The one-season solution

[Alidar Jarok]

I never saw Lost, but for a show that ran 7 years, a lot of people seemed upset at how it ended. Maybe it should have been a one-season wonder.

Two things. Six seasons and they definitely did more than a season's worth. Maybe not six, but I don't think one season would have been enough (particularly with how good season one was, but how it couldn't really have ended there).

The last season is criticized, but I don't think the show ran out of steam, they just had a difficult time pulling off a meaningful enough final season (I still think it was above average television, it just suffers compared to previous seasons). I don't think a shorter show would have necessarily ended any better.

 

[Timby]

It's easy to see in hindsight how some shows would have benefited from a more limited run (or at least the producers knowing when their definitive endpoint would be), but let's face it -- in most cases, that really, really isn't realistic. Taking the example of How I Met Your Mother, that was a show facing cancellation for its first three seasons, and then CBS kept on ordering more seasons to the point that I practically screamed, "NOBODY ASKED YOU FOR A NINTH SEASON, PATRICE!" The financial realities of television pretty much dictate that if a show is making a network money, they're going to want more.

That being said, I'm really glad Firefly ended when it did, because if it had run longer I think I would have just gotten tired of it pretty quickly. But Glee is the show that I really think had one good season's worth of ideas across what's been produced thus far and it would have really benefited from being a one-time event.

 

[the G-man]

Second what Timby said about Glee

 

[Australis]

I never saw Lost, but for a show that ran 7 years, a lot of people seemed upset at how it ended. Maybe it should have been a one-season wonder.

No they could have done 3-5 seasons easily, they just never had a plan for the show. And I think it only ran six movies.

Only show ever I gave up with only 2-4 episodes left. That's how bad the planing was.

This. They kept throwing in weird stuff without answering the original weird stuff. A little mystery i all very well, but nwhen you heap them on and answer very few, it sucks. IMO.

 

[Ethros]

Dollhouse


I know it did end up being two seasons, but had it been touted as a 2-3 season plan from the beginning I think more may have stuck with it (and the first season would have been a lot tighter)

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I never saw Lost, but for a show that ran 7 years, a lot of people seemed upset at how it ended. Maybe it should have been a one-season wonder.

No they could have done 3-5 seasons easily, they just never had a plan for the show. And I think it only ran six movies.

Only show ever I gave up with only 2-4 episodes left. That's how bad the planing was.

This. They kept throwing in weird stuff without answering the original weird stuff. A little mystery i all very well, but nwhen you heap them on and answer very few, it sucks. IMO.

Lost actually did answer the vast majority of mysteries. Just, instead of having some guy come out and make a big expository speech 'BWA HA HA! I was behind it all the whole time. I did this and this and this for this specific reason!', they made you pay attention to get some of the answers. Almost everything that happened in the show was explained in some way. And I'm glad they didn't do that because it would have cheapened the impact to have everything boil down to one central cause.

But I definitely agree season 6 should have been more focused on solving existing problems. I do like the way they threw in the Jacob backstory in the second to last episode, but the problem is more that the show contracted 'Heroes syndrome', that characters seemed to be splintering off arbitrarily, falling into things with no logical connection between cause and effect, and never able to focus on the same goal for more than two episodes in a row.

 

[shivkala]

Lost actually did answer the vast majority of mysteries. Just, instead of having some guy come out and make a big expository speech 'BWA HA HA! I was behind it all the whole time. I did this and this and this for this specific reason!', they made you pay attention to get some of the answers. Almost everything that happened in the show was explained in some way. And I'm glad they didn't do that because it would have cheapened the impact to have everything boil down to one central cause.

But I definitely agree season 6 should have been more focused on solving existing problems. I do like the way they threw in the Jacob backstory in the second to last episode, but the problem is more that the show contracted 'Heroes syndrome', that characters seemed to be splintering off arbitrarily, falling into things with no logical connection between cause and effect, and never able to focus on the same goal for more than two episodes in a row.

Exactly! Must has been written about those supposedly unanswered questions from Lost. Though, I do have to add, there were a few un-aired scenes, that have been posted before (I'm of the belief that if you were really worried about it, you would have already seen them, so I won't post links here).

Was Lost perfect? Absolutely not. A planned end-date from the beginning would have made it a whole lot better. However, as has been posted here, we're not going to see that on US network television anytime soon. Thankfully, some of the cable networks are understanding this (FX, in particular) and addressing it with season-long anthologies.

 

[Australis]

The statue?
The nature of the island?
Limbo? Really? (that was especially disappointing because Ashes to Ashes went the exact same route).
Te exact reason behindf all the bases?

Theree's probably a bunch of stuff I've forgotten, but that's because of my overwhelming disappoint ment. Up until the end of s4, I was going to buy the whole lot on DVD to pour over it. Nowe, I won't even watch repeatss.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It wasn't limbo.

It was (by the final season) a new timeline but Hurley remembered both timelines, and then magicked everyone else into remembering the old timeline despite never having lived it because he was now magic, and took them back to the island to live happily ever after because some of them used to be in love and should be together despite never ever meeting in the new timeline.

 

[shivkala]

The statue?

From the Cracked article I linked to earlier:

QUESTION 5: Who built the Statue?
ANSWER 5: Why?

The longer answer here is "Egyptians." The longest answer is "Egyptians, probably."

This is in another category of question that doesn't work. It's the same as wanting to know where Jacob's mother came from. Chances are the answer is "brought there by someone else." OK, then where did THAT person come from? Who was THAT person's mother or father? This is information that belongs in an appendix of an Extended Universe Encyclopedia, not the narrative of a television show. If you want to learn more about Midi-chlorians and who Boba Fett's father is, just get the Expansion Guide. The Statue wasn't there because it was integral to the plot. It was there to enrich the setting in which the story played out.

The nature of the island?

Again, in the article I linked:

QUESTION 2: What is the Island?
ANSWER 2: Magic.

The longer answer for this is "The Island is a conscious place that can travel through time and space. It contains the source of all life. Water and Light combine at its center to form an energy that fuels Life, Death and Rebirth throughout existence. The Island, like all life, can make choices and be manipulated. If the light at the Source of the Island ever goes out, everything ends."

But the shorter answer is still "Magic." Magic is actually the answer to many Unanswered Questions, and if you hate that fact, then LOST just wasn't for you. Since the beginning, the central argument in the show was about Science vs. Faith. As it turns out, the winner of that battle is "a little bit of both." Our protagonist Jack started out as a man of Science, and he saved the world after he learned to balance his beliefs with his new found Faith in the Island. John Locke, on the other hand, operated on blind faith, and it broke him. He helped save the Island, but he also ended up being the face of the villain. On the other hand, Jack, the balanced one, was our hero.


Balanced.

So, yeah, Science won a little and Faith won a little. Among the show's sci-fi elements, like time travel and pushing a button every 108 minutes to stop the end of the world, there is also magic and ghosts and an afterlife. There is the unexplainable; a Monster in the jungle, and Magic on Magic Island.

Limbo? Really? (that was especially disappointing because Ashes to Ashes went the exact same route).

Well, the article calls it "Purgatory" and not "Limbo," but "Potato"/"Potato"

QUESTION 1: "So, it was purgatory, yeah? Right? YEAH?!?"

ANSWER 1: No.

Apparently a lot of people think that the Island was purgatory and everyone was dead the whole time. In a recent the Verge interview, Lindelof was asked why he made the whole show bloody purgatory. Lindelof spent the next few minutes explaining to the interviewer that everything on the Island happened in real life and the show was not, in fact, purgatory. Of course, all Lindelof had to do was show him a line from the finale: "Everything that's happened to you is real." Pretty straight forward, but maybe it would have helped if the Architect from The Matrix said it.


"... ergo, the Island is a series of tubes. Ergo, other stuff."

The likely cause for this false theory is that over the credits of the finale, ABC chose to show images of the crashed plane in silence, with no characters around. It was apparently meant to simply allow the audience to reflect on the series, not to claim anything about the plot of the show. The characters did not die when their plane crashed. I COULD stress that enough, but I guess I just don't want to take the time.

Te exact reason behindf all the bases?

Theree's probably a bunch of stuff I've forgotten, but that's because of my overwhelming disappoint ment. Up until the end of s4, I was going to buy the whole lot on DVD to pour over it. Nowe, I won't even watch repeatss.

QUESTIONS 9-108: The rest.

Satisfied with the answers or not, the answers are there. Sometimes the answer is Magic, sometimes it's the Island, and sometimes your question is dumb. But each question does have an answer. If you read the remainder of these and find that you still have questions, feel free to message me or send one to this LOST Answers blog. I still have some creator-approved things to say about Christian Shephard, Jack becoming a new Smoke Monster, and many other things that may or may not blow your mind. Ask me sometime.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I do like that a lot of shows do seem to be keeping their seasons focused on a single story arc so that there's a beginning and end each season even if it leaves openings for more. It helps when a series is cancelled prematurely to have some sense of closure.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Spoiler: LOST

Looks like that guy is calling the flash-sideways an alternate timeline and afterlife created by the nuclear detonation but the ending revealed them to be simply flash-forwards to the afterlife. Looks like he also throws in a bit of his own conjecture when he suggests that Jack became the new smoke monster. Also, he didn't provide an answer to why the pictures on the wall in the house that Miles visited had changed.

 

[Australis]

IN this Age of Reason, Magic Is No Answer.

And in my world, Cracked, was a MAD wannabe. So I've never gone there. Note also, external source, the answers were not 'in-show', which is sloppy writing to me.

But thanks for posting that.

 

[the G-man]

IN this Age of Reason, Magic Is No Answer.

And in my world, Cracked, was a MAD wannabe. So I've never gone there. Note also, external source, the answers were not 'in-show', which is sloppy writing to me.

But thanks for posting that.

I know a guy who was one of the writers for cracked website. He said that the articles especially the ones about real-life things are fairly heavily fact checked. But that was several years ago.

The other interesting thing about that site, which I still visit regularly, is that it slowly morphing away from being a humor site into simply a trivia and opinion site

 

[Mr Light]

LOST answered almost everything. Even the damn whispers. I hate it when people say they were dead the whole time. Didn't they watch the finale?!

I was as disappointed with Season Six as anyone else, but they DID answer everything.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The reason people seem to think everybody was dead the whole time is because they misinterpret the line:

Spoiler: Lost Season 6

JACK: Everyone is dead?
CHRISTIAN: Everybody dies Jack. Some before you, some long after.

This line is really meant to explain why the few Survivors of the main cast are there in the afterlife, they died, just they did it long after Jack did. But people take it to mean everybody was dead the whole time.

It's also heavily implied by Hugo and Ben's final exchange that the two of them had a long successful stint as overseers of the island.

Then the fact that the final scene during the credits shows an empty wrecked plane on the beach, which they interpret to be what happened in reality.

As for the statue, it's not explained exactly how the statue was constructed, but it is directly implied that there was a long line of protectors of the island long before Jacob, and the statue is an artifact of one of the past protectors.

The nature of the island? I wouldn't say 'Magic' is quite accurate. Or rather, the show gives you a choice between 'Magic' and 'Science beyond human understanding'. The Dharma Initiative's entire purpose was to try to understand and exploit the island's source of power, just as MiB's old buddies who built the wheel were trying to. The light in the cave is sustaining the 'Spark of life' for the entire world, and Jacob is one in a long line of people protecting that spark of life from those such as the Dharma folks intending to exploit it.

 

[Ethros]

So is this thread now purely a Lost discussion thread?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Who is you Avatar Ethros?

It's been scratching away at the back of my mind for over a year now.

Should I worship her, or is she from Harry Potter?

 

[Agent Richard07]

Who is you Avatar Ethros?

It's been scratching away at the back of my mind for over a year now.

Should I worship her, or is she from Harry Potter?

Kristen Connolly

 

[JirinPanthosa]

So is this thread now purely a Lost discussion thread?

People used the disappointing ending of Lost as an argument that it should have been much shorter, and other people are making counterarguments. This is a valid extension of the topic.

I think Sopranos is also a candidate for a show that should have had a much shorter run. Maybe 2 seasons instead of 1, so it could have ended on the execution of Pussy.

Any show whose premise requires constantly putting your main character in a dangerous situation then having the universe magically arrange itself to preserve the status quo, if allowed to run too long, will fall into a cycle where all the jeopardy is trivialized by the viewer's knowledge that the main character and most of his inner circle will survive, and all the best supporting characters who threaten that main character in any way will die. You're forced to create a violent situation because it's a violent show, then resolve that violence by redirecting it to the most notable characters surrounding your lead.

It's fine in a show like Game of Thrones where there is no main character so you can have characters die as the natural resolution of their development rather than as a necessity for preserving the status quo.

Speaking of which, DEXTER.