The “Lost” Short Term Memory Syndrome

I’ve loved “Lost”, and I’ve hated “Lost”. I swing like a pen­du­lum between these two extremes, and all because some tele­vi­sion writ­ers want to drag out some­thing that prob­a­bly only last another sea­son or two. Cur­rently I’m back to lov­ing it, but up until the sec­ond half of sea­son 3, I was hat­ing it, and with good rea­son, because it was suck­ing wind. After a pretty killer sea­son 2 finale episode, the first block of new episodes for sea­son 3 were less than stel­lar. I know that the pro­duc­ers of the show say they were set­ting up stuff for later in the sea­son, but face it, they still weren’t very good episodes. I was so sick of it I was ready to swear off of the show for eter­nity, but lately they’ve been doing a pretty good job of keep­ing the aver­age Vance glued to the telly week after freak­ing week.

As best as I can gather, the Losties have been on The Island for roughly around 70 days, just south of 2 months. In that time they’ve had 9 of their own die (Scott, Boone, Shan­non, Arzt, Libby, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Nikki, Paulo) and one more if you count the Oceanic Air pilot killed in the first episode, and some of those peo­ple, if the show’s time line is to be believed, died lit­er­ally only weeks ago. Our cast­aways don’t seem very vis­i­bly upset by a lot of the death going on around them.

I attribute this to the “The ‘Lost’ Short Term Mem­ory Syn­drome”. It’s a con­di­tion com­monly found in tele­vi­sion char­ac­ters who crashed on an island 3 years ago and are still liv­ing in that time, yet they’re being watched 3 years in the future on tele­vi­sion. How else can you explain the lack of feel­ings, the for­got­ten things that hap­pen from one week (or day, or what­ever their pas­sage of time con­sists of) to the next?

We’ll be talk­ing in “Lost” time, not real world time, FYI.

On the sec­ond day our Losties are on the island some of them hike to higher ground to see if they can use a radio to con­tact the out­side world, but they pick up sig­nals in French from a radio tower. Shan­non is able to deci­pher them, but many more peo­ple were there besides her. Do they not remem­ber this unseen tower? Why aren’t they look­ing for it?

Sawyer was tor­tured by Sayid roughly a week and a half after they crashed for hoard­ing, yet in last night’s episode, Sawyer and Sayid are pal­ing around and try­ing to get Juliet to talk. Would you be friends with some­one who had tor­tured you not 2 months before? Why isn’t Sawyer try­ing to get even with Sayid for doing this?

Three weeks ago Jinn, Sawyer, Michael and Walt set sail on their boat, which was blown up by the Other known as Tom later that day. That was 3 weeks ago? Feels like for­ever ago.

Sayid loved Shan­non, and she died about on day 48 of their time on the island. If we’re at about day 65+, shouldn’t Sayid still be a lit­tle torn up over her? The guy sure did mourn a long time for his girl, didn’t he?

On day 59, Locke was trapped beneath the blast door in the Hatch. It pierced his thighs, but a week later he’s fine? What gives? I know it’s the “heal­ing pow­ers of the island”, but come on, don’t give me that.

Eight-ish days ago, Michael killed Ana Lucia and Libby. Eight days ago. Three days after that Michael and Walt are given a boat and coor­di­nates by Ben Linus. They leave the island.

On the same day the Hatch explodes. If the Hatch exploded on day 65, and we’re right around day 70 or so, it’s been less than a week since that occur­rence. None of the Losties seem to remem­ber the Hatch, but the Oth­ers talk about the Pur­ple Light that screwed up their nav­i­ga­tion systems.

I guess they for­got about the Num­bers too. And they were such a big deal, weren’t they?

I’ll give them a point of con­sis­tency though — Sawyer has not reverted to call­ing peo­ple nick­names yet. I expect that to change as he con­ve­niently for­gets his deal with Hurley.