Lost - just over 2 years on

[Mr Silver]

I know this might sound pretty sad, but Lost played a big part in my life.

I discovered about a year after it began airing in the USA, when Channel 4 acquired the syndicate rights to broadcast here in the UK. I was absolutely hooked from the first episode and pretty soon I had caught up with the USA airings and I was heavily active in the fandom. At one stage, I was collecting screencaps, interview tidbits and other bits of media for one of the biggest television spoiler sites on the internet. To me, that's pretty extreme, I've not even gone that far with Star Trek. (although I was pretty much still a kid when the last incarnation - ENT, was airing.)

It was great having a show like Lost where a large proportion of the community were really into theorising about the direction of the show, the mythology and characters. Hell, even now the show is finished, there is still a ton of unanswered questions. Even for an obsessive like myself, there's still a lot of bits and pieces about the show that I am puzzled by.

So, since the Lost forum is no more, how about we use this thread to discuss mythology, reminisce and get Lost again!(lame, I know)

 

[trekkiebaggio]

Arrrrgghh Lost!

The last fifteen minutes or so of the finale just completely ruined my love for that show. I swear that ending was worse than some break-ups I've had .

Seriously though, I was pretty obsessed with Lost. I haven't actually re-watched an episode since the finale though.

I didn't watch it at first, it wasn't until after season 2 that I got into it. A bunch of us at uni did marathons of the first 2 seasons, those were great nights. And then carried on watching it weekly from then on.

 

[DonIago]

Bought the whole shebang on Blu Ray and started a rewatch with a friend...unfortunately we had a falling out in early S4. I haven't watched it since, but I'm getting a new tv quite soon and will either get other friends to do a rewatch or pick up where I left off. I must say the show looks and sounds spectacular in Blu!

I still think it's one of the best shows I've ever seen, and rank the finale quite highly, though Six Feet Under would still edge it out.

 

[Captain Craig]

I was so into LOST. It was the show that my then girlfriend and I were both passionate about. Even after we broke up we'd use that as an excuse to talk. Then the show ended just like all the internet thinkers had predicted while being told by the showrunners for a few years "no, no it's not that". Our schtick now is "I hope _____ doesn't end as bad as LOST".

I sold my DVD's, the show is now just a show I used to watch. I have no passion for it at all. Unlike say the Trek shows, Farscape, or X-Files I 'lost' any desire to even pop in the good episodes. When I'd watch an isolated episode of the other shows there was some satisfaction with how things ended and I don't have that with LOST due to an unsatisfactory conclusion.

 

[od0_ital]

Watched the whole thing on DVD...don't really feel a need to revisit it. There are so few "standalone" episodes, everything ties in with everything else. Just feels like an "all or nothin'" sort of show to watch. So, I opt for nothin'.

They got my money, though. Bought the first five seasons when they were on sale at Target before the sixth season started, and then rented the sixth season disc by disc from Blockbuster when it came out.

 

[auntiehill]

I LOVE LOST. I even liked the ending because it did leave some things unanswered.

I loved having to watch carefully and try to untangle all the strange bits of information. It was like a treasure hunt, discovering all the connections between the characters and trying to figure out the history of the island. I really miss that; there just isn't a show that has that much going on, that requires some effort on my part; it felt like participating, in a way, with the story.

 

[Dream]

LOST is a love or hate show. Probably no show gets such strong reactions.

I'm in the love catagory, though I admit it had plenty of flaws.

Don't plan on doing a rewatch of the entire show any time soon, but I do rewatch the occasional standout episode or season finale. No show does better season finales than LOST.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Besides the show there's two things I miss about Lost. One is the insane daily search for the latest spoilers even if it was just an episode title and the other is just the crazy theorizing about what it all meant. A lot of fans came up with some totally off the wall weird shit that made what went on in the show look normal in comparison.

 

[Mr Silver]

just the crazy theorizing about what it all meant. A lot of fans came up with some totally off the wall weird shit that made what went on in the show look normal in comparison.

I was actually thinking about some of that stuff today, specifically the Man in Black and what he was exactly. The apparent simplified version is that Jacob's Brother (unnamed of course, the insistence that his name had to be Esau was annoying) came into contact with the source, and had his conciousness zapped from his body and implanted into the cloud of black smoke.

Of course, there is also the unwritten possibility that the Man in Black is a symbiotic entity, an entity in which Jacob's Brother is one of many entities that make up "the darkness", with the idea being that he has somehow become the dominant entity through his "special" nature.

I remember all the speculation about the "Mother" character and how people were saying left, right and centre that she was also a smoke monster. This was evidenced by the fact that she was apparently single-handedly able to massacre an entire community without so much as a scratch. I personally think that she just perverted the "abilities" granted to her as protector of the island to massacre the community, an act of which, other protectors like Jacob, Jack or Hurley wouldn't even consider doing because it's not in their nature. Anyway, I'm drifting.

We saw some skeletons as Desmond walked into the source cave, suggesting that MIB's transformation may have been a unique occurrence. Desmond is naturally exempt from the normal rules, since he is immune to the lethal effects of EM radiation. Jack didn't turn into a smoke monster, although the source was inactive at the time he ventured into the cave. (and his intention was to restart the source, not exploit it like MIB and others intended to do) Of course, it may also be that the Island's protector can freely venture into the source with no ill effects - assuming that the protector of the Island is still recognised as such until death, regardless of whether they have performed the succession ritual, and also assuming that Jack died of his stab wound and not because of exposure to the source.

Thoughts?

 

[DonIago]

My main thought is that I'd really like to know what happened to the folks who ultimately got off the island.

 

[Relayer1]

All along I trusted that they'd got a great ending. I sort of knew they hadn't - there just isn't anything that could have made a satisfactory conclusion/explanation, but if there WAS it would just have to be fantastic ! And I trusted.

Oh, they're dead. Lame copout doesn't cut it. I still want every hour I spent watching that show back...

 

[sidious618]

I miss the show but I really enjoyed the last season and adored the finale so I feel pretty satisfied.

 

[Dream]

Oh, they're dead. Lame copout doesn't cut it. I still want every hour I spent watching that show back...

How was it a copout? Did you even understand it?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I've got it queued up on netflix streaming. Someday, I'll do a big run thru of it again, tho my hunch is, it wont be nearly as fun without the plot twist suprises.

I keep wanting someone to re-edit the whole series in chronological order and put it on youtube. That hasn't happened yet, has it? That would be a great way to rewatch the whole thing. ABC should do it and make a little more $$$.

My main thought is that I'd really like to know what happened to the folks who ultimately got off the island.

I bet Sawyer and Kate had uneventful lives and finally died of old age. Sawyer was probably the crankiest old a-hole who ever lived!

What's everyone's favorite theory that never panned out?

Mine was the notion that the island was a chunk of a sentient Solaris type planet that crashed on Earth eons ago, and all the weird stuff was its attempt to communicate with humans.

Another favorite (possibly compatible with the Solaris theory): the island was a nexus between realities, and in one reality, everyone really was killed in the crash - the faked crash under the ocean was real, in one of the parallel realities.

The need to enter and exit the island on exactly the right heading was because of the need to hit the right corridor for your own reality and not a parallel reality.

 

[Mr Silver]

It wasn't really a copout, they weren't "dead all along". The flash-sideways thing was done to provide closure to all of the characters that fans of the show really cared about. The point of the ending was to show that the characters had formed such strong bonds with each other that they couldn't "move on" until everybody had died. The FS was some kind of purgatory that each of them lived in until Desmond began helping everybody remember.

Jack was in denial, it took Christian Shephard to convince him that the FS purgatory wasn't really his life. The final episode was all about character resolution and ending the show as it began - with each of the characters together.

I felt at least half of Season 6 was wasted, given that a lot of the important mythos that required answers, wasn't even covered. Important characters such as Ilana were discarded without actually recieving a centric episode and Charles Widmore's return to the island wasn't really explained all that well either.

Despite doing an incredible job, Terry O'Quinn should have stuck to playing Locke and not MIB. If I had been writing the show, I would have kept Locke alive, in a scenario where he would be taken from the island against his will at the end of season 4. This would then mean that MIB could take on the form of Christian Shephard, as it was always intended apparently, to be a nemesis to the de facto main character of Jack.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

It wasn't really a copout, they weren't "dead all along". The flash-sideways thing was done to provide closure to all of the characters that fans of the show really cared about. The point of the ending was to show that the characters had formed such strong bonds with each other that they couldn't "move on" until everybody had died. The FS was some kind of purgatory that each of them lived in until Desmond began helping everybody remember.

Although I thought it was a bit lame that Sayid's 'big true love' was Shannon when all he'd been banging on about for the past few seasons was Nadia.

 

[DonIago]

Yeah, Sayid-Shannon seemed like unadulterated fan service...except...I'm sorry, who were the fans of that? Though having Nadia show up there would also have been a bit odd, especially as she never spent time on the island. Though the same could be said of Penny.

Poor Boone and Locke have nobody to move on with...except each other? Were there any other unattached people in the church?

It boggles my mind that anyone who saw the finale is still espousing the "they were dead all along" argument, as I thought that was unambiguously explained.

 

[auntiehill]

But with Nadia, he had too much guilt--guilt over the torture, guilt over what he became after she was killed, etc. With Shannon, it was a clean slate for both of them. That's why, in the FS, he had to make peace with Nadia and the past she represented, and finally walk away from it. With Shannon, he lived in the moment, and not the past. I thought the scene where the finally meet again was really lovely.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

And where were Nikki and Paulo?!

 

[DonIago]

Heh. I was still hoping for S4 to feature a Nikki-Paulo Zombie Apocalypse!

During our rewatch we made a point of noting anytime either of them was on screen that it was important to remember that -they were there the whole time-.