So, Lost

Sebastian is in the disappointed camp. I’m in a camp where I thought they needed to do more in earlier episodes to answer basic questions people have had since season one. But overall, I liked it. Vincent definitely made it a tearjerker.

UPDATE [By Sebastian]: I’m less disappointed now than I was last night. Really, the show “Lost” about the characters wrapped up cleanly. The big remaining questions are about the Island, namely what the hell is it and how did it get there? What’s it’s history? How does the giant wheel manipulate space and time? And how did Hugo and Ben run the Island after they took over from Jacob who took over from Jack?

But maybe in the end the Island doesn’t really matter all that much. Presumably the people on the plane got off, and lead full lives thereafter, and Hugo and Ben spent a long time protecting the Island. The sort of “flash-sideways” seems to have been a sort of parallel dimension where they were all dead but didn’t realize it, but had to realize it in order to move on.

12 thoughts on “So, Lost”

  1. SPOILER AHEAD (for those who didn’t see the finale): The title “LOST” evidently refers to what the producers hoped to render their audience after six years of this show! The finale seemed to be pointing to a Harry-Potter-like ending, that was emotionally satisfying, and even sewing major loose ends. I thought Jack would save the day, and the island universe would melt away, leaving our heroes happy in L.A. Instead, we get this somewhat creepy, cult-like gloss on the meaning of life and death. It was moving to see the main actors together, but it was, pardon the expression for this site, a misfire.

  2. Yup. They’ve been making excuses for not knowing how to tie up the loose ends for a while now, but I really expected more than this. Fan service doesn’t excuse poor storytelling, and I did not tune in for six years for the Hug Convention in the Unitarian Church at the End of the Universe.

    I still love the early seasons, but this is clearly another X-Files. The writers were great at spinning off interesting new elements, but when it came time to weave all those elements together? They were obviously completely lost.

  3. I watched the two-hour “review” before the episode and they said something that made the final episode make some sense: the producers viewed it as a character drama. If that’s what you’re doing then having a resolution where everyone winds up happy makes sense.

    The only problem is that I mostly didn’t care about the characters. I wanted to know the mystery of the island. As much as they gleefully killed off people, I guess I mistakenly assumed that they were telling a story and not just giving a glimpse into the lives of a group of people. Oh well.

  4. Yeah… Big thumbs down, though I agree Vincent at the end was a cheap emotional shot. (I’m out of town and can’t pet my dog right now. Dang!) They might as well have just made it Newhart waking up and the whole thing was a dream- no questions answered, too many loose ends… I quit watching when they started pushing the button in Season 2, and I never should have started up again.

  5. Add me to the disappointed list.

    Jacob had fountain of youth powers, but only gave it to one man?

    OK, it was all a tangled dream of Jack dieing after the plane crash.

    I am less than happy I wasted 2.5 hours. Glad I didn’t have a LOST party.

  6. I think the fountain of youth powers were only good for one person at a time – whoever was guarding the island.

    I don’t think the producers took into account just how much fans considered the island itself to be a character. So though they say it was a character-driven story, they can’t really dismiss that there are people who want to know more about the island.

    I want to know more about the wheel, too. I mean once Desmond made it down into the heart of the island, we saw that it was nothing like the area around the wheel, and there was no other half of the wheel sticking out. That means that it’s another center of power for the island, just like the hatch spot. The producers can say that’s not important all they want, but it did capture people’s imaginations and they at least want a few more hints about these things.

    One of the questions I had was what happened between the birth of Ethan & Miles and when Ben took over that women could no longer give birth if they conceived on the island. That was the basis for one of the main characters, so I don’t think it was too much to ask to deal with that question.

  7. Apparently, purgatory is a tropical island with plenty of food, water and beautiful promiscuous women wandering around.

  8. Except that wasn’t purgatory. The island was real, but the “flash sideways” was the slightly purgatory bit.

  9. Bad storytelling, full stop.

    They got caught up in how “cool” they were being and didn’t bother to maintain a coherent narrative or plot the arc.

    The claims of “character study” are just a gloss over their failure. Meaningful “character study” can only occur within a coherent narrative and setting, however odd.

  10. I get the writer’s-school standard teat the plot should be in service of the characters. But that doesn’t mean you get to throw out an interesting plot with no resolution as long as one of the characters has a compelling ending.

  11. I never watched Lost but I am a fan of another show that will end tonight (24). Here’s to hoping it will wrap up cleanly, though it wasn’t looking good for Jack last week.

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