Haha, I did go to Lostpedia and saw Cindy/kids aftermath and brainwash and all that jazz…
While the last season/finale was WTF for me, I did reminisce (didn’t hit me that it is the tenth anniversary of its debut til now) about the pilot eppy (with fantastic shockers like the pilot dying), Locke’s first background episode, Mr.Eko’s eppys, my love for Sawyer…
I got the impression that even someone on the level of Hitler was child’s play compared with the “Smoke Monster” evil on the island. Sort of an allegory to Satan in the bottomless pit in the Bible.
Even if it was only from the back, Sun should have been topless at least once. As if people wear button-up shirts on a damn tropical island all the time.
As I said upthread, I think they were going in that direction but then chickened out. That’s what chaps my hide, that they were so close but pulled back in the last two or three episodes.
I was lying awake at about 4 this morning wondering about Cindy and the kids–maybe because I’ve been reading this thread and thinking about Lost again. They were seen in some of the final episodes, at the Temple and afterwards. If they didn’t get killed at the last minute, did they get on the plane? Were they still on the island hanging out with Hurley and Ben?
I’ve been trying to pick out a point where the story really turned wrong for me. The time-jumping and 1970s Dharma were some of my favorite parts. Even in the final season, the Jacob/evilLocke story wasn’t bad until it fizzled out near the end. But the cutesy Side-ways storyline… um… no, even before the ending at the church. Whatever else I might change, I’d certainly get rid of that.
I always thought the sideways thing worked if you just pretend it wasn’t real. Instead of it taking place in the afterlife and having very little to do with the rest of the plot, it’s all in Jack’s head. He’s not making it up, though. It’s a gift from the island. To reward him for sacrificing himself, the island feeds him a vision of everyone coming together instead of splintering apart and killing each other. Then he dies.
In the past, I’ve made the argument that it was the intention of the writers to at least have this be a possible interpretation of what we watched. I know that’s not likely true, though. But that’s part of how I’d fix the ending. I’d keep but shorten the sideways story and make it pretty explicitly just the island giving Jack a vision.
I kind of liked what was going on in the sidewise plot and was actually kind of annoyed that it was one big fake-out. I mean, think about it, when you die you forget what was the defining event of your life, being trapped on “Craphole, Island”. How dumb is that? (I also told a co-worker two weeks before they showed it that Alt-Sawyer was going to be a cop.)
There were hints about the sidewaysverse, though. When Sun was in the hospital and Jin came to visit her, he brought her white flowers – the color of mourning in most Asian cultures, and a horrifying gesture for someone in the hospital if they weren’t already dead. Maybe the producers didn’t actually put that much thought into it and it was accidental, but either way I thought it was an eerie touch.
I quit watching after Sawyer and Freckles where stuck in the bear cages in the middle of season 3 so I can only say what killed it for me. A show like this needed to evolve, you can’t keep people interested in the same formula.
Battlestar Galactica is a good example of what I mean, I get that fans were upset over the extreme changes made to the plot in later seasons, but what the hell were the writers supposed to do? I think the show as a whole was pretty good and would have went the way of Lost had they not fundamentally changed the story arc. Lost just kept adding, it never evolved.
I don’t think it would even matter that much. There’s no real important mystery to The Walking Dead. Stuff can just happen and be entertaining until it’s not any more. I’m not expecting any explanations or resolutions.