Rug Burn Junky on 13/6/2010 at 17:27
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
It was a good series with a shit last five minutes. So was Battlestar Galactica.
I tend to agree with everything you said except for this. There are key differences between the two and that's why Lost's ending is so poor. For one, the very raison d'etre of the series is different - BSG wasn't just about the ending. The journey itself was more fulfilling. It meted out puzzles hinting at the ending not as the meaning of the show itself, but as another aspect on top of the current plotlines at any given time, until the "mystery" was built upon an already strong foundation. The sub-plotlines of BSG were strong enough to stand on their own - allegories about the nature of war, politics and power and the machinations involved in each. Lost had none of this (or at most, very little, done hamfistedly). It lived and died solely by the promise of the underlying puzzle/premise of the series and they battered you over the head with "This is the mystery you should be wondering about at this point in time. (We'll let you know later whether it matters)". So it already raises expectations for the ending, because we all know that the "it was about the character development" is fucking bullshit.
The BSG ending - or at least the concept - worked fantastically, it's just that the postscript was incredibly clumsy. Take out the dancing robots scene and the whole "It's happening again" stuff and the our-earth-is-earth-2.0 still works and comports with everything that was done before as well as being a novel surprise. You can quibble with how some of it was handled ("Starbuck's an angel?") but it is still a good-but-not-great combo of mind-fuck and makes-sense, where-as the lost ending without the post-script is kinda blah, and with the post script is a deus ex machina to explain the alternate universe that wasn't even introduced until this season. "Hey, let's throw a new plotline in 84% of the way through the series, wrap THAT up, and pretend it's an ending for the whole thing!"
The way I see it is this:
They had a great idea for a series: A plane crash, everybody dies, and they're on this island which is actually purgatory. They threw it out there thinking "ha! nobody will ever guess that that's really what happened, so it'll be a great mindfuck when we reveal the big surprise at the end."
Except it was kinda an obvious ending, and everybody did guess it. So they were fucked. It's like telling a joke and someone shouts out the punchline before you finish. Either they let everybody down by giving them the proper "surprise" ending that everyone already expects, mindfucking no-one. Or they try to come up with something else and play it off like that's what they meant all along. and give a different limp surprise.
So they went with option 2, and spent 3-4 years fumbling around for a way to make it work. And they never really did. So they cannibalized their original ending, and slapped it on to a generic Jack's-a-martyr story with no compelling meaning and called it a day.
Thirith on 14/6/2010 at 06:15
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
I tend to agree with everything you said except for this. There are key differences between the two and that's why Lost's ending is so poor. For one, the very raison d'etre of the series is different - BSG wasn't just about the ending. The journey itself was more fulfilling. It meted out puzzles hinting at the ending not as the meaning of the show itself, but as another aspect on top of the current plotlines at any given time, until the "mystery" was built upon an already strong foundation. The sub-plotlines of BSG were strong enough to stand on their own - allegories about the nature of war, politics and power and the machinations involved in each. Lost had none of this (or at most, very little, done hamfistedly). It lived and died solely by the promise of the underlying puzzle/premise of the series and they battered you over the head with "This is the mystery you should be wondering about at this point in time. (We'll let you know later whether it matters)". So it already raises expectations for the ending, because we all know that the "it was about the character development" is fucking bullshit.
What I don't get is those people who tore Ron D. Moore a new one at the end of
BSG, jeering at his "It's all about the characters!" thing and making it sound as if the series' ending had invalidated everything they'd ever liked about the series... but then a number of those same people defend the
Lost ending and its weaknesses (again, for the record, I thought
Lost ended in an enjoyable enough way, but apart from the vehemence I'd agree with everything RBJ writes here), pretty much saying "You were in it for the plot? Didn't you know that it was all about the characters?"
T-Smith on 14/6/2010 at 15:22
Quote Posted by Thirith
What I don't get is those people who tore Ron D. Moore a new one at the end of
BSG, jeering at his "It's all about the characters!" thing and making it sound as if the series' ending had invalidated everything they'd ever liked about the series... but then a number of those same people defend the
Lost ending and its weaknesses (again, for the record, I thought
Lost ended in an enjoyable enough way, but apart from the vehemence I'd agree with everything RBJ writes here), pretty much saying "You were in it for the plot? Didn't you know that it was all about the characters?"
I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of "invalidating everything". A friend of mine said the same thing about the end of BSG. It seemed to him that the "God made it all happen" answer basically ruined the rest of the show - that no matter what happened, God and his "angels" would make sure humanity followed the right path, thus rendering human free will - all the choices they'd made over the four seasons - irrelevant.
Personally I enjoyed the finale, though not as much as LOST. Honestly, I think maybe the reason I enjoyed "The End" as much as I did is BECAUSE of Battlestar. LOST built up the entire last season as much more spiritual-based than before, and I accepted that a lot of big questions weren't going to be answered. That sucked, yeah, but I didn't cling onto the false hope going into the finale that every loose end was going to be tied up nicely. If they tried, it would have just been "Daybreak" all over again (God "Sorry, he doesn't like to be called that" is responsible for everything we didn't explain, there we go).
In the end, both shows toyed with spirituality and the concept of a greater power throughout their entire run. The sad part is, this subject ends up becoming the answer for both. Rather than stick straight to sci-fi and toy with religion, the shows ended up falling back on the latter when both shows had dug themselves too big a hole to climb out of with logic. I really enjoyed both of the shows but as I said, I think what I got from Moore's story really helped me enjoy and accept LOST a lot more than I would have.
EDIT - Though I still can't defend the "purgatory" story. Going back through season 6 there are hints throughout (the biggest being a couple lines from a show Sawyer is watching). But the sheer amount of time spent building it up, so late in the game, was horrible. Yes it ended up providing for a great emotional end for the characters and let us know "everybody dies". But really, the writers should have spent more time and energy tying up loose ends on the island and developing THOSE stories. As nice as it was, we didn't NEED the church. If anything, they could have done the purgatory thing in the last couple episodes (like they did with the end of season 3 and the flash forward surprise). That would have freed up A LOT more time early in the season, as well as eliminate confusing/unnecessary build ups in the alt.
Thirith on 15/6/2010 at 05:36
Quote Posted by T-Smith
I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of "invalidating everything". A friend of mine said the same thing about the end of BSG. It seemed to him that the "God made it all happen" answer basically ruined the rest of the show - that no matter what happened, God and his "angels" would make sure humanity followed the right path, thus rendering human free will - all the choices they'd made over the four seasons - irrelevant.
To be honest, this strikes me pretty much as a knee-jerk reaction against the notion of God in
BSG - and it's not as if that notion hadn't been introduced from the very beginning of the series. The God of the series didn't screw with the characters' free will throughout
BSG, so why should he suddenly do so? There are lots of things that can be criticised about the ending, and it definitely didn't handle everything well, but for some people even the idea of a fictional God seems to be a no-go.
Quote:
EDIT - Though I still can't defend the "purgatory" story. Going back through season 6 there are hints throughout (the biggest being a couple lines from a show Sawyer is watching). But the sheer amount of time spent building it up, so late in the game, was horrible. Yes it ended up providing for a great emotional end for the characters and let us know "everybody dies". But really, the writers should have spent more time and energy tying up loose ends on the island and developing THOSE stories. As nice as it was, we didn't NEED the church. If anything, they could have done the purgatory thing in the last couple episodes (like they did with the end of season 3 and the flash forward surprise). That would have freed up A LOT more time early in the season, as well as eliminate confusing/unnecessary build ups in the alt.
My biggest problem in this respect is that the (overall) story the series seemed to be telling in S6 is different from the story in S5 etc. I'm not talking about the seasonal arcs - obviously those can and should differ. It's just that apart from incidental details there's little throughout the series suggesting that they knew where they were going. There was little sense of a consistent direction the series was going in. By comparison, with
BSG I never felt that there were these abrupt changes in the series' trajectory; I'm currently rewatching the series, and I'm finding it to be much more consistent in what it's doing. Having said that, I'm one of the people who actually enjoyed the big reveal(s) at the end of S3, so YMMV.
I understand that this is difficult to achieve with a series that might be cancelled, but the fact that it is difficult to do doesn't mean we can't be disappointed when it doesn't work out all that well.
T-Smith on 15/6/2010 at 09:44
Quote Posted by Thirith
My biggest problem in this respect is that the (overall) story the series seemed to be telling in S6 is different from the story in S5 etc. I'm not talking about the seasonal arcs - obviously those can and should differ. It's just that apart from incidental details there's little throughout the series suggesting that they knew where they were going.
For me, from the beginning through to season 5, even with all the storylines and craziness, it seemed like it was all heading to one destination. I couldn't tell you what that destination was, but each season seemed like a natural progression.
Season 6, in many ways, felt disjointed from the rest of the show. They spent time trying to make it seem like this was the ultimate game plan they had from day 1, that smokey and Jacob had manipulated everyone to this point. But it didn't feel like it because you're right. There was nothing beforehand to really suggest it. Instead of foreshadowing what was coming, it felt more like they simply had a rough idea of how to end the show and wrote the plot of season 6 to fit in with all the random pieces they sprinkled throughout that they never explained.
I really did like season 6, but not the way it flows or feels overall. It gave us some of the best episodes and moments the show has ever produced, but all together doesn't have same pacing or feel as before. The overall plot was okay, but it REALLY could have been better thought-out to connect with the rest of the show. It also felt pretty damn weird for the show to slowly build up to straight sci-fi across 5 seasons, then simply dump it in the end for faith.
