119 replies to this topic

[red snow]

I think a lot of the fans who stuck with it until the end were burned by the ending. For me it's one of those endings that gets worse the more I think about it. Some of the character deaths were really pointless (eg Jin and Sun) and the "heaven storylines" really didn't make up for that in my opinion. I think what really bugged me though was the suggestion by the showrunners before season 6 started was that the "sideways" stories were a parallel earth where the plane never crashed. This seemed to make perfect sense, given the ending of season 5 and I think that could have made season 6 really interesting. As others said the stakes for the buttplug being removed would have been far higher if they had released it in the regular timeline - destroying the world or something and then they could have used the last few episodes getting the sideways crew to reassemble and prevent it happening over there.

I didn't mind that not everything was resolved but there should have been a more satisfying conclusion.They had 3 years to tell the rest of the story and season 6 still felt like they had made it up as they went along. I think if i did a rewatch I'd probably end at the end of season 5 -  i think that works better for me than the nonsense in season 6 and the show goes out on a high too.

[Morpheus]

I didn't actually like the end of season 5 either, well half of it anyway. I actually thought the Jacob and Locke stuff showed some promise, but I thought the 70s stuff fizzled out and ended badly. I was not at all interested in an alternate timeline where the crash never happened, yet somehow they came up with something that interested me even less.

[oracle86]

Werthead, on 31 May 2012 - 06:03 PM, said:

I liked Lost a great deal when it was on and, for all its faults, think as an overall story it hangs together much better than Battlestar Galactica ever did. However, BSG had some truly outstanding brilliant episodes that I can watch again and again. Looking back at Lost, it never really did the same thing. I suspect I'll watch it again someday as a whole piece, but I'm not in any hurry to do that in the next few years.

I agree with almost everything Wert said, but I feel that Battlestar Galactica, for all its faults, is a better TV show than LOST.

[Jon AS]

Shryke, on 01 June 2012 - 02:55 AM, said:

Agreed on this. The show was a fun enough ride from week to week, but once you start watching it again or looking back at it, the show doesn't hang together at all. It's got some fantastic individual episodes, but it's too unfocused and too all over the place to really work as a completed tv show.

I think that's the main reason it's fallen out of public consciousness so fast. It never came together, it never really coalesced and satisfied the audience, which is what makes shows memorable. Instead it just kinda ended and then people moved on because there was nothing there to look back on.

Yes, this is a good explanation.

Reading this thread I'm struck by how much about the show I've completely forgotten. Usually I can remember inane details about stories I get invested in, but with Lost I now find myself looking back and thinking that while there's 6 seasons worth of stuff, hardly anything of it stuck with me.

[williamjm]

Quote

I've been torn on Lost since it ended. I was someone who really disliked most of the finale and thought the show stumbled in its sixth season, despite some excellent episodes and moments, including Jack's final one on the island.. That left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, especially because it seems to me that the flash sideways amounted to being the most convoluted and contrived way to give all our characters a vaguely happy and Hallmark ending. Most importantly, season 6 failed to provide stakes for the series (so, what happens if the dildo of doom is pulled out and the Smoke Monster escapes the island? Who cares?) and to integrate the Jacob and Man in Black story into the rest of the series. So many of the most important elements of the series, from the Others to the Dharma Initiative, were marginilized in the last season.

I agree with this as well. I think the Jacob vs Man in Black storyline is probably the most disappointing one. As you say it doesn't really make any sense, particularly when you consider the smoke monster's action in the earlier seasons. I can't find a link to it now, but I did watch a youtube video recently summarising all the ways in which the plotline didn't make sense. There's also a more fundamental problem that it just isn't a particularly interesting or compelling plotline. The smoke monster was Lost's equivalent of the white balloon in The Prisoner, a simple plot device to keep the characters where the writers wanted them to be and while there was a bit of mystery to it, it was probably one of the less intriguing mysteries in the show. I didn't mind the Man in Black himself (or fake-Locke) but he made a mediocre Big Bad compared to some of the show's earlier villains (particularly Ben, who is one of the best TV villains I can think of). I didn't find Jacob to be a compelling character, his actions again didn't really make sense and often seemed to make him as much of a villain as the MiB. Lost had many compelling storylines, but trying to insert a new storyline superseding everything else in the show in the final season without having really foreshadowed it left it feeling a bit underwhelming.

The flash sideways also seemed ultimately pointless. I think one of the bigger problems with the show as a whole was due to the flashbacks. Initially they were a smart way of providing character background and in the early episodes they worked well, but as the show went on and they stayed part of the format the writers really struggled to make them consistently interesting (Charlie's sub-Oasis rock band flashbacks were possibly the dullest), I suspect if I ever rewatched the show they'd often be the most tedious parts.

Having complained about it quite a bit, I will say that I did like some things about the finale. I thought that for a lot of the individual characters' story arcs it did manage fairly satisfying endings, and while I was never all that keen on the Man in Black storyline at least it did get resolved. I don't mind the glowing cave all that much (although it's a bit silly), and I don't really mind that they never explicitly why the island was so special or important, because I was never really explaining that much of an explanation about it and I don't really think it's something that necessarily needs to be explained. The show as a whole had some of the most memorable characters of the last decade's TV, it did have a number of compelling storylines over the years and overall I did enjoy the show a lot even if there were plenty of ways in which it could have been better.

[Werthead]

I've never understood how the smoke monster being the main in black squared against the repeated claims in Season 1 of it being a security system, a system in Season 2 that we know even had a codename (Cerberus) and had some kind of rule system that the DHARMA Initiative had figured out. None of that seems to make sense if we consider it being some kind of 2,000-year-old dude with a grudge against everything.

Quote

I agree with almost everything Wert said, but I feel that Battlestar Galactica, for all its faults, is a better TV show than LOST.

Oh, absolutely. It's highs and greatest successes were much, much better than Lost's. However, despite the numerous plot holes mentioned above, Lost as a narrative with a beginning, middle and end did make a rough kind of sense. BSG's ending was really very random and not only explained nothing, it also left very little on the table to speculate with. Any conclusion fans wanted to draw about BSG's ending relied on enormous amounts of fanwank to even start to work.

[Howdyphillip]

I just watched the US version of Life on Mars. I bring that up here because of the comparison that was made in the interview the OP posted. Lindelof said that the ending was disappointing because it was spoon fed to the audience. I have to agree. It would have been a much better series if the whole thing was left up to the viewers interpretation. I understand that the UK version ended in a completely different fashion,

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

I stopped watching Lost after the first couple of seasons because nothing was ever explained.  Maybe some of it was explained after i stopped watching, but I got tired of not knowing:

What was the deal with the numbers
WTF polar bears
Why is the Dharma Initiative there
What is the DI's overall goal
Why are there so many stations and what do they do
What is the connection between DI and the Others
Why did the smoke monster kill Eko
Why was there a pirate ship in the middle of the island
How did the survivors manage to shave often enough that they maintained manly stubble but no beards and yet were never seen clean shaven
What is the point of all the backstory connections between the characters, if there is one

Edited by WrathOfNederlandsVoetbal, 04 June 2012 - 10:45 AM.

[Raidne]

Caligula_K2, on 31 May 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

...so, what happens if the dildo of doom is pulled out and the Smoke Monster escapes the island?

Yep. This question demanded a pretty detailed sci-fi explanation - the whole underlying energy source did - and we never got one. That's my problem with the finale.

[Reposado]

WrathOfNederlandsVoetbal, on 04 June 2012 - 10:44 AM, said:

I stopped watching Lost after the first couple of seasons because nothing was ever explained.  Maybe some of it was explained after i stopped watching, but I got tired of not knowing:


WTF polar bears

Why did the smoke monster kill Eko

How did the survivors manage to shave often enough that they maintained manly stubble but no beards and yet were never seen clean shaven

these ones can be answered

the eventually escaped from those cages that sawyer and kate were in. they were brought there for research

because the actor wanted off the show(cop out, true)

because they found the hatch fairly soon in show time, (9th day maybe) they could shave in there

dharma is there to do research. the island has all these weird qualities which makes it ideal for certain experiments. that's what all the stations are for.(some have other purposes such as defense) the others are the people who were already on the island. eventually, ben switches sides and helps the others clean out dharma

[williamjm]

Quote

Why was there a pirate ship in the middle of the island

If I remember correctly there was a tsunami which swept the ship inland to where it ended up.

[Jon AS]

williamjm, on 04 June 2012 - 03:31 PM, said:

If I remember correctly there was a tsunami which swept the ship inland to where it ended up.

Yeah, there was like a five second scene in an episodes halfway through the final season that explained it. Pay attention, people.

[naz]

Sir Jon Ramsey, on 04 June 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

Yeah, there was like a five second scene in an episodes halfway through the final season that explained it. Pay attention, people.

Ahem. See below.

WrathOfNederlandsVoetbal, on 04 June 2012 - 10:44 AM, said:

I stopped watching Lost after the first couple of seasons because nothing was ever explained.  Maybe some of it was explained after i stopped watching, but I got tired of not knowing:

Edited by nazputin, 04 June 2012 - 03:46 PM.

[Jon AS]

nazputin, on 04 June 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:

Ahem. See below.

Uh, I may not have been entirely serious, and in fact it is quite possible that I was mocking the writers' obvious last minute attempt to give us an explanation for that.

"Hey guys, considering that this is the last season, shouldn't we come up with an explanation for that mysterious ship we introduced way back in the first season?"
"Yeah, you're right. How about: it was thrown onto the Island by a giant wave? In fact, let's kill two birds with one stone and make that the way the statue got broken as well."
"Works for me."

[Reposado]

Sir Jon Ramsey, on 04 June 2012 - 04:14 PM, said:

Uh, I may not have been entirely serious, and in fact it is quite possible that I was mocking the writers' obvious last minute attempt to give us an explanation for that.

"Hey guys, considering that this is the last season, shouldn't we come up with an explanation for that mysterious ship we introduced way back in the first season?"
"Yeah, you're right. How about: it was thrown onto the Island by a giant wave? In fact, let's kill two birds with one stone and make that the way the statue got broken as well."
"Works for me."

ahhhh, i hated that they threw that in. we did not need to see how the statue was broken

[Dr. Tachyon]

Damon Lindelof has stated that he doesn't want to do more shows with "wackadoo mythology." Go figure...

http://www.deadline....me/#more-280915

[Kracken Maid]

JamieM, on 31 May 2012 - 05:24 AM, said:

Off topic, but, as a huge Lost fan, this has bummed me out no end http://www.avclub.co...k-to-mat,75813/

Oh my god this is really bad. He seemed like a nice guy ..

[awesome possum]

I still love this show, from beginning to the very last scene.

I have not been able to rewatch the series, though, and I've tried once or twice.  I like watching clips of episodes on youtube every once in a while, but I can't make it through the Pilot.

[Reposado]

awesome possum, on 07 June 2012 - 09:49 AM, said:

I still love this show, from beginning to the very last scene.

I have not been able to rewatch the series, though, and I've tried once or twice.  I like watching clips of episodes on youtube every once in a while, but I can't make it through the Pilot.

i'm actually excited to do a rewatch, beginning to end. just need to get a blu ray player. (a previous roommate had one when i bought the set) i watched selected episodes immediately after buying it, but now it's just staring at me begging to be watched

[awesome possum]

That's the thing, I really want to watch it again and watch it from the perspective of knowing what happens.  I don't know if it's trepidation at seeing how badly things aren't tied together or sadness at knowing that most of the characters die horrible deaths or what.

I recall Lindelof/Cuse as much as admitting that after the third season they sat down and had to figure out what was happening with the series.  That's when they set the end date.  Maybe it's that in the back of my mind, knowing that the first three seasons were so much crap being flung at the wall to see what sticks.  I mean, the entire series basically started as, "Hey JJ Abrams we have an opening in the Wednesday 9pm timeslot... have any ideas?"

Knowing things like Jack was supposed to die in the Pilot throws a wrench in knowing that he ends up playing the vital role of Savior of the Island, especially when you also realize that his arc was supposed to be Kate's and the only reason that never happened is because Matthew Fox did a great job of being likable in the Pilot.

I guess maybe I just don't want to potentially ruin what - in my mind - is a damned good television show and one of the 10 best I ever watched.  My wife keeps nagging me about watching it, though, so I think we'll eventually start a rewatch after we get through Supernatural.