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“LOST”  Lost Me                               

by Michael Kirwan

     I turned on that program “Lost” this week, looked at it for three minutes or so and decided that I’d never again watch that television show. When it came out I thought that the premise was interesting and the cast believable, the mysterious monster in the jungle intriguing. I figured there were some real unconventional possibilities inherent in a situation where a sizable group of modern day people were stripped of their realities and forced to confront who they actually were in an isolated, primitive environment. Cut off from civilization, separated from family and work responsibilities, forced to fend for their lives on a daily basis. What could be more dramatic?

     The castaways have been on the island for at least a couple of months now. Why is the fat guy still fat? Without sugar, without baked goods, without all the crap snack foods loaded with chemical preservatives, HOW THE FUCK IS THIS GUY STILL FAT? It doesn’t make sense. It defies logic and that is just something I can not abide. The entire cast should look gaunt and bronzed from the constant exposure to the sun. Some people should have gone crazy or committed suicide from grief (they ARE away from their families, their whole identities dismantled) some should have succumbed to their own medical histories (after all, it seems that almost everyone has some condition or other that requires treatment these days). Everyone is just a little too fresh, wholesome and complacent. But that’s not my beef. THE FAT GUY IS STILL FAT. It doesn’t ring true, it doesn’t make sense. The horror in the trees I can accept. It is the “unknown”. There is no precedents or rules to follow except that it had to have a recognizable food supply that existed before the plane crashed. But it IS KNOWN that given a limited diet of fish and fruit and only water to drink (I haven’t noticed a Coca-Cola machine on the beach) that a FAT GUY IS GOING TO GET VERY THIN VERY FAST.

     It bothers me a lot when minor things don’t make sense. Glaring inconsistencies are a blatant insult to the audience. I couldn’t watch “The Cosby Show” because the kids were just too many different colors. Before you all get on your “high racial horses” I am simply pointing out that given the skin hues of Bill Cosby and Felicia Rashad it is inconceivable that they could’ve possibly produced Lisa Bonet. It’s illogical. Maybe it’s just me. I tend to notice a lot of seemingly unimportant details because I study everything that might be worked into a drawing. I knew several large Black families when I grew up and the skin tones of the children were always within a range comparable to that of the parents. Whenever I tried watching that show the extremely light-skinned older girls were just too distracting. Why didn’t Dr. Huxtable accuse Claire of fucking white men when he looked at those girls? It just bothered me.

     Similarly, I find myself unable to stomach “That 70’s Show”. I was there. I lived through the 70’s. They never play any music. We all listened to music continually during that era and we discussed various songs and artists and bands ad nauseum. We were also socially conscious and reacted strongly to politics and the Vietnam War and the plight of starving people in Africa and India. In the seventies teenagers were very aware of what was going on around us and we talked about current issues. We may have been stupid and selfish like some of the characters in that show, but we certainly weren’t so bubble-wrapped that we considered our personal problems more pressing than our civic responsibility. It’s galling to watch my youthful years represented so narrowly. This show proposes that the protests and anger and disillusion that we felt back then weren’t an integral part of the fabric of those times. It suggests that we were as meaningless, shallow, self-absorbed, unaware and as badly educated as today’s youth. We weren’t. I feel as if the producers of this slop are denigrating my own past with this portrayal of “The 70’s”. But the real reason I can’t stand to watch it is that they have a smoke detector in the basement. That simply is too ridiculous for me to accept. It wouldn’t have been there.     

The End

 

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They may not be: redistributed; sold; altered; enhanced; modified by artificial, digital or computer imaging;
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