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Post by crowschmo on May 24, 2010 17:13:22 GMT -5
Apparently someone ELSE is looking over the island now, as both Hurley and Ben are dead. Maybe Vincent is keeping tabs on it? There's no way to know how much time has passed in the real world. These people are just in this weird pergatory for countless whatevers, until they all remember and "move on". I would think that a good deal of time has passed, since, I would think, Hurley and Ben, stayed on the island for quite a long stretch. Jacob was there for God knows how long. And who finally killed Hurley? Wouldn't he be immortal like Jacob was (kinda - or just very long-lived). Or did Hurley just pass the baton to someone else? Walt and Michael and all those "Tailies" were kind of dead end characters. I realize it might have something to do with not being able to get actors back, or whatever, but, what purpose had they served? What happened to all those children that the Others supposedly kidnapped from them? I missed a few episodes, so I don't know if that was ever explained. There was all this todo about Walt being special when HE was taken, then he was just gotten rid of as a character and really didn't have much to do with anything. Not much of anything was explained really. I thought this ending sucked on ice.
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Post by mccloud on May 24, 2010 17:41:08 GMT -5
Me too, crowschmo. The island ending was ok, fairly interesting, but the sideways was a complete cop-out, very lame. Oops, last season, uhh...here you go! HAHA! Suckers! What a waste of my time.
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Post by Mr. Atari on May 24, 2010 18:31:24 GMT -5
For what it's worth, this was posted today by someone claiming to be one of the regulars in the LOST writers' room. He's probably a fake, but I found his explanation to be very helpful; just in case you're still fuzzy on how it all holds together, or why they chose to go this route. I've been thinking about the "church ending" all day, and I think I'm warming up to it. I still don't buy the idea that they somehow created the purgatory reality together and yet needed other people to wake them up, but the implication that these folks are connected in all planes (pun intended) is pretty cool. Live together, die together. The writer in the link above mentions that the church hug-fest and Jack's on-island death comprised the original JJ Abrams ending, written in 2004. If that's true, I can't call the sideways world a cop-out. In fact, it strikes me as a very creative storytelling device to get from point A to a predetermined point B. There's also Doc Jensen's recap over at EW. I think he sums up a lot of my feelings, while still being respectful to the detractors. I especially liked how he pointed out how the church seating evoked an airplane cabin, and how Christian throwing open the back door evoked the ripping open of flight 815. A nice visual touch I missed the first time through.
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Post by mccloud on May 24, 2010 19:09:02 GMT -5
That explains it some, but it doesn't make me like it any more than before I read it. If that's the ending he wanted, well, there it is, good for him and all of you who liked it. I didn't like it.
So the entire point of the show was: our lives are what we make of them, and who we love matters more than anything? Gee, that's never been written about before. How ground breaking! I would have rather seen the shiny hole remain open and the island sink into oblivion. I've been duped by a stupid TV show, thinking it had something new to say. It was a waste of my time and energy.
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Post by Mr. Atari on May 24, 2010 19:41:35 GMT -5
I've been duped by a stupid TV show, thinking it had something new to say. It was a waste of my time and energy. I think that's the place where we diverge. I never thought it had something new to say. In fact, the thing I enjoyed most about LOST all these years what that it was admittedly, obviously, and unashamedly derivative. They even put the references smack in the middle of the show-- be they Star Wars quotes, books the castaways read, or character names. So when this show- built for 6 years on blending its borrowed and disparate elements into an intellectual and emotional fruit smoothie- ends with its hero sacrificing himself for everyone else, while its characters find redemption and community while entering into a hybrid-heaven containing elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the lack of originality didn't bother me. It was a synthesis of the best stories ever told. And, for my money, absolutely consistent with what the DNA of the show has always been.
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Post by quinnmartin on May 25, 2010 9:36:37 GMT -5
That explains it some, but it doesn't make me like it any more than before I read it. If that's the ending he wanted, well, there it is, good for him and all of you who liked it. I didn't like it. So the entire point of the show was: our lives are what we make of them, and who we love matters more than anything? Gee, that's never been written about before. How ground breaking! I would have rather seen the shiny hole remain open and the island sink into oblivion. I've been duped by a stupid TV show, thinking it had something new to say. It was a waste of my time and energy. If you enjoyed the show enough to keep watching it for 6 years, how does the last couple of hours of the show make those 6 years a waste of time? A lot of BSG fans had the same reaction with that finale. I could see that if you're talking about a novel or a movie, but it seems like a strange way to look at a TV series.
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Post by mccloud on May 25, 2010 11:36:45 GMT -5
What is BSG? I watched Lost the first 2-3 seasons, and when they switched to a 10pm time slot, I stopped watching it. I started watching it again just this year only because it was the last season. So, I guess I was duped by 3 years of a TV show, not 6. The show was inherently a serial - you couldn't watch a stand alone episode and get it or enjoy it imo. This whole season was a full blown build up to a dramatic finale with implied promises of questions answered. The last couple of hours were ok, the last 10 minutes were not. I believed the hype, and that was my own fault. If it were a movie, I would have asked for my money back. As far as it being as strange way to look at a TV series, it is my way. The last TV showed I followed on purpose was The X-Files, until it strayed into soap opera terrain. I'll watch House or Law & Order sometimes, but I normally don't regularly follow any TV shows.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on May 25, 2010 11:43:01 GMT -5
That explains it some, but it doesn't make me like it any more than before I read it. If that's the ending he wanted, well, there it is, good for him and all of you who liked it. I didn't like it. So the entire point of the show was: our lives are what we make of them, and who we love matters more than anything? Gee, that's never been written about before. How ground breaking! I would have rather seen the shiny hole remain open and the island sink into oblivion. I've been duped by a stupid TV show, thinking it had something new to say. It was a waste of my time and energy. If you enjoyed the show enough to keep watching it for 6 years, how does the last couple of hours of the show make those 6 years a waste of time? A lot of BSG fans had the same reaction with that finale. I could see that if you're talking about a novel or a movie, but it seems like a strange way to look at a TV series. Perhaps. But I think the difference is that, despite the huge character focus, the show was equally driven by a mystery/reveal structure. And while the show was obviously keeping viewers by keeping "full disclosure" just out of reach, I know a lot of people who feel like they never quite paid off on that aspect. In terms of character and theme, I think the reaction Atari gave above was fine and even noble -- those arcs made sense in their own terms. But in terms of straight story-telling and the way the show stressed giving you hints of a larger narrative, I think they dropped the ball. They wanted the character/theme ending to replace the straightforward plot ending, at least in terms of wrapping up a lot of just straightforward "questions," like wtf was Walt, why was electromagnetism so important to the glowing light thing (if at all), etc., etc. And to me the "we wanted some stuff to stay mysterious" angle is fine if you never gave the impression that there could be a clearer answer in the first place. But LOST, and the producers, often made it seem like their was. To me, that strikes of a bit of audience manipulation. I wouldn't have cared as much if I hadn't heard Damon Lindenhof in one of the podcasts say "everything can be explained." The contrast with BSG is good, I think, because there the "religious" aspect was ALWAYS vague. It was clear that some stuff (like the prophesies) from the old gods was right and that stuff about the monotheistic god was right, too. And the "angels" were always contradictory, and they never promised more than "God's got a plan, but you can only have faith in it, never know it." In that situation, there are no answers to be had, and so much about BSG was about surviving as best you can in the midst of chaos and uncertainty that a metaphysical message like that fits. But...I'm not sure LOST always played that angle as consistently. It's part of why I never liked the last three seasons as much as the first three. The first three did a nice balance of mystery/reveal, and the themes seemed more under the writers' control. But after the flash-forwards, things just felt muddier, and the mysteries didn't seem as appropriately connected to the character stories to me. That's subjective, I know, but I just felt like I lost the sense of where the show was going at a certain point. I'm glad people like Atari feel satisfied, but I suppose I don't. Thank goodness I was perfectly happy with how BSG ended. heh... Plus, I still think the entire last half hour, apart from Jack dying in the same spot, felt like a Hallmark card. BSG's ending felt more appropriate to all the hell they'd gone through: lots of people are dead, we still don't know all the answers, and now life is about to suck, even though we get a chance to start over...kinda. Watching Adama have to build his cabin without Roslin was much more appropriate to the themes the show covered than "everyone's happy and hugging and walking off into the light."
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Post by Mr. Atari on May 25, 2010 12:21:40 GMT -5
I wonder for the folks who think the storytelling technique failed to answer enough questions, what questions are still unanswered for you?
Is it that you're mad they never got back to Walt or filled in the gaps of people like Libby? Or is it that you're mad they didn't explain in more detail the things like the light or the physical nature of Smokey?
If it's the former, I think they only really left a handful of loose threads (like, say, the food drops). But even those can be pieced together with a little deductive reasoning. In fact, I can't think of a too many unexplained plot threads where we can't piece together a reasonable answer from clues in the show. And none that are terribly important to me.
If it's the latter, then I understand, but disagree. One of the central questions in the show was, "Science vs. Faith". They chose to tell the story where faith wins. If that's not your personal inclination, then I can understand you being bothered. Another central question in the show was, "Freewill vs. Fate". With the combination of the island events mattering AND the afterlife ending, they seemed to be saying both are true. Again, if that's not your personal inclination, then I imagine their ending would bug you. But disagreeing with their answers to the questions is not the same as saying they didn't answer them.
So Walt is telepathic and Hurley & Miles can talk to dead people. The island can heal people and travel through time. So what if they never explained why? Why can Luke be a jedi, but Han can't? What makes a light saber work? It doesn't matter. It's a part of a fictional world that makes the plot interesting. Why can't that be enough?
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Post by mummifiedstalin on May 25, 2010 16:50:28 GMT -5
I think it is the latter: they left too much unexplained. And there's a difference between stupid explanations (like midichlorians) and within-the-context-of-the-story explanations.
I'd put it this way: don't make a story that is at the very least half driven by wanting to know what something actually is and even having the characters acting as if there are explicit secrets that can be revealed if you don't ever intend on coming up with answers to those questions.
Two examples, one big and one small.
Small example: Walt. Walt's "special-ness" and the attempt to save him from the Others, as well as learn something about them, was one of the driving plot points of Season 2. His later appearances to Locke, especially as he lay about to die, suggest that he has some kind of deeper connection to the Island that will at least explain connections between his telepathy and whatever it is the Island has in store for Locke. But we never get an explanation for why that connection mattered EVEN WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE "MAGIC" OF THE STORY. That's not a midichlroian bad answer. That's just giving up on part of the plot.
Big example: the nature of the Island and the glowing light. According to the way the show ended, any possible explanation for why the Island was special seems ultimately meaningless or at the very least accidental. Why did these people have to get drawn into this magical drama at all? In the end, all the Island did was give them a chance to form relationships with one another. But anything else it could have been: a true manifestation of "life, death, rebirth," or Jacob's talk about it being the thing that bottles up hell...ultimately apparently accidental, if Christian's talk is true. Again, maybe that's cool from an allegorical standpoint, but, if so, it makes the central thing that made the show unique (WTF is the island?) ultimately irrelevant. It turns it into the briefcase from Pulp Fiction. But in Pulp Fiction, they never pretended to give you clues as to what was in there. It was glowing and mysterious and THAT WAS THE POINT. But in Lost, the reason so many people tuned in was because they kept giving you clues about what that mystery was. Then, in the end, they never even gave us a "bad-midichlorian" explanation -- they just left it vague, not even explaining it in terms of what in the show counted as magic.
(I didn't want a "scientific" explanation, but some kind of explanation that made the whole Jacob vs. MIB conflict would have been nice. I mean, they're brothers who hate each other. One's good, one's bad. Nice. Archetypes, cool. But...who cares? It doesn't connect or add up to anything. Why does the Island need a protector? Why should anyone bother protecting it? Other than the fact that "weird stuff happens there," we still don't have any reason to see it as significant -- it's magic, but magic-without-any-discernible-importance.)
I mean, throughout the show, it seemed that the idea was that the Island was a clue to something much bigger than any of the individual people. But, according to the finale, the Island was just a way for them all to learn important (or, my idea, Hallmark-card sentimental) lessons about love. And it just seems like such a massive disconnect with the rest of the show, that I can't take the "bigger message" stuff seriously.
And, Atari, I guess I understand your general point about "science vs. faith," but I think in this particular case it was a cop-out. The faith doesn't make sense to me, even on the show's terms. Faith in what? A random glowing light? There's no theology of any sort that I can figure out that happens here. Or if the thing they were all supposed to have faith in at the end was their relationships with each other, then WHY BOTHER GOING THROUGH ALL THE MYSTERY IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I guess my point is that if you want to tell a story that is at least half driven by mystery and setting the audience up to want answers, you don't just end it by saying, "Well, it was all really just about the characters and their struggles with 'big ideas' and if you are actually bothered about simple things like plot, you missed the point." Why, then, tell a story that has one of the most intensely intricate PLOTS in the history of television? Why fill up the internet and encourage people to hunt for clues like the numbers and the maps and decode the whispers if, in the end, that's stuff you're just going to drop along the way, or at least say, "Oh, that wasn't really important."
But to end a VERY long post, this bothers me because I actually did have a lot invested in the show awhile ago. But if this really is where they were going, then, yeah, it never was for me. Unfortunately, I feel like they left me a series of twist-ending exercises and schmalz.
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Post by mccloud on May 25, 2010 17:58:34 GMT -5
I mean, throughout the show, it seemed that the idea was that the Island was a clue to something much bigger than any of the individual people. But, according to the finale, the Island was just a way for them all to learn important (or, my idea, Hallmark-card sentimental) lessons about love. And it just seems like such a massive disconnect with the rest of the show, that I can't take the "bigger message" stuff seriously. And, Atari, I guess I understand your general point about "science vs. faith," but I think in this particular case it was a cop-out. The faith doesn't make sense to me, even on the show's terms. Faith in what? A random glowing light? There's no theology of any sort that I can figure out that happens here. Or if the thing they were all supposed to have faith in at the end was their relationships with each other, then WHY BOTHER GOING THROUGH ALL THE MYSTERY IN THE FIRST PLACE? I guess my point is that if you want to tell a story that is at least half driven by mystery and setting the audience up to want answers, you don't just end it by saying, "Well, it was all really just about the characters and their struggles with 'big ideas' and if you are actually bothered about simple things like plot, you missed the point." Why, then, tell a story that has one of the most intensely intricate PLOTS in the history of television? Why fill up the internet and encourage people to hunt for clues like the numbers and the maps and decode the whispers if, in the end, that's stuff you're just going to drop along the way, or at least say, "Oh, that wasn't really important." What mummi said...seriously, I couldn't summarize it better than this. The glowing light was more of a Barton Fink thing to me...what was in the box?!
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Post by crowschmo on May 25, 2010 18:00:17 GMT -5
And why POLAR BEARS?
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Post by mummifiedstalin on May 25, 2010 18:21:38 GMT -5
Heh. Except, to be fair, that one they did answer.
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Post by quinnmartin on May 25, 2010 18:35:09 GMT -5
Speaking of POLAR BEARS, one of the best Soup bits ever.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
-segment with Crow?
Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on May 30, 2010 12:14:46 GMT -5
Ending was fantastic. That's all I'm going to say because dwelling on it with people who didn't like it is pointless. It was exactly what I needed it to be, and that's all that matters to me. It felt more fitting than anything I could have dreamed.
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