'Lost': Generational gap

Since the start of the Season 4 of Lost, I've shied away from trying to make big, bold, all-encompassing theories about the show. It's always dangerous to do so under the best of circumstances, but trying to do so in the middle of a season in which the stakes and scenarios seem to alter on a weekly basis seem to me a fool's errand. You could call me prudent, and you could also call me chicken. Heck, you can call me Al. It's all good to me.

That being said, it's hard not to occasionally step back and swing for the fences. And that's what I plan on doing tonight: going all Barry Bonds on Lost. Lord knows I have the swelled head to do so, even though I still don't know what flaxseed oil is. That being said, I couch said swing under the following disclaimer: this is not my über-theory of Lost. I don't think this is the be all and end all explanation for everything that's happened and is happening on the show.

But, it's a potential über-theory for Lost, one of many equally plausible arguments. That's the fun part of making these huge predictions at this point in the game: while it's easy to point out holes in them, it's hard to completely dismiss them, either. Short of saying "The Island is where all the Keebler elves bake their delicious cookies!", you're pretty much guaranteed a CHANCE at being correct. And I'll take the "greater than Keebler elves" odds every time.

Tonight's theory can be called the "Sins of Our Fathers Theory." In essence, this theory states that everything in Lost started literally decades before the crash of Oceanic 815. What we see in the show is the result of careful planning on the part of an elder generation barely seen in the show to date, but whose presence affects nearly everything we've seen on the show.

More than perhaps any show on television right now, Lost is a show of its time. I don't merely mean that it exploits the visual spectacle of high-definition television, although it does. I don't merely mean that it exploits a web-savvy culture through its use of alternative storytelling and the exuberance of fandom, although it does. And I don't merely mean that it thrives in a culture that embraces long-form storytelling as a viable niche of mass-market entertainment, although it does.

When I say that Lost is a show of its time, I mean more than anything its historical time, a time in which baby boomers are approaching the age in which they are close to retirement, close to Social Security payments, and a long, long way from their idealistic upbringing. As they approach these milestones, milestones they perhaps never thought about, their thoughts turn not only to the problems their generation failed to solve, but also turn towards their offspring as the possible salvation to their thwarted, stunted ambitions.

Indeed, genre storytelling has been rife with this theme throughout the early part of this new century. Heroes and Battlestar: Galactica stand at the forefront with Lost as shows that have taken advantage of genre's use of allegory, metaphor, and allusion to comment on modern society, modern angst, and modern issues. It's not that these shows stand alone today in doing so, nor do they stand alone in genre storytelling history in doing so. But Lost, Heroes, and Battlestar all keenly and directly confront the modern dynamic in which the "older" generation looks at the world around them, hates what they see, looks upon themselves as the cause for such failure, and hope that the next generation can clean up their mess.

The "fathers" in the title of my theory, as if pertains to Lost, are Christian Shephard, Charles Widmore, and Mr. Paik (first name currently unknown). These are three figures I believe to be at the core of Desmond's arrival to the Island, the crash of Oceanic 815, and the arrival of the Freighters. in this theory, they are all related to the initial incarnation of the Dharma Initiative, through ties to the Hanso Foundation. All believed deeply in the validity of the Valenzetti Equation, all believed in the good of changing it, and all bought into the DeGroots' methods for changing it.

But somewhere along the line, hope in the Dharma Initiative failed. The Initiative itself can be seen as a byproduct of the baby boomer age: borne of relentless (if perhaps naive) optimism, seeking to change the world through enlightenment and knowledge. I often mock this original version of the Initiative as "hippy dippy," but historically speaking, one can look at the hippie generation as one phase of the baby boomers, until Altamont and the 1970s and good paying jobs and suburban lifestyles sent them on their way through the following decades, ever further from their ideals, but ever closer to the culmination of the Valenzetti Equation.

With age, experience, and perhaps more than a small dose of cynicism that came with the decades that followed the failure of the initial Dharma Initiative, a change took place in the culture of those associated with the Hanso Foundation: a change that moved from DeGroot-ian idealism to Widmorian pragmatism. And much in the way that Adam Monroe and Daniel Linderman sought to save the world through unsavory means in Heroes, these men sought to finish the work started decades earlier through methods that may have been frowned upon, if not downright loathed.

And whom did they use in order to achieve these ends? Their very children. Jack Shephard, Penelope Widmore, and Sun Paik are all heavily involved in the mythology of the show, and stand as central pieces of the chess game being played by their fathers as we speak. Charles Widmore looks to be the leader of the elder generation, working closely with Christian Shephard and Mr. Paik in order to see the original goal of the Dharma Initiative be met. This involved sending two of their children to the Island itself, and breaking the heart of a third in order to use her tenacity and resources to unwittingly aid in their search for the elusive Island.

Such a theory helps explain Christian's many appearances on the show, both on and off the Island. It helps explain why Sun used a Widmore Corporation pregnancy test. (Mr. Paik perhaps knew Jin was infertile, needed an heir to his empire, and agreed to build the freighter in return for Sun's rescue before her pregnancy became terminal.) And most of all, it explains the unique mural on the wall of Charles Widmore's office, a mural that may contain the key to everything known about the mysterious Island itself by the Hanso Foundation's elder statesmen.

Moreover, this theory keeps in line with the show's preoccupation with the strained relationships between the people on the Island and their parents; predominantly, with their fathers. Take these crippling relationships, and couple them with the Island's propensity to allow its inhabitants to start anew, and one could look at the plans of the elder generation to be something akin to compassion. It's a complicated compassion, to be sure, but I'm not sure any of these parents see themselves as evil anymore than Adam Monroe and Daniel Linderman see themselves as evil.

Flawed? Naturally. Proud? Hardly. But these men are past the point of self-glorification. What was once a shining future is but a cold reality, and only in the lives of their children, and in an Island that still holds some promise of hope for the world, can the dreams that have long since eluded them be achieved. If not by them, well, then through them. And if casualties come from this, if suffering comes from it, well, the end justifies the means. Saving the world is all that's important.

The time to save themselves has long gone.

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude.