Lost. Can we talk about it? Just finished my first watch.

[DunderMifflin]

I definately think the last season is easier on rewatches without the confusion of not knowing wtf the flash sideways are.

I loved the Lost ending and Across the Sea was one of my favorite episodes. Along with Ab Aeterno and all the 70s Dharma episodes. 

All my favorites are ones that have scenes on the island that take place before the plane crash.

Except the one where Sayid gets kidnapped in a flashback by one of his torture victims. But that's only because of the scene where the cat lady gets him to confess. It was a remarkable scene and the cat lady actress was incredible.

[Werthead]

Across the Sea was really weird. They said it would answer things and it didn't. It was supposed to, but they first panicked that people would hate their explanation for the Island and then the budget wouldn't let them do the volcano they wanted, so the episode was nerfed before they got a chance to make it.

There are enough inferences to fill in the gaps - "Mother" was from the Egyptian settlement of the Island, the boys' mother was Roman, we see the frozen donkey wheel being built and a few other things - but there's also a lot that's unconfirmed. For example, "Mother" was presumably the former incarnation of the Smoke Monster (since there's no other way she could kill all of those other natives on the Island) but this was never formally confirmed.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

Yeah, I didn't hate  "Across the Sea," but I did find it frustrating in that it raised almost as many questions as it answered. 

[Gertrude]

Sure, we saw the frozen donkey wheel being built. What the hell is it and how does it remotely work? Eh, we're not gonna tell you. The Man in Black knows because 'he's special'. That's the explanation we get. Believe me, I was fan-wanking and looking the other way as much as I could, but at some point you just throw up your hands. Jacob was another character that was a hot mess - an inconsistent, selfish asshole. I had more sympathy with the Man in Black after that episode. The writer (can't remember which one) even admitted that it's his least favorite episode. As you say, there were issues in the background of it, that doesn't excuse it.

Look, I get it. There was no way to explain all the shit they threw at us satisfactorily. Part of me being sour is that the writers blatantly lied and misdirected the audience. They weren't just coy and evasive, they actively lied. For ratings, to avoid the wrath of fans, for their own ego, because they had no idea what they were doing and were making it up the fly, whatever it was, it's the part that sticks with me.

[Annara Snow]

19 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

Sure, we saw the frozen donkey wheel being built. What the hell is it and how does it remotely work? Eh, we're not gonna tell you. The Man in Black knows because 'he's special'. That's the explanation we get. Believe me, I was fan-wanking and looking the other way as much as I could, but at some point you just throw up your hands. Jacob was another character that was a hot mess - an inconsistent, selfish asshole. I had more sympathy with the Man in Black after that episode. The writer (can't remember which one) even admitted that it's his least favorite episode. As you say, there were issues in the background of it, that doesn't excuse it.

Look, I get it. There was no way to explain all the shit they threw at us satisfactorily. Part of me being sour is that the writers blatantly lied and misdirected the audience. They weren't just coy and evasive, they actively lied. For ratings, to avoid the wrath of fans, for their own ego, because they had no idea what they were doing and were making it up the fly, whatever it was, it's the part that sticks with me.

Gods, yes. Jacob was awful. I even liked MIB better than him. Why was he supposed  to be a good guy? I don't know if they planned that explanation from the start, but either way, it sucked.

Characters and backstories were the best part of Lost. The mystery ultimately turned out to be shit. Kind of like The X-Files. For that reason, I preferred the flashsideways (though they turned out really cheesy at the end, with all the "true love" shit) to the island stuff in season 6.

[williamjm]

13 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Gods, yes. Jacob was awful. I even liked MIB better than him. Why was he supposed  to be a good guy? I don't know if they planned that explanation from the start, but either way, it sucked.

I think Jacob might be the most underwhelming character in the show, considering how important he is to the overall mythology. I think I preferred him when he was a mostly invisible presence in a cabin.

[Gertrude]

Since this stirred up my interest in Lost, I began looking for podcasts and have been listening to them off and on. It's interesting to remember the theories and mind blowing moments. The hosts were talking about skaters and jaters and I was so confused until I remembered that combining names and shipping is a thing people do. The one I'm listening to starts on season 3 and when the first hints of time travel sneak in, they talk about how much they would hate that if the show went down that road. One of them also said she'd be disappointed if it devolved into the mystical after Jacob's first appearance.

It's nostalgic. I did enjoy the show and I still do enjoy a lot about it. I was again reminded of how the writers went out of their way to misdirect their audience. The newspaper article announcing Jeremy Bentham's death states he has a teen-aged son. Um, no. That's the show purposefully yanking our chain for no good reason.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

This reminds me of all the websites that sprung up after season one discussing hardcore scientific theories explaining what was happening. I wish I could find them again. The show just encouraged this sort of thinking. But of course none of that turned out to be relevant. 

I feel sorry for those who invested so much time and effort writing those articles because they utterly wasted their lives! Almost a much as I did reading them

[RumHam]

I don't remember reading any scientific theories beyond "it's a cloud of nano-bots" but I do remember analyzing the crap out of that damn blast door map. 

[williamjm]

3 hours ago, RumHam said:

I don't remember reading any scientific theories beyond "it's a cloud of nano-bots" but I do remember analyzing the crap out of that damn blast door map. 

I think there were a lot of people trying to come up with an explanation for the Numbers.

[Gertrude]

There was number madness. It wasn't all scientific and serious, a lot of it was, but not all. I just listened to a podcast that had one of these convoluted connections mentioned. H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, O is the 15th, when Hurley saw dead Charlie at the convenience store he was near the Ho-Hos. Shit like that.

And not only analyzing the blast door map, but the mural in the hatch too.

[felice]

1 hour ago, Gertrude said:

There was number madness. It wasn't all scientific and serious, a lot of it was, but not all. I just listened to a podcast that had one of these convoluted connections mentioned. H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, O is the 15th

So what's the 42nd letter of the alphabet?

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 4/30/2017 at 1:29 PM, williamjm said:

I think Jacob might be the most underwhelming character in the show, considering how important he is to the overall mythology. I think I preferred him when he was a mostly invisible presence in a cabin.

Sad but true.

[Annara Snow]

20 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

This reminds me of all the websites that sprung up after season one discussing hardcore scientific theories explaining what was happening. I wish I could find them again. The show just encouraged this sort of thinking. But of course none of that turned out to be relevant. 

I feel sorry for those who invested so much time and effort writing those articles because they utterly wasted their lives! Almost a much as I did reading them

Why wasted? If they came up with great ideas, better than the showrunners, more power to them! Just like great fanfics and fanvideos, brilliant fanon theories that turn out not to be right could be seen as transformative works by the fandom. Maybe they or someone else someday even end up using them as inspiration for a better show or book?

That reminds me of some great theories the fans on the Battlestar Galactica SciFi channel forums back in the day had come up with as explanations for Head Six and Head Baltar, I had one, too. They were all much better than the angels crap they ended up going with. I certainly don't regret reading those theories and coming up with one.

[briantw]

On 4/28/2017 at 5:22 PM, Werthead said:

I think saying "They have a plan" in the title sequence of 53 episodes straight before quietly removing it and hoping people forget about it is a bit of a counter to that. Moore also said that they did actually have a fair bit of the plot planned out in advance because of the lengthy delay between the pilot and Season 1, and they had mapped out most of Season 1, the Kobol and even the Pegasus arcs before they got there.

Fairly obviously, they had no plan for after that and the morass of abandoned, nonsensical storylines (remember Cally and Tyrol's kid? Because the writers forgot about him, and they also forgot about Six getting pregnant by Tigh) multiplied significantly after that point.

It's actually the reverse of Lost. Lost didn't have a hard and fast plan for the first 2 seasons, improvised reasonably well, and then developed a plan and stuck to it, even if it caused problems because that plan wasn't entirely compatible with what they'd outlined in the first two season. BSG had a plan for the first two seasons, then decided to improvise, at first reasonably well and then more catastrophically, until the whole thing collapsed under the weight of its own illogic. When when they came back to try to answer the questions raised in The Plan, it went really wrong.

I don't remember hating the ending of BSG as much as Lost or Dexter, but I also don't really remember much of what happened in it, so I must not have found it to be very enlightening either.  In contrast, I can pretty much remember everything that happened in the finale of The Shield because it was fucking amazing and wrapped up the story in pretty much the most perfect way imaginable.  I also loved that The Shield gave us a payoff on basically every terrible thing the characters had done throughout the show.  Almost every major action had major consequences.  

[Werthead]

Quote

 

I think there were a lot of people trying to come up with an explanation for the Numbers.

 

The Valenzetti Equation.

Although it might have been nice if they'd answered this on the show rather than the spin-off artificial reality game.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 5/2/2017 at 2:12 PM, Werthead said:

The Valenzetti Equation.

Although it might have been nice if they'd answered this on the show rather than the spin-off artificial reality game.

Yeah, I forgot how much key info/answers were a part of the supplemental materials like The LOST Experience. I was so caught up in the show back when it aired that I consumed all of that stuff. I can see how it'd be frustrating for someone just watching the series via streaming to not get answers to things like the numbers, Hanso, and the food drops (as well as the fate of Hurley, Ben, and Walt that was revealed in "The New Man In Charge" Internet mini-sode) that are likely not available on the streaming sites. This is why you need the DVD/BR for binging older shows--gotta get those supplemental features.