I loved Lost during its run and liked the ending well enough, but I agree completely with the OP.
The first season of Lost was a 10 out of 10. Afterward, although there were some great episodes and some interesting arcs, the writers seemed like they were just throwing a bunch of crap at a wall and hoping enough stuff stuck.
Ultimately what it comes down to, as someone said above, is that it is a whole let easier to set up mysteries than to resolve them in a cogent and satisfying way.
Oh wow, I totally forgot about Mrs. Clue. Remember when we were all convinced she was going to play a major role in the “mystery”?
AHAHAHA. HAHAHAAAAAH.
OK.
I agree, btw, with never recommending this show to anyone. It turns to shit so quickly after season 2 that it’s not worth watching after that point, but then again, there’s no resolution to any of the cool stuff they set up in seasons 1-2 either, so either way you’re going to be dissatisfied.
I was rageful after the final episode aired. I can deal with poor storytelling, but it just felt like such a massive “fuck you” to the audience. I mean, the show creators had said in interviews that there wasn’t going to be some big cheat at the end, i.e. the whole show in the mind of an autistic child, or it was all a dream, or whatever. Oh. No. It’s just that they’re all DEAD and in PURGATORY. Which is such a massive cop-out cheat and a shitty way to end it, and it was just so clearly obvious that anyone involved in creating that show stopped giving a shit several years prior.
Wow, I am still sort of worked up about this. I seriously don’t think I have ever felt this irritated about any ending to any other creative work in any format. And I am including the X-Files in that.
If anything, in the last few episodes of the last season I thought the writers got caught up in a rush of explaining all the mysteries they could and using that as an excuse to chicken out from the dramatic road they’d started down. As I’ve said before:
Also, who was this “Mrs. Clue?” I don’t remember that at all.
NM, I see it was Ms. Klugh, the woman shot by Mikhail at the Flame.
While I agree that the unanswered questions probably weren’t important or could be answered sufficiently via fanwank and magic, it does bother me to realize that the writers honestly had no idea what the explanation was for any of the mystery elements they put into the show. Regardless of whether they were halfway capable of fanwanking some answers of their own for the sake of ending the thing, I think that it shows an amazing lack of professionalism to simply add random odd things with the idea that you’ll figure out an explanation later.
I don’t hate the show, nor does the idea that the writers were lazy make me angry, but if I could do so, I would ask for a refund. They simply didn’t fulfill their obligations.
I pretty much agree with this. I thought the resolution was decent; I thought that as the show came to an end, they continued to have quite good episodes if you take them on their own, but the overall arc turned out to be pretty weak. The most disappointing thing about this to me is that it seems like you could drastically improve the major arc stuff with some minor changes.
Having said that, I really don’t understand people who say that the overall show was a waste of time because of this. The first three seasons were fantastic, with a few blips here and there. Walkabout and the s3 finale are two of the best episodes of any show I’ve ever seen. The last season could have been 20 episodes of nothing but Carlton and Damon laughing at the audience, and I would still not find the show to have been a waste of time.
I do miss the characters, though. Clip . . .
I watched about six episodes in a row when my girlfriend at the time was really getting into the show. The mysteries didn’t bother me, because I assumed I just hadn’t watched enough to start figuring stuff out.
What really frustrated me in that show was how meandering and meaningless 90% of any particular episode was. I don’t think I’m far off in saying that most of the shows I saw went like this:
Character 1: We have to get to the lighthouse.
Character 2: Why?
Character 1: You’ll see.
– 5 minutes later –
(a new character appears)
Character 3: Wait, you can’t go to the lighthouse. Follow me.
Character 1: Okay.
– 5 minutes later –
Character 2: Where are you taking us?
Character 3: You know where I have to take you.
Character 1: Hold on, what’s that over there?
And so on. They never, ever did what they set out to do at the beginning of the episode, and the few ones I saw were filled of the “What must I do?” “You know what you must do” variety of dialogue.
Did I just see some bad ones, or was the whole show really like that?
You do understand that the whole show “happened” right? That it wasn’t all purgatory?
I think it’s best to think of the “flash-sideways” storyline as one giant epilogue to Lost.
And yeah, I loved Lost. My favorite show of all time. And it seemed like a lot of people who loved the last 3 seasons seemed to go all “No, only the first two season were good” once the show ended.
Well, that’s mostly because, as has been said, they really don’t stand up to re-watches for a lot of us. Seasons 1-2 are like, TRAGICALLY good - tragically because the follow-through never happened in a lot of cases. I personally find it impossible not to re-watch the series going “wow, that would have been cool,” and “too bad THAT never happened…”
I am genuinely glad that some people enjoyed the ending. I wish that I could have been one of them. I am not being sarcastic about that at all.
Here’s the thing. I think that Lost had the potential to work for people on two levels: characters, and mystery. The characters were reasonably well-done throughout, and their stories were interesting. The mystery, on the other hand, started out with huge promise – the promise that there were all these disparate elements that were confusing and strange, but would ultimately make sense as more and more of the mystery was revealed.
As it turns out, the writers were just throwing out random “weird” elements and figuring they’d tie it all together later, which is a shitty way to write a mystery, and very disappointing to those viewers that actually cared about the mysterious part of the plot. The viewers that were more into the relationships between the characters were more satisfied, I think.
I was hoping up until about three or four episodes from the end (I can’t remember now anymore where I finally lost faith) that the writers had some really impressive trick up their sleeve, and would tie everything together and reveal the mystery in a reasonably satisfying way. I mean, I didn’t need every single little nitpicky thing to be wrapped up. But I did need to have some feeling that the writers actually had a plan and weren’t just screwing with people because they didn’t really know how to end the damn show.
And yes, I understand about the flash-sideways storyline being the only part that was technically “Purgatory” but it still felt like a cop-out and a cheat. For me, I mean.
I think that what most Lost fans wanted was a logical explanation to the many, many strange occurrences that happened on the show.
I think part of the problem when the show was coming to an end was that there was no *logical *way to explain the mysteries or at least the writers couldn’t come up with any.
Its the easiest thing in the world to come up with an island that healed the disabled and and killed babies, but its not so easy to come up with an explanation for it all that the audience will buy.
No strange occurrence should have ever been introduced until the writers had an explanation for it clearly written out and ready to be revealed in some future show.
Obviously this wasn’t done and I find this to be the biggest mystery of all.
Well said. It feels like I was lied to. I was drawn into the mysteries, and spent about 4 days of my life on their story, only to find out there was no payoff for many of the mysteries. I said in the original finale thread that I spent years watching a sci-fi/mystery story, then got the finale to a *Lifetime *movie. Perhaps Hallmark Channel movie would be a better comparison.
I actually suspected this was the case from the beginning, and completely avoided the series. If it had had an actual conclusion, then I’d watch it. I’m sure millions of former LOST fans will do the same with the next similar show that comes out–avoid it until they know for sure that there’s some payoff.
Probably not. When I started watching the first season on DVD with a friend, I said, “If this is going to be like the X-Files, where I want to throw something at the screen around the fifth season, I’m not going down that road again.” And then I got hooked in spite of my misgivings… and it was like the X-Files all over again.
But then I can still watch and enjoy old X-Files episodes even when I know they’re going nowhere interesting. I don’t know if I could watch Lost again; I’ve no desire to now, but we’ll just have to see in a few years.
When people used to ask me if I watched Lost I used to say “I don’t need to - I’ve seen Twin Peaks”. Twin Peaks was another show that piled mystery upon mystery, many of which were never really resolved, although at least with David Lynch’s name on it you knew it was going to involve a lot of general weirdness. But I recall the fury of the television viewing audience when the end of the season came and not only did they not resolve the big “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” mystery but they added the “Who Shot Agent Cooper?” one. There’s a reason nobody stuck around for the next season, which got canned halfway through.
Lost, FlashForward, The Event, Vanished…I don’t trust television writers any more to actually have a plan for all the mysterious weird stuff they throw onto the screen and so I don’t get invested in this type of show. They’ve broken my heart too many times.
This is the basis for my new policy: if I hear a lot of buzz about a new TV series, around Season 3, I will buy the DVD (or take it out of the library) for the first season, and watch it 2 or 3 episodes at a clip. I got through all of the first season of LOST, and found that I was too baffled, and too little satisfied. Never looked back.
Yep, this is exactly why I haven’t been watching V, Flash Forward or The Event. In fact, it’s rare that I’ll even give a new show a chance until it’s been renewed for a second season.
Pretty much. (Although per Black Knight below it didn’t actually say “COEXIST”. I’d have bet it did)
Here’s a “I didn’t enjoy the ending, but I’m still trying to be fair” synopsis.
[spoiler]
The second-to-last season ended with a nuke going off in the past and (as far as we knew at the time) creating a second parallel time line. There was all sorts of cool drama in the last season* as it looked like the parallel time line was “What would have happened if the plane crash in S1 hadn’t happened?”
As time went by, we figure out that that the parallel timeline had diverged much earlier and the characters who were affected by the magic immortal guy had apparently not been affected by him in this timeline. So the con-man had become a cop, etc. One after another, the characters remember the main timeline.
Eventually it turns out that the parallel timeline isn’t a parallel timeline at all and..um..it’s like a waiting-room for heaven. All the characters died at one point or another in their post-show lives and nothing they did in their lives made any difference after about season 5 because they all had to get back together–no friends, no family, no loved ones that weren’t in the first 5 seasons and they all had to remember before they could all move forward. They didn’t just die all at once, they went on and lived long (or not) lives, but when they died, they all ended up in heaven’s waiting room and hung out there, amnesiac, until all the people on the plane crash showed up.
Finally, the last episode has everyone racing towards a church. Almost everyone in the parallel timeline has remembered, but Jack (the doctor/main character) doesn’t. Finally they get into the church, and everyone is paired up with their TROO LUV (except one guy, who’s NOT with his TROO LUV, he’s with some irritating crazy, whiny bimbo he went on one or two dates with and boinked once–which, I think both the pro-ending and the con-ending agree was totally stupid–why wasn’t Sayid with whatshername who he spent most of his life loving and sacrificing for rather than the incest-bimbo?) and when Jack joins them (from a door behind the pulpit) they all walk through the big glowy front door into 100 watt/dry ice smoke heaven. [/spoiler]
The problem is that while (weenie-ending or great-ending debate aside) it ends a lot of the character arcs, it resolved absolutely none of the mysteries from the previous 5 seasons. And honestly? For me, the character drama were the least interesting parts of the show for me–it was the mysteries that I loved (the stuff with The Numbers, the Hatch, etc) were the parts I loved the best. The endless Jack loves Kate who has the hots for Sawyer who loves Juliet…but can be lured away by Kate (who sucks and ruins everything) drama was stuff I suffered through to see more of the mysteries.
*None of which had anything to do with the drama from the previous what…six? seasons, but still…interesting
Not to poke at America or anything, but isnt a case like Lost not simply the inevitable byproduct of the American system of making tv shows.
Its been mentioned mnay times on this board how UK series tend to be a lot shorter, with more definite story arcs, while in America it is all about the ratings, and so shows will continue to be churned out for as long as is possible.
Its inevitable with this system that writers will need to scrabble about making storylines up on the fly, attempting to stretch things out for as long as possible. What did people really expect? It is for this reason that I dont entertain shows like Prison break, 24, Heroes or whatever. I dont like being manipulated, and its stupid to sit there going “I wonder how this pans out”, when at that point the bloody writers dont even know what way it is going to finish. They havent decided yet. Balls to that.
Its a pity, I like the look of “The Walking Dead”, but the idea of watching it knowing that I probably wont see a resolution just fucks me off.
I saw the first 5/6 episodes of Lost, thought they were great, but also called bullshit on the wider picture and walked away from it. Never regretted that decision.