Losties? (Potential Spoilers)

[Nelly]

... discuss.

Make me dislike it less.

Because, IMO... the ending of Lost was too close to the ending of James Cameron's Titanic starring Kate Winslet and Leo.

[Jane]

But the island is now in Hurly, Ben and Desmond's hands... You know they are totally making it a crazy party island.

[The Gentleman]

LOST - A Tale of Two Shows

So, I have been watching Lost since about 4 episodes into Season 1, when one of my best friend's forced a DVD of downloaded TV into my hands and told me to watch it or suffer the consequences. After watching those first few episodes I was, in a word, enchanted. The show was compelling and tightly written with an interesting setting, populated by interesting characters. I wasn't able to watch any more until the DVDs came out, and I sat reloading the Wikipedia page over and over waiting for a release date. When I got Season 1 on DVD, I spent two solid days watching the whole season through. And it was SATISFYING. Even the ending of the season was a good thrill of anticipation, rather than the frustrating tease that accompanies most cliffhangers.

And then Season 2 started, and things got bad.

The character development that pushed Season 1 along was gone, replaced by long scenes of wrinkled faces of frustration and poorly written inner turmoil. The questions about the Island, instead of becoming deeper as answers were revealed, just continued to add up on a long list, as NO answers were provided. Plots that had been incredibly important in the first season were suddenly dropped for seemingly no reason. The whole season felt like the writers had never expected to get renewed beyond the first, and had suddenly been called back in from a vacation in Tahiti to churn out something that would continue to sell ad space. The show had no soul anymore, and I wondered where it had gone. The show improved again in Season 3, but it never quite reached the potential that Season 1 had shown us.

Finally, after six years, the show has come to an end. As the black placard with white letters flashed on the screen for one last time, I felt adrenaline drain out of me, and realized that despite my frustration with the show, I didn't want to let go, as the characters on the screen had finally done. And I wondered why. The conclusion I came to is that the final episode of the show was both one of most amazing finales I had seen, and one of the worst. I was elated and disappointed all at the same time. The show was somehow occupying two complete different sections of my consciousness at once. It existed both in the reverent place that in which I hold shows like The West Wing and Avatar: The Last Airbender, and in the dark pit of scorn I where I cast such shows as Battlestar Galactica and Heroes. How was this possible?

After some careful thought, I realized that Lost was actually two shows, and had been all along. It was at the same time a compelling character drama about the interconnected relationships of a community, and a science-fiction show about . . . well . . .
After making this realization, I came to the conclusion that it is unfair to both Lost shows to review them as a single entity, so I have decided to deal with each of them separately.

Lost (In Translation)
The first Lost is a show about people and communication. This is the show in which Sawyer hides under a bed while his father murders his mother and commits suicide. This is the show in which Rose knows Bernard is still alive, and they run to each other across the beach. This is the show where Sun and Jin stop speaking but are visually straining toward each other. This is the show that was GOOD.

The finale shows us that the only things that happened on the Island that were important in any way were the connections that the Losties formed with each other. Since this tends to line up with my philosophy of life, in which the only things of importance are other people, I liked the finale quite a bit. It was sappy and lit through a soft-focus like an old Madonna video, but I still liked it. It allowed a feeling of resolution to the tensions that had built over the course of 6 seasons between the different Losties, and gave a palpable sense of connection. In the final shot, I felt like I was in the church with them, happy that at last they could all leave together.

This Lost emphasized the interconnectedness of ALL people, even strangers. In the end, the Losties were just a bunch of people that happened to be on the same plane. That was their only meaningful connection the only thing that drew them together. It illustrated the phenomenon where you know someone for years casually, and then start dating them and get to know them intimately, and try to look back on the time when they were a virtual stranger. It’s almost impossible to picture this person you care about so much when you knew them, but didn’t really KNOW them. Yet all that’s really changed is your perspective on life – they are still the same. Everyone around us could be sitting in a church with us after we die, happy and waiting to move on together, and it’s only a matter of circumstance and perspective. It was a simple story about ordinary people and how they care for one another. In this, Lost was remarkably successful.

Of course, there were some problems.

•Useless/underused characters. The entire tail section was a waste except for Bernard. Libby was killed too quick to have impact, and everyone else had a story that went nowhere. The same with the people that arrived on Whidmore’s boat. Miles was one of my favorite characters, but they did jack with him. His presence was irrelevant. Don’t even get me started on Daniel. These characters just slowed down the plot.

•Desmond. He was a useless character. This belongs in the category above, but he was SO useless that he deserves his own mention. He and Penny had a great love story, but it was irrelevant to the rest of the Losties. The story was about the connectedness of the community, and Desmond wasn’t connected. His only real connection was to Charlie, and that was basically ignored in the final season. Desmond, like Daniel, really only had purpose to the OTHER Lost show, which I’ll get to in a minute.

•Missed connections. The show spent too much time emphasizing all of the missed connections in the Losties pasts and futures. It was a show about forming bonds, and I get that it’s important to show how close we are to the people around us without even knowing it, 6 degrees of separation and all, but the show went overboard. Especially without having those connections really go anywhere.

•Kate. Kate sucks. She is a terrible person, making entirely selfish choices at every turn. The show never addresses this and treats her as a tortured heroine.

•Michael/Walt. This was one of the best storylines in the first season. I understand that the actor that played Walt was growing faster than the show was progressing, but really, they should have done more with this.

•Sayid. There are only so many times you can turn heel/face before I stop giving a shit.

•Ben. If you want to redeem a character, have them actually DO something to redeem them.

•Too little Jack/Locke payoff. The tensions between these characters built and built over the course of 4 seasons, making them the two driving points of the plot. Jack’s line in the finale about Locke being right about everything was good, but there was no real acknowledgement of resolution between the two in the afterlife.

•Character’s bending to the force of the OTHER Lost. Sadly, the science-fiction plot ran characters on the rails sometimes, making them behave strangely and make bad decisions.

•Missing people in the church. Where the hell were Miles, Michael, and Walt? There had huge connections to people, but they don’t get to move on? Miles I can understand, maybe he has some shit to work out like Ben, but Michael and Walt were original cast, the only ones not in the church. If Locke can forgive Ben for strangling him because he FELT LIKE IT, maybe the other Losties can forgive Michael for shooting someone to save his fucking son?

•Sun and Jin together at last . . .for about 30 seconds. Give us a bit more damn payoff for watching these two struggle toward each other for 3 seasons, rather than giving them one hug and then drowning them. I mean, come on, Lapidus survives and they don’t? I give less of a fuck about Lapidus than I do about Horace Goodspeed.

•No Ethan payoff. Come on, he’s been the creepy guy getting pulled out of the closet to show up in random places for 6 years. Give us a final scene with him.

The show had some flaws, but all very forgivable given the writers ability to actually make me care (on and off) about these people. When I saw THIS Lost finale, I was on the verge of tears several times. The idea of the Losties creating a place in the afterlife where they could find each other really hit me in the heart and made me think about all of the people in life I hold dear. It was a fine ending to a good show.

(Land of the) Lost

It’s going to be difficult for me to sum up everything that’s wrong with THIS Lost. This show is an epic failure on the scale of Plan 9 from Outer Space, without the fun cult aspect of Plan 9. The show runners obviously had no overarching plan about the mysteries of the Island. It was just a long series of introduced plot hooks and sci-fi tropes with no connection other than a $200,000 ad buy. So, some highlights of the shit that sucked.

•Walt. What the hell? He was obviously the crux of the first two seasons of the entire show. Then, nothing. What was up with Room 23? Did the writers just really like A Clockwork Orange?

•Desmond. His only reason for being in the show was as the sci-fi Deus Ex Machina. It’s stressed about how he is different and special. Then he ends up doing absolutely nothing and being completely irrelevant. Fuck you, brother.

•The Dharma Initiative. A group of highly talented scientists sent to the Island to study . . . . some . . .stuff? By . . . some . . . guy? It apparently involves polar bears. The best thing Ben ever did was gas these fuckers, because at least I got some payback for them stealing 3 seasons of my life.

•Jacob. Across the Sea was one of the biggest letdown episodes of the show. It contained no answers, and instead was a mini-drama about some characters that I don’t care about as people, whose motivations weren’t illuminated at all by the episode. Even with Allison Janey it was a waste of an hour of my life. The sheer inconsistencies revolving around Jacob and his “plan” are more numerous than the number of times Hurley says “Dude” during the series. Does he have magic powers or doesn’t he? How can his fancy mirror see all over the place. That brings me to another point.

•Magic. How does THAT work? Is it a motherfucking miracle?

•The Man in Black. Oh, you’re not going to tell us his name, even though you hint at it. Hahah, funny. Fuck you.

•The Numbers. 4 8 15 16 23 42. I have another number. Zero. That’s the exact amount of fuck I give about the writer’s ability to write Macguffins. Yet another thing that motivated several fucking seasons of the show, and was subsequently dropped completely. Yes, I understand they have some kind of importance in the tie-in Lost material regarding some equation and the end of mankind. You know what’s irrelevant to Lost? Lost tie-in material.

•Daniel. No matter how hard you try, you are no Jeff Goldblum.

•No babies on the Island . . .except when there are. Not only was this rule inconsistently applied, the point of it was never mentioned. Did Jacob do it? Did the Man in Black? Why in the hell would a place sacred to Tawaret, the Goddess of Fertility, kill every woman who had a baby there?

•The Others. Every action the Others took made no sense. First they want Claire and Walt, then they don’t care. I get that Ben was doing what he thought Jacob wanted, since he never saw Jacob at all. But if Jacob actually had a reason for bringing the Losties to the Island, why didn’t he communicate that to the people that ostensibly worked for him.

•Dougan. Super special Japanese guy. What the fuck? I thought Ben was the leader? Now Musashi shows up and throws around a baseball? Nothing at that temple made sense.

•A literal plug in the earth, like that wine bottle analogy Jacob made. Seriously? That’s what you’ve got for me as a payoff for the science-fiction aspect of this? A big stone buttplug in the asshole of the earth? I hate you Lost.

•The condescending and slightly snide tone of the finale and interviews with the creators. “We’re not going to answer every question.” That entire attitude of posing a bunch of questions and then not answering them, and calling it art infuriates me. Listen up TV writers: You are not fucking Henry James. You could not write My Turn to Screw, much less The Turn of the Screw. Lost is a science-fiction mystery. The point of science-fiction is to use strange happenings to illuminate the human condition, and the point of a mystery is to entertain and tantalize before the satisfaction of a revelation. Not to jerk people around and see how long you can keep them going. Questions should only be unanswered when answering them would be antithetical to the point you and trying to convey. Since you were obviously not trying to convey a point in the mystery/sci-fi portion of the show, I can only conclude that you were wasting my time while jacking off on a giant pile of money.

•Lack of answers. This has been stressed a lot here, but this actually isn’t a complaint about the finale not giving us any answers. It’s a complaint that there weren’t any answers to give. That’s the REAL reason that we received no explanations. The creators and writers never bothered to figure this shit out. That’s why there are so many inconsistencies and dropped plots. They were just going along week to week. The whole thing is like a poorly planned roleplaying game that the GM lost interest in after about a year, but didn’t have anything else to occupy the timeslot.

There are a thousand other complaints I could make about the sci-fi Lost, but mainly, it was just a steaming pile of shit filled with inconsistencies and irrelevant revelations.

Overall

As a whole, the show suffered greatly for mixing the two stories together. The character drama would have been a great 3 season show, one of the best, in fact. There was no need for a thousand and one bullshit mysteries. A few strange occurrences on the Island to keep the characters motivated and talking was all that was required. The injection of the mystery/sci-fi element bogged the show down, wasted everyone’s time, and ultimately was a giant dickslap to the face of every fan by the show’s creators. The entire final season should have been about 5 hours long if you stripped out the useless characters and the hours of pointless Purgatory “flash-sideways” nonsense that had nothing to do with anything.

In fact, the entire show of Lost could be done in about 2 hours with 5 people stuck in an elevator. Stuck. Yeah, I like that. Maybe that’s where I’ll make my mint.

In conclusion – While not the giant disappointment that the BSG finale was, the Lost finale will probably convince me never to watch a show by JJ Abrams again. It was the best 3 seasons, and the worst 3 seasons of a show that I both regret and do not regret watching. I think the only thing I can say is that at least there was no Sylar.

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

My greatest complaint was by far the hole in the plot drain being plugged by a giant sandstone turd. With hiroglyphics on it. Like they couldn't afford a flash-someways to explain that sh*t? Boo.

[Nelly]

I think the plug was symbolic. I think it was made to represent the missile crisis in Iraq.

Discuss.

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

I don't even like you.

[Nelly]

I think that's not true at all. I think you have <3's and cookies for Nelly.

[Decimus]

May 26, 2010 12:07:52 GMT -8 Nelly said:

I think you have <3's and cooties for Nelly.

Fixed.

Also, hurray for Lost being over. Terribad show that it is.

[Nelly]

Fuck you, Blewis. I hope you get Lost on a magical island for 6 years, which turns out to only be like 3 months, but then you go back in time and three years pass while Sun has a baby and then you turn into an alcoholic and grow a beard and make Kate and Hurley come back to the island and stop the smoke monster from doing bad things to Desmond who got captured by Whidmore and was being used for freaky science experiments even though he was the constant and he totally helped everyone wake up in the freaky afterlife so that they could all go to the ice-cream social in the church before they go to heaven.

Also, fuck you... you're not Penny's boat.

[Just Evan]

May 26, 2010 13:41:07 GMT -8 Decimus said:

Also, hurray for Lost being over. Terribad show that it is.

Goddamn right. Watching season one was like reading the first book of the Wheel of Time series. The writers basically came right out and said "we've got nothing but repetition of mysteries and drama with no satisfying resolution! Keep watching and we'll give you more of the same til the money runs out!"

And they did. Thank god it's over.

[Jane]

I have complaint about the last scene in the church and really the final in general. It's Aaron. He was totally used an easy means to get kate (which u are totally right about Nick, I want to smash her face, like she truly deserves.) and claire. But we all know that Aaron lives and gets older. Even if they were just as Jack knew them, then he knew Aaron as a toddler, he read bedtime stories to him. SO why? why? is he a freaking baby again? hmm? Does he somehow magical revert to a younger age? and why the fuck would he want to?

Le sigh...

I, like Nick am torn about the show. My view is a little different. I think JJ whim-pt out. He fucks his characters over, he has no compunction about using them to further his plot. Every single season up to season six shows us this. Then all of a sudden we get this happy ending?? BullShit!!! Someone pushed him, "the fans will revolt, whine, whine." So instead of whatever crazy intense mind screwing ending he had planned, we get happy, fuzzy, shinny. Which I know makes some people happy, but I feel now as if none of what happened to them means anything, no lessons learned, no weight to what they experienced, there was no cost. There is no true happy endings... The last episode, on the island it felt like a classic hero's journey, in the sideways verse it felt like a badly written romance novel.

Overall I enjoyed the show of LOST very much. I just hope JJ doesn't fuck up Fringe.

[Decimus]

May 26, 2010 15:50:08 GMT -8 Nelly said:

I hope you get Lost on a magical island for 6 years, which turns out to only be like 3 months, but then you go back in time and three years pass while Sun has a baby and then you turn into an alcoholic and grow a beard and make Kate and Hurley come back to the island and stop the smoke monster from doing bad things to Desmond who got captured by Whidmore and was being used for freaky science experiments even though he was the constant and he totally helped everyone wake up in the freaky afterlife so that they could all go to the ice-cream social in the church before they go to heaven.

I can only speculate on how accurate this paragraph is to the "plotline" that the show held. And, from there, hope that you realize how much meth the producers, writers and directors must have done to come up with something as ludacris as that.

[Bill]

For you "Lost Haters" out there, chances are you watched an episode or two, hell, maybe even a season.

I would know, I was one.

Then I -had- to know how it all ended. Luckily for me, season 3 caught my attention and I was hooked.

Some of you never even tried getting that far.

So before you trash it, know the full damn story. Yeah, we sound crazy talking about plot that you have no clue about.

We, collectively look like idiots pretending to be shapeshifters and vampires on a college campus. Think about that next time ;-)

PS: I loved this show. Didn't like the "side flash" ending.

[Wilhelm Opens-the-Way]

I share most of the following questions: www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291