After the crash, the conundrum: To fight together, or to drift apart?
Of course, it started with a plane crash.
That's the first, most obvious way that ABC's ``Lost" has become TV's most prominent nod to our menacing new world. The tale of disparate characters, crashed on a tropical island, is full of overt references to the world we live in now. Through ``Lost," we get war-in-Iraq wish fulfillment: Sayid, the noblest survivor, fled the Republican Guard due to his conscience and flogs himself emotionally when he tortures someone. Through ``Lost," we meet our enemies in the form of ``Others," elusive and far more sophisticated than they look. They hide as sleeper agents, awaiting the moment to strike. They view the castaways as invaders.
But what really makes ``Lost" a post-9/11 parable is mood. This is a show about uncertainty and indecision, about learning that a beautiful world is actually full of threats. It's a paranoid fall from paradise.
``Lost" was conceived as a fictional takeoff on ``Survivor," the desert-island reality contest that, when it first aired in 2000, some took to mark the end of civilization as we know it. (Little did they know what else reality TV had in store.) But ``Survivor," for all of its emphasis on backstabbing and rejection, is a pre-9/11 creation, optimistic at heart. Navigate the cartoon-like challenges, play the game right, and you'll win yourself a treasure. And, of course, it's all a game.
In ``Lost," the stakes are higher. Victory is survival. And the castaways aren't necessarily noble; the flashbacks, key to each episode, prove that everyone is flawed. They send the chilling message that our history can haunt us.
Over the course of the series, the vehicles for payback have changed in telling ways. This show, more than any drama before it, is partially steered by its audience; producers say, for instance, that the mysterious numbers became more prominent when fans latched onto them. So ``Lost" becomes a canvas for our own evolving fears. What started as a collection of vaguely supernatural threats -- dark psychic prophesies and monsters made of smoke -- has given way to human enemies, steeped in strange philosophies. They are organized and adept at lying. They find ways to pit the tribe against itself.
Yes, there are heroin side plots and cancer-survival stories and the producers' clever sleight-of-hand involving the Dharma Initiative. But really, the last two seasons were about how the castaways would respond. Form an army? Send a spy? Band together or act as renegades?
In that sense, Jack and Locke, billed as science versus faith, also represent different approaches to a fight. Jack is all blustery American spirit: Announce our good intentions, try to reason with the bad guys, and if all else fails, barrel forward with guns. Locke wants to understand the enemy, and possibly embrace him. Last season, he wrestled with his feelings over Henry Gale, the is-he-or-isn't-he villain who was locked away in the hatch. Locke let him out of his closet and asked for his help. Henry went on to mess with his head.
So much for dark psychological experiments. So much for faith. The paranoid folks turned out to be right.
Staff writer Joanna Weiss covers pop culture. She can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 