"Desmond's Our Boy"
No, no, Lost isn't until tomorrow night, but I found this interview with Lindelof and Cuse over at the New York Times fascinating, and I thought I'd share it with the 4-5 of you who might enjoy it.
Lindelof says this about how the polar bear cages and Desmond became metaphors for themselves and their experiences:
Carlton and I have long said that when the characters were stuck in cages at the beginning of the third season metaphorically, we were stuck in cages. But the metaphor that we rarely talk about but plays even better is that Desmond’s our boy, and the reason he’s our boy is because for that year we felt like we were pushing the button every 108 minutes or the world would end. And so when he ran away in the third episode and basically said, “You guys push the button now,” we were setting him free. He was sailing around the island trying to escape in the Season 2 finale, he washes up, and it will just not let him go. In many ways Desmond is the guy that we identify with because he brought them to the island. So Penny represented our salvation too. The idea that there was a happy ending for this guy, so whenever we write Desmond episodes there’s this real sense of identification. As much as we love Sawyer, I cannot identify with Sawyer in any way because he’s so much cooler than I am.
I think that last part about Saywer's hilarious.
I'm also fascinated by how much they loved Mr. Eko and had these grand intentions for him, but when Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje wanted to be written off the show, they had to give the character an early end. It's kind of crazy to imagine where Mr. Eko would be right now, if AAA hadn't wanted to be written out, and how that might've effected Benjamin Linus and John Locke (I'm adding what I've read in previous interviews from that last one). Would Eko have been one of the pastaways? Would he have been a candidate? Somewhere in the Impossible Dreams DVD store, there's season 3-6 of LOST and they look very different. Kind of...illuminating, I guess, how much of a collaborative effort television and film is, really.
Lindelof says this about how the polar bear cages and Desmond became metaphors for themselves and their experiences:
Carlton and I have long said that when the characters were stuck in cages at the beginning of the third season metaphorically, we were stuck in cages. But the metaphor that we rarely talk about but plays even better is that Desmond’s our boy, and the reason he’s our boy is because for that year we felt like we were pushing the button every 108 minutes or the world would end. And so when he ran away in the third episode and basically said, “You guys push the button now,” we were setting him free. He was sailing around the island trying to escape in the Season 2 finale, he washes up, and it will just not let him go. In many ways Desmond is the guy that we identify with because he brought them to the island. So Penny represented our salvation too. The idea that there was a happy ending for this guy, so whenever we write Desmond episodes there’s this real sense of identification. As much as we love Sawyer, I cannot identify with Sawyer in any way because he’s so much cooler than I am.
I think that last part about Saywer's hilarious.
I'm also fascinated by how much they loved Mr. Eko and had these grand intentions for him, but when Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje wanted to be written off the show, they had to give the character an early end. It's kind of crazy to imagine where Mr. Eko would be right now, if AAA hadn't wanted to be written out, and how that might've effected Benjamin Linus and John Locke (I'm adding what I've read in previous interviews from that last one). Would Eko have been one of the pastaways? Would he have been a candidate? Somewhere in the Impossible Dreams DVD store, there's season 3-6 of LOST and they look very different. Kind of...illuminating, I guess, how much of a collaborative effort television and film is, really.