The Lost Season Six Thread - spoilers be damned

Martek on 8/6/2010 at 15:51

Quote Posted by T-Smith

The show's been over for a couple weeks, and fans are still asking why there were polar bears on the island, even though it's been answered.

I wanted to know why there a polar bear skeleton in Tunisia (as examined by Charlotte).

Queue on 8/6/2010 at 16:57

Continental drift.

You know, I never saw a single episode but I do recall that the producers kept swearing for years that they knew exactly where the show was going and exactly how it would end--and that they'd tie everything up and answer all questions.

Nice and neat, swear to God.

Sooooo... Turns out, they ended the show(http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1376462/) because they ran out of ideas and in the end couldn't exactly tie up all those loose threads into anything reasonably coherent because they probably didn't know where they were going in the first place.

This is why I don't watch a lot of TV.

T-Smith on 8/6/2010 at 17:10

Quote Posted by Queue

Sooooo... Turns out, they ended the show(http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1376462/) because they ran out of ideas and in the end couldn't exactly tie up all those loose threads into anything reasonably coherent because they probably didn't know where they were going in the first place.

An old quote taken out of context. In season 3 they negotiated with ABC for the show to end after 3 more seasons. The problem was that they didn't know how much longer the show was going to be at the time (since it was a popular show, ABC wanted to keep it around as long as possible). As such, they were forced to find ways to extend the show, coming up with unnecessary plotlines and shitty episodes to drag things on (otherwise known as the beginning of season 3).

Apparently, the episode they used to convince ABC that they needed an end date was "Stranger in Strange Land", using it as an example of the fact that they couldn't keep stalling or crap like that would keep coming.

Thirith on 8/6/2010 at 19:31

Quote Posted by Martek

I wanted to know why there a polar bear skeleton in Tunisia (as examined by Charlotte).

That one's been answered, and rather elegantly at that. Remember Ben turning the donkey wheel and ending up in the middle of the desert? Remember those contraptions in the bear cages? Remember how cold it was in the donkey wheel chamber?

The one thing that doesn't particularly make sense is how old the polar bear skeleton is, but the island does wonky stuff with time, so I guess that one can be handwaved away.

Rug Burn Junky on 9/6/2010 at 00:59

Quote Posted by T-Smith

coming up with unnecessary plotlines and shitty episodes to drag things on (otherwise known as the beginning of season 3).

Except for the fact that said unnecessary plotlines and shitty episodes had already become apparent long before Season 2 concluded. These criticisms were always waved away by die-hard fan/apologists with "they aren't unnecessary, the writers KNOW what they're doing" and those of us who thought this was absurdly naive were treated as non-believers. Queue's quote simply evidences what many of us knew all along: they were flinging shit at the wall like monkeys in a zoo, and the show suffered greatly for it while along a certain hardcore subset of the audience ate the shit up unblinkingly and called it high cuisine.

Which is also why more recent statements by cuse and lindeloff (that the fact that they may not have plotted the entire show doesn't matter) are simply wrong. They are defending against that particular criticism in the abstract ("Who cares if we plotted the WHOLE show, nobody else does") when that criticism is actually only used to highlight the fact that the middle seasons were unredeemably bad and that the defense of these poor episodes ("They know what they're doing!") was , as I said, absurdly naive and easily disproven in hindsight. Context is key.

T-Smith on 9/6/2010 at 04:50

Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky

Except for the fact that said unnecessary plotlines and shitty episodes had already become apparent long before Season 2 concluded.

In which case of course you'd think the middle seasons were unredeemingly bad (though I still think season 3, beginning aside, is the best the show had). Exactly what do you define as the middle (3 and 4?) and why were they so bad?

With that out of the way - it's sad that the writers didn't plan it all out (and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot). They brought up too many plots without thinking of proper resolutions to go with them. In the end when they realized they couldn't answer everything, they started going with their lame "It's about the characters, not the mythology" bullshit.

That said though, opinions on the show and its merits will be discussed to death. Some hate it, some love it. Some feel it's intelligent, others think the writers were idiots and fans are stupid. Some take everything with a grain of salt, others are fanatical and defend everything the show does.

I've got about 10 people who I work with into the show over the last two years. All of them love it, most have finished (the latest one is half way through season 3 and so far it's his favourite). It's nice to sit around and talk with different people about it and get their opinions, what they like and don't.

It's nice in another way to - some of the other people I work with refuse to watch LOST because "it makes no sense" and "looks stupid". Then they start talking about how True Blood is the best show on television, and a little part of me dies.

Rug Burn Junky on 9/6/2010 at 05:54

Quote Posted by T-Smith

The only "great" season was season 1, and that only because it still had anticipation connected to the great potential of the show. It was pretty much all downhill from there. [INDENT]

Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky way back before Season 2 even ended

As to whether it's worth catching up on?

ummmmm, not sure. I still watch, but with markedly decreasing enthusiasm each week. It's gone from mildly cool x-files-meets-robinson-crusoe supernatural mystery show to cheap soap opera which takes place on a tropical island, catering to the middle age housefrau Days of Our Lives set ("OMG! When are they going to hook up?"). This is more "Felicity" JJ Abrams than "first season of Alias" JJ. See any of Dia's posts for clarification.

Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky

Soap operaish doesn't necessarily just mean "who's hooking up with whom?" but also the cheaply manipulative plotlines. Though the cliffhangers work to a point, they become gimmicky, with no real resolution ever, and no sense that there's a real meaningful story arc in there, so much as a series of macguffins. There are a bunch of threads which interconnect, but ultimately, I'm getting the sense more and more that they don't amount to much very interesting as a whole. A few well placed plotlines are far superior to a ridiculous number of weak or meaningless ones.

I will say that this week's episode was better than many recently, and I loved seeing Clancy Brown. Though by reminding me how dearly I miss Carnivale (a show which did the holistic-supernatural-mystery-cliffhanger exceptionally well), it only further underscored the missed potential of this series.

Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky

It really isn't hard to tell based on the hamfisted way the plotlines are meted out on this show. The problem isn't that I don't know where the plot points will lead, the problem is that the writers seemingly don't for many of them, and that's becoming increasingly obvious.

On top of which, watching any other of JJ Abrams shows will only underscore the point. This is proceeding exactly the way that Alias did, starting with a tight, seemingly coherent story arc which just gave way to increasing levels of fluff melodrama, and all of the various threads come off more as "Let's throw as much at the wall as we can and see what shit sticks."

Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky

To be fair, I'm not quite "panning" it yet. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's bad, just that it's not as good as it could be.

And, in the context of recommending to Scots, and knowing his tastes in general, I was laying out the flaws that I'm guessing would get under his skin.

And I don't think the Abrams problem is ever keeping the story 'flowing' so much as keeping it plausible and nuanced. It's cheap pulp from beginning to end, which is fine. It's just that he overdoes things so much that you eventually lose the ability (or desire) to suspend disbelief for the next manipulative plot point.

I still see reasons to believe that this sort of thing is currently metastisizing with Lost, but it hasn't yet quite become so endemic as to ruin the show.

[/INDENT]It had some redeeming moments in the past two seasons. Unfortunately, all of those redeeming moments were like a bad episode of Family Guy or Douglas Coupland novel - consisting entirely of cultural references which make slack-jawed yokels think "I recognize that!" is the same as "that's funny" or "that's interesting." Except the hackneyed cultural references upon which it relied were culled exclusively from within the Lost universe itself. It's self referential masturbatory laziness, compounded by some cheap form of dramatic solipsisim.

Quote:

Some feel it's intelligent.

These people are morons (Not for liking it. it was, all-in-all, a fun show) but for being so delusional as to think it's something that it isn't. It's entertaining, to be sure, but intelligent? Complicated doesn't equal intelligent, especially when those complications hide flaws rather than enhance strengths.

Thirith on 9/6/2010 at 08:44

Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky

I couldn't agree with this more. I greatly enjoyed watching Lost, but while it throws around some big words and concepts, it doesn't really do anything particularly intelligent with them. It doesn't have to, either, in order to be fun TV - but IMO the people who project all this hidden depth into Lost aren't all that far removed from those who claim that The Matrix and especially the sequels are, like, so deep, man!

Queue on 9/6/2010 at 14:13

Quote Posted by Thirith

Remember Ben turning the donkey wheel and ending up in the middle of the desert? Remember those contraptions in the bear cages? Remember how cold it was in the donkey wheel chamber?

You know, now I can see why this show was cutting edge.

Donkey wheel.

WTF!

Thirith on 9/6/2010 at 14:40

It's simple to make anything sound silly by picking one element out of context and adding "WTF?!" at the end.