Bibliotrek

Dear Damon Lin­de­lof and Carl­ton Cuse:

I have been a LOST fan — devo­tee, even! — ever since the sum­mer after Sea­son 1, when I devoured the whole sea­son on DVD over the course of about 48 hours. Elec­tro­mag­net­ism? I’m there! Time travel? Bring it on! Alter­nate real­i­ties? Excel­lent! For the five sea­sons since then, I have watched every episode the night it has aired, loy­ally believ­ing that you had a MIND-BLOWING plan despite that mid­dle sec­tion of Sea­son 3.

But after watch­ing tonight’s episode? I don’t even know, y’all.

Spoil­ers up through this week’s episode after the jump!

Don’t get me wrong: I love Hur­ley, and Hurley-centric episodes almost always make me happy. I thought it was inter­est­ing that Libby was back, that she was in the men­tal insti­tu­tion, and that she remem­bered Hur­ley. I hope those wacky kids get it together.

Most of tonight’s episode was pretty good, really; I like Hurley’s trans­for­ma­tion into the leader, and espe­cially Jack FINALLY learn­ing to shut the hell up and let some­one else take the lead. Except now I’m afraid that Hur­ley was right and that Jack some­how “abdi­cat­ing” is going to lead to DOOM and DEATH and that will annoy me. Note: Just because Jack has a sav­ior com­plex doesn’t mean he actu­ally has to save everyone!

But what really pissed me off was Ilana’s death.

“SERIOUSLY?” I shouted at the TV, alarm­ing the neigh­bours, I’m sure. “SERIOUSLY?! Another dead lady? You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” You can tell that’s an exact quote because it’s so elo­quent. But this is get­ting ri-goddamn-diculous.

Let’s go over the fates of the main female char­ac­ters on the show!

• Shan­non: Dead.
• Ana Lucia: Dead.
• Libby: Dead.
• Nikki: Dead. (Lost­pe­dia has her listed as a main char­ac­ter because she got a flash­back episode, so I do here as well.)
• Char­lotte: Dead.
• Juliet: Dead.
• Claire: Alive, but infected/evil.
• Sun: Alive, but can’t speak Eng­lish anymore.
• Kate: Alive.

So 67% of the main female char­ac­ters are dead; 89% are dead or oth­er­wise neg­a­tively altered. Kate is the only one who is still (a) alive, (b) able to speak Eng­lish, and © not in the habit of cre­at­ing dead squir­rel babies.

But look at all these dudes who are still alive!

• Jack
• Sayid (although he’s infected)
• Ben
• Miles
• Lapidus
• Jin
• Hur­ley
• Sawyer
• Desmond
• Richard
• The Man in Black

That’s 11 men to 3 ladies. And whereas only 33% of the total female char­ac­ters are still alive, 61% of the male char­ac­ters are.

And yes, the num­bers favored the dudes to begin with. The total num­ber of main male char­ac­ters is exactly twice that of female char­ac­ters: 18 men to 9 women (and that’s not even count­ing Jacob!). But, I mean, that’s an accu­rate reflec­tion of the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion, right? Two men for every lady? OH WAIT.

LOST, I love you. But I call shenanigans.

Sick and tired of ladies dying,

bib­liotrek