Same here, although I’ve got less and less hope that they’ll pull a cohesive answer out of their ass, let alone a good one.
Regarding Dharma, we need to know (at minimum): [ul]
[li]Why did Dharma come to the island?[/li][li]Who was funding them and what was their motive?[/li][li]What was their relationship with Whidmore?[/li][li]How did Dharma react to the Dharmassacre? Why didn’t they come back in force? They obviously have insane levels of resources. [/li][li]Why did Operation Dharma-drop continue after the Dharmassacre? (this, IMHO, was a huge fuck-up on their part. A lot of these questions would be moot without the Dharma food drop. If Dharma was eradicated completely in the Dharmassacre it wouldn’t be an issue, but to have them not only active, but aware of the island’s location AND so damned responsive that like 24 hours after the “Send food!” signal is sent manages to get a plane to the island and drop a year’s worth of supplies–that they had the manpower to get together and ship that quickly.) [/ul][/li]
And that’s just Dharma. There’s a similar list of questions about Whidmore/Desmond/Penny (how did Penny have her OWN arctic listening station? Why did she think Desmond was still alive? If she didn’t, what was she listening for?) and another list about Eloise Hawking and her gang (I assume Illya is on Hawking’s side). And what’s the relationship between any of these three groups (Dharma, Whidmore, Hawking) and Jacob/MIB?
And this is leaving out all the “What is the Island?/Who is Jacob/MIB?” type questions.
They’ve got about 9, 9.5 hour of actual screentime (12 hours minus commercials) to deal with most of this stuff. This isn’t trivia like “Who edited the Dharma films and why?”, these are major issues that motivated characters for like 5 seasons.
Dharma? Dharma are a red herring. They don’t know anything more about the Island than we do, and they have no relevance to the series’ main plot.
Frankly, I’m glad the show has left those stupid hippies behind. I’m getting tired of people yammering on about them.
(Anyway - as to the Dharma Drop, my theory is that it had actually been dropped 15 years earlier, and got caught in a temporal maelstrom en route. After all, we already know that time gets all wonky when you try to send things to the Island. As Lucy Lawless would say, a time vortex did it).
Actually–that would satisfy me if they did it in the show.
Sawyer: So what about the Dharma people? Why were they here?
MIB/Locke: I let 'em on the Island to keep Jacob busy. They were just intended as a distraction.
Sawyer: So why’d they keep sending food?
MIB/Locke: They didn’t–it was a drop caught in a time-vortex. Really Sawyer, they’re not all that important.
I’d be happy with a similar explaination for The Numbers too:
Hurley: So…wait dude. What about The Numbers? Why were they cursed?
MIB/Locke: They weren’t cursed, Hugo. They were just Jacob fucking with you. You were going to win the Lottery one way or the other, but when you played the numbers that Jacob distracted all those Dharma hippies with (he gave them idea that broadcasting the numbers would make world peace or something) it tickled his fancy to “jinx” you with them. It wasn’t hard to push someone out a window near you, to put in a call to a cop that you were a pusher along with your location, to burn down your mom’s new house. I can’t explain the meteorite though."
If you allow massive fanwanks and handwaving on that scale, I guess there isn’t much they could do (or fail to do) from here on out that would displease you.
My theory about the drop is hardly a “massive fanwank”. It’s just an amusing solution to a decidedly minor problem. I’ve long accepted that sometimes, weird shit happens on that island for no damn reason. It’s part of the place’s charm.
Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, no major questions remain about Dharma. They found the island (though the Black Rock captain’s journal), set up some research stations, meddled with forces outside their ken and were killed by the Others. The end.
I think they later “clarified” that the had the “overall arc” planned from day 1, not necessarily the details. And that’s really the way it had to be, since they were not given a fixed number of episodes from Day 1. They had to tread water for a while, since they didn’t know how long the network would make them drag it out, potentially turning it into another X-Files.
I never saw the X-Files, but I keep hearing people use that as an example of a totally unresolved series.
Did X-Files hint/explore the idea that there was some overall point to all the weirdness and then drop the ball or was it always supposed to be a “Here’s a weird event of the week that’s unconnected to any other weird event of the week.” type show?
No, a huge chunk of the first season (including, I believe, the first four episodes) revolved around the X-Files alien “mytharc”.
There were always hints of a plan that would then be smashed to bits whenever the show was renewed for another season. Eventually (it’s hard to pin down where), Chris Carter said fuck it and just starting making up shit and retconning shit that had happened as little as a year or two earlier.
I only ever watched the X-Files once in a while, so maybe a more faithful viewer can explain that analogy better.
I forgot to add, though, that I don’t necessarily buy the Lost writers’ statement that they had even the big story planned out. For example, I’m sure most of us find it hard to swallow that, when they wrote the Lost pilot, they knew that the unseen force which was heard in the jungle accompanied by uprooted trees would be a black smoke monster who could take the form of dead people and who was also a man locked in a centuries-long struggle with another, seemingly supernatural man who traveled off-island to touch people and bring them to the island in the hopes that they would become candidates who would replace him as protector of the island.
But, as much as I sympathize with the fanwankers who want definitive answers to every last question, I’m resigned to the fact that with such a show it’s impossible to get them. Given the nature of television, you have to rope in a certain number of casual viewers, the housewives who want to see 5 minutes of people sitting on the beach, Kate agonizing over whether she loves Jack or Sawyer, and crap like that, or your show will not be commercially successful enough for the network to justify it. Also in order to maintain a mass audience, every episode has to have a story arc–so you get 5 minutes of people sitting on the beach at the end of the episode as denouement. As much as most of us, myself included, would love for the show at this point to be nothing more than a non-stop explication of every question we’ve ever had, there aren’t nearly enough of us for the network to justify doing that.
Given that they’re writing the last episodes, I don’t think there’s any need to build a network audience - nor are people going to leave the show at this point and stop watching the final season if there isn’t enough filler drama. They could do wall to wall reveals and explanations for the season if they had them. I think they’re still just mostly treading water.
I can understand the feeling that they’re treading water with respect to major answers, though I’m not expecting too much in that regard until the last few episodes.
It’s a bit strange, but I actually feel like the last few seasons would be better off with more episodes to tell the same amount of story. It really feels like the show is completely driven by the overall plot points. For example, there seem to be strings of episodes that are “ep to get Jack to the harbor”, “ep to get Sun to the harbor”, “ep to get Des and Penny to the harbor”. It feels like a “treading water” episode here or there would have worked well.
I rewatched this last episode with my wife who had missed it, and one thing occurred to me. It looks like there could be some correlation between the groups that are forming in the two storylines.
In the alternate timeline, we have Jin+Sayid, Kate+Claire, Jack+Locke+Hurley+Ben.
In the island timeline, we have Jin+Sayid+Kate+Claire+Sawyer+Fake Locke, Jack+Hurley+Ben.
Obviously not a perfect matchup, but maybe something interesting.
It has, for one episode. And considering there are less than 20 episodes to wrap this thing up, I suggest that plot and revelations should probably be highly related.
I can’t buy the “food drops caught in a temporal anomaly 15 years ago” fanwank, if only because they were clearly dropping more than just food. Remember the washer and dryer and how modern they were? Those had to be dropped at some point. Makes you wonder why they never dropped a newer stereo or something, though.
I don’t know about all of it, but didn’t they have Christian Shepherd turn up in the pilot? Or was that a couple episodes later? So they had the monster and the dead people (presumably Smokey) pretty early on.
