June 10: Charlotte Lewis

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This place is death...

With the high death ratio on a show like Lost, there is a lot of "character turnover." Every season injects a new cast; from there, it's a fight for survival. There seems to be a grim sort of limit to the amount of people who can be on the show at any given time, so newbies and oldies need to duke it out for one of those coveted, not-just-a-smokey-vision-or-a-flashback positions.

It seems that, sometimes, they chuck characters at the screen at see what sticks. (Well, I doubt that they randomly chuck ideas and wait things out until someone gets to likable or gets a DUI, but you know what I mean.) So, when they suddenly flooded us with a bevy of new faces in season 4, I was initially a bit jaded. Some of them were immediately interesting or lovable; how can you say no to Daniel or Miles? Others weren't initially 'ZOMG.' At first, Charlotte seemed like an overly prissy bitch (albeit, an overly prissy bitch tromping through the jungle and kicking ass, but still.)

While some grating characters just sort of fade off the radar of interest, or join the list of characters you hope meet the Smoke Monster face-to-face, others actually, miraculously, start to grow on you. Charlotte is one of the latter.

Admittedly, a lot of her appeal lay in her (ultimately tragic) relationship with Daniel Faraday; oh, weren't they so geekishly attractive together? Her sharp demeanor softened up so much around Dan, and he couldn't help giving a noodly smile every time she looked his way. It was seriously adorable, and there's no denying that.

Mind you, the moment things actually started to fall in place, the goddamn fickle bitch that is destiny swooped down and smote poor Charlotte. There's no shame, Miss Lewis; Attila the Hun died from a nosebleed, too.

Charlotte isn't one of those characters who are designed to be immediately appealing. She's got one of those vaguely abrasive, rather formal and clever personalities that isn't exactly warm and welcoming; she's an intellectual bitch. Although she didn't have much screen-time to develop, she was nonetheless able to show herself as an interesting woman; well, knocking out Kate won her a few points. Ahem.

As time went on, she definitely grew on me. She simply looks like an explorer; there's something about her face that makes her look like she should be wearing a canvas hat and chasing Ralph Fiennes around the desert, searching for artifacts and occasionally finding polar bear skeletons and an angry Colin Firth. She also looks like she should be wearing SPF 60 sunscreen at all times, unless she wants a BITCH of a sunburn. Oh, and 'C.S. Lewis.' HAHA I GET IT.

In the end, I really liked Charlotte. It would have been nice to see more of her, to let her character develop; but ultimately, her death was still tragic because it was so passionately felt by another character. The scene where Daniel talks to a young Charlotte is so sad and beautiful... there's a lot of potential for Charlotte, given her past and skill set and whatnot, so I hope she'll be popping up for some more adventures in season 6. Cultural anthropologists have never been so sexy.

> Photoshop + tablet
> about 1.5 hours
> stock ~struckdumb