But what is the mystery, exactly? Let’s go back to the final line of the pilot: “Guys, where are we?” So that’s the question the series needs to answer. That’s the ONLY question that really matters.
As of this week, we know that the island holds the magical light which is the source of all life or some such. I don’t really remember. But they are giving us an answer to ‘the mystery,’ THE question. It may not be in the detail everyone wants, or be to everyone’s satisfaction, but it’s there.
If I understand Fenris and others’ frustration correctly, it’s generally because the series to date hasn’t been a direct a map to the conclusion - so that once you get to the endgame, you can look back at all the various elements and they’d somehow tie together and explain one another. But it should have been clear a couple of seasons ago - or at least from the beginning of this season - that Lost wasn’t that show. We the viewers are experiencing this story as the core characters do, encountering the unexplainable and making the best of it. Nobody guaranteed the Losties answers to all of their questions and nobody guaranteed us, either. It may sound like a cop-out, and it probably is, but I feel like the show has every right to be a big pile of weird and a lot of things just won’t and don’t make sense. Oh well, it was a ride. And at the end of the day, I have a feeling that the characters in the show will be feeling much the same way - perplexed and confused but on a different path from when they started, for good or ill. The only thing I really care about at this point (having had the ‘where are we’ question more or less answered) is where the core characters go from here - and if the two timelines aren’t resolved then this may remain ambiguous and woo-woo as well.
I’m not saying the complaints and frustrations aren’t justified, and I absolutely think a version of Lost that satisfies that thread of continuity that people are clamoring for could have been made. But it wasn’t. So it’s a bummer if you feel like you wasted six seasons of your TV time, but I’m still looking forward to next week.
Ben didn’t want to eliminate Widmore, he wanted him to suffer as badly as he did, thence the threat and intent to kill his daughter. (Not sure why he didn’t try again after his initial attempt, however.)
Finally watched it last night. There was some good stuff, but a LOT of disappointing stuff.
5 seconds into the episode, I’m saying: Hmmm… ancient, preggers woman on the beach-- gotta be twins Jacob and MIB.
“It’s so beautiful”. Gag me with a spoon at that line. Trite is an understatement. Gee, I wonder if MIB is going to end up in there? What plot tension!!
Jacob drinks the cool aid. Doesn’t even think about it.
However, I did like the Earth Mother (or whoever she was). The acting was good. Not a bad explanation of Adam and Eve.
It feels like they’re making a mad dash to clean up some “mysteries” and check them off a list. Not a very good episode, overall.
I hate to say it, but Ellis Dee is right. And I called this years ago:
The belief that all this stuff is tied together defies the evidence before us. If you simply drop the assumption that “Lost” is a coherent story and take an honest look at what’s been aired so far, it is obvious - I mean amazingly, stupidly, blatantly obvious - that most of the show has just been made up as they go along and need more hooks to get the viewers to come back the following week.
This is, of course, fully consistent with the manner in which the show is produced. When they started making “Lost” nobody knew if the show would last one season or two seasons or five or be dumped after two episodes. I simply don’t believe the show was planned out all the way to the end, and so they’ve just been dropping in new mysteries and characters to ramp up the “tension.”
There’s not going to be a logical end to this. No chance at all.
The show has been successful in large part because it has good characters and production values, and good characters will keep an audience tuned in. Episodes that really bring out a character, like “The Constant,” can be riveting even when the plot is absurd. Even though the episode is silly and unnecessary from a plot standpoint, Desmond’s desperation and panic and the amazing payoff when he finally calls Penny is compelling stuff. Once they drew viewers in with a story that - at least for the first season - didn’t fall apart logically, the characters keep you hooked, because you want to know how things turn out. You care about Sayid and Sawyer and Kate (sort of) and Jack and Hurley. You want to know if they’ll be okay.
But the simple truth is that the story is flat-out stupid and was NOT planned at least not much. That’s why so many episodes spend incredibly long stretches of time having characters splititng up/joining up to just walk from place to place. It’s just been careening from one bullshit cliffhanger to another.
I’m looking forward to it as well, but what got me hooked were all the little clues that seemed to be pointing to a solid, cohesive answer. Instead, just about every single clue has been ignored. At least the polar bear mystery got resolved. In about as flat and unsatisfying a way as possible ("because Dharma needed polar bears on a tropical island for…an experiment…of…some…sort. " and that’s it? That’s the best they could do?*) but they did touch on it.
The huge mystery of Other sterility (which is the driving motivation for Juliet and presumably Waaaaaaaalt), was a key plot point for 2 or 3 seasoons. The “corruption” disease (Ben seems to have gotten better as well–remember L’il Ben was corrupted). Why there are rule that prevent Ben from killing Whidmore (and what are the rules? Alex wasn’t Ben’s daughter, she was his kidnap victim if you want to be technical about it). Why did Penny believe Desmond was still alive–and believe so strongly that she got enough money to fund an entire full-time fully-staffed arctic (and why arctic? Desmond was sailing around the world–at the equator) listening post?
All of that is stuff that’s critical to understanding character motivations, to understanding plot points, etc. It’s not minor stuff like “Who was the guy Ben had Sayid shoot?” that didn’t have a larger arc significance.
I’m not saying they have to spoon feed every answer in minor detail, I’m saying they’re ignoring massive, character and plot fundamental mysteries they set up and it’s poor storytelling.
*How about "Every time the donkey wheel is turned, some quantity of mass from the arctic is teleported to the island to take the place of whoever disappears. Normally it’s snow. This one time it was a polar bear.
Sure, if you ignore the silliness of that. It was also the alleged rule for killing Jacob. Which Richard failed because he got his ass Karate’d by Jacob.
Smokey can appear out of nowhere. Not letting him speak is basically impossible. If it was something that would somehow prevent him from being killed he could just talk constantly. And he makes noises while smoking around. Is that talking?
Finally, didn’t Dogan flat out admit that he only told Sayid that so he’d go out and get killed by Smokey?
Which also makes no sense. Why would you go through the incredible expense of shipping a polar bear to a secret tropical island to do work that say…a donkey or mule or horse or dog could do? How did they get the non-domesticatible polar bear harnessed and down into the donkey wheel chamber?
Even if they were using the polar bear for something else (IIRC there was something about intelligence enhancing experiments) that failed, it still doesn’t cover why you would use the insanely expensive-to-get polar bear rather than a donkey or something. This isn’t a major mystery, but it’s an example of how sloppy they were. Having the polar bear and explaining it by saying “Dharma was experimenting on it” was fine. Having the polar bear, explaining it as a Dharma experiment, then making it a) disposable and b) domesticated by having it show up in the desert just adds so many more layers of questions.
So you admit DHARMA, female sterility, WAAAAAAALT and the numbers have nothing to do with the plot?
But this was all planned out from the beginning? Right :rolleyes:
I guess this maybe explains why The Others speak Latin, although I would presume that MD isn’t the first “Other”, and that earlier “Others” spoke even more ancient languages.
Y’know, thinking about it, of all the remaining mysteries from the first season or two (remember, Jacob wasn’t even mentioned until season 3 or 4…whichever season had Sawyer and Kate in the zoo), they’ve chosen to spend the entire final season exploring the Smoke Monster…which was the least interesting mystery to me.
I know it’s not necessarily useful to focus in on some one particular thing a character says as being indicative of the central mystery, but…
Back in the Season Five finale, there is this exchange between Jacob and MIB, regarding the Black Rock:
“It only ends once”. So, Jacob appears to be looking for some kind of ending, and he keeps repeating efforts to bring people to the Island in order to create this once and for all ending-- presumably the sinking of the Island?
What’s odd is that the producer had mentioned that Adam and Eve would prove that this wasn’t made up all along. What’s bugged me about this episode is that Eve turned out to be a character never introduced prior to this episode. I find the backgammon game between Locke and Walt to be more foreshadowy. But of course, maybe my mind will change after the finale.
Adam and Eve could’ve been any two people (man and woman) who had been on the island before. That was probably the easiest mystery to resolve without knowing in advance what the resolution was supposed to be. The fact that the pouch with the stones in it didn’t disintegrate tells me they had NOT planned it the way it came it.
I really wish there was. As noted, Jacob wasn’t even mentioned by name until the third season and this seemed to inform the basis of the show at the time. Evidently the conflict between him and the MIB wasn’t even theorized by the producers until that time, going by articles posted elsewhere in the thread. The philosophical battle between the two seems to be a late addition.
Ultimately this seems to be where they’re headed so I have a small amount hope that we’ll get a somewhat satisfying ending if, as I do, you buy this conflict as being the core of the show and everything else is superfluous.
I am still severely disappointed with Jacob’s characterization in this episode, (and “character development” with a 2,000 year gap is not what I consider valid storytelling), but it’s not without reason that this idea of Jacob trying to end a millennial long fight with Smokey is the catalyst for everything. It hasn’t been until the last 100 years or so that he would have even been capable of bringing people to the island with relative ease, triggering his “Others”, and the Dharma people, and Widmore, and our own Losties into a protracted conflict.
That’s pretty much it. The story is only interesting as long as they show a tiny part that hints at a much bigger, more incomprehensible Great Big Mystery. But as the mystery series winds down, they have to start wrapping up all the story lines and the Great Big Mystery is never as interesting or compelling once it has been revealed.
But they are giving us an answer to ‘the mystery,’ THE question. It may not be in the detail everyone wants, or be to everyone’s satisfaction, but it’s there.