Kevin Smith Digs 'Lost'
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I have to admit, I'm actually disappointed by this. The title of this post at Entertainment Weekly is "Kevin Smith Raves About 'Lost'", which makes it sound like a lengthy interview where we get to listen to what one great creative mind says about the work of a half-dozen others. I always love reading things like that, when real talent appreciates the real talent of others - it's very insightful at times.But it's a bust, a total implosion. There's one long dialog by Smith about Lost, a short back and forth (and I mean short) and that's it.
Read it if you're a fan of Lost or of Kevin Smith, then complain about them ripping you off. As for Lost itself, I don't know what there is to get all that excited about. Lost substitutes real story telling with flashback cheats, does it constantly, and gets praised for it. Everything I've ever been taught about writing that's wrong, that you'll be punished for, that audiences hate, somehow is everything that makes people love Lost, and it's absolutely befuddling because all the standard stuff about not abusing flashbacks is actually right.
Is it any wonder that their ratings have halved over the course of the third season, and that ABC is so ready to put it to bed (but not really all that interested in upsetting fanboys) that it's trying to stretch two seasons out into three? C'mon people, do the math: 16 episodes per season is 48 in three years which is exactly the number of episodes you get with every other hour-long drama out there, except you get it in two years instead of three.
I respect Kevin Smith and his opinion of Lost, and as such obviously I'm simply expressing my own. I'm not declaring the show to suck - even though the ratings decline would indicate that the only thing lost on that show is the audience - I'm sure people work very hard over there and a lot more people like the show than hate it.
Good for them and congratulations for their early success, I simply don't agree that Lost is some kind of phenomena worthy of placing on a pedestal - quite the opposite, I think they've done a lot of things wrong and have suffered for it.
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