Michaels last scene confused me. The first time I saw it I didn’t get what Christian was trying to say to Michael. When he says “you can go now”, I took it to mean that Michael could leave the ship now. Then of course the freighter blew up. So my mind was reeling a little as I tried to figure this out. He says you can go then he gets blown up. I immediately tried to find a way out for Michael (I seem to do this every time someone dies, with the exception of Shannon I guess). I tried to figure out if maybe he’s been dead for this whole time and maybe he didn’t know it. I know it doesn’t make sense, it was part of an old theory that was horribly nonsensical. But after that scene I just forgot about it, I’ve never really liked Michael, I think the writers did a good job redeeming him, I’ll get back to that later, but I didn’t really care that much. The day after I watched it I was talking to a friend of mine about it and he was saying how Christian told Michael that he could die now. So I was surprised, I hadn’t really thought of Michael as dead. So the point is I didn’t really get that scene, and I was surprised that everyone else seemed to interpret it so easily. (On a side note: every time I write Michaels name I here Libby in my head saying “Michael” right before she gets shot. I’ll bet that scene is one of the most flashed-back-to scenes in the “previously on Lost” segment.)
So about the redeeming of Michael. When Michael came back I’ll bet at least 90% of the Lost audience still hated him. The Lost audience is more than 12 million people, those are just the people that watch it on Thursdays, there are definitely way more that watch the DVDs or download it. So 90% of 12 million is more than 10 million people. And as a community, Lost viewers are very vocal and opinionated. So when we hate someone it really gets harsh. Last summer it was announces that Harold Perrineau, the actor who plays Michael (I roll my eyes at you if you needed to know that), would be returning to Lost. That was excited, not because any of us were terribly thrilled to see Michael again, we just wanted to know where he went and why he had to leave on a bearing of 325 (notice that Michael left on 325 and Daniel calculated that you have to come and go on 305, hmmmmm, that’s a discussion for another time). So he came back, we got a backstory as to what happened, it was pretty dull, but at least we know now. So then the writers have a problem, they have a character who did terrible things (maybe just one thing, it’s not so bad that Ana-Lucia died, but Libby, still….it hurts). Now they have to reintegrate this character back into the show, they could make him a villain, that would have been interesting, and easy too. But they took the harder route of trying to make him likable again. They made him try to commit suicide, they made him emotionally distraught, self-sacrificing, they even let him get pummeled Ben-style. So in my eyes I think they did redeem the character, I wouldn’t say that they improved him any more than what he was like in the first season, and I can’t say I liked him much back then, but at least I could pretend not to hate him for the double murder.
And then at the very end of the season they killed Michael. Very soon after the episode aired Harold Perrineau talked to a reporter or two about his feelings. Here’s the link. So in that interview he said, pretty much, that he was disappointed by the way his character ended and he even mentioned a few racial stereotypes that he feels were promoted by the writing of his character. I won’t go into the stereotyping part, because if you know me you know how I feel about racial stereotypes. But his anger, I feel, is misplaced. He went from being one of the most hated characters from Lost to being a savior, it’s true that it would have been nice for Walt and Michael to reunite. But, unfortunately, Michael was not a good dad. That may have been due to circumstances in the majority of the flashbacks but, he was an unreasonable person who seriously shouldn’t have raised Walt. I also think that the actor probably should have seen this coming, in almost all of his first few scenes he does or says something which shows that he wants to die. I think that Harold should be happy. Happy that 10 million people like him considerably more now than a year ago. That’s what I think. I think that maybe the producers could have told Harold that he wasn’t going to last very long, but now that we see his response to death i can see why they wouldn’t want to do that. Oh well, let’s just be happy that he can’t kill any other women on the island.
- Izi
