great post. i consciously avoided watching lost (past the 2nd season), because i figured they'd never answer most of those questions. i watched the last episode, and i was like: uh.. yup.
Lost - The Final Season Thread
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great post. i consciously avoided watching lost (past the 2nd season), because i figured they'd never answer most of those questions. i watched the last episode, and i was like: uh.. yup.
"I think there's a little to much phoney on my balony".
Talk about clutching defeat from the jaws of victory. Everything up to the end of season five was pretty good, but once they showed Jacob everything went to hell.
BSG: the question at the beginning was not whether or not they would find earth but what they would find when they got there. Whether it was our present day earth or an alternate reality earth or a future earth. That series explained it.
X-files: the question was what are the aliens, what do they want, why are the government helping them and what happened to Mulders sister. All were answered (although in a convoluted and boring manner).
Lost: the question was what was the Island . The answer: a container for a light that is good that you must do evil (kill people) to protect. And also, everything that happened doesn't really matter because they all eventually die. Seriously??? We're supposed to swallow that?
They had 2 endings (one on the island, one in the flash sideways). If at least one of the endings had made sense I would have been satisfied.
The purgatory ending could have been slapped onto the end of any TV show because it had nothing to do the main series.
BSG: "Adama, it doesn't matter if you find earth and save all your people, because in the end everyone dies, just enjoy the journey with the people you love".
X-Files: "Mulder, It doesn't matter if you find you sister and discover who the aliens are, because in the end everyone dies, just enjoy the journey with the people you love".
Avatar: "Ang, it doesn't matter if you master all the elements and beat the fire lord, because in the end everyone dies, just enjoy the journey with the people you love".
What's the name of that film with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan directed by Kevin Smith?
Talk about clutching defeat from the jaws of victory. Everything up to the end of season five was pretty good, but once they showed Jacob everything went to hell.
BSG: the question at the beginning was not whether or not they would find earth but what they would find when they got there. Whether it was our present day earth or an alternate reality earth or a future earth. That series explained it.
X-files: the question was what are the aliens, what do they want, why are the government helping them and what happened to Mulders sister. All were answered (although in a convoluted and boring manner).
Lost: the question was what was the Island . The answer: a container for a light that is good that you must do evil (kill people) to protect. And also, everything that happened doesn't really matter because they all eventually die. Seriously??? We're supposed to swallow that?
They had 2 endings (one on the island, one in the flash sideways). If at least one of the endings had made sense I would have been satisfied.
The purgatory ending could have been slapped onto the end of any TV show because it had nothing to do the main series.
BSG: "Adama, it doesn't matter if you find earth and save all your people, because in the end everyone dies, just enjoy the journey with the people you love".
X-Files: "Mulder, It doesn't matter if you find you sister and discover who the aliens are, because in the end everyone dies, just enjoy the journey with the people you love".
Avatar: "Ang, it doesn't matter if you master all the elements and beat the fire lord, because in the end everyone dies, just enjoy the journey with the people you love".
What's the name of that film with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan directed by Kevin Smith?
I think some people are giving it a pass because they have spent six years watching it and don't want to feel like they wasted all that time. If Lost had been a feature film, they probably would have mauled it within an inch of its life.
What if we found out that in The Usual Suspects, Kyser Soze wasn't ****** but actually a demon with supernatural powers.
What if we found out that in The Usual Suspects, Kyser Soze wasn't ****** but actually a demon with supernatural powers.
What does "Vincent" spell backwards? Think about THAT. Oooooooh.
Other than being annoyed by the unsatisfying ending, I've been considering the fact that I'm going to miss these characters. Yes, the show left many loose ends; however, the writers excelled in character development. I'd say these personalities rival those in M*A*SH. Certainly, their histories do. (Perhaps there is a better TV show to use as an example.)
I dare say people watched this series more for the characters than for solving mysteries and that complaining about how it ended is a display of grief.
I dare say people watched this series more for the characters than for solving mysteries and that complaining about how it ended is a display of grief.
People do have a point when they say that the show's characters were more important than the mysterious elements of the Island.
However, it was still a plot-driven show rather than a character-driven show, and in that sense, the finale is a complete failure.
Almost all of the character development involved learning mysterious bits of information from their past and seeing how they were all interrelated. This was what the writers used to keep people hooked in the show from week to week, and ultimately, it was all swept under the rug.
No revelatory information was given about anything that anybody cared about for the 5 previous seasons. The only answers were to mysteries that were raised during Season 6.
99.99% of the show turned out to be one giant MacGuffin.
Lost was not a character study like Taxi Driver or In the Bedroom. The characters' stories depended on all of these answers that were never given.
There was very little in-the-moment character development that actually went anywhere. Jack was only really interesting as long as he was butting heads with the real John Locke, but we all know that that never went anywhere. And apparently Kate was one of the most important characters in the show, but she spent all her time getting in the other characters' way and/or bouncing between Jack and Sawyer like a game of ping-pong. And Sawyer stayed the same over the entire course of the show. Apparently he never learned anything from what the real Sawyer did to his parents. He was starting to change when he was part of Dharma, but they he went right back to how he used to be for Season 6.
It's not a good answer, but it IS an answer, and they didn't say it didn't matter. The island, for whatever reason, apparently sits on something like a hellmouth and whoever protects it keeps the evil from getting out. After six years, is it stupid? Sure. But it's an answer.
Whereas in BSG, the nature of Earth was just as unsatisfying, and everything the characters did really WAS meaningless because "god" was calling the shots all along. Plus, it's all going to happen again. The characters were mere cogs in a machine which will keep running the same cycle over and over.
That was not the interpretation i got, but I could be remembering it wrong. I thought it was human nature that was keeping them running the same cycle over and over again. I didn't find the nature of earth that unsatisfying (although maybe a little uncreative). I was pretty pissed at the ending of BSG because it also left a lot of things unanswered. But at least the final season felt organic to all the previous seasons.
The (human) characters in Lost were very interesting and engaging.
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honey
Active member
I'm pretty bitter about Lost's ending. And I'm frustrated that so many people liked it.
The ending made no sense at all within the context of the story. It was only there so fans could have something warm and fuzzy.
The ending's irelivance notwithstanding, I found it very distasteful for such a smart show. Along with the comfort of heaven comes some nasty side effects... The idea that everything you do in life is leading up to eternity in another world: it makes everything relatively meaningless. This world is real and difficult and full of ecstasy and tragedy. Things in this world have real consequences and when you die it's over. Our deaths provide meaning to our lives and keep people from growing too far apart from the closeness we felt as kids.
The "and then everyone lived together in heaven" ending to Lost was some of the most pseudo-philosophical pandering ever imagined.
The ending made no sense at all within the context of the story. It was only there so fans could have something warm and fuzzy.
The ending's irelivance notwithstanding, I found it very distasteful for such a smart show. Along with the comfort of heaven comes some nasty side effects... The idea that everything you do in life is leading up to eternity in another world: it makes everything relatively meaningless. This world is real and difficult and full of ecstasy and tragedy. Things in this world have real consequences and when you die it's over. Our deaths provide meaning to our lives and keep people from growing too far apart from the closeness we felt as kids.
The "and then everyone lived together in heaven" ending to Lost was some of the most pseudo-philosophical pandering ever imagined.
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Jon Starr
Veteran
I have to agree. While I did like the ending for the characters, for the overall mystery and story it was aweful.
It really was just a cop out. The flash sideways now feels completely and utterly pointless, and just dangles there like some sort of failed writers attempt at doing something genius and clever. It's like an ugly hangnail. I was REALLY looking forward to see how the flash sideways would fit in with the main story, and I thought it would be what Desmond was talking about how you go in and get another do-over. Or perhaps they had to chose between which time line they wanted to live in. Or as some predicted that they would end up destroying the island all for their own sakes despite releasing 'hell' (essentially finally doing what they attempted to do). OR something... not that... which has NOTHING to do with the storyline.
Plus they really wanted to trick the audience. Notice how if they destroyed the audience it would sink... and at the beginning the island had been sunk. If it was a world they created for themselves why was the island even there? Why were some of these things happening? How did they create this 'heaven'?
Ugh...
but since I'm attached to these characters I'm glad they had a happy ending.
One thing I am curious about is Hugo's reign on the island. What sort of things he had to deal with...
It really was just a cop out. The flash sideways now feels completely and utterly pointless, and just dangles there like some sort of failed writers attempt at doing something genius and clever. It's like an ugly hangnail. I was REALLY looking forward to see how the flash sideways would fit in with the main story, and I thought it would be what Desmond was talking about how you go in and get another do-over. Or perhaps they had to chose between which time line they wanted to live in. Or as some predicted that they would end up destroying the island all for their own sakes despite releasing 'hell' (essentially finally doing what they attempted to do). OR something... not that... which has NOTHING to do with the storyline.
Plus they really wanted to trick the audience. Notice how if they destroyed the audience it would sink... and at the beginning the island had been sunk. If it was a world they created for themselves why was the island even there? Why were some of these things happening? How did they create this 'heaven'?
Ugh...
but since I'm attached to these characters I'm glad they had a happy ending.
One thing I am curious about is Hugo's reign on the island. What sort of things he had to deal with...