This is perfectly on point. Lost was a mystery – the mystery of the island. The opening act was the body being found. After that we were collecting clues about suspects, their ties to the victim, their motivations and relations to other suspects.
It was a mystery, just couched in different terms.
Somebody, on this board I think, said it perfectly. (paraphrasing) If Lost had been cancelled after the first two seasons, and you happened to meet one of the writers in the airport and could ask him a question it would have been ‘what was the island.’ Which is the same as asking who committed the murder.
And now that The Event has officially been cancelled, I can continue to pretend it doesn’t exist and not lose 20 hours of my life on another mystery show that will never provide answers.
This is the key to understanding what went wrong with LOST:
The questions were more interesting than the answers.
It was set up to fail from the beginning because the audience was shown so many interesting mysteries that it couldn’t possibly be more interesting to know what the reason actually was. Even the best writers in the world couldn’t write solutions to the mysteries that were so incredibly mind-blowing that knowing them could ever be more fun than not knowing, and wondering.
Your imagination is really the most powerful plot device that exists.
The problem with LOST was that we bought in to all of the mysteries because the creators claimed that they had the solutions prewritten before the series even started. The fact was that they made it up as they went along. It’s not that we needed or even wanted the answers handed to us, we just wanted everything to tie together.
Worst. Ending. Ever. I’ve boycotted J.J. from my life now.
To me, it was pretty clear that they had either written themselves into a corner (Boxing Helena style) or only planned on two seasons, so they wrote the middle in a frenzy and said, “Let’s put pointless clues around that will eventually mean nothing.”
The special effects in the freaking pilot looked professional, the last episode with the golden hot tub and the cave entrance looked like it was filmed in someone’s backyard.
My question is still about the Red Sox victory. Evidentially, even in the island afterlife, you have access to any videos you need for manipulation? Since this was all fantasy from the moment the plane went down, does this mean the Red Sox never won in '04?
Also, exactly how many countless things were NOT explained at all in the finale? My biggest peeve was the role of Dharma, dropping the food supplies, the experimental videos, etc. It appears that no one had to ever push any button to stop the purple flash, nor did it matter that Ben killed any of those people in the first place. Who cares if Ben was evil or not? Who cares if Jack reconciles with dead dad? They’re dead anyway.
Umm…“they would have died anyway” is absolutely not a very good defense for any bad acts.
There’s a whole lot of legitimate complaints about Lost (or any other media for that matter, but Lost more than many), but that’s just a silly point you’re trying to make there.
Uhh…what? Everything outside of the side-flashes in the final season actually happened to the characters. Ben had access to his Red Sox videos because he was capable of working a VCR…
Yes, what **Merijeek **said. It may have been a lousy ending, Locrian, but it sounds like you had a seriously mistaken understanding of it. Almost the entire show really happened.
