I recently started rewatching “Lost” when it started streaming on Netflix and am hoping some other fans (or not-fans) are also watching (or hate-watching) so we can share thoughts on it. Open spoilers throughout.
I watched “Lost” in its entirety as it was released, but hadn’t seen it since. I’ve made it through three seasons so far (so I guess I didn’t start rewatching that recently). I’ll post my thoughts on the first 3 seasons in a few days, but first here are my memories and biases coming into this.
I really liked the show and wasn’t as pissed off as some people about the resolution or lack thereof of the mysteries. I thought the ride was amazing and if some things didn’t pan out or make a ton of sense, I’m willing to let it go and enjoy the journey. I think people upset because things like the Black Smoke turned out to have some mystical cause are being a little ridiculous – if they were expecting some scientific explanation for everything, then I question their science knowledge.
By the time I got partway through season 4, although I still really liked it, I remember feeling like a few too many things were being made up by the showrunners as they went along, particularly by season 6 (the last one). I’ve since read some discussions that the planning was a lot better than they get credit for, so I’m looking forward to seeing if I agree.
Except that the creators and the showrunner explicitly said that everything seen in the show had a rational explanation.
It was pretty obvious to me at halfway through the first series the writers were just making stuff up, and to avoid having to resolve any of their poorly thought out ‘mystery boxes’ they just piled on more mysteries. (Thank you JJ Abrams for introducing the viewing public to that concept as a way of avoiding taking any responsibility for churning out three decades of mindless garbage.) They at least had a good cast of actors, and I got a belly laugh out of the metacommentary of the science teacher bitching about being redshirted by the rest of the cast before literally blowing himself up to demonstrate how dangerous the old weeping dynamite in the mysterious boat wreck is. (Note: it isn’t.) I didn’t watch any further and tock a certain perverse Schadenfreude in hearing fans continually bitching about how nothing made any sense. Sometimes you just need to give up on a show that clearly isn’t going anywhere, i.e The X-Files, Prison Break, et cetera.
I think this was just a PR response to a lot of criticism that the show was getting because a lot of folks were figuring out by then that there was no master plan and they were just making it all up as they went along.
I kept watching the show even though I knew the writers were just winging it and by that point it was never all going to come together into any sort of cohesive master plan. I will admit though that by the last season I just wanted to see how they ended the freaking thing. Mrs. Geek was firmly convinced that everything would make sense at the end even though I kept telling her that it wouldn’t, and she was a bit pissed off at me when I was proven to be correct.
We stuck with it, but I wouldn’t fault anyone for bailing out before the last two seasons.
“Lost” is one of my favorite series. I have the DVDs and have rewatched it multiple times. I love how each season was almost a different genre. There were some things it took me a couple rewatches to pick up on. Now that you know the whole story, you’ll catch some “easter eggs” they planted along the way.
The only real problem I have with it is the 3rd season. At that point ABC was refusing to let them choose when to end the series because it was so popular. So they just made a bunch of filler episodes to show what would happen if they had to continue to stretch it out. ABC relented and decided six seasons would be enough. Because those filler episodes are boring, I usually skip the middle episodes of season 3. After those, it took off and I love the last seasons more than the first ones.
I hope you enjoy the rewatch. I’ll follow this thread to see what you think.
I remember we had fun here talking about the episodes as they aired and speculating on what was going on. I think some of those threads had dozens of posts the same evening the show aired. Partly that’s because the board was more active then.
I wasn’t here then, but at some point after I joined the board, I went back and read all those threads when I was doing a rewatch. Those threads were great. Talking about the show the next day was a part of the experience. At work, we would meet at 9 a.m. in the lobby to discuss and speculate. Fun times.
Sort of. I’ve actually been watching a YouTube reactor watch Lost, which feels like rewatching it. There seems to be a lot of disdain for reaction videos on this board, but I think it’s fun to watch a 20-something who’s never seen it before watch it and come up with crazy theories as to what’s going on, just like we all did when it first aired. Although it makes me feel old to realize that someone who was a child when it first aired is now an adult watching it for the first time.
Hey, I actually think the one where Hurley, Jin, and Sawyer find an old Dharma VW van and get it running was a fun episode, even though it was pretty much filler.
I was following threads on some other board, maybe a “Lost” Usenet. It was at least half the fun.
It’s the first time I saw (and maybe the first time anywhere?) people posting HD screenshots of stills from the show. I remember hundreds of posts analyzing the map on the hatch blast door.
If you liked Lost, you might be interested in “From”. It’s another story about a mysterious place where people arrive and can’t get out with much more of a horror vibe. It features Lost alum Harold Perrineau, and the showrunners promised a resolution. I don’t believe them .After 2.5 seasons I gave up.
I rewatched season 1 about a month ago and being able to watch it knowing what is important and what’s not, along with no commercial breaks or week long breaks between episodes it’s somewhat frustrating how often they really leaned into micro and macro cliffhangers that really led to nothing.
It was nice to see all the characters again but I don’t think I’m going to continue with it.
I watched it a little over 10 years ago. I never did get the hate for how they ended it. I thought they did as well as they could with the finale. Where they messed up was in the season before the last season. That left them with little room to work with, but they somehow managed to figure it out and came up with an ending that worked well. At least that’s how I remember it based on my 10 plus year old recollections.
Lost was effort TV with the discussions after each new episode and the never ending speculations during the long breaks between them. The most fun was the summer with the alternate reality game where clues were found that unlocked information about the mysterious island. I haven’t been as involved with anything like it since.
My husband and I watched some meandering, complicated, yet engrossing tv shows. (‘Carnivale’ was our favorite, and both ‘Twin Peaks’.). He watched only some of ‘Lost’ and the finale, and I tried to explain some of the more convoluted theories. He finally said, “Sal. I’m enjoying it. I’m just along for the ride, I don’t need to know how the engine works or the ultimate destination. I just go with it.” (He loved Desmond, and was distraught when Rousseau was dispatched.)
Stranger in a Strange Land (the “Jack’s tattoos” episode) is the only one I skip. Easily the worst episode of the entire show and adds nothing to the plot.
They really stuck it to the viewers, on two occasions. First, the reveal of how Locke got paralyzed. Everyone was so sure he’d been under the deck when it collapsed with Hurley on it, and it seemed pretty clear, from what we were finally shown, that Cuse and Lindelof did not want the viewers to be right.
Second, the origin story for Jacob and The Man in Black. Remember how people were calling him “Esau”, for lack of a stated name, and new people started coming in to the online discussions, saying, “I must have missed the episode where we find out his name is Esau!” So we get the backstory, tension all through the episode – “Are we gonna hear his name, finally?!” – and at the very end, “Goodbye, brother. Goodbye–” BOOM. LOST. Gigantic middle finger to the viewers.
I’m sure there are people who chuckled and said, “Aw, they got us good!” I’m not one of them.
