Post-island, we learn that being a part of the “Oceanic 6″ (Meaning 6 survivors? Knowing that Jack, Kate, and Hurley are three of them, who are the rest?) comes with its share of celebrity-like paparazzi pressures as Jack alludes to with Hurley and as becomes even more apparent in the car chase scene in which Hurley ends up in jail, begging to be committed to an insane asylum where he can at least gain some semblance of peace and refuge from hounding demons, both real and imaginary.

Of course, one can’t help but draw parallels between the media exploitation of such a tragic [yet fictitious] event as the plane crash and the survivors who must live in the eye of the media storm and America’s own fixation with celebrities. How many of us flinch at the way the paparazzi mercilessly hound Britney Spears on an hourly basis making us all more than a little uncomfortable at the idea that anyone really wants to bear witness to someone else’s suffering in such a vicious and relentless manner all in the name of a ratings game.

There were a few hooks to Thursday’s episode:

Are the “rescuers” as Jack and Kate believe them to be indeed beneficent or do they have some hidden motives all their own? What will the rescuers do once they learn the true fate of one of their own at the hands of John Locke? Was Charlie’s cryptic message (Not Penny’s boat) really meant as a forewarning to the group of the rescuers’ ill intentions or a personal message to Desmond regarding his love’s mission to find him?

Either way, it doesn’t really matter since regardless of Charlie’s message, its legacy - the division it created within the Locke and Jack camps created an interesting dichotomy in the group’s dynamic. Last season’s opener had all of the survivors of the crash uniting together against “the others”. Toward the end of last season, with alliances and loyalties tested and more distrust perpetuated, the survivors started to turn on each other, especially Locke as he believed his place to be more and more on the island. Now that Locke and Ben are united in their desire to stay on the island at all costs and Hurley made his plea to heed Charlie’s warning and convince others to go with Locke, it would appear that things might get more interesting with Jack losing his hold as leader of the group.

Still unresolved is Kate’s pregnancy. Where Walt went after his brief stint in the season finale and how he his character will re-emerge and in what form (i.e. Jacob)? Finally and perhaps the most troubling question of all: What Hurley meant when he told Jack that he was sorry for not choosing him. Did Hurley’s alliance with Locke somehow elicit the death of even more people he feels personally responsible for? And what’s this big secret he’s keeping for Jack?

All things we might not see answered this season, but as long as there are flash forwards I might just be able to get through some of lackluster writing this season has shown us thus far.