Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

Some years ago two friends of mine started going out in secret, and I asked them if they were together. They said "no". Then, that they were actually together, they said "and you had no idea!" No, what happened was I asked you a direct question and you lied and I took you at your word. This is the same thing.

That should say "then, when they revealed that they were actually together", obviously.

did anyone mention the amazing death of the smoke monster? AAAH I FELL OFF A CLIFF I'M DEAD

it was the unplugging of the RPG save point what killed that beast iirc

As I recall, as the latter half of the season unraveled, it became increasingly clear that the finale was going to be a big raspberry. By the time it actually hit, there really wasn't any way it could be halfway decent. Even then, I'll grant, it was bad.

Classical-Fusion Driveshaft Concert

Gah, I had blocked that from my memory until now.

I don't think there is any possible way they could have ever been able to wrap it all up and make anyone happy.

Probably not. But there's lots they could have done to avoid pissing a huge swath of fans off to the point that they're still bitching two years later. Like not constantly assuring us that they knew exactly where things were going and that it would alllllll make sense in the end when the whole show was actually a secret attempt to break a Guiness world record for telling the longest shaggy dog story ever.

I sometimes wonder if there was any possible way that it could have ended well. I'm personally comfortable with extensive ambiguity in the film and TV that I like; I mean, I love the Sopranos finale and was baffled when people were angry. But they couldn't realistically have been ambiguous with the Lost ending - they would have been crucified. I don't think there is any possible way they could have ever been able to wrap it all up and make anyone happy.

It's really down to how much the showrunners stoked the notion that it was all coming down to a single, major reveal that would explain everything. If they had been a lot more "this isn't Shyamalan - we're playing around with a bunch of themes" or something, maybe people wouldn't have been so pissed?

I don't know, I just can't believe there was actually a time when I was like "yeah, they've got this. It's all going to make total sense and I will like it."!

― Walter Galt, Thursday, May 17, 2012 7:01 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this is otm. i think the show was actually at its best when they kept a lot of plates spinning and you got to wonder about time travel and all this other weird stuff -- the more they introduced, the less they were ever going to 'resolve' anything with any one episode or even one final season arc. maybe they should've just answered some major questions about the island while introducing more as a way of saying "are you still with us?" and if people were, then it could've been a really long-running thing like Dr. Who or Star Trek where you can do spinoffs with the characters or storylines people respond to the most.

like this could've been a franchise people would actually care about and have huge conventions for 10 years after it went off the air, but they almost wanted to just milk it as much as possible while it was going and then burn all those bridges to a lucrative long tail and get away.

should have been surprise-cancelled after season four, then people would still be speculating about how great it could have been

not that this didn't bug me all the while watching the show for the first time, but man, on re-watching it the mysteries aren't so immediate and the shoddy writing wrt the characters is ~really~ jumping out this time around. hay we're introducing a new character hmmm what's their thing idk how about stupid daddy issues again? it is so truly awful and lazy. how they convinced themselves that this was what the show needed to focus on is a brain scrambler.

"The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." was so great that it makes me sad that this is Cuse's creative legacy

always rep for Nash Bridges

I honestly think I could write an entire book about how to construct long-form narrative solely using Lost as an example of how not to do it.

get right on that, bubba

I might!

(I had a previous idea for a book on writing sitcoms that basically boiled down to: DO write like seasons 1-5 of Rosanne, DON'T write like seasons 7-9 of Roseanne. Season 6 was a bit of a gray area, but also was just after she'd had extensive plastic surgery so it was, perhaps, instructive in its own way.)

it's when they added that extra E that things went bad

EEXACTLY.

what WAS happening???

this morning im working myself up in a lather about the finale for no reason

I prolly do this about once a month on average

I still feel burned whenever I think of this show. I still rewatch the x-files, but I can't imagine rewatching Lost.

yeah the penultimate episode definitely dug the ditch so deep that the finale couldn't go lower (though it tried).

fuck this show

This pretty much charts the sequence of thoughts every time LOST passes through my mind.

Sometimes I reach this zen place where I'm like "can you believe how much you enjoyed a drama on ABC for awhile? That's almost impossible!"

I started watching in Season 3 and the whole time my friend who I made watch the show was like "this show sucks" and I could never really disagree with him but I still loved it. It's my own fault, basically.

Well, could have been worse. Could have been Heroes.

i feel like early enthusiasm for the show was like the bush tax cuts. there was no way anyone could have realistically expected it to end well.

I don't think I ever really expected a satisfying conclusion for this show, but the actual ending was just so much worse than anything I could imagine.

god, remember the good times?

polar bears!

if you introduce a polar bear in act I...

not that this didn't bug me all the while watching the show for the first time, but man, on re-watching it the mysteries aren't so immediate and the shoddy writing wrt the characters is ~really~ jumping out this time around.

It really points up how easy it is in serialized storytelling to get your audience with you by alluding to ~secrets and mysteries~, no wonder they binged on that so recklessly. But unless you're counting on getting cancelled, those gd mysteries are gonna come home to fkin roost at some point. Same goes for those BSG fuckers, but they were even more brazen about it, having the very tag line of their show be a straight-faced lie. (tho i still love BSG).

Yeah, I guess that's a quality that I don't sweat in mainstream comics because those things run for centuries, and even if the current creative team doesn't resolve anything, someone else will pick up the thread years down the line. Television show runners, however, would probably be wise to work from a slightly different playbook.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/03/18/lost-writers-debunk-theories-about-hit-series-10-years-later/

Cuse also said the writers decided not to provide answers to all the questions raised by the storylines in the final season. “Every question sort of begets another question. … We just didn't feel like there was any way to answer all the open questions at the end of the show without it feeling really didactic and boring.”

I hate these motherfuckers so much.

They asked way too many questions

Though:

Lindelof said they did write a scene that answered who was on the Outrigger, but the scene was never shot. That script may be auctioned off to raise money for a charity in the future, he said.

When you not a sociopathic douche, every question begets an ANSWER.

I just read back a couple pages in this thread and realized that I got into kate beaton and anthony clark's webcomics via their LOST Cartoons. alright LOST that's one point in your column

Lindelof said, “We felt that withholding from the actors audience was best for the show.”

fuck this show, fuck these people, etc

In 2014 AD there was still folks who cussedly hated Lost ...

we must go back in time and change nothing

It is weird how ... I don't want to say seminal but that's the only word that fits ... seminal the show is, I keep seeing shows that feel like it or borrow from it. Expecting Terry O'Quinn to show up on Walking Dead, for instance, because of the 'personal journey in extremis' thing. 'Begins as a colossal puzzle but at the end get rid of all that and just say it's an allegory' or 'ironic commentary between present and past scenes' of True Detective. Or maybe it's my taste that just draws me to similar material

That outrigger thing gets my goat though and no mistake

so wrong that an all-time story like 'the constant' has to be embedded in this pile of shit

every time i remember a cool thing about the show i also remember the corresponding failure to justify it at the end. like when the world thought they found the sunken remains of the plane, every detail super-convincing, but really it was a decoy widmore put there...because it was going to allow widmore to fulfill his master plan of ??? anyway he got shot and died.

It is weird how ... I don't want to say seminal but that's the only word that fits ... seminal the show is, I keep seeing shows that feel like it or borrow from it. Expecting Terry O'Quinn to show up on Walking Dead, for instance, because of the 'personal journey in extremis' thing. 'Begins as a colossal puzzle but at the end get rid of all that and just say it's an allegory' or 'ironic commentary between present and past scenes' of True Detective. Or maybe it's my taste that just draws me to similar material

― Brakhage, Wednesday, March 19, 2014 8:17 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't watch Walking Dead but i think LOST has been hugely influential on TV, if primarily on network shows that nobody watches that get canceled after one or two seasons. there are seriously like 2 or 3 high concept shows debuting on ABC or CBS every few months, there were just a couple new ones last week. seminal in the sense of lots of doomed sperm swimming around.

hey person of interest is still standing!!

the whole obsessive, poring over every frame and prop on the show, style of TV-watching definitely started with Lost. I also feel like it's the first show to really take advantage of Internet fandom, what with sprawling wikis, weekly podcasts, those Hanso videos, etc.

person of interest is basically an updated touched by an angel with a bit more paranoia and occasional nods at procedurals and then whedon-inflected comic book season arcs.

siberia seems like its stuck the closest to "what lost coulda been".

x-p
Didn't Twin Peaks get some obsessive fan action? And network extras?

Is Siberia returning? Serious question, every time I google it there is no record that it was canned or otherwise.

what was the outrigger again?

id forgotten too so i googled it and turns out its a bunch of bul lshit