Anyone else missing LOST?

[coolghoul]

No.

And I loved LOST.

Honestly the ending kind of took the sails and deflated the whole thing somehow. It's still a really well made series, one of the better ones in recent memory. So much of the show just feels meaningless though.

QFT!

And I second it.

Thirded.

I loved LOST. Followed it fairly closely. Listening to the LOST podcasts and such and the finale completely deflated the show.

They just took the original question (asked by fans in s1) - is the island limbo? and turned it into the flash-sideways are limbo.

And didn't answer anything about the island, MIB or ...

Gaah! It makes me sick to think of that finale. It probably wasn't as bad a finale as it seems - but the series had set up sooo much and there was so much detail there. And then for the showrunners to say - "Y'know - all that detail that we put in there - the plot twists we added that you talked endlessly about... That's not what the story is about. It's about characters forgiving themselves and moving on" --- aargh!

It's not that I would have minded character resolutions - but they completely ignored everything else that they had set up. And that was a choice that I as a viewer don't agree with.

So - (in a sense) I want my investment in time back. But then again - it was soooo much fun *during* most of the journey...

 

[RoJoHen]

I continue to be boggled by the people who say the writers didn't answer questions. My response to that is, "Yes, they did. You just obviously weren't paying attention."

 

[coolghoul]

Diff'rent strokes. I find it faintly insulting the way you said it, RojoHen - somehow I read it as if you were saying that you find it mindboggling how I could be so stupid. But hopefully that wasn't your intention. Besides online forums are not a place for thin-skinned people - so no worries.

Please tell me who/what is MIB, Jacob and where they get their mysterious "powers" from. What the hell is the significance of the water that wasn't flowing (or was blocked) and the stupid thingummyjig that had to be "set right". It was a major part of the "fix" that was in the finale. And it didn't make sense to me. It could as well be "Stuff happens. The losties fix things. But pay attention to the limbo story please - that's where the people hug, sing and dance together" if you get my meaning.

Also - I do NOT think I am in the minority in disliking how the series ended. Today Yahoo! is running an article on major 2010 TV letdowns (it's on their tv.yahoo.com page) and guess which one heads the list?

 

[Jetfire]

I don't even think it was the series finale that was bad...it was the whole final season...I am happy just leaving it at S5 since S6 was pretty much blah.

 

[bigdaddy]

I don't even think it was the series finale that was bad...it was the whole final season...I am happy just leaving it at S5 since S6 was pretty much blah.

I agree, it was bad from the beginning of the 6th season. Clearly the show just deflated.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Diff'rent strokes. I find it faintly insulting the way you said it, RojoHen - somehow I read it as if you were saying that you find it mindboggling how I could be so stupid. But hopefully that wasn't your intention. Besides online forums are not a place for thin-skinned people - so no worries.

Please tell me who/what is MIB, Jacob and where they get their mysterious "powers" from. What the hell is the significance of the water that wasn't flowing (or was blocked) and the stupid thingummyjig that had to be "set right". It was a major part of the "fix" that was in the finale. And it didn't make sense to me. It could as well be "Stuff happens. The losties fix things. But pay attention to the limbo story please - that's where the people hug, sing and dance together" if you get my meaning.

Also - I do NOT think I am in the minority in disliking how the series ended. Today Yahoo! is running an article on major 2010 TV letdowns (it's on their tv.yahoo.com page) and guess which one heads the list?

I'm with you coolghoul. I don't want to write a long post like I did in the Lost forum about it back after the finale was on, but basically some people accept "It was magic" as an answer.
Again, yes, the characters got quite a good story, but the show brought up many questions, and we all kow that we were all enthralled by the mystery of the show, but the answers never came....and ending came, but not answers.

 

[C_Miller]

I don't know... I got the answers I wanted... I was happy with where we were left.

 

[Lookingglassman]

Nope. I watched maybe 5 minutes of the whole series while it was on. I was planning to buy the DVDs one day and watch all of them, but so far I havent gotten around to it.

 

[startrekwatcher]

I continue to be boggled by the people who say the writers didn't answer questions. My response to that is, "Yes, they did. You just obviously weren't paying attention."

My response to your response is, "Yes, they did answers some but not all they introduced. And if you as the astute viewer you claim to be don't realize that then *you* were obviously not paying attention".

They did answer questions but they still had plenty of unanswered questions they didn't bother with which is fairly annoying since they kept promising from the first season that the audience wouldn't be left disappointed since they learned from all the botched mythologies that came before them whether The X-Files or Twin Peaks.

So instead of everything coming together as one Big Picture it is just an incomplete mess. You can still watch it in pieces and appreciate the particular individual storylines but don't kid yourself taken in totality they don't add up to much. It also makes a lot of the twists and set-up come across as to be enjoyed in that brief moment for the sake of the OMG reaction than being the beginning of going somewhere and bein adequately developed.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

What questions do you think were left unanswered that deserved answered?

 

[theenglish]

What questions do you think were left unanswered that deserved answered?

I second this question. I have been asking people this since the finale and there is only one question people have come up with that I didn't have an answer for, but it was something that had been explained offscreen in a video game of all things.

The answers might not have been satisfactory but they were there.

The island for example was the cork that kept hell from getting through to our world. Okay, there was no specific religion's hell, but wasn't that the point? Jacob was a generic "agent of heaven"? Yes, many things of the "mysticism" were not explained in "scientific detail" but they did not have to be. That would be like expecting JRR Tolkien to provide gaming stats for Sauron.

 

[Gary7]

I was pretty caught up with LOST into the 5th season. I'd lost interest with season 3, as I found it stretching the limits quite too often. I was glad I came back to it, as the 5th season was a blast. The 6th season went weird... compelling, but hard to take. It was becoming obvious to me that the writers were on a chaotic path and would end up leaving a lot of loose ends. And they did.

I really wished they'd gone to season 7 and done things right. I felt like Carlton and Lindelof took the easy way out. They capitalized far too much on the sentiment. That left me a little bitter... although, I must say, it was also the loss of these great characters I'd come to "know" over the span of the series.

Funny enough, I don't really miss it. I've moved on. I stepped over to Fringe and that series has me even more hooked than LOST, even though I'm fearful of it getting canceled at the end of next season (they moved it to Friday night, a kind of death sentence). I've gone back to the forum I used to frequent (LOST.com), and there are a number of diehards still visiting it every day trying to keep their virtual friendships alive. But little by little, more people drop off. I'd returned once every few weeks and now I've kind of just left it alone. It's really sad to see people still trying to cling to something that has gone.

 

[Gary7]

About the ending, they tried to go "esoteric" and provide multiple or ambiguous meanings. It was convenient, because time was running out... they didn't have enough "video runway" to even cover all of the essentials.

We learn some of Jacob's origins and why his brother became his nemesis (man in black), and how the man in black turned into what he became, but we are left with so many gaping holes... We don't know how the island came to be, or why Jacob's brother was supposed to be the "end of the world" if he escaped. It seemed his only real objective was to leave, to go "back to his people". And then we're given this bizarre "parallel universe" thing, supposedly created by the detonation of the nuke at the Swan site. Then Desmond mysteriously becomes this focal point or liaison between realities. But then, it's not really two realities... it's a kind of "purgatory", where people must await for a kind of "resolution" to take place before they can move on. The real kicker is that we see people escape on the plane from the island (which in of itself was just pathetically ridiculous, physically impossible for a jet engine aircraft to do that) and then appear in this purgatory... did the plane crash? There were plenty of things like this left to question. I felt we deserved to know more.

I kind of half expect Carlton and Lindelof to author some kind of "LOST Mysteries Revealed" DVD at some point, which explains what "really" happened that they just didn't have the time to film. And of course, this would be another money making vehicle for the franchise. Maybe this was part of the intent... think of how many people would have a hard time resisting the purchase of something like that.

 

[theenglish]

And then we're given this bizarre "parallel universe" thing, supposedly created by the detonation of the nuke at the Swan site. Then Desmond mysteriously becomes this focal point or liaison between realities. But then, it's not really two realities... it's a kind of "purgatory", where people must await for a kind of "resolution" to take place before they can move on. The real kicker is that we see people escape on the plane from the island (which in of itself was just pathetically ridiculous, physically impossible for a jet engine aircraft to do that) and then appear in this purgatory... did the plane crash? There were plenty of things like this left to question. I felt we deserved to know more.

Aside from if the plane should be able to take off or not, the purgatory is not any direct result of the nuke. All of the characters lived out their full lives and died at different points in time (hundreds of years in the case of Hugo and Ben) and THEN they arrived in the purgatory. That was clearly explained in the final episode.

 

[C_Miller]

Yeah, Gary7, your questions about the FlashSideways timeline were answered, but a lot of fans were (and still are) extremely confused over that. I personally got it, but I know a lot of people didn't, so it makes me wonder how clear it actually was.

As for all of the other questions, I liked the ambiguity. I have all but written up one giant theory as to why everything happened the way it did (including timeline), which is exactly what I was doing when watching the show. I know a lot of people were coming up with theories throughout the show and that became part of the fun and when I jumped on after it was all over, that became part of the fun for me as well. I loved sitting around over analyzing every glance, every camera angle and every word that came out of our character's mouths and if at the end, they took a check list of every question left unanswered and answered them, I'm sure much of my overarching theory would be shot to hell and I don't think I'd like that very much. Because of some of the ambiguity, people can make theories or hold on to the ones they already have without anyone (besides other fans) saying that they're wrong. In that sense, Lost belongs to all of us.

I heard one idea that Locke and Jack were supposed to represent the different types of viewer. Locke is the one who is willing to let the show (or the Island) take him to where it wants to. He is willing to accept certain things just at face value and is okay when he doesn't understand something. Jack is very proactive and wants answers. Doesn't really believe in a deeper meaning, but when something comes up, he wants to know about it immediately. Neither is right or wrong, even in the show both characters were treated with mutual respect (although in the end, John won out). I am certain more of a Locke person, while I know there are a lot of Jack people out there. Most of my friends are Jacks.

Unfortunately for them, the writers took a Locke approach. Even Lindeloff said that at the heart of the show, it was a character study. The island was there to make the characters get from point a to point b. When you take the show like that, the answers to frivolous things are relatively meaningless.

 

[Australis]

I think the flash-sideways were a copout so they wouldn't have to answer all the questions. Oh yeah, I went there!

What questions weren't answered?
What was the true nature of the Island?
What was the donkey wheel? Really?
What was the statue? Why four toes?

Thosre a the main ones for me. There were a stack more, but I have, quite literally, blocked most of it out, due to sheer disappointment.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

What was the true nature of the Island?

Do you really want this spelled out? In my opinion, this is a classic case of leaving the answer ambiguous. The true nature of the Island can be seen in different ways by different people, but to fully explain that nature would take away the mystery and ultimately wouldn't be a satisfying explanation for most.

What was the donkey wheel? Really?

It was a mystical device initially created by the Man in Black, but later completed by possibly the Egyptians, that manipulated the energy within the Island. Do you really want a technobabble explanation?

What was the statue? Why four toes?

It depicted the Egyptian goddess Taweret. Why not four toes? Maybe this particular branch of the Egyptian civilization developed a belief that their gods had four toes.

 

[Shurik]

The island for example was the cork that kept hell from getting through to our world. Okay, there was no specific religion's hell, but wasn't that the point? Jacob was a generic "agent of heaven"? Yes, many things of the "mysticism" were not explained in "scientific detail" but they did not have to be. That would be like expecting JRR Tolkien to provide gaming stats for Sauron.

The magic cave with the cork and the water was introduced 2 or 3 episodes before the series finale. Up to that point there was no indication that letting MIB out of the Island is bad, other than some characters telling us that Bad Stuff will happen if he leaves. The MIB himself was introduced in 5th season finale, AFAIR. No one said what exactly is that Bad Stuff or how will it affect the outside world.
Tolkien explained and showed pretty well what would happen if Sauron or other bad guys would get free.

So the main and the most important question that was left unanswered was about the nature of the Island, what it was and how did it affect the rest of the world. The rest of the answers can be deduced from it.

 

[bigdaddy]

LOST is a franchise, I think they left it vague so they can milk it some more, but fans are already pissed.

Who was Jacob's and MiB fake mom? Who told her to kill their real mother, who was everyone on the island, how did people get to the island, why was there a spinning thing that made the island movie?

Those I just came up with without sleeping for 20 hours.

 

[Nardpuncher]

What was the true nature of the Island?

Do you really want this spelled out? In my opinion, this is a classic case of leaving the answer ambiguous. The true nature of the Island can be seen in different ways by different people, but to fully explain that nature would take away the mystery and ultimately wouldn't be a satisfying explanation for most.

What was the donkey wheel? Really?

It was a mystical device initially created by the Man in Black, but later completed by possibly the Egyptians, that manipulated the energy within the Island. Do you really want a technobabble explanation?

What was the statue? Why four toes?

It depicted the Egyptian goddess Taweret. Why not four toes? Maybe this particular branch of the Egyptian civilization developed a belief that their gods had four toes.

Please don't start using the word 'technobabble' as it makes the idea of actually explaining anything after look bad.
Many of us have been around Trek and sci-fi enough to know when technobabble is used as a cheap cop-out.
When a TV show like Lost comes to an end, wanting to know the nature of the island is not technobabble.
Do you think I or many others approve of midichlorians?
I've read all of the Harry Potter books as well as LOTR and of course wouldn't dream of asking how magic came to to be. But when you have an island that can actually change its position as well as travel though time I ant something more than "it's a magic place".