if i understand it correctly, my only ever having watched two episodes of lost means the same as having watched from the beginning. right?
LOST
(43 posts) (8 voices)-
Daniel Florien
AdministratorExcept for the whole experience and storyline part. :)
Posted 3 years ago # -
esoteric
Member<SPOILER>
The whole last season was terrible, and like a lot of TV shows, it was riddled with sloppy writing. They said they knew where it was going all along, but I just can't believe that. It's really unfortunate. The last season wasn't as brutal as Battlestar Galactica, but it was pretty bad all the same.
What made the first 5 seasons, and especially the first 2 or 3, really interesting was not just the "what weird thing is going to happen next", but more so who these characters are, how they are dealing with what is going on on the island, and how who they were back in the "real world" influenced all of that.
As they stated in the finale, everything "really happened" on the island, but it somehow feels irrelevant now, and so do what the characters experienced. The whole "flash sideways" universe was supposed to be some sort of purgatory type situation where they all needed to "wake up" and find each other and go to heaven together. Ugh.
I'm not a writer for a tv series, and I understand that they never really know if their series is going to be picked up for another year (take FlashForward for example), but a lot of these series seem to fly by the seat of their pants, just making shit up as they go along and then trying to patch the seams up as best they can later.
Can't they come up with a framework for the story that includes a final goal and potential seasonal climaxes that can be stretched out or collapsed as necessary, while still working towards a specific finale?
At least Fringe doesn't seem to be going the way of LOST and while it's only Season 3, at least they have been leading somewhere with it all.
Posted 3 years ago # -
esoteric
MemberWell, there's a lot of discussion about that (and a lot of other aspects!). I think the "they all died in the crash" thing started because during the credits of the finale the wreckage was shown, and there were no people around.
All I know is, and at this point I don't really care to spend too much time figuring it all out as I probably won't ever go back and watch this series, is that it was explicitly stated that it all "really happened".
Define "really happened", I guess. :P
Posted 3 years ago # -
esoteric
MemberI don't watch a ton of television and there are only a few shows that I follow, but I've been let down by the final season or episode big time twice now. First BSG, and now LOST.
Frustrating to invest time and emotion in collection of characters and the plot they are involved in, only to have it all end so unsatisfactorily at the end.
What struck me though about LOST is how rabid some of the anti-LOST sentiment is. Not just indifference, but rabid, ranting hatred for a show they've never seen! Funny, that.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Daniel Florien
AdministratorI enjoyed LOST, even the ending. There's no way they could have ended it and made everyone happy. I think it was probably the best TV show ever.
I also really enjoyed 24. And Dexter. BSG was pretty good, and if you take out the last 15 minutes of the finale, I thought that was pretty good too.
Posted 3 years ago # -
swmr1
MemberI enjoyed Lost and the finale as well, Daniel. I'm a huge sucker for the "realization moment" or whatever you call it when characters look back on their experiences and learn something. I know it's sappy and maybe even one of the reasons I became a christian long ago but, c'est la vie.
I also don't mind the fantasy or what if's about eternity. It's pleasant to fantasize that something nice would lie beyond this life. It's the taking of that fantasy and trying to act like it's reality that grates on me.
I read something that said those who watched LOST primarily as a character-driven show were probably somewhat satisfied with the ending. Those who watched it as a sci-fi show (and it did present itself as both) were probably dissatisfied. I was irritated much of the last season with the confusing story line but the last episode made up for it, IMO.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorAt least Fringe doesn't seem to be going the way of LOST and while it's only Season 3, at least they have been leading somewhere with it all.
Very true. It looked at first like it was gonna pull an X-Files, but it has really ramped up this past half-season.
I read something that said those who watched LOST primarily as a character-driven show were probably somewhat satisfied with the ending. Those who watched it as a sci-fi show (and it did present itself as both) were probably dissatisfied. I was irritated much of the last season with the confusing story line but the last episode made up for it, IMO.
Word.
Posted 3 years ago # -
esoteric
MemberI read something that said those who watched LOST primarily as a character-driven show were probably somewhat satisfied with the ending. Those who watched it as a sci-fi show (and it did present itself as both) were probably dissatisfied.
I could see that as being pretty true, but see, I watched it for both aspects and was disappointed with both aspects by the end.
I liked the sci-fi mystery aspects, and I was curious to see how they all tied together in the end. They didn't. At all. Like I said, they just seemed to create a whole bunch of mysteries, and then did a piss-poor job of trying to patch it all together with no ultimate goal for where their story was going.
I liked the character aspects because I liked how they all started off as strangers to each other and the viewers, but through revealing their back-story and their interactions with each other, we got to know them better as they got to know each other better. Then, we started to see some of their characters change over time... up until the last season when there was no time for character development and most characters didn't even do or say anything at all.
In general the last season just seemed so god-damned rushed that there wasn't time to explain the mystery OR develop the characters, and I just couldn't buy the sappy "everyone goes to heaven" ending. Why spend so much time in the "flash sideways" universe talking about the different character's histories when it didn't matter AT ALL. It was just purgatory. So what if Lockes father was a vegetable? Who cares about how Sawyer became a cop? Even the "real" world on the island was just rushed as well. They just sort of ran back and forth, a bunch of people died quick anti-climatic deaths and Hurley took over care of the island.
Patches, patches... YMMV.
But I digress...
Posted 3 years ago # -
Ty
ModeratorCat Valente's take:
http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/583912.html#comments
I utterly lost interest in Lost about season three and never went back. That seems to happen with a lot of shows though (including BSG which lost me in season 3 too), so it may not particularly be a comment on Lost itself, but more on how long I will tolerate a premise before I'm tired of it.
But I will say this, after watching a couple of episodes of season one (on DVD) I turned to my wife and said, "If this were a Twilight Zone episode, they'd all be dead and trapped in purgatory. The flashbacks are them shedding the unresolved things from their lives so they can move on into the afterlife."
Sigh.
Seriously, guys, if you plan to write genre fiction (even on TV), then you should be familiar with its tropes. The BSG ending where it's going to be the garden of eden and the hybrids are the Adam and Eve character: no. That story gets sent to the SciFi magazines at least once a month, and is roundly laughed at by the editors before being thrown in the trash. And the "they're all secretly DEAD!!!!" ending is old old old too.
It makes me sad that these guys who are running television shows can't even come up with an idea good enough to net them a short story sale.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Notice that Jack is the one in "purgatory" with all his friends and family as he goes toward the light... then *switch scenes* his eye closes. If he's not in 'purgatory' (which the writers have explicitly stated), then perhaps the flash sideways is Jack's dying process (as time is nonlinear in the show) a la NDE.
EDIT-- Plus there are multiple interpretations to any part of LOST. When Jack goes down the well to save the island, he engages in a katabasis a la Homer's Odysseus or Plato's allegory of the cave. When the MIB goes down the well, he turns into evil a la Satan's katabasis in Milton's Paradise Lost.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Ty
ModeratorThen they fail the other mantra of short story editors: clarity, clarity, clarity.
I get why final episodes hide the football a lot: picking an actual ending is sure to please some and displease others. I find it lame and cowardly, but I get it. Even some of my favorite shows ever have done similar things, and I fault them for it just as hard. X-Files, we are looking squarely at you, here.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Well, yes, they should, but patience is also required in peeling back the layers. I may have had questions about that was happening in LOST, but I also experienced questions when reading Homer, or Plato, or Dante, or Milton, or Edmund Spenser. Complexity seems to be par for the course in these works (complexity that affects the clarity, that is).
Oh- and I might add that James Joyce's Ulysses is not exactly known for its clarity! LOL!!!
Posted 3 years ago # -
Ty
ModeratorComplexity is one thing, hiding the football so that you can't be pinned down is entirely something else, and is something that seems to happen far more often in TV writing than in prose. Though, there are prose writers who are guilty of this as well.
"I also experienced questions when reading Homer, or Plato, or Dante, or Milton, or Edmund Spenser."
Did you question what happened?
See, I read a lot of old epics too. I can, in a couple of sentences, tell you what happened in Gilgamesh, or the Iliad and the Odyssey, or the Divine Comedy. Analyzing all the details of the imagery and language is a lifetime's work. But what happened is pretty straight forward.
Even with BSG, a show I disliked, I can tell you what happened. They picked and ending, and they stuck with it.
I guess it's my own personal kink, but I have a strong negative reaction to vagueness pretending to be sophistication.
Posted 3 years ago # -
DDM
MemberComplexity is one thing, hiding the football so that [it] can't be pinned down is entirely something else
Hey Ty, how do you feel about Primer? I hated that movie for precisely the reason I quoted.
The idea that they were dead and in purgatory from the beginning is definitely a minority interpretation. The show even goes out of its way in the finale to discourage that interpretation
Not to mention the producers went out of their way to say that everything on the island actually happened and that the survivors didn't die in the original crash(People thought this because of the scenes of empty wreckage of the first plane on the beach over the series finale's credit).
Posted 3 years ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorI thought they were pretty crystal clear about what happened. There was no hiding the football; the only thing that threw people was the whole empty wreckage shot (which being after the credits I never actually even saw :), which apparently was added post-editing by the studio and not by the producers.
Posted 3 years ago # -
esoteric
Memberhow long I will tolerate a premise before I'm tired of it
It seems a lot of shows lose steam just after the 3rd season. Makes me wonder if Arrested Development (one of my favourite shows of all time) would have tanked if it HADN'T been cancelled. Even though I watched BSG and LOST till the end, there was definitely a change after season 3 in both of these shows.
Makes me wonder if dramatic TV shows should have shorter story arcs. Not 5-7 seasons, but more like 3 or 4.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Ty
Moderator"Hey Ty, how do you feel about Primer? I hated that movie for precisely the reason I quoted."
I thought Primer was a very interesting failure. And probably for that reason. I don't need a story to spoon feed me information; I like challenging books and movies. But I need to feel like the writer knows what's going on, even if I don't (yet).
Nope, I'm curious. What would be your three sentence summary of what LOST was about? Not all the stuff that happened. Just what it was about. This is an exercise that comes up a lot in writing critiques. If you can't tell me what your story is about in three sentences or less, then you don't actually know what it's about. I know you didn't write LOST, but since I can't ask the writers. . .
Posted 3 years ago #
Reply »
You must log in to post.