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March 28, 2024, 08:29:23 AM

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Reevaluating Lost

Started by Ja'moke, December 10, 2020, 03:49:17 PM

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Pete23

Was a big fan right up until the final season, and still think the revelation of the flash forwards was one of my favourite tv moments ever. However, like a lot of people, I completely believed them when they said that they had the ending planned from the first episode so I sat through all that glowing treasure cave bollox thinking "this may appear like a lot of barely thought out desperate bullshit made up on a production deadline but don't worry, it'll all be worth it in the end". Turns out the "ending" that they had from the beginning was just the meeting up in heaven bit, and the actual ending of the story was completely made up in the writers room each week and felt like it. Still, five ok to awesome seasons aren't bad for any show.

New page lottery numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42

An tSaoi

I never finished the show. What was the deal with the magic lottery numbers in the end?

Pete23

there's a good explanation here https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Numbers, but basically "Each corresponded with one of the final candidates to replace Jacob as protector of the Island. The numbers also formed the coefficients in an equation that predicted mankind's extinction."

This might not mean a thing depending on when you bailed.

QDRPHNC


popcorn

One of the most maddening TV series I've ever sat through, and not really because of the lack of "explanations" but more the irritating cast of characters making bizarre decisions every 5 minutes.

Also sorry to go all Dawkins but the relentless "reason is bad, you must have faith" moralising. There's an entire episode where one character quite reasonably attempts to get everyone to make a decent effort to be rescued but no one's interested and the moral of the story is that we must all accept our fates or something.

I was a big fan - I absolutely loved all the Dharma Initiative stuff (and all the Easter Eggs/fake websites/TV adverts that accompanied it) plus I'm a sucker for time travel stories.  I thought it lost it's way towards the end with the Jacob business but this thread has definitely put me in the mood for a re-watch..

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: timebug on December 11, 2020, 09:36:40 AM
Loved series 1. Started watching series 2 and realised after a couple of episodes that they were taking the piss,and I bailed out.

It's a real shame that this sort of thing is most people's experience of multi series 'Box set' tv shows now. There isn't the satisfaction of a conclusion, just a point where the investment of time becomes no longer worthwhile.

Ja'moke

Quote from: touchingcloth on December 11, 2020, 07:44:02 AM
I gave up some time during series 4, if I remember. I seem to recall that around that time the show got commissioned for a LOT of seasons, when originally it had been conceived and plotted as a three series arc, so I made the assumption that from then on they were going to be making it up as they went along. I'm quite glad I bowed out when I did having read what the conclusion of the story was, but like the OP I still think the first couple of seasons were phenomenal.

I actually thought things improved in Season 4. From what I remember, Season 3 was when they had no idea how long ABC would make the series go on for, so there was a lot of stalling. But towards the end of Season 3, they finally got confirmation that it would be three more seasons and that was it. So coming into Season 4, they had an endpoint to aim for, and, to me at least, Season 4 felt a lot more focused.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: An tSaoi on December 11, 2020, 11:16:34 AMI never finished the show. What was the deal with the magic lottery numbers in the end?

Magic wine.

machotrouts

Quote from: QDRPHNC on December 10, 2020, 05:51:24 PM
Start of season 3 was where I gave up. Clear they had no plan and it was all very superficial.

My "fuck this, they clearly have no plan" moment was halfway into season 1. I have NO time for mysteries that don't have solutions. I don't mean "mysteries that don't tell you their solutions", I am cautiously pro-ambiguity, I mean mysteries with no canonical answer whatsoever, nothing in the writer's head. Fuck's the point of that? That's just nothing. Anyone can write it. Here I'll write a mystery for you: a giant floating disembodied fanny???? What does it all mean??????? Nothing! I don't have an answer! I just made some shit up! Your guess is as good as mine! Waste your fucking time!

And nobody give me some "death of the author" shit I hate that so much. That kind of thinking is how we end up with Crash Bandicoot vore fanfic

Ja'moke


thugler

Quote from: machotrouts on December 11, 2020, 04:23:43 PM
My "fuck this, they clearly have no plan" moment was halfway into season 1. I have NO time for mysteries that don't have solutions.

Must admit, this was my experience, almost from the very beginning. I watched it, found it pretty silly (the polar bear) and quickly got the impression it was just mystery tosh without much behind it. Was pretty delighted when everyone cottoned on to idea this by the mid/end point.

Ja'moke

The "lol polar bear" thing seems to be what most people latch on to to laugh at the show despite it being one of the most logically answered questions in the whole show.

Captain Z

It was just the ghost of a brown bear.

Leo2112

Quote from: machotrouts on December 11, 2020, 04:23:43 PMHere I'll write a mystery for you: a giant floating disembodied fanny

Where did it come from?

purlieu

I had a theory about why the main plot went kind of tits up at the end, and it was somewhat confirmed by an interview I watched with Damon Lindelof: they original had a rough idea of where it was going, and then a mixture of fan service, discovering great (initially one-off) character performances and network buggering aroundness sent the entire thing spiralling off in the wrong direction. There are a lot of consistencies in the mysteries in the first three series, and a few startlingly prescient hints in the earlier episodes which were clearly there as "ah, told you so!" moments for rewatching: the one that really stood out for me was one episode ending on Locke sat on the beach, with black and white game pieces in his hands, while totally unexplained sinister music played. It was slightly odd but forgettable on first watch, but in context of my rewatch before the final season, it totally fit: I think they did have a good vs evil battle planned, and Locke was going to be part of it.

But then there's stuff like the smoke monster being referred to as the island's security system, being nicknamed Cerberus (in a show chock full of on the nose naming, this must have been intentional), and every time it came after someone, it showing them aspects of their past and apparently passing judgement. And then at a certain point it just became a generic bad guy who fell into a pool of light and turned into smoke and wanted to leave the island and... I dunno, destroy the world or something? Are his plans ever really explained? The smoke monster of the final two/three series is totally different to the earlier one. Its role seemed to be that of thinning out the survivors depending on their worthiness. Whoever the big bad was originally intended to be, I don't believe it was the smoke monster. Then you have Desmond and Ben who were instrumental in the direction of the plot, yet were only kept on because the writers grew to like them based on the performances on screen.

Lindelof and Cuse did themselves no favours by doing a weekly podcast in which they regularly told us that everything would be explained, asking fans to write in with their theories as to what the smoke monster was (and replying with things like "actually some people have got it almost exactly right!"!) and then writing an entire episode as an expositional flashback in which one character almost literally says "some questions just open up more questions - you'll never know what's really going on".

So yeah, I believe that whatever the plans were early on - and I'm sure there were some - they fucked up along the way and tried to patch it together as well as possible, leaving a narratively unsatisfying story that just takes an uncomfortable left turn, tonally, in its final couple of series.

For all the problems with the final episode - and it just being a big "stop the bad guy" runaround with a "everyone goes to heaven in the end" subplot is a pretty big problem - the one thing that disappointed me most was the Desmond plot. I can buy into the daft sci-fi of the show, and Desmond's exposure to the electro-magnetism allowing him to travel through time and such made for some of the most interesting and exciting stuff the show did. The season five cliffhanger resolving on the 'flash sideways' split timeline was a really bold move, and the reveal that Desmond could use that same ability to travel to an alternate timeline made total sense. The fact that Charles Widmore knew about this, and sent him there, tied in with what we already knew. Maybe Desmond reuniting the timelines would be the only way to defeat the smoke monster after he sabotages the island?
But no. Widmore's so-important-it-got-him-killed plan is to use magnets to send Desmond into the afterlife at some undefined period in the future to make sure that everybody goes to heaven together. The afterlife reveal in the final episode basically undermines the season five cliffhanger, the development of Desmond's powers and their perceived importance, and the show's - admittedly very loose - grounding in anything resembling reality. It just felt like a rug-pull for the sake of it, and one the writers hadn't even come up with when they started the flash-sideways plot at the start of the season (unless there's an actual reason that the island had 'sunk' in the afterlife). There's so much they could have done with that whole plot to make it at least follow the daft rules the show set out, but instead they chose to make it the afterlife plot. Which also makes me wonder whether the original idea was for the island to be Purgatory from the start, and they weren't as clever as they thought they were, so when everyone guessed it they had to make the rest up on the spot.

Anyway, Lost. Enjoyably exciting weekly watching that feels a little one-dimensional in hindsight, and fell apart when the writers fucked around with their original ideas.

Ja'moke

To me it always felt like the island was meant to be a sort of purgatory and the castaways were there to be judged, rewarded or punished. Sun even says at one point the island is punishing them. And there are lots of other hints too.

But fans guessed that very early on. So it seemed like Cuse and Lindelof threw in some other stuff and took a detour to prove that it wasn't that. And yet in the end, they still kind of did the purgatory thing anyway except within the alternate timeline rather than the island itself.

EDIT: Sorry, I just realised purlieu said the same thing above. I agree.

Menu

Quote from: Ja'moke on December 11, 2020, 01:00:54 PM
I actually thought things improved in Season 4. From what I remember, Season 3 was when they had no idea how long ABC would make the series go on for, so there was a lot of stalling. But towards the end of Season 3, they finally got confirmation that it would be three more seasons and that was it. So coming into Season 4, they had an endpoint to aim for, and, to me at least, Season 4 felt a lot more focused.

That's exactly my memory. The final 3 seasons were worth the drudgery of Seasons 2 and 3.

Menu

Quote from: machotrouts on December 11, 2020, 04:23:43 PM
Here I'll write a mystery for you: a giant floating disembodied fanny????

Prime Video immediately commission 5 seasons.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on December 11, 2020, 11:59:23 AM
It's a real shame that this sort of thing is most people's experience of multi series 'Box set' tv shows now. There isn't the satisfaction of a conclusion, just a point where the investment of time becomes no longer worthwhile.

Amen. The notable exception to this is Deadwood, because it didn't fizzle out but instead got shitcanned in its prime. The more usual thing is the fizzle out or shark jump though - I think the second series of House of Cards is one of the best thing ever to have been on telly, but the subsequent series are are old of increasingly bad shit.

Menu

Quote from: touchingcloth on December 12, 2020, 03:46:23 AM
Amen. The notable exception to this is Deadwood, because it didn't fizzle out but instead got shitcanned in its prime. The more usual thing is the fizzle out or shark jump though - I think the second series of House of Cards is one of the best thing ever to have been on telly, but the subsequent series are are old of increasingly bad shit.

For me, Deadwood is the best series there has ever been on TV. I urge people to watch it if they haven't already.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Menu on December 12, 2020, 04:13:58 AM
For me, Deadwood is the best series there has ever been on TV. I urge people to watch it if they haven't already.

Seconded. It's one of the few shows I'd say everyone should at least try, because it's a total masterpiece.

mjwilson

Quote from: purlieu on December 11, 2020, 10:01:51 PM
Widmore's so-important-it-got-him-killed plan is to use magnets to send Desmond into the afterlife at some undefined period in the future to make sure that everybody goes to heaven together.

Wait, this isn't right is it? Widmore doesn't know about the afterlife, his S6 plan is about getting Desmond to the island and making sure that he's electromagnetism-proof enough to unplug the cork.

purlieu

I could be misremembering, but I could have sworn the first time we see Desmond travel to the flash-sideways timeline was due to Widmore. Assumed that was his plan.

NoSleep


mjwilson

Quote from: purlieu on December 12, 2020, 12:34:48 PM
I could be misremembering, but I could have sworn the first time we see Desmond travel to the flash-sideways timeline was due to Widmore. Assumed that was his plan.

Widmore does zap him in a big microwave, and I think you're right that Des gets a preview of the sideways. But I think that's just Desmond's superpowers, not Widmore's plan. (Haven't rewatched S6 in a while though - doing a rewatch at the moment and I'm up to late S4, alongside The Storm podcast.)

mjwilson

Quote from: Ja'moke on December 10, 2020, 03:49:17 PM
Season 1 - Fantastic
Season 2 - Still pretty great and intriguing
Season 3 - First half was annoying and felt like the show was stalling. The flashbacks became tiresome. But the back half of the season had some incredible episodes
Season 4 - A big improvement over Season 3 as now the show had a confirmed end-date and the "flash-forwards" made for a refreshing change to the flashbacks
Season 5 - Not as good as Season 4 but still enjoyable
Season 6 - Underwhelming on the whole, but I liked the finale

I would rate season 5 a bit higher than this I think, I love all the time-travel stuff and the way the different stories get linked together.

chveik


PlanktonSideburns

shame they didnt use the original themetune they had in mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4AEEoX3d3E

NoSleep