Let's get "LOST"

Cafe Society
1

OK, so I’m a few episodes into Season Two.

By the way, I’m still committed to finish this, so please no spoilers. Please.

Anyway, as most of you probably know by now, I have watched some LOST but am not yet a fan of the show. (Basically, I’m kind of like **mswas **except that I get moderated on. :cool: ) After promising a friend, and after resisting another friend’s entreaties for years, I’ve buckled down to watch the series.

Now, I’d watched most of the first season when it came out on disc. Didn’t finish the season. Got bogged down about two-thirds of the way through when it became clear that this was largely a show about assholes trying to out-asshole the other assholes; an island full of jerks who all should’ve drowned in the first place. The only character I like without reserve was Hurley. The doctor dude was just too central-casting boyscout for me to feel any connection to. I just hate the former paraplegic baldy guy; I want someone to just beat his ass till he loses that superior, knowing smile he carries around. As much as I hate him, I hate Mike, the black single dad, even more. Kate, OK, kinda cool, but again, very cliche and not very convincing as a human being.

So yeah, I pretty much had to force my way through it. What helped was the second or third time we saw Danielle Rousseau, the psycho french broad, her delivery of her lines was so exquisitely, operatically, Ed-Woodily over the top, that it suddenly occurred to me that it was possible the creators were just yanking our chain. The unrelenting hail of non-sequitur “mysteries” for no apparent reason beyond keeping the audience confused, the general misanthropy that permeates the series, suddenly I saw all of this through a campier lens than I had previously done. It plays like a parody, I thought, of serial drama programs. Possible smoking gun: the 108-minute button thingy as a metaphor for the TV program LOST and its audience.

That’s when I started to enjoy it: to just let it be silly and ridiculous for the sheer pranksty joy of being silly and ridiculous.

Plus then Season Two, the writing has improved, the characters have developed some texture, even the cinematography seems higher quality. Awesome. Now my two favorite characters are Hurley and Echo. Added bonus for Season Two: Shannon, gone. Woot. I’ll miss her brother’s eyes, but I can watch old Rob Lowe movies any time I want.

The most recent episode I watched, we finally got to see the “monster,” who apparently is an evil island relative of the chick in I Dream of Jeannie, only his smoke is black where hers was white. Oh and plus he hasn’t materialized yet; he’s all smoke and no flame so far.

So anyone who wants to comment on the show up to as far as I’ve gotten, have at it. But again, please no spoilers, not even the “pay close attention to So-and-So’s thingamajig, it’s important later.” If you don’t mind.

Also, I know lots of people love, love, love this show; anyone else have trouble getting into it, like me? Anyone watched a lot of it but still hate it? Etc.

2

seriously if you don’t like the show, mystery characters etc… don’t watch it. Who the fuck cares if you told your friend you’d do it. Just tell your friend that it’s visual and audio torture to watch this show. And just stop watching it, you do no one any good by bashing something that doesn’t appeal to you.

3

I didn’t get hooked on the show until Hurley’s “Numbers” episode in S1 and the discovery of…um…something The Hatch…in S2.

Those two things really got me hooked.

I felt (and do feel) the same way as you about many of the characters. Unreserved love for Hurley, dislike for Jack, loathing for Michael…and other characters will get focus. Locke is a really complex character and grew on me. As did Sawyer.

And Mia Furlan (the crazy French chick) is, IMO acting that way–the over-the-top stuff–because of the Director: I think you’re right there. She was a major character in Babylon 5 and was an astonishingly nuanced actress. This role/character/show doesn’t showcase that part of her talents. :wink:

Without spoiling things, I love the show, but am also often frustrated by it. The writers often set up a situation where a character could just say “Dude, what the HELL is going on?” and we get an answer to a long-held question. But it never happens. Some of the characters behave…um…stupidly (but not inconsistently–which is more important to me–ie: they may be morons, but that’s who they are: morons) and at least some of the characters grow and change (also important to me).

So…I dunno–I’d say to give it until the end of S2. If you don’t have any investment in it by then, you never will.

4

OK, Sawyer just conned Charlie into beating up Sun for him, so he could use the threat of attack to loosen up the gun cache and snatch it up himself. Interesting development. I used to kind of like Charlie, and I find his backsliding into the evils of baptism a bit bewildering. So I hope he finds redemption. (Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!)

But everyone else is getting more an more on my nerves. I just don’t buy Sawyer as an actor/character. His smarm is too studied. Yeah, I know, con man. Still, he feels off to me; I have too much a sense of him ACTING. We’ll see. At least he remains relatively complex.

Favorite thing: the rabble of extras who are not cool enough to sit at the grownups’ table and remain in the background mumbling to each other, “What should I do with my hands?”

5

I absolutely love the show so I feel kind of strange agreeing with this, but I think BMada’s absolutely correct. The show doesn’t really change over the long haul. It’s character drama piled on top of mystery after mystery with a smattering of answers here and there. If all the characters just annoy you lissener it’s really not worth sticking out.

The mystery of the island’s nature grabbed me from the beginning, and I actually liked a good chunk of the people. (The ‘baldy paraplegic’ is actually my favorite character on the show, with Sayid a close second, and I didn’t hate anyone aside from Kate and Jack. And Jack has kind of grown on me over time, for a couple of different reasons.)

If you find yourself being drawn in on a second viewing, by all means continue on, but the first season really is representative of the show. It gets better in the second season but drags down considerably in the third, before picking up again in the fourth and fifth. (The fourth season is a shortened one due the writer’s strike a few years ago.)

Charlie and Sawyer are two of the more interesting characters. (And Sawyer ends up being very important to the plot as well.)

6

Locke just seems so thoroughly, pathologically dishonest to me. That coupled with the smug, snakelike grin he’s always wearing just paint him as one of the least trustworthy characters I’ve ever come across. He has only his own agenda, which he’s not going to clue you in on, and which has aspects of lunacy and denial. He’ll smile while he cuts you, convinced he’s doing it for your own good. The most dangerous kind of personality I can think of: the self-righteous sociopath.

7

I can understand where you’re coming from on Locke, but I never read him as being deliberately dishonest. ‘Walkabout’ is an early first season episode so I assume you know about this already, (no spoilers), but Locke is experiencing the Island’s mysteries in a personal first hand hand way from the second the plane crashes. He’s also a man looking for faith and purpose in a life that has completely lacked it up till this point and I think he’s drawn in by the island’s “magic”, (for lack of a better term).

Why doesn’t he share his secret with the other castaways sooner? I’ve often asked this question myself, and the best answer I can come up with is the fact that no one on this show talks to anyone else truthfully. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s an annoyingly common trope on the show and it’s something you accept or you don’t. It’s a lazy attempt at creating tension and i really don’t have any defense for it, (except to say Lost is far from unique in this category.)

The real Locke is emotionally naive and looking for connections, even though they may not exist. He’s prone to making mistakes, but he’s not a bad guy.

8

I don’t…think…you’ll find this a spoiler. But just in case:


The producers are aware of the rabble too and will address them. Using pretty much the same “grownups’ table” metaphor you used. :wink:

9

OK this is one SERIOUSLY fucked up show. Michael just shot Ana Lucia and Libby (from the great lost comic masterpiece “Titus”) and then himself. And the “Other” who looks like he was drawn by R. Crumb has presumably taken this opportunity and hooked it. Meanwhile, Charlie and Echo have some weird ass Huck and Jim thing goin on, buildin them a cabin or some such in them thar woods, and Kate and Jack are becoming more and more irrelevant to the general goings on. They’re now like a couple of normal human people dropped into this ant farm that some child god likes to pick up and shake just to watch the ants tangle and maim each other for his amusement.

Turning into my kind of show. I hope there’s a musical episode coming!

10

There sure are a lot of hatches on this island.

11

I don’t know what is more disquieting: the fact that the rest of the statue is missing? . . . or that it has four toes?

12

Interestingly, everything you’ve said here applies exactly to my history with and feelings about the show as well. Including, in particular, the exact same hooks that got me to start watching the show.

13

Nitpick on the OP, his name is “Eko”, not Echo.

I never saw Lost through the campy lens you’re seeing it with. I guess it’s my fault for expecting the creators of a mystery drama to take themselves seriously. I would have enjoyed it more had I approached it from your angle, I think.

14

Just so we’re clear, this is no spoilers for lissener, but spoilers-aplenty for anyone else who hasn’t watched as many episodes as lissener. Fair statement?

15

I started watching about a month ago at girlfriend’s behest - she’s an absolute fan and I figured I was gonna see it anyway while she was watching, so I started from season 1 ep 1 as we had acquired all 5 seasons (she was more than happy to accomodate me). Started very skeptically, I don’t watch many TV shows, only comedies, and find series (CSI, 24, whatever) to be over-dramatic and soapie-like in general.
What added to the confusion and much to my skepticism was that about 6 months ago just after we’d got together she’d found the season finale of season 5 on the internet, and I’d watched that with her. I was mortified by what I saw - the plot seemed ludicrous, the music was horrendously annoying and it all seemed very tacky - I couldn’t see the attraction in any of this. Besides this, it was also dismally ‘unscientific’. Girlfriend assured me that there was no way it could make sense, I needed to see it from the start to understand how things had developed.

I decided to just accept whatever the show presented, and enjoy it as a work of fiction and nothing more, and see how well the story was written. Part of my decision to watch the show was because I’d read that season 6 was the last season and that all questions were going to be answered, and in that sense it appeals to me as having a beginning and an end.

A month on, and tonight, as it so happens, we will be watching that same season finale, only now I’ve seen the ~70 episodes that preceded it. Yes, the plot is loopy and only seems set to continue in this line. Yes many characters are bloody annoying, but some do get written out! Like Shannon, who I was also pleased to see out - but annoyed that we got so much backstory that turned out so unnecessary.
You will also have to steady yourself for questions answered with more questions, mystery heaped on mystery.
The overall story arc does not move far in the first 2 seasons, and in season 3 things get seriously drawn out. I understand they wanted to build characters and whatever, but a lot of it turns out to be so unnecessary.
However I think if you make it to season 4, you will start respecting the show creators and producers a lot more in retrospect - things start tying together and sense eventually made of certain storylines.

From next week I’ll be able to participate in all Lost discussions, for now I’m on high spoiler-avoidance alert :wink:

16

This was one of my absolute favorite moments on the show, maybe even my favorite. All I can say is that if you aren’t really hooked into the show by now, you probably should just give it up - aint your thing.

If you do decide to keep going, keep in mind the first half of season 3 is sloooooooooooow, because they didn’t have an end date for the show set yet so they felt they had to tread water for several episodes. Once the production team negotiated an end date, the story-telling picks up and the rest of season 3 forward is creamy goodness.

17

That’s good, cuz yeah dipping into season three has mostly been, so far, all about looking at my watch. But this kind of gives me a reason to be distracted, and ponder from a wider perspective, or something. First, more Clancy Brown! There’s not a movie that’s been made that wouldn’t benefit from a dose of Clancy. Second, I have a feeling the LOST creators grew up on those schlocky 70s scifi shows that Star Trek kind of spawned in its wake. LOST feels a little like “Land of the Giants” meets “Land of the Lost” meets “The Prisoner.” And of course I love the friggin traffic this “deserted” island gets. There’s more people pass through here in a day than through Grand Central Station or Gilligan’s Island. Why is it that TV series that involve an island and some shipwreck survivors alway manage to have a “Special Guest Star”? I would give a lot to hear, coming from over a ridge or behind that tree, “Boss! De plane! De plane!” and then see Lee Majors or Charo emerge from the foliage. That. Would be awesome.

18

Season 3 sucked. Season 4 is better, but then season 5 goes completely off the rails. However, if you’re like me you’ll stick with it anyway just to see it be over. It’s kind of like going to the funeral of your worst enemy - you need to make sure that rat bastard is really dead. That’s what the final season is like for me.

19

Hmmm, well, I really liked Season 5.

And honestly, like everyone else, I agree that Season 3 dragged and meandered. But there’s still some good stuff in there, and in some ways, the dragging ultimately has a huge payoff that I’m not sure it could have earned if the show HADN’T gotten to the point where people took things for granted.

But yeah: if you’re not into the characters, I can’t see why it’d be worth it to watch. If you can get invested, there’s some really powerful and insightful stuff going on, and those payoffs get more and more fascinating as the series goes on, rather than less.

20

Having watched seasons 1-3 on DVD ( and thus fairly rapidly ), I have to say season 2 dragged the most for me and was the weakest. Starting with season 3 I think the show has gotten consistently better ( not counting this season, which I reserve judgement on ).

Lost seems to generate a lot of polarization in this respect. But curiously, like with the new BSG many of the haters ( or at least “less-enthusiasticers” :wink: ) are still compelled to watch. Such is the compelling power of serial dramas, even truly shitty ones like most daytime soap operas - the need to see where things go is a powerful addictive force. I’m sure there must be a couple of papers somewhere discussing the neuropsychology of this.