I hope J.J. Abrams and crew have learned a lesson from Alias, which wrapped its erratic 5-year run this week. Always have an escape route. Look before you leap. Know where you're going before you start the journey. Take your pick. Like The X-Files before it, Alias was a poster child for seat-of-the-pants plotting. And now that it's over, it still doesn't make any sense. First, at the end of season... four?... Rambaldi's endgame was revealed to be a massive zombification project to the resounding "Huh?" of the audience. It was a development that came out of nowhere, and why Sloane would doggedly pursue such an outcome remained unclear at best.
The second time around, the endgame made much more sense, and at the same time even less. From the very beginning, the show intimated that Rambaldi had found the key to extreme longevity if not immortality. So when the bread crumbs finally led to an elixir of life, that at least felt internally consistent. Obscenely baroque, with a gazillion steps to gather artifacts that seemed to play no part in the creation of the elixir, but thematically sound. But if Rambaldi discovered eternal life, why would he be entombed? For years I've been convinced that when it all finally came together, Rambaldi himself would reveal himself to be alive and kicking and the mastermind behind... something. That, at least, would have made a sort if internal sense.
But sense isn't exactly the hallmark of the series. It would be easy, if exceedingly geeky, to go back through all five seasons and list all the Rambaldi-related shenanigans that went nowhere or were never explained. We never learn why Rambaldi prophesized about Sydney in the first place. And what was all that mumbo-jumbo about Sydney bringing "the highest power unto utter desolation"? It's obvious the writers had no idea where they were going when they pulled ideas out of their asses-- they just hopped into the paper bag and hoped to write their way out of it later.
Which brings us to Lost.
They've gone a great job so far of delivering payoffs for their promises, and everything's pretty much holding together (Michael's complete loss of a moral compass notwithstanding). So I remain hopeful. But we've just seen what can happen when a show loses its way, and I'm hoping Lost's title isn't prophetic.
Posted by Peter at May 24, 2006 1:03 AM