The problem with "Lost" wasn't the finale, it was the entire show

Cafe Society
1

I was originally going to post this as a reply to TV Shows you loved (but can’t watch anymore because of the final episode(s) but I decided it may generate enough discussion to be worthy of a spinoff thread.

The people who hate Lost because of the finale have always perplexed me. The reason Lost is awful is not the episode that happened to be the last in the airing order. The reason it’s awful is because it was bullshit the entire time.

The strength of the show relied on the idea that there was a story behind all of the mystery, some way that it was going to all come together and be amazing. Because arbitrary mystery is unsatisfying - anyone can just stack a bunch of random nonsensical crap on top of itself. All of those stories, the supposed purposes and meaning of the characters, their backstory, and their reason for being there. The Island mysteries, the various powers in play. A mystery writer makes an implicit promise to their audience - there’s a story here, and I’m going to reveal it to you bit by bit. And in the case of Lost - explicitly. In various interviews, they said there was always a story and it’d all make sense one day. The writers knew what they were doing.

But with Lost, there was never a story. The entire thing was 5 years of creating mysteries to sit on top of previous mysteries to make the whole thing go deeper and deeper until you got to… nothing. There as never substance there. They were just going from week to week deepening the mystery more or less at random, with no eye towards it making sense overall, knowing that one day everyone would be dissapointed, but as long as we can string people along, ratings!

So the last season rolls around, and people think “Ok, so they know this is the last season, so this is where it finally all has to come together, they’re running out of time to complete their story” - and half the first season goes by without really explaining much about the world the show exists in or the story we’ve seen so far. So now people think “Okay, the final half of the final season, now it really has to start coming together” and for the first few episodes, it really doesn’t. So they think “Okay, we’re down to three episodes. Obviously they’re going to have to start revealing the real story, there’s no time left” and two episodes go by without any sort of satisfying resolution. So people say “Okay, well, one episode left. This one is going to have to be huge, and knock the ball out of the park, and reveal everything, they only have an hour left” - and it didn’t. It was a bullshit copout, as anyone who was paying attention would’ve known.

But somehow I’ve heard from this dozens of times that the Lost finale was disappointing, and it has amongst the worst finales ever. Which is misguided. The disappointment you get from the finale - that it never wove all of the mystery mongering into a cohesive story - is not a fault of the finale, but of the entire series. The finale was just the last chance for them to tell a story. But they never intended to tell a story that made sense, the only intended to give the impression that they were, to make that promise to their audience, keep them watching, keep those advertising dollars coming in for years, and then laugh at everyone’s dismay from their gold plated yachts after the finale.

Somehow, not only did this not backfire on the people involved in the show, but gave them careers. Damon Lindelof is still out there completely ruining shit for some reason. When I was watching Prometheus, I actually had the thought of “these characters make so little sense, their motivations so random and inexplicable, their failure to communicate so bizarre, that someone involved in Lost must’ve wrote this” and I went home and found out that Damon Lindelof, head writer of Lost, had been brought in to rewrite the script. I’m not making that up.

So anyway, some people still like the show in retrospect, because they liked the individual episodes or the actors or the characters or whatever, fine. (And some of those people baffle me too - in our Lost threads in the board, people would point out how the plot made no sense, and people would chime in saying “Well I watch it for the characters anyway!” - which was funny, since the characters changed their personality and motivations from week to week to serve the arbitrary nature of the plot)

But those who hate the show and put all their frustration on the finale are misplacing it. The finale didn’t fail you, the whole thing failed you from the start.

2

Or, to quickly sum up your whole post: J.J. Abrams. He does this crap in every show he does.

You’re absolutely correct, by the way.

3

Your post says at the outset that the final episode is not the reason the show is disappointing, then proceeds to explain exactly why it is the final episode that makes the show disappointing.

That’s literally just a description of the very facts that make the final episode the most major disappointment in the show.

I agree with you that the show as a whole is seriously flawed, for exactly the reasons you name. The final episode is the most major disappointment in the show exactly because it makes this fact about the whole show finally completely obvious and undeniable. The final episode is the worst, because it had a chance (from the audience’s standpoint) to make the show as a whole great–and failed to do so.

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(By the way, what it really was, was that the island was some kind of spaceship or interdimensional vessel, and all the weird stuff that was happening was this vessel’s virtual-reality UI searching for a new pilot.)

5

Huh? I thought he said the opposite?

The final episode is not what made the show disappointing, because no matter what form it took it could never have made the show as a whole great.

6

I agree.

There’s a two part episode of Family Guy where stewie gets into an epic battle with his mother. At the end of the two part episode, Stewie finally manages to kill hios mother.

Directly after that, the screen goes blank, then you see Stewie stepping out of a Virtual Reality simulator:

Lost should have went the VR route.

7

I don’t think that’s what you said, but now that you’ve clarified I see how we disagree.

I think it was possible for an episode to be written which satisfied me at least. Granted it couldn’t tie every detail together by that point, but it could have painted a broad picture that explained the gist at least, and I’d be happy to fill in the details later.

8

It was the entire last season I hated, not just the last episode. But I also hated that the writer lied. They said there was not going to be any supernatural explanations; they said they weren’t just making it up as they went along.

9

The entire show was just like one of Sawyer’s long cons. Reel in the suckers and ultimately leave them with nothing for their investment in the show.

10

I think I actually over-explained it, so I’m surprised you’re reading it that way.

Basically, the problem with the show was that it had an implicit (well, and explicit) promise to the audience that it would all make sense, that there was an underlying story that would be revealed. There never was. From the very start, this was the plan - they never had any idea of where the show would go, they just thought that they could keep revealing mysteries one layer deeper, keeping us suckered in, until the wheels finally fell off and by that time they had 5 seasons of highly rated television.

The fact that no coherent story was presented, no mysteries explained, is not the fault of the finale, but the entire show. The main reason the finale was so dissapointing was that it was the last chance to make the story coherent. But it didn’t create the underlying problem, it was just the last (failed/not tried) attempt to fix it. The problem was endemic to the series. From the very start it was rotten - there was no overall story, and the writers never intended for it to make sense. They tricked people and violated their promise as storytellers and became rich from it. People should not remember Lost fondly, nor does it make sense to remember it as a show that was good except for an awful finale, because that really doesn’t accurately characterize the problem at all.

11

I’ve never seen Lost, but I can see how your description in this and the OP can just as easily be categorised as the series being alright, and the finale being bad. If the writers were able to create something that engaged people and interested them, only to let them down by not giving things a satisfactory conclusion, then the series was good, and the ending was bad.

12

But the reason the series is compelling is because it gives you the impression that you’re seeing bits and pieces of a mystery that will be built and fleshed out and make sense. If you’d told everyone from the beginning “this show will never make sense, all these hints we’re making at having a cohesive story, a reason behind what we’re doing, and ultimate answers are bullshit - it’s just going to be mysteries stacked upon mysteries”, the majority of people would’ve stopped watching it.

It’s only interesting because of the implicit (and explicit) promise that there was a story being told one bit at a time, and that if you kept at it, you’d see more and more of this story. There wasn’t. It was some guys flinging mysterious shit at a wall for 5 years and laughing at you for gobbling it up and trying to find hidden meanings and predict the way it might go.

The dissatisfaction with the ending is actually dissatisfaction with the fact that there was never any underlying story, none of it was ever meant to make sense. I’m saying that dissatisfaction is misplaced, targeted at the wrong thing. I wonder if it’s psychologically easier to say “well, that was a crappy last episode” rather than “well, I was tricked for 5 years watching this stupid show under a false pretense”

13

The last episode could have been good, and could have tied everything together satisfyingly, IF they had planned for that. IF they had been working up to that. If that were true, they could have, in theory, put together a finale that didn’t suck and didn’t ruin the whole series. However, they were not building up to that. They were not planning that. Therefore, the problem started way back before the finale - indeed, it was a problem from the very beginning.

I think that’s the gist of it.

14

I was engaged by Lost because I thought there was an interesting backstory to be told. It’s like a long, complex, lovingly told murder mystery that ends with the revelation that the victim was killed by a random tweeker who stole $20 out of his pocket.

Lost was a Mystery show without a Mystery to reveal.

15

I have to disagree. Yes, in its form, Lost just became the epitome of a Shaggy Dog Story. But if there was some rewriting of the final season, the finale could have been stellar AND made sense.

If Jacob and “the Man in Black” (did he ever have a name?) were played up to be like fickle Greek gods who interfered in the lives of men, the whole thing comes together. The island becomes a Mount Olympus type place where gods and mortals mingle, the mortals’ history show their path to there. The finale culminates in an escape from the island and thus an escape from the fates that the gods determined.

16

I never watched Lost, precisely because I figured this would be the case. I’m not sure I’m happy to be proven correct.

You see (and I might seriously annoy some people here with this), exactly the same thing had happened multiple times before with TV series that are essentially one long story arc. If you actually do have an end that resolves and ties everything up satisfactorily, your series is over. And, while that may be OK for some limited-run Brit TV series (like Life on Mars), it’s not good for American TV*, where you want to keep milking that cash cow. So you gotta keep dragging it out, piling mystery upon mystery.
I suspect that the producers and writers justify it to themselves by saying that the drama is all, and it’s a minor problem that consistency goes by the wayside – you’re there to provide people with entertainment, not be a completely consistent and closed intellectual puzzle. But Shakes nails it perfectly with his Family Guy quote above – you’re gonna piss a lot of people off. But what does it matter after they’ve already watched the show, made it a hit, and you’ve got the ad revenue? What are they goingh to do, not watch your next show? Fat chance. Once Upon a Time is still going strong./
The show that soured me on the concept was the one that, I think, started it all – Twin Peaks. When TP started, it was fresh and original, a show that seemed to show the way people really did react when faced with a local tragedy, with enough quirkiness and loose ends each episode to keep you watching. But it eventually became clear that answers weren’t forthcoming, and the quirkiness turned into full-bore weirdness. And consistency went by the wayside. They did eventually reveal The Killer, but it was way too weird by then, and the show careered onwards, nonetheless, and eventually sputtered out, leaving a feature film in its wake. And I avoided such shows from then on.

*Interestingly and ironically, the American take on Life on Mars was actually a limited-run series that did resolve everything at the end. Although, to prove it was American, they had to take the title literally.

17

In one paragraph you’ve managed to lay out and solve more mysteries than LOST had ever hoped to.

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I think the reason the final episode sent me into a ranting rage was because of the lie. They told us all along that A) the mysteries would be solved and loose ends wrapped up, and B) It wasn’t a purgatory thing.

So if it wasn’t a purgatory thing, what the fuck was it? I’ve even read where Lindelhoff and Abrams gave convoluted explanations to tell me why it wasn’t a purgatory thing, but nothing they said made sense in the context of what I actually saw. The most basic questions weren’t answered.

I agree – the problem was with the final show, but the final episode could have redeemed the entire series. Because it failed to do so, Lost can go suck a bag of dicks.

19

While the final episode could’ve been better, I don’t think they could’ve wrapped up the series well in that one episode even if they were very talented writers. They’d given us such a wide range of mysteries that there was simply no good way to tie them all up. Now if they’d spent the entire last season trying to make it make sense - they might’ve salvaged something half-decent - but when they were writing the series, they introduced new factions, new sorts of magic, and new ideas about everything with no regard for how it might all fit together. It’s really hard to just take a random mess of mysteries and elegantly tie them up.

20

Would you say that your argument is that the hatred of the finale is just shooting the messenger? That it was merely the point where years of squandered potential came crashing home, but not the cause?