Heh, I liked the Smoke Monster Alarm.
Did anyone watch “The Simpsons” beforehand? The chalkboard gag was a funny nod to LOST.
I didn’t get that vibe either. I got the whole Buddhism/enlightment/death-birth thing. The flash sideways was simply another existence and Desmond led the losties to enlightenment.
That’s what I took from it, anyway.
Completely reading into it here, but I’d say they all got together to make that plan sometime after the plan was actually carried out. After all, they certainly never made the plan during ordinary life–many of them (Shannon, Boone, Locke, Jack, among others) died before any such plan was made–and it would make no sense for them to have gotten together to make the plan before the ATL was formed if the function of the ATL is for them to “find each other” (because, obviously, if they got together to form the plan, they already found each other).
This leaves only one option, however counterintuitive–they formed the plan sometimes later than the events that transpire in the ATL.
This is reminiscent of some ideas in Philip K. Dick’s VALIS trilogy, wherein one theory that a character has about what’s happening is that our own idealized future selves look back at us from a kind of Heaven, and occasionally try to help us reach our potential to grow into… well… them.
Not that I think it was particularly wise or interesting to withhold the name, but it is valid to ask–why, on the other hand, do you care so much about his name?
“So. It’s the traditional warm German welcome.”
(Another idea, BTW, is that they didn’t consciously gather together and form a plan, but rather, when Shepherd said this was a “place they made” so they could “find each other” he means to allude to a general principle whereby our actions in ordinary life determine somehow a plan for what will happen in this ATL life. The LOSTies’ relationships with each other and the actions that issued from them amounted to a “making of a place for them to find each other” which was realized in a literal fashion during this first stage of the afterlife.
Which is cheesy. But hey, kind of nice I guess.
I’ll take it as long as I get to also imagine there were aliens involved.)
I can’t add much to the analysis of the finale, other than to first state that I am a “it’s a show about an island” guy… my feeling is “meh” at best… I hated the Spielberg-esque approach (e.g., create an emotional experience, that leaves people feeling they have gone through a catharsis, which they tend to interpret as a “positive experience”)… I prefer a good old Oliver Stone punch to the gut, TYVM.
Otherwise, I am just hoping they make a Sawyer/Milo cop drama, sans any references to Lost…
While we’re at it—let’s assume that the Alt-Verse is a kind of cosmic waiting room for heaven and not just some delusion in Jack’s head (because if it were a delusion, it would suck vastly worse than any other theory extant). Why is Aaron just now being born? Or was Aaron an illusion…in which case, wasn’t everyone else? Ditto baby Paik.
Being an illusion of existence kind of explains the 5 minute labor and delivery, though.
Yeah, that was just plain sloppy. They should have had grown versions of both Aaron and baby Paik there. ETA: My post was in response to Fenris.
darkufo posted that, in the script, MIB’s name was Samuel.
Why no babies … and other possible unexplained oddities?
Someone at Lostpedia came up with this theory…
The island protector makes the rules. Maybe Jacob made a “no baby” rule, doing what he thought was best to protect the island, but he made an exception for candidates.
There was that bit about Jacob and MIB playing a game and Jacob accusing MIB of just making up rules as he went. MIB told Jacob that Jacob could make up the rules of his own game. When Hurley and Ben suggested getting Desmond off the island, Hurley commented that nobody can leave the island. Ben told Hurley that’s just how Jacob did it and Hurley could do whatever he wants (make up his own rules).
Well THAT sucked. Where do I apply to get those, what, 120 hours of my life back? I could’ve spent them doing laundry or watching traffic.
I also heard that here: Lost: Want to Know the Man in Black's Real Name? Get the Answer to That and More! - E! Online (see second video). Kristin’s understanding was that they decided to leave it ambiguous to keep him more of an entity.
What did Jack do after drinking the Kool-Aid that he couldn’t have just done on his own without having been annointed by Jacob? He wasn’t invulnerable to MIB. He didn’t show any mystical powers. He was still just Jack. Was he really transformed at all? Is this like, “You had the power all along” a la Wizard of Oz, or am I thinking too hard?
Because a lifetime of consuming entertainment produced over a period of 1000 years or more has conditioned me to care, and because the writers knew that and used it to manufacture interest in the character that was unearned.
Certain storytelling techniques produce predictable responses in an audience. If we are watching film or TV, and two characters look at one another and the orchestra plays a gentle string melody or tinkling piano, this is authorial shorthand for “these characters will fall in love or at least in something resembling it.” It’s a way to color our perceptions of the characters and their relationship with one another, using our longstanding associations as a way to avoid tedious exposition. If the same two characters look at one another and the orchestra plays a low, thudding bass, we can guess that there is antipathy between them.
If every time we see a particular room, the camera lingers for an extra second on a particular photo, then we can assume that this photo will have importance later in the plot - and we can experience the entertainment accordingly, colored by this assumption.
If there is a villain, and the villain is constantly masked or in shadow, and every time we are shown the villain the director takes great pains to obscure his/her face and form, we may expect that the villain is actually a character from elsewhere in the story (I thought the recent Sherlock Holmes movie, which I liked, failed on this front as well). We will watch with this in mind, and the tension created by the villain’s anonymity combined with our expectation that the villain is someone we know makes the story more interesting.
In the same way, if there is a piece of information that the writing and direction takes great, almost comical, pains to hide, we have been conditioned to expect that this information is important. The writers of Lost know this; they are professionals in a field where this sort of storytelling device is older than they are. By making an effort to conceal the name of Jacob’s brother even in circumstances when it was borderline absurd to do so, they created an expectation that the name was somehow important. That expectation colored our every interaction with the Man in Black, and created exciting tension regarding the eventual resolution of this. The authors used that tension as a way to make their story interesting.
I care about the name because I was told to care, in other words. I was told, via authorial shorthand, that the name was important, and let it affect the way I perceived the show and the character. To be told at the end that hey, it wasn’t important - well, it’s not an unforgivable sin, not for a great show with a great ending. But it’s cheap and it didn’t work.
As far as I can remember, the only evidence we have that even Jacob himself has any kind of power is his own and Richard’s longevity. Which, you know, ain’t nothin’, but then, it ain’t alot either.
So I was wondering about this as well. Does drinking the water actually do anything? Does being Island Protector mean anything other than longevity and the power to convey it?
It’s aliens and nanotech I tell you. Nanomachines giving longevity and screwing with your mind.
Heck, even the smoke monster seems best explained as an advanced nanotech of some kind.
What I was wondering was did Jack really pass anything on to Hurley when he had him drink the water since he never said that Latin prayer/spell/whatever that Fake-Mommy and Jacob both spoke.
Uh, I had to look it up, so I’ll post it for others to enjoy.
Bart wrote:
End of “Lost”: it was all the dog’s dream. Watch us.
I feel pretty cheated.
As far as the details of the last episode… it was well written, well acted, and I’m glad the characters I’ve watched since the beginning all found peace and happiness. I understand the ending that the writers put together for us.
But for 120 hours of my life, I wasn’t watching a show about how friends and family are good things, and you need to try to better yourself, and happiness awaits you at the end. If I wanted to get that moral message I would have watched a Pixar movie, or watched Golden Girl reruns.
I was watching a show about:
- an island that transcends space and time
- people that live centuries
- a button that needs to be pushed continuously or ‘evil’ happens
- Alvar Hanso (remember him and how he was setup as a mysterious driving force)
- big statues with 4 toes
- a big antennae with the Crazy French Lady message repeating (that the Dharma people let run for years without bothering to turn it off… or at least broadcast some jazz tunes over your perpetually-powered radio station)
- multiple underground stations
- international assassinations and conspiracies
- smoke monsters
- dead people that talk to living people
- glowing caves and sources of unworldly power
- The Others and even The other Others
- etc., etc., etc.
So, a lot of people made a lot of money off of this show, and a lot of commercials were broadcast during these 6 seasons… and we get no pay-off for all of that besides ‘these people are important to you and now you can be happy’ (yes, I know that is a gross simplification). I mean at least you could have had Christian Shephard say a quick one or two-liner during the exposition scene at the end to try to wrap up at least what the glowing cave was… they couldn’t even do that.
It’s almost like deus ex machina in reverse… we are going to weave this intricate elaborate story for YEARS to keep you involved and sell commercial time. But at the end of the series, none of that stuff we told you is going to matter one bit.
There could have been dinosaurs on the island, or they could have been teleported to a world populated by cute fluffy bunnies, or it could have been all controlled by aliens… the point is that none of it mattered. Six seasons of telling a story where 90% of it didn’t matter.
Deus ex Lostina 