Lost as an one-season miniseries

[Dream]

To be fair, Ana-Lucia and Libby and Eko were supposed to around longer but they were prematurely written off for drunk driving / actor problems

The Eko actor just wanted to leave in season three so he was hastily written out.

We did get Desmond and Ben so at least season two wasn't a complete waste of time.

 

[tighr]

I like that there are things on the island that we never learned about it. The place has clearly existed for a long time, and the LOST characters only take up a tiny part of it. Do you know every little bit of history about your own town?

Seriously, though, who's enjoyment of the series was critically dependent upon knowledge of the four-toed statue? Or any single mystery?

That's not the point. The point is that above all else, LOST is still a dramatic story. And in storytelling, you simply do not introduce plot elements that are ultimately unrelated or never referred to again. It's called a Chekhov's Gun. It's evidence of bad writing.

I would have been unconcerned with the statue if it had the requisite 5 toes. The statue is later shown in flashbacks, and is where Locke kills Jacob. Sufficient foreshadowing. But by deliberately taking time out of the plot to have Sayid point out that it only has four toes? You better be prepared to explain later why it was important enough to mention.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Seriously, though, who's enjoyment of the series was critically dependent upon knowledge of the four-toed statue? Or any single mystery?

That's not the point. The point is that above all else, LOST is still a dramatic story. And in storytelling, you simply do not introduce plot elements that are ultimately unrelated or never referred to again. It's called a Chekhov's Gun. It's evidence of bad writing.

I would have been unconcerned with the statue if it had the requisite 5 toes. The statue is later shown in flashbacks, and is where Locke kills Jacob. Sufficient foreshadowing. But by deliberately taking time out of the plot to have Sayid point out that it only has four toes? You better be prepared to explain later why it was important enough to mention.

So ... creatively interesting settings can be on-screen so long as the characters never acknowledge them? Perhaps four toes was introduced purely for atmosphere and mood. Maybe it was a red herring. Or maybe it's just not worth obsessing about years later since it was never a central, integral element of the overall story to begin with.

 

[degra]

the cabin, Kelvin, the smoke monster, the emergency hatch, the glyphs, the temple, the magic water, sayids zombie condition, sequence if numbers to be input, the statue, ilanas past with Jacob, why the others dressed up, miles ability, the wheel, etc were nothing more than a series of macguffins. Now it is clear the writers just saw them as kewl high concepts,,,mere passing ideas,,,not something to use, develop or explore further in any interesting or dramatic way. Sadly that seems to be a trend,,,writers cramming a billion ideas and teasers into a series and leaving them by the wayside rather than choosing a few and taking the time to develop them. I guess they just don't have the writing skills of their predecessors who realized quality over excess is much better.

seems like poor writing to introduce all these mysteries and have the characters draw attention to them making a big deal about it then not do anything with it. Usually when you point something out it will be addressed or play a role in things to come. Season two was particularly bad about it.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Now it is clear the writers just saw them as kewl high concepts.

So did, apparently, some of the audience. Heck, I thought they were all fun additions (except maybe zombie Sayid). But the main emphasis at the beginning (and while admittedly there were some missteps, continuing all the way through the finale) was character.

And Season Two is a perfect example of the series playing to theme and character above all else (Man of Science v. Man of Faith). If anything (for Season Two, at least) plot was sacrificed in the name of character.

 

[degra]

well we'll just have to agree to disagree. The mysteries were far more involving than the characters. Some of the characters were fun to watch,,,,Juliet, sawyer, sun,,,looking back much like with bsg and post season two heroes,,,losts cumbersome mythology got in the way and distracted for me from the characters. Season two is tied with season six as the series worst. By Season two the flashbacks felt like writers spinning wheels, didn't care for the writers turning Charlie and Locke into assholes, the tailies story dragged on, too much time was spent on the swan station, the Hurley,Libby romance was lackluster same for sawyer and Ana lucias tryst.

 

[DonIago]

I disagree with a large portion of your post, and if I thought there was anything to be gained by going into the specifics, I'd spend the time to do so, but I suspect that neither of us is likely to influence the others' opinion.

Though I will say the whole point of the Sawyer-Ana Lucia thing was that she wanted his gun. I thought that was pretty damn obvious.

 

[tighr]

Season 2 ended in a reboot.

Season 2 introduces the tailies. They are all subsequently killed (except for Bernard).
Season 2 gets us into the hatch. The hatch is subsequently blown up.
Season 2 introduces the necessity of entering the numbers. Not entering them has no legitimate consequences.
Michael spends the entire season looking for Walt. Once found, we are never told why Walt was important to the Others.
Season 2 shows us a map of the island in the hatch. We are never told how this map happened (nor why a smoke monster needs "vents", given what we now know about the smoke monster).
Season 2 ends with Penelope finding the island. But then the boat that shows up is "Not Penny's".

 

[Praetorian]

Hum, I thought the statue had four toes because it was a statue of Anubis...a half jackal half man god... (even if real life Anubis statues have 5 toes, that explanation is good enough for me...)

 

[jayceee]

Decided to watch the season 4 dvd set in a marathon session yesterday and earlier this morning. (Found the dvd set at a church rummage sale awhile ago for $2, but haven't watched it previously. I don't have any of the other seasons on dvd, other than the pilot).

I never really watched Lost, other than watching the pilot episode previously.

Despite not knowing much about the details of the show, I found season 4 somewhat compelling to watch. There were several scenes which I suspect would require some knowledge of previous seasons for context, but overall I thought season 4 was watchable as a standalone.

 

[Gary7]

It's been awhile, but the end of the last episode they did explain all the major stuff. The only left unexplained was Widmore's change of heart or why whatshisname from S:AAB was building the cabin.

We found out what and why the Island is, and why and how the plane crashed.

No, they didn't explain all the major stuff. This is what has people like degra all up in arms about it. The only way I could enjoy the series was to let go of wanting to know all of the answers. But frankly, I would've liked to know a few things:

• MIB doesn't start out evil. He knows that his and Jacob's mother is not their maternal mother; that she essentially kidnapped them. So, he craves to go back to live with his people, but his mother decides to kill all of his people just to spite him. SHE was the evil one, and spurned on MIB to take revenge on her, cementing his rage.
• So why would an evil mother be charged with taking care of the "light of the Island", some kind of super power wellspring? By whom?
• Is the island the heart of the Earth? If this "light of the Island" is the critical wellspring to all life on Earth, why would there be such a slipshod arrangement of protecting it? Seems like there should be a much more formidable people doing it and with high moral standards.
• Jacob tells his brother (MIB) that he can't leave the island. Yet, HE is able to leave. Why is this? How is such an arbitrary discrimination enacted?
• So we have these 3 people--the mother and her two sons--living on this special island. The "evil" son kills his evil mother, and Jacob is charged by his mother with keeping his brother from leaving. Why does the mother care what happens outside of the island anyway?
• All you have to do is drink a cup of water from the island's stream, handed to you by someone who was bestowed caretaker powers over the island. "Now you're like me." OK, great. Being bestowed this guardianship gives a kind of immortality. Why not give everybody a drink? Then everyone could leave the island in an instant, in addition to immortality. Of course, this would ruin the story... and to foil it, just make the powers only transferable instead of copied. But this caveat isn't shown. Looked pretty silly to me. Also... why no VFX on drinking it, like a momentary glowing aura around the person? Looked pretty silly to just drink and "wallah!"--you've got powers!
• So despite all that Ben and his cohorts learn about the Dharma Initiative, they remain clueless about "the hatch" (Swan station)? They have no idea that some crazy cockamamie Dharma experiment was conceived to have people conscripted into tediously entering in a code every 108 minutes, which has a critical action of alleviating "magnetic pressure"? Not doing so results in catastrophic earthquakes? I don't get it... this was so stupidly risky.
• You'd think with the Dharma Initiative they would've had a fail safe... that after scaring the sh*t out of the test subjects in the Swan and the start of magnetic chaos, that a back-up procedure would automatically perform the magnetic "alleviation". It would've made so much sense rather than risk the safety of the entire island if someone goofs up. And what should have happened is that there would be some uncovering of this. At the Pearl station, they would've found some evidence of the fail safe but then discover that it has become faulty... if you DON'T enter the code, everything will fall apart.

I can understand how the island is something special, but we don't know WHY it is so. Its special nature attracts people to go there, seeking out its power. Ancient peoples, including the Egyptians, find their way to it. MIB's fellow people were inventive and figuring out a way to harness the power of the island, ultimately to find a way off of it and travel the world. But they were wiped out. Then centuries later, the Dharma Initiative comes along, attempting to do the same thing. Jacob has them wiped out, using Ben and his team to do the dirty work. But not before the Dharma scientists had already dug deep enough to expose the dangerous magnetic properties of the island. It seems silly given Jacob's power that he couldn't have stopped that from happening much sooner.

One could say this whole thing was an analogy to how the inventive nature of humans is a dangerous power and improperly wielded could destroy everything. But, it's set in a bizarre story that doesn't have much at all to explain it.

Why 4 toes instead of 5? Who cares. Maybe it was a comedic Egyptian settlement, the fore bearers of cartoons. This pales in comparison to knowing the real deal... why we have this very peculiar small arrangement of people with special powers and no explanation as to how they were bestowed and by whom.

If there's anything LOST left as a gaping hole in its entire story, it's this. And I feel the writers, namely Lindelof and Cuse, backed themselves into a time pressure corner and couldn't figure out how to clean it all up. So they fell back on "it's all about the characters" bit. Mind you, they were seriously influenced by "The Prisoner", intending to leave a lot of people confused at the end, because heck... look at all the chatter that continued for decades after "The Prisoner" was over. They wanted to repeat that... have their own historical stake in television history. And it worked. Good for them. Not so good for the intelligent audience that isn't just along for the ride but wants a well crafted story.

 

[Mr Light]

They explained in the show that the Island is the wellspring of all life/souls on Earth, so destroying the Island would destroy all life on Earth. There is only one protector given immortality, and one guard dog given immortality, they can't just make everyone immortal.

Someone had to manually punch the Number into the Swan because the anomaly disturbed the electrical equipment and automation couldn't be trusted.

I will admit one odd plot hole in the series is the fact that the Others let Desmond stay down in the Swan alone pushing the button, knowing (?) that the fate of the world hung in the balance if he didn't. What if he killed himself? What if he overslept? What if he slipped in the shower and broke his neck?

My fan-wank to this is that since they were watching him on the video the entire time, they were ready to rush into the station the moment they saw Des go down.

 

[tighr]

I feel the writers, namely Lindelof and Cuse, backed themselves into a time pressure corner and couldn't figure out how to clean it all up. So they fell back on "it's all about the characters" bit.

This is what bothers me. Lindelof is a terrible writer, pure and simple. He's responsible not only for the giant question mark that is LOST, but his stamp is also on "Cowboys and Aliens" and "Prometheus". I'm fearful because he's been given a writing credit on the new Star Trek movie.

 

[degra]

I just expected them to do something really interesting with all these threads,,,the way ds9 did in the final chapter. Good and great writers not only meet audience expectations but exceed them in how they wrap up a story. Lost did neither but then again that is what happens when you allow overgrown fanboys to produce tv and films these days.

 

[jbohn]

To be fair, Ana-Lucia and Libby and Eko were supposed to around longer but they were prematurely written off for drunk driving / actor problems

If memory serves me well, Libby wasn't supposed to be killed off at the same time as Ana-Lucia who was always intended to be killed off near the end of season 2, but because most fans didn't like the Ana-Lucia, the writers knew that nobody would care when she was shot, so they added Libby to that scene as well to up the shock value.

Whatever loose plans they had for Libby's character were given to other characters down the road. And we never did find out much more about Libby and why she was in the asylum and why she was in dealings with Widmore and why she gave him her boat. Presumably he needed the boat and maybe The Others had a hand in killing Libby's husband?

 

[Ryan8bit]

If characters in the show are having to reiterate what the show was about all along, chances are that they failed at some point at just letting it happen naturally. Pretty much the same thing happened in Voyager, and it was considered poor writing then too.