Kept me up last night. Begrudging criticism Thread.

Mr. Incognito

Okay, I know I won't be the only one so please feel free to add or detract as appropriate.

I missed the first series of Lost- never say what everyone was going on about but then got HOOKED in the second series and went back and watched the first one- I still think the second series was the best of the lot.

Anyway, the reason I loved lost was the minute you thought you had it figured out everything took a completely different tangent. Added to this there was a wide array of credible characters that you could FEEL as they had their own back stories and their interactions meant so much more when you say what motivated them.

Things for me have started going downhill with Series 5. All of a sudden we have a lazy episode where Jacob and MIB turn up and Jacob goes around touching all the candidates. It was lazy and seemed totally out of character with Lost up to this point. If we had Jacob in the flashbacks in the series all along I would have held my hands up and say WHOA!! That's who that guy was in all those flashbacks/ flashforwards. Instead we had one episode that this character comes out of no-where and suddenly goes around high fiving people I've connected with for 5 years. I let it go, I figured okay if this is what they need to do to introduce a character fine.

But then it gets worse. Instead of mystery after mystery and character after character everyone is practically killed off. There are no others. Interaction is restricted to a handful of characters and everything is going towards Narnia. Light V Black, big standoff blah blah blah. We've seen it a million times before in a million different permutations and movies / books/ fairytales etc. It's practically an insult to the thought and complex mechanisms behind the first 4 series.

Series 1-4 Mystery. Series 5- quick squeeze in MIB and Jacob.

The only thing saving the series at this stage is the acting and the score. The odd mystery is thrown in but we have nothing like the mind bending episodes of series two when the black came down you wanted to throw your shoe at the screen in frustration.

Indeed, series 5, island is on pocket of "special energy". Boom. Island sinks. Losties from Past go to future to play 5 a side and we are introduced to an alternative flash sideways to say goodbye to all the old favourites no matter how we have to squeeze them in - arrest on plane, one night stand with sawyer, marry my brother, my new partner. It's lazy lazy lazy lazy boring stupid writing. I have no investment in these characters anymore. Who gives a crap if you were in series one. Do we ask William Shatner back if we're making a new Star Trek. Enough is enough.

Ths simple fact is there were a million ways they could have gone with the series. They went the sterotypical Hollywood sell out, Light V Dark standoff. I no longer rush home to download the episodes and I am getting prepared for a mega mega mega anticlimax.

Everyone dies, kids take over, circle of life. Flash sideways is the new life and we've said goodbye to everyone. Blah blah

Useless.

Edit okay, It did keep me up last night and here's a list of things annoying me:

Whitmore downgraded from Bad Guy to two bit tag-a-long. Seems he is not motivated by Greed but wants to get back to the island to destroy Smokey? I thought he wanted to use the islands properties for profit? Serious character erosion.

Desmond's time jumps being absolutely immaterial. Including his time in the hatch etc.

Jack from Hero to Drunk to Locke.

Christian Mystery. I have a feeling we'll never get an answer.

The Kids, I have a feeling we'll get a MIB Jacob centered episode and they have some funky powers and they are all some lost tribe of ancient egyptians that survived the fall of Egypt by coming to the island. Moses, something along those lines.

Unifying theme- I don't there is one. I think everything will have to be mashed to "fit" the new Dark V Light view.

The island itself- what is it that's so special. And now it's so special that a nuke sends it to the bottom of the ocean. Yipee.

Adam and Eve. Now this is where the writers say they had an idea all along. Going to be interesting to see who that turns out to be.

Jin and Sun. Have turned into Romeo and Juliet. FFS the lady was ready to up and leave him.

This whole candidate lark. I just don't buy it. They're there to become the new Jacob. Ich don't think so.

This series is SLoooooooooooooooowwwwwwww

L31mr0d

Lets face it, however they choose to end it, it's going to alienate a large chunk of the audience. I personally like the direction the show is going, so, hopefully, I won't be one of the viewers that will feel disgruntled when it ends :pac:

James Forde

post saved for series end :pac:

uncleoswald

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

It's practically an insult to the thought and complex mechanisms behind the first 4 series

Complex mechanisims? The show was a mess for large parts of seasons 3 & 4. The writers as good as admit to this.

And if you never saw the appeal in Season 1 then we watch the show for very different reasons.

Anima

Losties from Past go to future to play 5 a side

I enjoyed that

I agree with you in parts. If they knew they had a certain amount of hours to explain the story, I think we'd all be a lot happier. There are so many things from previous episodes that were important at the time but are utterly irrelevant now. You could nearly write off 60% of season 2-4. An example being the tail section survivors. They have no bearing on the story now but they took up an entire season and a half maybe?

L31mr0d

Anima wrote: »

An example being the tail section survivors. They have no bearing on the story now but they took up an entire season and a half maybe?

Wasn't it originally held that LOST was first pitched as a dramatized version of the reality show "Survivor", where real people are put on Island, split into 2 tribes, the weak are voted killed off then they merge, and, as is the way with Survivor, the tribe that merges with the least numbers is whittled down until there is none of them left.

The way it is going now in this season, with the remaining "Survivors" competing as "candidates" (even if they may not be aware of this), it would appear to be following the same pattern. Who will win the million island and be crowned the sole survivor. :pac:

speedboatchase

I agree with OP, Lost has always required a certain level of suspension of disbelief, largely fostered by the bond you had for the main characters. Series 5 and so far 6 have given us alternate realities, time travel, characters with answers being non-commital and vague before getting killed (RIP Dogen) and just ridiculous levels of nonsense. Even this week's episode we were introduced to a brand new team of soon to be killed extras coming to the island (Widmore's team)

Mr.Nice Guy

I agree with a lot of Mr. Incognito's points. For me the Jacob/MIB thing has been disappointing and it's as if the bulk of the show has been dealing with minor players in the grand scheme of things. Ben and Widmore seem largely insignificant in light of what we now know about Jacob and MIB. I wouldn't mind this if it had been hinted at before now but it was only really acknowledged at the start of season 5. We had time travel, Widmore etc. in previous seasons to contend with.

Sad to say I'd have to conclude with others at the moment that a lot of this has been made up by the writers as they have gone along. Hope not but that's what I feel.

blue_steel

I agree to a large extent. Although I loved season 5 and enjoyed the introduction of Jacob in the finale it did worry me a little at the time. If this grand unveiling had been planned all along why had we not seen him in earlier flashbacks?
The same thing was done with Ethan way back in Season 1 and Desmond in Season 2. They were introduced and then retrospectively tied into earlier occurrences.
I just can't get engaged with the endless debates regarding whether Widmore is aligned to Ben or Jacob or neither. Or ruminations on the properties of magic ash. It doesn't interest me. What got me in was Smoky, the apparitions, the whispers, Dharma, the numbers etc. The flash forwards and the time travel were a big jump but they worked. This season isn't.
And the writers DID say at one point that everything would be explained by science (or science fiction). What happened there?

Earthhorse

I agree with you regarding Jacob and MIB; I just don't care enough about them and now the whole thing revolves around them. It just doesn't work.

But I have to agree with uncleoswald, there were no complex mechanisms in play in the earlier seasons; it just seemed that way because you assumed the writers knew what was happening behind the scenes, when, in actual fact, they didn't have a bog. There was never going to be a neat or sophisticated explanation to tie everything up. So much of Lost (for a lot of people) relied on the tease.

Personally, I preferred the last few seasons (4 and 5) where things moved along at a fair clip. This season hasn't been any slower than the first few though.

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

Do we ask William Shatner back if we're making a new Star Trek.

Pretty much.

blue_steel wrote: »

And the writers DID say at one point that everything would be explained by science (or science fiction). What happened there?

People took them at their word.

Mr. Incognito

I had to dig this up.

I'm so sorry to see I wasn't wrong.

The final was pretty much pure and utter drivel.

They couldn't explain a god damn thing so they wrote two hours of people finding each other and weepy reunion after weepy reunion.

Then stick in crap purgatory that has nothing to do with anything. The end.

Oh and for the common theory that is that they were alive on the island and purgatory was after what about Richard.

"You want to know something Jack, something I've known for a long time. You're dead. You're all dead".

noodler

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

I had to dig this up.

I'm so sorry to see I wasn't wrong.

The final was pretty much pure and utter drivel.

They couldn't explain a god damn thing so they wrote two hours of people finding each other and weepy reunion after weepy reunion.

Then stick in crap purgatory that has nothing to do with anything. The end.

Oh and for the common theory that is that they were alive on the island and purgatory was after what about Richard.

"You want to know something Jack, something I've known for a long time. You're dead. You're all dead".

The actor who plays Ben says you are wrong.

jimbling

I couldn't disagree more. I was disappointed with some stuff, but I expected that. That fact is, I think they did better than I thought they would.
But then, I loved the Jacob/MiB stuff.... so I'm probably biased there.

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

Oh and for the common theory that is that they were alive on the island and purgatory was after what about Richard.

"You want to know something Jack, something I've known for a long time. You're dead. You're all dead".

Did you for some reason believe Richard when he said that?

Richard was told that by MiB the day he arrived on the Island. Jacob told him otherwise. When Jacob died Richard lost all his faith. He then lost his mind a little bit too.... He clearly just gave up on Jacobs notion and thought, briefly, that MiB had been telling him the truth all that time ago.

By the end of the very same episode he had changed his mind again and was back on track trying to stop MiB.