The Series That Broke Your Hearts Out of Nowhere.

The death of Shannon Rutherford on Lost. Starts the series as a clueless, terrible person. Someone I’d want to be nowhere near, that I’d spend every effort to stay far away from.

She’s defined herself — and others have defined her — by her situation and physical attractiveness. Both matter a lot less in her new circumstances so she’s forced to change, to more truly become herself. To be better. Shannon caused me to think again about how much our milieu defines us and how everyone gets inaccurately pigeonholed by life, by how we look, by how we speak and then we come to live those roles even against our will. (And many people get really, really angry when we attempt to change.)

Inertia keeps us where we are, and it takes a seismic shift (being stranded on a weird funky-ass dangerous island, joining the army) for us to alter ourselves.

I thought to myself, “There’s no way a show like this is going to kill off the pretty blonde girl once she makes it past the first episode. That just doesn’t happen on mainstream American TV shows.”

Well, wrong.

And just as she was becoming someone worth knowing, worth being. Great character because many Lost fans to this day hate her because of her “uselessness” despite the fact that she had a better character journey than almost anyone else on the show. She is what defines a compelling character: conflict, pathos, change, redemption, reflection. For these reasons and because Maggie Grace did an excellent job of portraying her, she’s one of my favorite TV characters of all time.

It reminded me in metaphorical terms that when we try to change, often the universe itself (in the form of other people for most of us) tries to keep pushing our heads back into the muck.