Confession:
I really like LOST.

In fact, I was watching the last episode (I missed it last week) online.
Desmond was just seen eating a mango- which totally made me want a mango- but we don’t have any so I settle for an orange.

So far all the questions brought up the week before last are left unanswered because they are flashing back again- focusing on characters that we have not seen much of- building little by little the plot- widening the story and the mystery.

Sometimes, as the seasons continue to pass and I still have no solid answers as to what the heck is going on, I grow frustrated.

This is something that I suddenly want to explore- as life has turned out for me so differently than I had expected-the plot building day after day and new people and situations continually widening the story and the mystery.

What really gets me is how you can see the same characters (back to LOST) day after day and after some time you believe that you know them. Then they go and do one of these flash backs and you see that you don’t know them at all. And really how could you in such a short time and in this one situation (stuck on an island)?

Are the good guys bad? the baddies good? Are they changed? Are they better? Is this time on the island a new start? Or do they hide in new circumstances waiting to be revealed when the time is right? Maybe this is where their true colors are shown…perhaps this is where their real character is revealed?

The writers take the time to build and set up and then pull apart and add and the entire story is changed in the hour or so that the episode with commercials takes. Or is it? Maybe these flash backs (at least last weeks) are just a formidable distraction from the main story line; just enough raw bait to throw the hungry sharks circling the ship.

Sometimes though the flashbacks into some of the main characters lives tell us how they
became the people that they are in the current episodes. The reasons they do the things that they do is revealed. We understand them a little better.

I guess my point is that although life is relatively short a lot can happen to us and be done by us in the years that we have and who we are can be (seemingly) utterly complex or terribly simple. Are we bad or good or bad and good both?

It is quite trivial to make this comparison between LOST and real life I suppose. But I think that some will find ways to explore these questions (this mystery) and I guess if one wants to one can find or see that exploration in just about anything, even in television.