Lost and "Lost": The Sacred and Profane

Is ABC's "Lost" Our Lady of Vilnius' parallel universe? Can I learn from watching it, or will it just make me unhinged?

As I was scanning the front page of today's New York Times Arts section, Gina Bellafantes's article, Philosophy, Mystery, Anarchy: All Is ‘Lost’ caught my eye. What with Our Lady of Vilnius and all, I watch very little TV. Despite the show's being ABC's blockbuster hit for 4 years, I never even heard of it, but "Philosphy, Mystery, Anarchy?". The shoe seems to fit.

"Lost,” ... denies us the satisfaction of ever feeling that we might confidently explain, to the person sitting next to us at dinner, that we have a true grasp of what is going on — of who among the characters is merely bad and who is verifiably satanic. To watch “Lost” is to feel like a high school grind, studying and analyzing and never making it to Yale. Good dramas confound our expectations, but “Lost,” about a factionalized group of plane crash survivors on a cartographically indeterminate island not anything like Aruba, pushes further, destabilizing the ground on which those expectations might be built. It is an opiate, and like all opiates, it produces its own masochistic delirium."

Replacing a some of the author's words can give us something like this:

"Lost on Broome Street” ... denies us the satisfaction of ever feeling that we might confidently explain, to the person sitting next to us at dinner, that we have a true grasp of what is going on — of who among the characters is merely bad and who is verifiably satanic. To watch the Save Our Lady of Vilnius Committee try to save the parish is to feel like a high school grind, studying and analyzing and never making it to Yale. Good dramas confound our expectations, but “Lost on Broome Street” about a factionalized group of parishioners in a culturally indeterminate archdiocese nothing like the archbishopric of Bing Crosby's "St. Mary's", pushes further, destabilizing the ground on which those expectations might be built. It is an opiate, and like all opiates, it produces its own masochistic delirium. "

Calling anyone in a masochistic delirium: Wake up, smell the Starbucks and please help us preserve our heritage as New Yorkers, Roman Catholics and lovers of humanity!