Monday, May 24, 2010

DEUX EX MACHINA & 121 EPISODES OF LOST


Last night was the series finale of a groundbreaking television show that I have watched since I first saw the pilot in September 2004. There's a lot that I liked and will miss about LOST. I really like the characters, the acting, the Hawaii setting, the mystery, the twists and all the turns that kept me and the world guessing for 6 years. However, the series finale of LOST was a big cop out. It reminded me of my Greek playwriting class.....

In Greecian times they called it the "deux ex machina", which loosely translates into "the God machine." Basically in Grecian tragedies, the mother would sleep with the son, the father would kill the mother, the famine would destroy the city-state, the people of the village would burn, the priest would defy the gods, etc. All hell would break lose and after 3 hours of sitting on stones with no backing in an amphitheater at night with no air conditioning, the playwright couldn't leave the audience with an ending like that, so the deux ex machina was born. At the very end of the play, a god (usually Zeus, but any of the other major gods would do) would descend from Mount Olympus and magically fix everything, restore order, make everyone alive again as if the past 3 hours of misery had never happened, and POOF! Happily Ever After. It was a cop out in 2000 B.C. and it's still a cop out in the 21st century.

Here's why: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/05/one_hundred_unanswered_lost_qu.html

Also, is it me, or does ever great TV show not know how to end? LOST joins great television shows such as Seinfeld, and The Sopranos with not knowing how to end a great television series.

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