Does A Bad Final Year Ruin A TV Show's Memory?

[Skellington]

A bad final year can certainly leave a lasting bitter taste in the mouth, especially if it exposes a lack of proper planning throughout the run of the series. Battlestar Galactica is certainly no exception.

Spoiler: BSG 4.0 and 4.5.

The inclusion of All Along The Watchtower at the end of season 3 seemed to place the story no earluier than the 1960s, yet the show's final scene appeasrs to contradict this (not to mention requiring certain plot contrivances) just because Ron Moore wanted a shot of a blonde in a red dress walking through New York City. He couldn't just have watched The Matrix?

Speaking of The Matrix, the last few eps of BSG only seem to work if you "take the blue pill" and forego any real critical judgement of it; at least in terms of plot, continuity and logic. It's very much a performance-led show in my opinion, with the actors (and composer Bear McCreary) rising to the challenge

I could go on about season 4. The existence of the resurrection hub and the skinjobs' utter depence on it makes the attacks on humanity look moronic and suicidal. The reason for the sleeper agent program is never explained, and nor is the baffling attitude of other charactersd towards Ellen, Athena and Boomer. After the mutiny arc the show seems to leave any semblance of organic storytelling behind and go down the rabbit-hole into a realm governed by drsam logic - and this from a show that formerly seemed to pride itself on realistic storytelling (as compared to the norm for televised sci-fi). BSG, so great at times, basically became a gordian knot that the discernuing viewer might be well-advised not to bother with. Characters we used to like end up doing things that are monstrous, way out of character, incomprehensible or a mixture of two or more of those things.

Also, Boomer's final scenes are just made of wrong.

 

[Elzie]

Just the name of this topic instantly reminded me of Lost. Oh dear. It wasn't my favourite show for long - thanks to Heroes - but I was a big fan. Season 1-3 are, in my opinion, much better than 4-6, but I never missed an episode.

I was hoping for a miracle after season 5, but no one seemed to hear it; I just blindly believed that everything - probably - would be explained on seaon 6. But it wasn't. And as much I loved the show, there word 'lost' does not only remind me of the series, but the finale...I felt betrayed!

Another failure was Heroes. I loved season 1, alot, and it was my favourite show. I got tired of waiting for season 2, so I watched from net, and though I was slightly confused -the quality did drop quite a lot - I tried to ignore it.

Season 3 I also watched from net - luckily, because they just showed it, and it was maybe like...11.30 pm - and I just kept thinking, 'It's Heroes!' Yeah. Right.
I did watch season 4, but I kneww pretty much from the start that the series was going down.

Season 4 cliffhanger was interesting, but I'm fine even if they just do a movie about it. (That's what's been rumoured). Still, I don't mind if they do nothing.

So, my answer to the question is shortly; I'm afraid so.

Thank God/anyone for CHUCK!

 

[RoJoHen]

People who say that LOST didn't explain things need to go back and watch it again.

 

[Nardpuncher]

People who say that LOST didn't explain things need to go back and watch it again.

It told a couple of the minor things but many of us would've liked to more about the nature of the island.

It wouldn't need to make scientific sense...just whatever the creators wanted...make the island the last part of Atlantis, make it Eden, make it a colony of Egyptian gods, but go with something.

The whispers and why Richard was immortal and what Smokey was were secondary or tertiary questions to the big one of what the island was. And don't go with the cork in the bottle, as that was a nice allegory, but who made it? Was it made at all? Why could it move? Why could it be dislodged from time? You don't have a show where islands can move through space and time without more of a reason than there was a bright light called The Source on it. Not all of the show should have its mysteries explained by "It was magic".

I think the show pulled a bait and switch like The Matrix sequels did when they turned the goal of the heroes from dismantling the Matrix and freeing all humans to the goal inexplicably becoming stopping Agent Smith. So then when Neo stops him you're told that it's done.

The goal of Lost was not to see the Smoke Monster shot in the back. It started a great mysterious thing that showed up every dozen or so episodes in the first few seasons to becoming the bad guy.
Also, many people were really wondering what in the world the Smoke Monster could be..it was so darn strange...then you see that it's Jacob's brother who got thrown into a white light that was only introduced the that very same episode and then he turns into a pillar of smoke that sounds like the meter on a New York taxi. It was basically "a wizard did it" thing.
Same with Richard....for no good reason he asks Jacob to make him immortal even though I'd think that would be almost the last thing someone would want after the love of their life has just died.
The four toed statue...we never get to see who built it, or why it had four toes. Sure there are statues all over the world that don't really need explanation, but a fictional one with four toes is a bit of a cheat and a tease if you never tell more about it.

I've heard it said "Well, what do you expect? Nothing could live up to the hype" and it's true that it would be impossible for the show to have some 6th Sense type ending that blows your mind like the answer to a great riddle, but they really didn't go with anything.

Saying that it was about the characters at the end is a nice try too. Sure that stuff was great as they slowly came to remember each other again. But it would be like a murder mystery slowly turning from solving the astounding murder to just focusing on the characters.

 

[LitmusDragon]

I actually have the opposite problem with Lost that a lot of people had with the ending. I thought they answered too much, and that the answers they gave, were lame on the whole.

Spoiler: Lost

A cork? Really? I would rather Jack had went into the mysterious light-cave and something ambiguous happened off-camera. At least then there'd be something to talk about.

Speaking of the light-cave, I don't think we needed to see that, the literal heart of the island as a shiny cave.

The afterlife stuff was the worst of all though. I just can't really invest emotionally in that storyline because it's so absurd. So, when we die, we go to a fantasy world and forget all of our previous history so that we'll feel better about ourselves?

Don't get me wrong, it's hard to design an afterlife. It's hard to write one. So why write one at all? Is this integral to the story in any way? No? Then why go there?

 

[sidious618]

You guys are crazy. The LOST finale was brilliant.

Agreed. I've seen it 5 times already.

I keep rewatching certain scenes on youtube. It's an addiction!

 

[startrekwatcher]

WARNING LOST SERIES SPOILERS BELOW
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I have rewatched the LOST series finale a few times to see if I judged it too harshly but I honestly can't see how anyone can say it is brilliant or excellent. Sure there are a *few* isolated moments character-wise that are nice but they were few and far between--certainly not enough to save an otherwise flawed story.

There are so many things that fail. For instance, LOST was a series that excelled at action sequences--just look at the S4 finale or the S3 finale--yet this finale the best they could come up with was a brief fistfight on top of a mountain that lacked no tension whatsoever.

The season as a whole failed to effectively build tension up to an exciting conclusion in the finale. There was no urgency--it was lethargic. The season was drawn out padded with a whole bunch of back and forth from camp to camp every episode. Instead of using the remaining screentime to provide interesting revelations or tell myth stories they just sat around. A lot of stuff introduced over the course of the series especially in S5 which felt like a major set-up season to lead into the final year amounts to nothing more than teases for the sake of being teases in hindsight as well as coming across as nothing more than just plot points with no serious development--a problem that plagued Heroes post S1 and contributed to a share of its weaknesses. I mean if you sit back and follow the life of the various storylines the show began you can see that while some were pretty well developed a lot of them were just teases and that is annoying. Teases are okay for immediate gratification but you kinda expect for them to be a springboard into something more--and a lot of times they weren't. They were there as a mere gimmick to give us a visceral "Wow!" reaction and that was it.

Kelvin, Jacob's cabin, the statue, Alvar Hanso, modern day Dharma, the ancient civilization--all set up seemingly meant to come together in some way but never did--I would have to hope that these stories would have been more interesting than the stories we were actually treated to in S6. Widmore became intriguing in S5 but was nothing more than a wasted plot device in S6. The Coming War foreshadowed in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" fizzled. S5 made Jacob and Smokey intriguing figures and S6 turned them into very dull characters with ill-defined unsatisfying motives. I mean there were a lot of times in S6 where the show seemed to be heading to an interesting direction but they'd pull back and go in the most straightforward uninteresting way you could imagine.

What were the great character arcs everyone is talking about? For Sun--to hit her head and write on a piece of paper? Jin being kidnapped by the Temple Others then Claire then Widmore? The erratic characterization of Sayid that even the writers strained to explain in interviews as well as the whole point of his "resurrection"? Claire's return felt pointless other than to explain where she had been since S4. What did Kate do that was so great? The one potentially interesting subplot developing involving Kate/Claire again a dead end plot point. Hurley's stupidity was highlighted with his boneheaded behavior involving the Black Rock.

The answers we did get were lame--the whispers, the mystery of the island, the smoke monster's origin, Jacob's origin story.

While the resolution to the sideway arc was satisfying I can't say the road to that point was all that satisfying or worthwhile--now in hindsight those scenes come across as contrived for the sole purpose of bing red herrings--the whole Jin/Sun/Keamey story, Sawyer the cop, Kate on the run, David the son etc etc. I thought they were boring before and the context would make them come off better the second time around but not really.

The series produced some of the most boring recurring characters with Dolgen and Lennon. Ilana got a piss poor exit and no flashback story as most characters over the series would get.

S5 did a better job in stirring nostalgia via its time jumps and revisiting moments from the series than the forced cameos and reminders that littered this final season.

I'm sorry I'm a big fan of LOST and loved it but I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for it and turn a blind eye to the problems in S6 and the finale. The writing quality was worthy of something from post-S1 Heroes. The writers just didn't care. So the questions they did answer were poor, some of the character stuff in the finale was obviously just rushed in its thought process. I'm sorry but TNG's AGT, BSG's Daybreak, MASH's finales were all superior to this botched half-ass mess.

 

[sidious618]

Obviously not everyone shares your opinion.

 

[T'Bonz]

I was a huge China Beach fan. The last season *sucked* big time. It rather ruined the show for me.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Warning - LOST Series Finale spoilers ahead!


Interesting that people seem to really love the LOST finale...or really hate it. Not much middle ground. But I think that different people hate it for different reasons.

Some hate it because they feel it didn't answer enough of the open questions. While I fundamentally agree that it left a lot of open questions, that is actually not the reason why I dislike the ending.

I dislike the ending because it didn't make sense.

For one thing, I did not understand why it had to be Jack who replugged the hole. Here you have the character who they led us to believe for 6 years was 'The Guy' die a totally pointless death for something we never fully understood the value of. And then out of that, we are handed the biggest (and lamest) bait and switch ever to be shown on TV. Hurley was always The Guy? Seriously? I mean, DUDE!

I was good up to the point Jack killed MIB. I was on board until then. But when Desmond could have plugged that hole WITHOUT risking death, why would Jack do it? Why would he need to (except for the convenient plot devise that Des was unconscious...when it was shown in HEA that he could be revived pretty quickly - one would think ESPECIALLY by a doctor)? I mean, it's like two guys standing outside an infected room...and the guy in street clothes, standing NEXT to the guy in the HAZMAT suit, rushes in to destroy the contagion. Sorry..but that is just not a Meaningful Death of a Hero to me. That is more like...Pointless Death of a Dumb Guy.

Next, there is the inconsistency issue with regard to how one becomes a Smoke Monster. With the exception of Desmond (who was determined to be sort of 'immune' from the effects of the light) only two people had ever been down that hole before Jack - MIB, and MIB & Jacob's Mom. And both of them turned into Smoke Monsters. MIB was not 'like Jacob' and Mom was 'like Jacob' - but in both cases, entrance into the hole rendered them Smoke Monsters. So why was Jack not turned into a Smoky when he replaced the plug? He was flushed out the back end like MIB was...but he did not become a Smoke Monster. Why not?

Next, we have the issue of the island and it's healing power. Why wasn't Jack healed of the stab wound, when we had seen the island heal everything from other stab wounds to cancer? If he had just stayed still instead of dramatically staggering out into the bamboo field, he might have lived.

And all of this, while a guy like Ben (who ALSO could have plugged the hole and died just as easily as Jack....and in that act found some redemption, at least!) stood around, STILL manipulating people up to the minute before Jack goes down the rope...so that in the supposed 'happy ending' to this show he becomes the #2 to Hurley...a guy who is not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, and who would be easily manipulated by Ben for Ben's own purposes, until, like, the end of time? Without even a Richard Alpert around to reel in constant manipulation and lies?

Lovely.

Jack died unnecessarily in a very contrived fashion. They give us the 'payoff' of him killing MIB...and then they snatch it away from us with his pointless and unnecessary death, sticking a rock back in a hole to save some cave of light which was never really explained enough for us to appreciate it's full value (we only have vague speculation leading us to believe that it had 'some' value - what level, we do not know...nor do we know the nature of that value). Shoot - he didn't even save the people on the plane - Frank did that as he took off, the ground already collapsing beneath the wheels of the plane.

I guess Jack's death saved Ben, Hurley, Desmond (what happened to him anyway? I mean, after he collapsed?) and Vincent. But those guys are hardly a reason to kill off the series hero - especially since two of those characters would have been better choices to plug the hole.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Warning - LOST spoilers follow!

Great post. And I pretty much agree with you. Some comments on some things that really resonated:

Instead of using the remaining screentime to provide interesting revelations or tell myth stories they just sat around.

This was an issue for me as well, during S6. How long did sundry characters sit around at the Temple, for example? About 1/3 of the season. And the sad part is that during all that time, the Temple's significance to The Others was never really explained!

The erratic characterization of Sayid that even the writers strained to explain in interviews as well as the whole point of his "resurrection"?

I never got this at all. Going into S6, Sayid was one of my favorite characters, but IMO was completely destroyed in S6. There was nothing of the bad-ass Sayid we had grown to love in this season. No redemption for his past crimes (which was supposedly the point of this character for 5 seasons). Instead, he sat around looking stoned for 3/4 of the season. And then died. Truthfully, I'd have rather him have died from the gunshot wound at the end of S5. Would have been a better ending to this character than what we got.

Claire's return felt pointless other than to explain where she had been since S4.

But what made her wander off without Aaron? I don't think that was sufficiently explained. Plus, to bring her back for this quasi-'plot' with Kate was lame, considering it went nowhere and that they could have used the time for more important things. Most of us had stopped caring all that much about Claire since she'd been gone for 2 seasons. So why did they bring her back?

Hurley's stupidity was highlighted with his boneheaded behavior involving the Black Rock.

And Jack died happy, knowing Hurley was running the show? I mean, I know he learned to 'let go', but no one could 'let go' enough to happily leave Hurley at the helm.

I'm sorry I'm a big fan of LOST and loved it but I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for it and turn a blind eye to the problems in S6 and the finale. The writing quality was worthy of something from post-S1 Heroes. The writers just didn't care. So the questions they did answer were poor, some of the character stuff in the finale was obviously just rushed in its thought process. I'm sorry but TNG's AGT, BSG's Daybreak, MASH's finales were all superior to this botched half-ass mess.

I agree with this, except for one statement - the part about the writers not caring. I think they cared. But they cared about the wrong things. They cared about appearing to be 'clever', right to the bitter end. Thus all the mind f**ks in the finale. They actually cared about that a lot more than they cared about giving us a satisfying ending. Which was too bad.

 

[Mr Light]

I didn't love or hate the finale, I was just lukewarm to it. It was disappointing and anti-climactic but I could live with it. The flash-sideways were a massive waste of time but that final scene in the church was good, and I cried like a baby when the dog showed up.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

DS9 comes off the best, because the awful Pah-wraiths/red eye Dukat/Jesus Sisko arc doesn't outweigh all the good of the last season and the finale.

Agreed. I love "What You Leave Behind," although I agree with everyone else about what its problems were. The Gul Dukat/Pagh'wraiths storyline ended in a very miscalculated, unsubtle way. It's also a shame that they never really addressed Captain Sisko's original mission on the station-- to prepare Bajor for entry into the Federation. But then, I suppose that was bound to be overlooked once the Dominion started to take over the series back in Season 3. I'm also ambivalent about Odo leaving Kira at the end. I understand his reasons but I'm just not sure I buy it considering how much we had invested in Odo's feelings for her going back to Season 3.

Still, "What You Leave Behind" was far more good than bad, as was the rest of Season 7. The Dominion War arc kicked ass! (Even if they recycled a lot of space battle footage in the finale.) The endings for nearly all the characters are brilliant! And I always cry when Vic Fontaine sings "The Way You Look Tonight."

I think Roswell's final season was good but not nearly as good as the 1st 2. Overall, after the end of Season 2, it seemed like the show just didn't know where to go, both in terms of alien mythology & the Michael/Maria romance. Jesse was boring. Jim Valenti no longer served a purpose now that he wasn't the sheriff. With Tess gone, there were no longer any compelling obstacles in the Max/Liz romance. Season 3 was mostly a lot of stumbling around trying to find a new direction. Mostly, all they did was kill time with the Max-in-Hollywood plotline, the Isabel/Jesse wedding, and the Metachem conspiracy/Max's death & resurrection storyline. Then there was the pointlessly repetitive Maria-tries-to-revive-her-music-career storyline. (In "Ch-ch-changes," Maria lands a music contract but balks when she's told that she won't have creative control over her songs. Liz talks her into taking the deal anyway. Then, in "Panacea," Maria arrives in New York to record some songs and is again told that she doesn't have any creative control over them. While she begrudgingly accepted that in "Ch-ch-changes," she acts completely surprised when it happens in "Panacea" even though she already had all of this information before.)

 

[Nardpuncher]

Obviously not everyone shares your opinion.

What kind of response is that?

The sky is blue while we're at it.

 

[sidious618]

Obviously not everyone shares your opinion.

What kind of response is that?

The sky is blue while we're at it.

Normally I'd agree but startrekwatcher pretty blatantly said you can't call the finale brilliant. Well, you can because people's opinions vary.

 

[Brolan]

I was disappointed with Lost too but at least we got some warning at the end of season two. That was the time of famous four-toed statue (which was never explained)sighting. I realized they hadn't explained much of anything yet and they weren't going to ever explain all the "mysteries" they created.

 

[sidious618]

That was the time of famous four-toed statue (which was never explained)sighting.

What?! How could you say they didn't explain that? There were whole episodes involving the statue.

 

[Nardpuncher]

That was the time of famous four-toed statue (which was never explained)sighting.

What?! How could you say they didn't explain that? There were whole episodes involving the statue.

I really am starting to think we're on different wavelengths.

There are a couple of episodes where we see the statue more, but not much was explained or revealed.

We see the statue in its complete form, we see it get smashed by a boat ( I had slightly higher expectations for its demise than it got accidentally hit by something) and we know that for some reason Jacob stays in the base.
Other than the fact that the god Tarrawet is kind of a hippotamus and hippos have four toes, there was no explanation given for the four toes.
The thing some people will say is that there are many mysteries in life that go unexplained (like Stonehenge or Easter island's statues) but this is a fictional show and it was explicity pointed out by Sayid that it had four toes..so the audience doesn't expect the creators to be that, well I guess the word is "sneaky" as to create such a fascinating thing as a broken four-toed statue and then not explain it at all.

 

[startrekwatcher]

That was the time of famous four-toed statue (which was never explained)sighting.

What?! How could you say they didn't explain that? There were whole episodes involving the statue.

When? The only times we ever saw the statue was briefly in the S2 finale, the back of the statue for a few scant seconds in "This Place is Death", briefly in the S5 finale teaser and then as a set piece in some early S6 episodes. But no history or origin was ever provided for it. Who built it? Why? Some neat backstory conjured up by the writers--nope none of that.

 

[sidious618]

Dear God. The statue is an Egyptian monument to an ancient deity. The Egyptians have been on the Island just like many other cultures and they made this statue while they were there. Jacob then moved in and made it his home.

That's the answer. You may not like it but it's dishonest to say that there was never an answer.