Finale Summation - well worth a read

dudeitshurley

This deserves it's own thread (thanks Kronsington).

Whether you agree with it or not it's an excellent articulation of how many people feel.


http://www.alwayswatching.net/features/lost-sucks

dudeitshurley

It's a long but surprisingly readable and enjoyable article, whatever your viewpoint is on the show.

1 excerpt from it:

"The island is home to a glowy cave with a cork in the ground that holds in bad stuff. By drinking magic wine or water (or any sort of magic fluid, really), you become protector of the glowy cave, and gain the mystical ability to make up your own set of unbreakable rules and travel into people's lives through mirrors and never age and so on. One such protector, named Jacob, pushes his brother in the glowy cave, and the guy tranforms into a mechanical-sounding smoke entity that can take the form of dead people and is capable of seeing into your soul. The smoke thing wants to kill his brother, but he can't, because one of Jacob's rules is that they can't kill each other.

The smoke thing declares that he will find a loophole, while Jacob inexplicably brings people to the island in an effort to prove him wrong about humans always corrupting and destroying. Many years later, Jacob starts taking the loophole dealio seriously, and instead of maybe coming up with some more foolproof rules to prevent him dying at the hands of Smokey, he decides to round up hundreds of candidates, chosen so that, in the event of his death, one of them would take over as protector of the island and make sure that the cork in the ground is safe. He enacts this elaborate plan by finding people off the island who are flawed in some way, and using his island-protector abilities to meet with them at an exact point in their lives where he could influence them with his touch so that they would be on a plane many years later that would crash on the island when a guy named Desmond didn't press a button in a hatch."

---

The highlighted bits in particular make for stark reading in the context of the narrative. Jacob is Protector of the Island. Why exactly did he bring people to the Island? In the context of the narrative it's so stupid. Bringing people to the Island where they either corrupt, kill or try do something with the magical light OR they come and are ruthlessly executed by Smokie. And for what? For Jacob to prove a point about humanity to a 'thing' that was formerly his brother? If it were merely Jacob being fed up with the job, then he willingly brought people to their deaths through a selfish need to quit and die.

Zombrex

That is a really good piece, summing up for me all that I felt was wrong about the show.

I'm not going to pretend I'm a great writer or anything but I've taken the odd screen writing course and read the odd screen writing book and the Lost writers really failed to follow basic story telling principles that ultimately lead to their down fall with the utterly nonsensical and irrelevant ending that simply manipulated emotions to give people what they think was their "pay off".

This sums it up well for me

The show was so convincing in the gradual way it unveiled aspects of its presumably fully realized mythology, viewers immediately accepted that there was a consistent internal logic, and that it simply hadn't been revealed to us yet.
...
The writers had no limits to where they were willing to take the story, and their lack of foresight resulted in a show consisting largely of crazy plot twists that served no purpose other than to trick the viewers into thinking that those plot twists would eventually serve a purpose.

Of course I've never written a TV showed followed by millions so I can't get too up on my own horse, but I've never written a book either I can still criticize Jordan's latest as being terrible literature. I think some of the fans are being overly defensive against Lost simply because they don't want to believe after 6 years they were being sold snake oil.

FredBloggs

I fully agree with you Wicknight and the bit you quoted hit the nail on the head.

As was said on another thread I really loved the journey but I did feel at the end that there were so many things introduced in the show that led nowhere thats its highly unsatisfactory. No way did I think everything should be revealed in the end but I do think that anything that was introduced should be explainable (even if the writers never explained it once they knew what the hell it was about.) As is said in the piece you quote from they were great at gradually revealing bits of their "presumably fully realized mythology" - problem was a lot of things they introduced were dead ends.

Dempsey

I think Alan Dale summed it up when asked about the character Widmore on Jimmy Kimmel and he responded with something like, "I dont even know if Widmore was good or evil"

We had the whole Ben vs. Widmore, Others vs. Dharma, the Kahana, the submarine, kidnapping of Desmond etc yet the actor didnt even know whether his character was good or evil or what really made him tick.

When I think of Lost: Season 6, i think immediately of this



The writers made a mess of it, they should have just asked for another season to end it right if thats what they really needed.

jimbling

Thought there was a lot of rubbish in the article really, but the main message is probably correct.
And the part wicknight quoted does really hit the nail on the head.

Mr.Nice Guy

That article is a superb analysis of the failings of the show, particularly the worst episode of the show's run, Across The Sea. It actually does articulate my frustrations better than I can. Might be the best analysis I've read yet.

He's spot on about how they half-assed so many aspects of the story and how people are in denial about the unresolved issues on the grounds that "I watched for the characters". Well I watched for both.

This bit is bang on:

My primary frustration with Lost isn't that it introduced numerous mysteries and subplots and then abandoned them (which it did), or that the explanations behind many of those mysteries were silly and underwhelming (which they were). What bothers me more than anything is that all those mysteries and subplots never mattered to begin with. Almost nothing the show focused on in its six season run was relevant to the story that the series ultimately tried to tell. The three biggest factors in each of its seasons--the Others, The Dharma Initiative, and the threat of Charles Widmore--didn't amount to anything in the story beyond just being inconsequential "stuff" that happened in relation to the island.

In other words, Seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 were filler seasons. They existed solely so that the characters had something to do until reaching the end of the show. And all of those mysteries and twists inbetween? Meaningless. The extent of their value to show was (a.) they were cool, and (b.) they maintained intrigue.

.

kronsington

Lads if ye liked that check out this podcast

http://www.slashfilm.com/category/features/slashfilmcast/bonus-episodes/

the guy who wrote the article (adam quigley) and some others go into an in depth discussion on the entire show and quigley doesnt hold back in his frustrations. you can find it through itunes also.

l listen to the slashfilm podcast every week- great movie podcast, highly recommended

seadnamac

As has been said, this summises my feelings on the show as a whole better than I could. Lost was always about the mysteries, it's what got it it's audience and kept it it's audience. These characters were one dimensional, cliched and repetitive. Others will disagree now, but time will show Lost in it's true light.

Chev

You've said many times that when people find out who Adam and Eve are, we'll all realize just how long you've been planning the mythology. Well, I went back and watched the "House of the Rising Sun" scene, and Jack says that the clothing looks like it's 50 years old. Is he just not very good at calculating the rate of decay on fabric?

CUSE: Jack is not really an expert in carbon dating.

LINDELOF: He's not really a forensic anthropologist. We need to bring in Bones.

CUSE: Or Charlotte. She's an anthropolgist.

LINDELOF: The other theory that I would like to throw out there is that Jacob and his mother were just expert craftsmen. They made those clothes on that loom so well, it would appear that they were only 50 years old in decomposition, when in fact it's several thousand.

CUSE: Or perhaps the fabric is magic. A lot of theories there, Alan.

Adored this little excerpt from an interview. While the tone is obviously very jokey, it really shows how Lidelof and Cuse heads work when dealing with narrative corners they've written themselves into. Any one of those explanations would fit in fine in the show, which is scary.

blue_steel

And then when it came time to pay off on that six years of investment, the writers decided to flip things around at the last minute and say, "See? It was actually about this the whole time! Pay attention to this now! That other stuff didn't matter!"
Actually, it does matter, and the only reason people are buying into the idea that it didn't matter is because we tend to forget things when they're dispersed over the course of six years and 80-plus hours. But try going back and watching the show again, and then tell me that the mysteries didn't matter. Because they sure as hell mattered then.

I said this after What Kate Does and got lambasted for being impatient. At the time I couldn't believe that some fans were suddenly obsessesed with this new devise that the writers had plucked out of their asses and had forgotten the earlier (and far more interesting) mysteries. It was obvious when the Sideways was introduced that Season six was going to stink.
I actually liked the purgatory explanation for the sideways but it wasn't worth half a season of torture to get there.
This is my first post since the finale. Enjoyed the journey but totally agree with this article regarding the writers unbelievable lack of planning.

uncleoswald

blue_steel wrote: »

I said this after What Kate Does and got lambasted for being impatient. At the time I couldn't believe that some fans were suddenly obsessesed with this new devise that the writers had plucked out of their asses and had forgotten the earlier (and far more interesting) mysteries. It was obvious when the Sideways was introduced that Season six was going to stink.
I actually liked the purgatory explanation for the sideways but it wasn't worth half a season of torture to get there.
This is my first post since the finale. Enjoyed the journey but totally agree with this article regarding the writers unbelievable lack of planning.

I don't think it's the flashsideways that the writer is blaming, but the inane on-island conclusion. The ancient feud involving a magic cave with the stone that had to be taken out then put back in. That is the letdown; the big finale not only had no connection with what went on for the five years preceding it, but it also managed to make all of it just seem like a bunch of irrelevant and largely nonsensical stuff that just happened. They even failed to make us care about this new plot because they introduced it intentionally late but most of all because they were ambiguous about the possible outcomes.

We have utterly opposite opinions of the flashsideways and I was probably one of the ones defending them while also criticising the aimlessness of the on-island stuff. I thought they were a wonderful idea, encompassing Lost's two greatest strengths- its characters and the introduction of a new mystery. Unfortunately they couldn't tie it into the main "story" and instead used it as a way to give the characters, and viewers, a happy ending. A bit like the flashforwards, another brilliant idea that they couldn't really provide a compelling reason for having. And the timetravelling.....

If they had just found meaningful and relevant conclusions for both the Island and the Losties then the purgatory reveal would have been a lot easier to stomach and could even have been poignant.

Anyway it is a nice piece. Overly critical perhaps but I too find it very hard to be anything but critical when talking about the show, which is annoying as I genuinely love it.

blue_steel

To be honest I was just glad the flash-sideways wasn't a multiverse alternate timeline. The fear that it might be pervaded season 6 for me. The afterlife explanation was completely consistent with the shows internal logic.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when Lost began the plan was that the island was purgatory but when viewers guessed it early on they had to change tack. The sideways devise allowed them end as they'd always intended to.

Mr.Nice Guy

The more I read this piece the more I realise the later seasons were ultimately a complete waste of time.

It's a shame when one considers all the great Lost scenes highlighted in the other thread which, ultimatley, were to serve little or no purpose.

uncleoswald

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

The more I read this piece the more I realise the later seasons were ultimately a complete waste of time.

It's a shame when one considers all the great Lost scenes highlighted in the other thread which, ultimatley, were to serve little or no purpose.

I know. I remember getting quite annoyed with Lost in that episode in Season 4 in which Ben creeped into Widmore's room, talked cryptically about some rules, and then said he'd kill Penny. I just wondered what it all had to do with that show I used to watch about the plane that crashed on a mysterious island. That scene is now more pointless then I ever could have imagined.

Love lost, must stop typing.........

Psychedelic

In other words, Seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 were filler seasons. They existed solely so that the characters had something to do until reaching the end of the show. And all of those mysteries and twists inbetween? Meaningless. The extent of their value to show was (a.) they were cool, and (b.) they maintained intrigue.

Bollocks. Those seasons were not filler, they related directly to the development of the characters and the plot. Even if they were filler, they have some of the best pieces of TV ever.

Mr.Nice Guy

Psychedelic wrote: »

Bollocks. Those seasons were not filler, they related directly to the development of the characters and the plot. Even if they were filler, they have some of the best pieces of TV ever.

C'mon of course they were filler. You should have read on to this bit:

Now here's a brief sampling of things in Lost that seemed like they were significant in some way, only to subsequently be revealed as having no substantial bearing on the narrative:

The entirety of Season 5. They left the island, came back to the island, skipped through time, lived with the Dharma Initiative, and for what? So you'd be mislead when the writers introduced the alternate timeline in Season 6.

The entirety of Season 4. An excuse to throw some new characters into the mix, none of whom mattered.

Widmore. Built up since Season 2 as being this mysterious villain, only to show up randomly in the final season and then get killed off without actually doing anything. Apparently Jacob talked to him at some point and he changed his mind and came to help protect the island. M'kay.

Eloise Hawking. Built up since Season 3 as this mysterious figure who knows a lot about the island, has a complex understanding of the fates of the characters (particularly Desmond), and is portrayed in a manner that would suggest she has some grand importance in the story. Nope, nope, and nope.

Illana, Caesar, Dogen, and Abbadon. Four mysterious new characters who were built up and then killed off when the writers didn't know what to do with them.

The Temple. Built up for several episodes during the beginning of the sixth season. Nothing comes of it.

The Numbers. They were cursed. Dharma used them. Jacob identified the candidates with them. Why? Don't ask, they're not important.

The Sickness. I still have no idea. Rousseau may or may not have been infected with it. Claire may or may not have been infected with it. Sayid may or may not have been infected with it, but then Desmond gave a speech about love, and then he may or may not have been infected with it anymore.

The bird that said Hurley's name. Guys, seriously. A bird. Said Hurley's name. Twice.

Great pieces of television at the time but eventually to prove immaterial to the actual plot due to the bad writing.

GeorgeBailey

The show was great at introducing things, but horrible at actually doing anything with them.

That quote would sum Lost up pretty well for me. Still really enjoyed the show though!

Linguo

Ah this article summed up so much I felt about the ending of the show. The more I think about the last episode as time goes on the more angry I feel about it, the ending really was a cheap way at manipulating peoples emotions and making everyone have a little cry knowing all the characters were together eternally...and then a few minutes later we were all left going 'But what about the bloody island!':mad:

I really wish they'd go re-shoot the last episode and come back with something decent!:D