In the final season of LOST there were two timelines, one where the crashed on the Island, and one where they never crashed.
The ‘never crashed’ timeline was an intriguing setup, but had an appalling resolution. That part really was a load of tripe. I think this is what really annoys people. Without this there would have been far fewer complaints.
the ‘crashed’ timeline was a lot better. Not at all perfect, but good. Most of the mysteries were explained. Not all explanations were onscreen, some were in the supplementary material. An onscreen explanation would have been better, but you can’t have everything. Overall, a reasonably satisfactory resolution.
I’m not seeing any huge number of unresolved plot points. A few, yes, but I can accept that. Skyfall for example has more and bigger plot holes. What are the major ones that you object to?
Overall, it was good. Not great, but good. Could have been a lot better if the last three seasons had been compressed into two, and eliminate the whole alternate timeline.
I’m with you. I never watched a single episode. My wife was enthralled by it and I kept telling her that the big payoff wasn’t gonna be worth it.
She ranted for a week when it ended and it was all I could do to keep myself from saying “told you so”.
I’ve been watching the re-runs, and it stands up remarkably well. But I know I’m getting real close to the part where I started not liking it so much-- all the time travel nonsense.
And I didn’t care much for the whole last 2 episodes. Very rushed, very forced, and the ending was just “meh”.
You have to remember that it’s the journey, not the destination. I learned that from Jacob.
No it wasn’t. Why do people keep saying that? It wasn’t. The flashes in the last season were. Nothing else was. The island was not purgatory and had nothing to do with the afterlife. The island was an island.
Sorry I wasn’t clear enough, but that’s what I meant. The island was still the island and Hurley was left in charge in the end because only he was pure enough of heart to pull the sword plus the ring didn’t corrupt him. Right?
For what it’s worth, I thought season 6 had some huge problems, but thought the finale was pretty good. Especially given what it was capping off.
But then, I was never expecting the finale to somehow explain everything that had happened in the previous 6 seasons in one fell swoop. For anyone that was hoping that would happen, I have to wonder what show they had been watching for the previous 6 years, because Lost was never that show, and I didn’t expect that to change in the final episode.
(Short of finding out that the island was Atlantis, which I was still half expecting, and is still my head cannon. I mean that motherfucker moves!)
I watched every episode, and hung out in the weekly threads here. I believed they would deliver an explanation that would make some sort of sense, but as we approached the end, I realized it wasn’t to be. I thought I was watching sci-fi, but instead it was a weird Lifetime movie. I can’t even remember what their half-assed explanation was - what the fuck the island was, why all the weird things were happening, etc. It pissed me off so much that, after the series finale thread, I didn’t give it any further thought, except when threads like this come up.
Between *Lost *and Heroes, I soured on getting into any other odd TV shows after that. I didn’t have faith that my time would pay off with a satisfying ending, or even an ending that made sense. I worried that, like the two previously-mentioned shows, they’d just make up shit as they went along, and worry about it making sense later. I wonder if many other people are also wary now, and that other series have died an early death due to that.
Not gonna go into too much detail after already having this [del]argument[/del] discussion at least once around here, but I hold to these two points:
The ending was fine – not great, but actually better and less ambiguous than I’d been led to believe. They did answer the central mystery, and with a reasonable amount of detail. I can understand why people might not like the answer they got, but keep in mind that ***any ***answer was going to displease a large percentage of the fanbase; oftentimes a cool mystery makes for a pretty boring fact once resolved. They didn’t try to tie up the countless loose threads they’d spun in the preceding seasons, but that was never going to happen, and any viewer who expected everything to be resolved had unrealistic expectations.
Even if you strongly dislike the ending, that shouldn’t then mean that watching the series was a waste. A disappointing conclusion doesn’t change the fact that you watched and enjoyed 6 seasons (or whatever) of quality television.
“Lost” was spoiled from being a truly great series because the writers were terrible at long-term planning. They created great, tense scenes and character development, but when it came to creating a cohesive multi-year storyline, they fell spectacularly short. They truly were just making up shit as they went along, which became glaringly apparent with the Walt storyline. I mean, they knew that he was on the verge of puberty. And yet, they didn’t pre-film flashbacks with him BEFORE he started growing a foot per day. Which, of course, meant that they didn’t know ahead of time that the kid was going to play a key part. Boggles the mind.
Because they just made up crap and never bothered to explain prior mysteries, I’ll never rewatch the series. I mean, why invest the time if you’re going to end up frustrated? However, I don’t regret the time I spent in the beginning because I enjoyed the premise and the characters. The acting was great, the scenery was beautiful, and individual stories were compelling. It’s just when you take it as a whole that it sucks.
I loved LOST, really think we’ll never see anything like it again, at least not on network TV. I didn’t think the end was a cheat, it was just the end. I didn’t expect “answers” to all the questions, it was obvious they were making it up as they went along, and I didn’t take the producers S1 words as gospel and I surely didn’t feel betrayed when the series went in directions I wasn’t expecting.
So, no, I emphatically disagree that it was “all a load of crap.”
Agreed. I liked most of the characters, there were plenty of both funny and emotionally stirring moments, and I found the show generally compelling on a week-to-week basis. I wasn’t wild about the finale (for reasons other than “we didn’t get answers!”), but I don’t regret watching the show one bit. Even that dumb episode about Jack’s tattoos.
I don’t think the “it’s the journey not the destination” argument applies here. When a piece of entertainment establishes itself as a mystery there is an implied contract: “Stick with me, the answers are coming.”
Imagine buying a box that advertizes itself as a jigsaw puzzle. You bring the box home, open it up, spill out the contents, begin the process of forming the picture. No matter how pretty any of the pieces may be, If it turns out there is no picture to form - the box was just full of random pieces - we don’t say the effort was still worth it. No, we would want our money back. Admiring random pretty pieces is not was we signed up for.
In a mystery story contract, the journey creates a tension - an excitement for learning how the pieces fit. The tension is released with the answer and we are satisfied (cigarette?). We willingly partake of the tension expecting the release - that’s the deal. LOST broke the deal we are rightly pissed.
Sherlock Holmes stories end with his pipe smoking, parlour room explanation to Watson (and us), answering whodunnit. Is such a scene necessary? With it we get to admire A.C. Doyle’s craft - every seemingly out of place event had its place. The attention we paid to the colour of the mud on the villain’s boot is rewarded. We look forward to reading the next story knowing we are in good hands. We could In principle, even without the the parlour scene, work out the explanation ourselves because there IS an explanation. The story was crafted to a plan.
Watching LOST we presumed we were in good hands. We thought the end was writ and our journey had a destination. The expected release of tension not occur. Worse, we learn the craftsmanship was poor. The writers did not fulfil the contract and the journey is retroactively tainted. The attention we paid to the Hurley bird and to the four-toed statue (and… litany elided) was not rewarded. We only paid attention to these things because we thought they were pieces to a puzzle. There was no puzzle. The box of random pieces is no fun.
Not every mystery in entertainment must be fulfulled! Star Wars was weakened by “explaining” the Force. We are tantalized by the orange glowing briefcase of Pulp Fiction. But no puzzle-solving-whodunnit contract was offered to us in those cases.
Now, having said all that, LOST did give us rewarding moments. Desmond and Penny on the phone - wow! So, no the show was not devoid of value - some of the pieces were very pretty. But the utter failure to deliver on the contract leads me to agree wholeheartedly: in the end LOST was a load of tripe.
I loved Lost, although of course the denouement left a little to be desired.
A great show that could be enjoyed on so many different levels - from soap opera stuff to obsessive deconstruction. Like mindless entertainment? No problem, you’ll have a good time. Are you there for the subtext? Take your pick: Greek mythology, 17th century political philosophy, comparative religion, literary and pop culture references, there’s going to be plenty to get your teeth into.
I’m currently going through it again with my wife (who missed it the first time around) and we’re having a great time with it.
I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic or nasty, I just find the premise of your OP rather off-putting.
You could state that you didn’t like the ending, you could ask what others thought, you could open a discussion about what it did or didn’t mean, and – even though it’s been done here more than a few times already – it usually makes for a spirited and interesting thread.
What you’ve done, though, is essentially demanded that everybody must have the same opinion as you. I’m not biting.
In many ways, the London Olympic opening ceremony reminded me of Lost: They were both grand, glorious messes that confused the audience and made everyone who saw it say “I don’t know what the fuck-all just happened, but we’ll never see anything like that again!”
I don’t even know what to say to people who make that assertion. Lost was the same trash in the pilot episode that it was at the end. Nothing ever made sense. There was never any satisfying explanation for anything that ever happened in the story. Season 1 was just as terrible as season 5.
The reason we all have the illusion that it was a great show until it “crashed and burned right at the very end” is because we all expected that feeling of building tension and climax to have some sort of satisfying conclusion. But it’s not just the ending that sucked! The whole thing sucked, and the ending just made us realize what a fucking waste the series was. There was absolutely nothing the show could have done in the end to make up for the trash it sowed in the beginning and middle.
Some of us realized the game they were playing pretty early, stopped watching and never looked back. Others (like my wife) stayed optimistic for way too long. People like you turned the optimism to 11 and doubled-down on the faith that something worthwhile could be salvaged, and watched all the way through to the end, only to see it’s just turtles all the way down.
What a disappointment. They played us like suckers.
