We Have to Magic the Magic Before the Magic or the Magic will Magic
* I’m planning on using this week’s bizarre Lost/West Wing crossover as my litmus test for how seriously to take people’s opinions on science fiction. That was painful, and enshrines what is more or less total garbage at the center of the show’s mythology. (We have to magic the magic before the magic or the magic will magic…) Despite those really good time travel bits in season five, season six has presented a strong challenge to the wisdom of our decision to start watching this show again. The showrunners still don’t have any idea what they’re on about; they never have. I’m hoping the last few episodes can avoid Battlestar Galactica levels of total series failure; I’ll be glad if they can just bring this thing in for a landing…
* Oliver Stone previews Wall Street 2 and 3.
* Climate change watch: no more lizards.
* The Great Unwinding: Detroit to begin its demolishing of 10,000 homes.
* And Boing Boing has a helpful graphic about Virgin’s SpaceShip Two. Booking my ticket now.
Gerry Canavan 
Personally, I liked last week’s episode of Lost, though clearly our expectations are different. Who said Lost *is* science fiction?
Fred
May 16, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Well, it *used* to be.
gerrycanavan
May 16, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Maybe, maybe not. I think there are some sfnal elements at work in the show, obviously, but there are also fantastical elements. Not explaining something does not necessarily make the show bad, and I’m not sure you can fault it for not telling the type of story you want it to tell, or for not adhering to all the perceived rules of a particular genre. You don’t have to like it, certainly — and I do get why the show, and the last episode in particular, are so polarizing — but I don’t know that I’ll be disappointed if we never understand how the mechanics of the island, the smoke monster, Jacob, etc. are supposed to have worked.
Fred
May 17, 2010 at 11:23 am
[…] thought the Lost finale was better than the entire rest of the Internet—which is to say “Across the Sea” has already trashed my hopes that we’d get an actually decent ending. But even counting the […]
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