tellhimfred.com

I stink.

I’ve tried my best to stay away from all those super-popular TV shows right now. Desperate Housewives? Not a chance. Lost? No way.

Until last night.

Kristina really wanted to see this show and I wanted to stay away. The only TV shows that I watch religiously are Family Guy and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Other than that, I could care less about what’s on. And with all the buzz about this show, I really wanted to hate it out of spite.

But no. I watched it.

They showed a season one wrapup, so I got the basic premise of the show. And then they showed the season opener. I wanted to hate it and failed.

So I realize I’m the last person to jump in on this discussion, so give me a little slack. I’m sure there are lots of theories out there, and that mine is an old one, but here’s what I think is going on.

They’re all dead and they’re in purgatory. Each of the castaways has some bad things in their past, but they also have several redeeming qualities. So I think the island is basically purgatory, where they are being tested to figure out where they should go.

Last night, a few of them left the island on a raft, only to be found by “pirates”. The father and son (don’t know their names) were on the raft, and the pirate demanded they give up the boy. A melee insues, and the son goes off screaming with the pirates.

The pirates are the keepers of purgatory. They won’t allow the survivors to leave the island, but when they see the kid, they realize he has done nothing wrong, so they take him away from purgatory to heaven, and send the rest back to the island for judgement.

The John Locke character, based on the British philosopher, seems like he was written from a historical bio. Much of Locke’s writing was in opposition to authoritarianism, and the Locke character acts accordingly. When the “leader” tells everyone to stay together, he goes to check out the hatch. He accepts nothing anyone says at face value, and like an old mystic, he advises everyone to seek out their own truths.

From Stanford’s bio on John Locke:

Locke’s monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds and artifacts, as well as a variety of different kinds of ideas.

They’re in purgatory. And that’s all i have to say about that.