Has "Lost" Lost It?

Cafe Society
1

This series started off great…and then it started to drift, but then they promised to bring everything back together and…what used to be a “must see” in our household has turned into, “must we see it?”

Time travel, jumps to back stories, new characters, more surprise doors that open to other doors that open to yet another door…I feel like the scripts are being written by schizophrenic writers who can no longer afford their meds.

Seems to me they have wasted a great premise and turned this show into a clusterfuck of plots and sub-plots and aimless meandering…I’ve met wild-assed drunks in bars who had more coherent stories.

2

Really? I think the last couple of seasons have been terrific, and for many of the reasons you stated.

3

Lost was lost about 13 minutes into the pilot episode. I realized just how bust it was about eight episodes into the first series, and that the writers would never be able to bring it all back together without resorting to some variation of, “It was all a dream in Tommy Westphall’s tropical snowglobe,” or some equally purile and now-overused trope.

However, the first series was still worth watching for Kate in progressively skimpier outfits and the in-joke with the death of self-cognizant “red shirt” Arzt. (I still prefer Sam Rockwell’s “Guy” from Galaxy Quest, though.)

Stranger

4

For some reason, I have the opposite impression from the OP. The show feels to me like it’s coming together, building up, finally, through an actual story arc capped by some kind of resolution.

It may be that information from outside the plot of the show itself is coloring my perceptions. the writers have explained in interviews that this season is all about how they got back to the island, and next season will be about how they get off one more time, this time for good. Then the show’s over.

Maybe it’s knowing this that makes me view everything that’s now happening as leading up to something, rather than as simply throwing more random shit at me.

5

It makes more coherent sense than ever, you just have to pay attention.
There is no loss in plot or consistency, it’s a matter of being able to form logical conclusions and being able to deal with a non-linear story.

6

Except for these new castaways - no! We’re getting lots of answers now and it’s been quite satisfying.

7

Knowing that it has 1.5 seasons left makes me confident that they will tell the story they want to tell and wrap it up as best they see fit.
Undoubtedly when a sci-fi mystery story goes on this long the resolution will never be fully satisfactory to everyone. People looking for a “ahh, every single thing makes sense now, every iota explained, and it all fits neatly into this clever puzzle” are surely going to be disappointed.
For me it was always about the ride, not the destination. Each episode is a roller coaster and that’s the fun of it. Others seem to feel the opposite and are quick to say “dispense with all the meandering, give me answers already, I just want to know how it ends.” The show is wasted on them and no ending is going to meet their expectations.

8

The fact that there is a definite end to the story (and it’s not all that far off) helps a lot. If they were just dragging this out, only to cancel the show abruptly when the ratings drop, I’d probably give up. But I think I’ll stay with it to the bitter end.

I do wonder how many of the mysteries (Adam and Eve? The polar bear? And I want to know more about Hanso.) will be resolved.

9

We’re still loving it in my house! I’ve always been good at suspension of belief for the sake of entertainment though.

10

I think it’s really good again. But time travel stories can be hard to wrap your head around, it’s probably best not to think about that stuff too much. The character stuff is good, we have the old John Locke back, Ben doesn’t know everything anymore, Sawyer is a better Jack than Jack ever was and Jack is now a poor imitation of early Sawyer. And Kate … well, she’s still Kate, you can’t have everything.

11

Agreed. The show drifted a bit in parts of season two and early season three, but since then it has IMHO been becoming increasingly more coherent. It still might end in a ludicrous clusterfuck, but so far I’m enjoying the ride.

It’s not for everybody and if you originally tuned into the first season primarily interested in a show about modern castaways…well…it probably quickly became not for you ;).

12

Didn’t the writers claim at one point that everything could be explained without resort to the supernatural? Is it safe to say they abandoned that idea (possibly as soon as they said it)?

13

The monster killed the pilot in the pilot episode. If you were looking for a non-supernatural explanation after that, I don’t know what to tell you.

14

Maybe they can still resolve everything in science-fiction - rather than fantasy - terms. Maybe. Don’t mind either way, myself. I like both genres, seperate and mixed.

15

I suspect that what the writers/producers were de facto arguing is that in the end it will be “science-fiction”, as opposed to God or “magic.” Of course the dividing line between non-hard sf and fantasy can quickly become pretty hazy and subjective.

But that’s fine with me. I’m not always a fan of the hardest of hard-sf.

16

I’m not sure what it is about that particular scene that is supposed to have forced the show into the realm of the supernatural. Can you explain?

17

I think it’s pretty bad. I still watch it - after the time invested, I feel sort of obligated even though I realize it’s sort of like throwing good money after bad. But it was clear fairly early on into the second season that the writers were just stringing us along and had no real idea what they were doing and not much has changed in that regard.

The characters have always been implausibly stupid in this show, never sharing information, not having reasonable motivations, etc. but it has deteriorated to an absurd level.

Typical conversation (made generic):

“Why are you doing this?” “Because I am.” “But why? This is a bad idea.” “I just… trust me… it’s what I have to do” - this sort of thing is supposed to pass as plausible motivation for characters for just about everything they do.

or

“We have to go [way across the island]”

“Why?”

“There’s no time to explain, just trust me”

“But it’s a 12 hour walk, you’d have plenty of time to explain…”

“JUST TRUST ME AND SILENTLY WALK ACROSS THE ISLAND WITH ME! IT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE!”

In recent episodes:

So Sawyer and crew live for 3 years as Dharma-ites. They must’ve learned vast amounts of information about the Dharma initiative, the island, and the others. I said then in a Lost thread, I bet this will happen: Someone will ask a question about Sawyer’s experience in the last 3 years and then there will be an explosion in the background which distracts everyone and the question will never be raised again. I was spot on - there was a point where someone was asking Sawyer something about his experiences when the flaming van came through the town, and that was that.

Jack, Kate, and Hurley know Sawyer must know some of the mysteries that have dominated their lives, and yet they’re completely incurious about it. In what universe is this remotely plausible?

The characters aren’t even characters anymore, they’re plot devices running around from place to place without much explanation other than “I HAVE TO DO THIS… JUST BECAUSE”.

It’s just comically amateurish at this point. If it wasn’t well budgeted and didn’t have momentum from what seemed like earlier promise, it would seem like a bad B movie.

18

I think this has been the biggest disappointment for me. In the current theories/questions/comments thread, I posted something about how Ben, revealing to Locke that Locke’s father was on the island, said “don’t look at me, YOU brought him here.” When that episode aired, most of us thought Ben was hinting that Locke’s subconscious mind had some magical ability to teleport people to the island or something. If you look back at the old questions threads, there were lots of questions sparked by lines like that, which many of us thought were allusions to big mysteries that would someday be revealed. Now, it’s looking more and more like most of those mysterious lines/plot events were just throwaway lines/events created to build suspense, don’t relate to anything deeper, and thus will never be answered.

19

I think people who make that point are saying that the monster’s activities in the pilot preclude the possibility of a mundane explanation for the show very early on. But as Tamerlane pointed out, the producers only said there wouldn’t be a supernatural explanation, which still allows wiggle room for a science-fictiony explanation.

20

Lost was in trouble a while ago and I gave it up. A friend told me it had got better so I caught up and now am loving it again.

In fact now I like it in a different way than before. When it started I was all about trying to work out what the fuck was going on.

Now I’m happy in the way the story is going and because it’s got a defined end date now I’m just sitting back and enjoying the ride, with all the twists and turns they are giving us on the way to the end. I’m loving the current run from this perspective. It is now a must watch show again IMO.