Julien, 25 – Paris (France) :
The fact that Harold Perrineau had a leading part in this new series called Lost had much to do with the appeal the show had on me from the get go. I loved him for his role as Augustus Hill in Oz and I forgave him for the whole Matrix thing because I basically knew that this was an actor I wanted to see more often on screen.
One of the reasons I’ve got attached to this character is because to me, he was the most vulnerable. Not only did he have to take care for himself, he also had Walt, his little boy. While everybody else were just trying to adapt and survive, Michael also needed to protect, love and educate his son. On a desert island. With a black smoke chasing and killing everyone around. And even if we all saw the Walt abduction thing coming, we all felt really bad for this struggling dad who just couldn’t do anything about it.
Which brings me to my Lost moment : season two, episode twenty. To free Ben, Michael has to kill Ana-Lucia. “I’m sorry“, he says, right before shooting her and – accidentally – killing a helpless Libby, who couldn’t have been in a worse wrong place, wrong time situation. The Others promised Michael a free pass off the island for him and his son if he could bring back their leader to camp. After all the killing and the freeing, Michael shoots himself in the shoulder. End title.
Harold’s amazing performance aside, it’s probably the first time I realized what I was watching exactly: a character-driven show about choices, sacrifice, loss, father-issues, hope, flaws, pessimism, regrets, life. The hell with the unanswered questions and all the mysteries that kept building up. I wanted to know how these guys I’ve learned to care about were going to survive all this. At that exact moment, I knew Lost was going the affect the way I enjoyed and perceived culture. That it was going to make me think. That it was going to, in a small way, affect the way I interacted with the world and society. Kind of a big deal for just a TV show.