Sunday, January 18, 2009

Making Sense of a Senseless World.

You think this post is about psychiatry. Or life in general. Here is going to be the secret, how to unravel it all so it makes sense.

Ha! Tricked you! I just found an article in the New York Times (from 1.15.09) called The Man Who Makes Sense of 'Lost.' It's about Gregg Nations, a man whose job (he gets paid for this!!!) is to keep track of the plot lines for the TV show LOST, a favorite of both Roy and I. This is the thing though, I watched the first season on DVD on vacation, 2-3 episodes a day, it was riveting, no commercials, no waiting a week to see what happens. I watched a couple more seasons on DVD, but not at the same rate, and the plot started to get a bit confusing. Or rather there were too many different plots going on at the same time and more and more plot lines started with more questions being asked but not enough being answered. And I caught up to the real-life show, and now have to watch it on TV, with the week-long breaks between episodes, noise of regular life, and season breaks. The show travels back and forth through time, I never figured out why Benjamin (the bad guy) was shown for a flash as a security screener in the airport in Australia, or what was with the polar bear on the island, and now we travel back and forth in time in vague and mysterious ways. There are puffs of smoke, bodies lost and found, lovers in countries down the road, and an island that splits and has the magic power to heal cancer and paralysis Nothing quite rivals that first season, with the number sequence that had to be typed into the Dharma station machines ever 108 seconds or else...or else what?

So I'm Lost. It was good to read that other people are Lost, and that even the show's script writers have trouble keeping track of the intricate plot. I didn't realize there were over 100 characters. Will they be my Facebook friends?

And Therapy Patient, there had better not be 20 million people headed to Washington on Tuesday. Shrink Rap will be reporting.

5 comments:

ClinkShrink said...

This is why I don't have a TV.

Monica Cassani said...

I only watch TV on DVD now...so when I "catch up" I just have to wait for the next season...it's a much better way to watch TV.

I don't watch Lost though it's ludicrous in my mind...I was into for 2 seasons and then like you said got LOST...and they therefore lost me.

Anonymous said...

What does it say when you are the person who can keep track of Lost plots? It's not that I have an astounding memory; in fact my memory can be quite poor. But I can remember what happened to a character and his/her associated plot lines; I need only see them. Although this happens with other shows, it is striking with Lost since I am often filling in my friends as to what's happening.

And, for the record, I don't read this blog for the Lost comments ;>

Keesha Boyd- MA, MEd. said...

Very funny post! I'm a fellow "shrink" and was trolling the blogosphere to find other interesting blogs to link to my blog (http://psychologicallyspeaking.blogspot.com). Hope you don't mind!

Sarebear said...

do a search on my blog, I believe I have a few posts that may help.

Hell, I even took some scientific references from a remark by the producers, one of the only clues they'd give before the last season, and spent a couple hours in Wikipedia . . . . it involved oh I forget, but it was cosmic scientific stuff, i had to read slooow and wrap my brain around it, high level physics, but actually as the season progressed and a bit more of the stuff with the physics guy, and the time being off w/the flare or rocket test, and other stuff . . . much other stuff . . . from prev seasons and into this one, some of the stuff that I'd read, not the nuts and bolts of it but kinda what it MEANT . . . made sense.

as far as theories for how the time displacement and the copied bunny and stuff . . .

but that was right around when I made those post(s) to my blog, so I haven't gone into it since. But I've got some interesting theories, heh.

Not that I post about it because you do, but eventually I'll put something newer up.

Thing is, everyone on this show, the main characters, seem to have to face their parental issues . . . . Kate, Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, Locke . . . . hrm Charlie dunno bout his parents, it was more his brother, really, but older, so kinda a father figure.

Jack though still hasn't worked his out. Sawyer is in the aftermath of what he did to avenge his parents' deaths, by offing Locke's pop, altho by avoiding facing his issues with his dad and having someone else handle it (not that I'm advocating murder, speaking hypothetically here, that he didn't face his issues cause he didn't face his dad, in the end). Kate faced the man she grew up knowing as her dad, and then the man who abused her mom (was that her actual dad? I forget). She stood up to her mom, too. Hrm, murder, she wrote, there, on the (step)dad, eeek. (yes, it's tv.)

Hurley . . . . he's still running from his issues. He's tried to be with his dad (i forget, did his mom die while he was on the island?) but then in the end ran away (other complicating factors too.

Benjamin . . . . well, we know what he did to his dad . . . his is more the reverse . . . his daughter. THAT made me feel bad for him (I think he thought there was some absolute reason the guy wouldn't pull the trigger, I don't think he was being a coward.)

With Saeed, it's the loss of his wife, and before that, whatsherface. He's got some probs goin on there. But they couldn't make it all mommy/daddy that'd be, well, too much all the same i guess lol.

Woops, am I shrinking them? heh.

Well, it's not all parental issues but mostly . . . if you take away the wierd physics and stuff (I still wonder if the smoke is nanites, read Michael Chrichton's Prey . . . . could explain more than the "smoke" too . . . . .)

Oh, the polar bear, well, remember the cages Kate and Sawyer, and earlier Karl were in? there was also reference to experiments on animals, on bears . . . .

Also, one of the comic books the boy used to read had a polar bear on the front. Wierd things would sometimes happen around him, having to do with what he'd been thinking about. Perhaps the bear came to the area because of him, maybe . . . (this level of thoughts affecting reality also being something I gleaned out of all the high-falutin' theoritical quantum physics crap, barely, that one day, from the stuff i linked to and read associated with whatever it was the producer had mentioned).

Well, I guess I sorta just posted a little about it, anyway, and I still haveta watch the latest ones on Tivo . . . they'll prolly make me go wth? like I've been hearing from people lol!!!