Lost's "why" problem (spoilers through Meet Kevin Johnson)

[chrisspringob]

I do find Lost to be great entertainment. But there's one aspect to the story arc that I find incredibly irritating, which is explained better than I could explain it by Peter Suderman:

http://theamericanscene.com/2008/03/21/lost-how-what-and-why

Here’s the problem with Lost. It asks “why” but answers “what” and “how.”

Spoiler alert!


In tonight’s episode, for example, the last before a month-long break, we see Michael, in flashback, go through the steps that led him to pose aboard the boat as a deckhand.
He’s told of the fake plane, and is informed that the boat’s crew have been ordered to kill everyone on the island. But when he’s given this information, he doesn’t ask the obvious question: Why? Why would anyone want to kill the people on the island? Why would anyone think the island, or its inhabitants, so important as to stage such a ridiculously complex hoax? It answers the simple why — why Michael would go to the island (to atone for his sins) — but not any of the whys that really matter. There’s no reason for these questions not to come up, no reason for Michael not to want to know the answers. The show just ignores them.


The same thing happens in the beginning of the episode, when Locke tells his people that he’s discovered that the boat crew intend to grab Ben Linus and kill the island’s inhabitants. Not one person asks the obvious question: Why? What would motivate this sort of mass slaughter? And why, in specific, do they want Linus?


Instead we get a lot of what and how answers: How Michael finds himself on the boat. What position Locke is taking as a result of the revelations. This is a pretty common pattern. Season two ended with a spectacularly useless revelation about how, exactly, Oceanic 815 was knocked out of the sky. It tells us a lot about what occurred, but after three and a half seasons, very little about why.

This kind of thing plagued The X-Files too. I like Lost a great deal, but the length of time they go without resolving key mysteries is somewhat irritating. I strongly prefer storytelling in which the major mysteries don't go unresolved for more than a season or two. To stretch things out longer than that seems like kind of a cheat to the audience. Of course, once a mystery is resolved, you can introduce new mysteries, but there's no good reason why some of the most basic questions from seasons 1 and 2 (like **what is the island all about?**) are still unanswered as of now.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

This has pretty much always been a problem, it's a symptom of plot-based writing. What happens and when it happens and whats revealed and when is all dictated beforehand and the characters are "written around" that.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Why would anyone think the island, or its inhabitants, so important as to stage such a ridiculously complex hoax?

This is actually not a problem for me at all - the Island probably has amazing magical superpowers that heal cancer and let people time-travel and I'll bet there's more stuff too. That's why Dharma was experimenting there - to see how people could use these powers (and what their limits were; for instance, the fatality problem of time travel).

It makes perfect sense that people would fight like hyenas over the Island. Killing everyone who knows about the Island is a logical step. As for Ben - maybe he knows how to time travel without it killing him? Widmore wants to find out how he does it. Or it could be some other secret he's learned.

My bigger problem is that staging a second crash seems absurdly unnecessary since the plane was way off course and the rescuers would find the Island only by the sheerest accident. And if they can blunder across the Island, so can others, who aren't even looking for the plane. What does Widmore plan to do about them? That whole crash scenario doesn't work for me. But it could still be just massive misdirection.

 

[that1guy]

Why is this a problem? It's called a plot device.

 

[Aragorn]

A big "why" is why do the characters keep secrets and not disclose what they learn with one another. And when Sawyer and Kate have Carl, why didn't they ask him what his group's purpose is on the island?

 

[chrisspringob]

Why would anyone think the island, or its inhabitants, so important as to stage such a ridiculously complex hoax?

This is actually not a problem for me at all - the Island probably has amazing magical superpowers that heal cancer and let people time-travel and I'll bet there's more stuff too. That's why Dharma was experimenting there - to see how people could use these powers (and what their limits were; for instance, the fatality problem of time travel).

It's not a problem in that we've been shown enough to surmise that the island has some kind of amazing powers, and that it would then logically be a huge prize to be fought over.

But it *is* a problem in that the characters who are largely in the dark about what this is all about (a category that encompasses all of the Flight 815 survivors, plus Desmond) never seem to press any of the many people who are at least somewhat in the know about what the whole business is about (this category includes the Others, as well as at least some of the people from the freighter) for some kind of explanation. For example, why doesn't Michael ask about what exactly is the story with the island, and what are the motivations for the Others and for Widmore?

He doesn't even try to get answers to these questions. He just accepts the Others' mission for him, and moves on. And there are a million other examples like this. There are enough people running around now who should have at least a partial understanding of the bigger picture, and none of them ever reveal anything important to the main characters, and the main characters don't seem to be bothered about this. As a result, we the audience never get more than a paper thin understanding of what's going on.

 

[DeafPoet]

A big "why" is why do the characters keep secrets and not disclose what they learn with one another. And when Sawyer and Kate have Carl, why didn't they ask him what his group's purpose is on the island?

The island smelled 815 coming and was like "This is the least curious group of people who have ever assembled together on a single plane! Watch me go as I crash this motherfucker!"

 

[chrisspringob]

A big "why" is why do the characters keep secrets and not disclose what they learn with one another. And when Sawyer and Kate have Carl, why didn't they ask him what his group's purpose is on the island?

Yes, exactly. Is Ben the only one of the Others who knows anything about what the Others are actually doing there, and what the whole thing is about? Is everyone else just blindly following him, or are the other Others in the loop as well? Because we've had a number of turncoat Others so far, and none of them have revealed much of anything in the way of valuable information.

 

[startrekwatcher]

It really doesn't bother me because the way I've always viewed Lost as though it is modeled on an hour long mystery only instead of an hour it is mapped out onto the life of the series. It also reminds me of a Big Puzzle and the writers go out of their way to only show you a portion and a certain perspective in a scene giving you only so much information. And unlike a regular serialized storyline, the writers cram so much stuff and connections that it would be almost impossible to include every reaction or response you'd like. The way I approach the show is that I look at all the connections and paths that I as an audience member am aware of but really don't expect all the connections to be made aware to every character even those that might involve them directly.

So it really isn't about the characters asking the right questions it is about the viewers asking the questions and pulling together what they know and filling in the blanks to some degree.

 

[Mallet]

It's not so much that I want to know everything right now, half the fun is trying to figure stuff out, but what gets annoying and ruins the versimalatude of the show is that the characters never ask the "WHY" question. That just makes them seem stupid and unrealistic.

I would be happy to even see a character ask "why" and have someone begin to tell them then the show cuts to a commercial. So even though the viewers don't learn the answer, at least we know the characters know and arn't being complete idiots.

 

[McCoy]

Yeah, Karl just had to say "I don't know". That way Kate and Sawyer would have at least tried to find out something.