This perfectly encapsulates what I went though watching the show. A gripping, intricately plotted sci-fi adventure show that was like nothing previously on TV suddenly turned into a nonsensical pseudo-metaphysical allegorical fable that felt like it was written by a stoned college Freshman who heard a 15 minute explanation of Theosophy and went “whoah”.
Yeah, funny that. Juliet and Jack seem the much more natural couple, being doctors. While Kate and James were both criminals. Yet the pairing of James and Juliet worked and the same with Jack and Kate (sorta).
I think it’s because James and Juliet had a sense of humor, while Jack and Kate were self-serious twerps who were incapable of ever being happy.
We reach the same conclusion but for different reasons. I didn’t have a problem with the metaphysical stuff like the afterlife and good vs evil allegory. Yes, it’s kind of cheesy, but the show was always a little cheesy. It’s fun entertainment.
My problem with season 6 was execution – bad characters, lame action (either too boring or too frantic), and confusing storytelling. That part differed from previous seasons more than plot.
I agree. And most importantly, Kate let Sawyer indulge his worst parts. Juliet inspired Sawyer to be a better person.
Jack was hopeless in a relationship no matter who he was with.
Well, just to clarify: I agree with everything you didn’t like about season 6 in addition to the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.
The final season, especially the back half of it, had a rushed, panicky flop-sweat feel of “how in the hell do we wrap this crap up?!?”
My husband and I got a little ‘Lost’ during the course of watching. He said he was just going to watch and ‘just go with it’ without worrying what it all ultimately meant. … Anyone remember when Locke found the hatch, and a light came on in the window? Yikes!
I had seen some episodes, but didn’t really watch the show until my wife did a rewatch in maybe 2017, and then another rewatch during the pandemic. I didn’t watch every episode, but between those two watches caught most of it.
I really love the show, but I understand the criticisms, and how they probably felt bigger for folks who were invested in the story telling over six years. For me, I’m willing to let the inconsistencies and oddities just kind of be what they are in the moment.
Heh. So true. If I have one think that actually irked me about the show it was that it seemed like there were countless scenes where a character had some crucial information, even going so far as to say “I have something you need to know, but I’ll tell you later”… and of course circumstances always turned out such that later never came.
I never watched it when it was broadcast, but I watched it end to end a few years after that, on DVD box sets borrowed from a colleague. I enjoyed it pretty well at the time and I tried to rewatch it again recently but this thing got in the way of my enjoyment:
It just became painfully obvious that this was the most favourite-est tool of the writers; a thing would happen that someone else needed to know some detail about, and the person who saw the thing would arrive into the same scene as the person who needed to know the thing, and they would sort of orbit the topic almost carefully and conspicuously not talking about the critical detail.
One of the things I remember from LOST was that someone looking for an explanation about something and getting a reply of “It’s complicated…” was pretty much a weekly thing. But on rewatch I’m not finding that at all. As I mentioned upthread, the first time I heard it was S1 E13, and at about the halfway point of S4 now I think I’ve only heard it two, maybe three times total. But yes, the lack of communication and hiding information from others gets very frustrating at times.
Heh. I definitely have a memory of Locke absolutely doing it… and I’ve probably expanded that memory about a specific device to cover a general sense of people just not talking.
Lampshaded in the Jacob/Man in Black origin story. A pregnant woman is the sole survivor of a shipwreck in what appears to be ancient Roman times. She meets the island keeper, Allison Janney, and starts right in with the questions. Janney answers two or three, then shuts her down: “Every answer I give is just going to lead to more questions.”
We just finished our rewatch. Well, rewatch for me, first watch for my wife. The ending that sucked originally was actually really quite nice this time. I guess it’s something that age brings to the table.
Even in the afterlife Jack is divorced (from Juliet).
Age, and adjusted expectations.
I’m finally into S6 on my rewatch, and pretty much at the point where I realized during the original run that “Yeah, they’re never gonna wrap this up.” But knowing that now makes it easier to just go with wherever they are going.
I’m still kind of amazed at how much I remembered, and how much I had forgotten.
I thought I had posted to this thread when I finally finished my rewatch, but I guess I didn’t. Anyway, I’m done, and overall I had a good time.
One thing that consistently bugged me was that Hurley was in a mental hospital in Santa Rosa, yet whenever someone in LA went to visit him, they always made it seem like it was a short hop across town. If I remember my CA geography correctly, Santa Rosa is like an hour north of San Francisco? Which is like 6 hours north of LA? That’s easily an all-day trip there and back. I always wondered why they chose Santa Rosa and not somewhere actually closer to LA.