Sunday, June 6, 2010

THE LAST WORD ON LOST



"Heaven,
Heaven is a place,
a place where nothing,
nothing ever happens."
- Talking Heads

What should be the last word on LOST? Cheesy? Lame? Cliched? Cheap? Vapid? Insulting? All good options, but I think there's really only one word that ends up describing what LOST became in the end.



Stupid.

I'm not trying to be smug, but I predicted it would turn out like this. I knew it. I think we all did. It didn't happen all at once, but gradually the sloppiness and laziness of this much anticipated season became obvious. There was the wrong date on Aaron's sonogram, then Kate's name not being on the cave ceiling even though it supposedly was on the cave ceiling, the pointless Temple subplot, the Stargate Lighthouse, finally the awkward, stiff, so bad it made me cry scene where Michael was trotted out to give the lamest possible explanation for the whispers.



This scene was when it hit me. I can pinpoint it as the exact moment in time when I knew that this grand finale season was going to suuuuuuuuuuck. I didn't want to accept it just then but as the weeks went by, there was no escaping the reality.



As LOST's finale season careened to its dreadful clusterfuck of a conclusion, carrying the reputation of a once great series on its back, even The Darlton tried to warn us away from hoping for too much. They started to say stuff like this:



"We're going to get killed," said executive producer Damon Lindelof.

They'd been all but screaming from the rooftops that we wouldn't be getting any goddamn Answers. It was all about the characters, yo. Those stupid questions were all red herrings! Not just the big ones, like Walt and Aaron and the Numbers. All of them!



At times they got downright insulting about it:


Not only did Damon inadvertently describe the process by which American kids grow up both stupid and fat, but he made it clear exactly how much respect he had for his audience. Which is to say - he thought we were chumps. He thought we weren't really interested in answers to the gajillion questions he'd posed. We didn't want to see the design behind the mysteries and characters revealed in a brilliant fashion that would reward us for our years of devotion. All we really wanted was cheap, generic junk food. So that's the way he ended his series.

To be fair, we should acknowledge that putting together a great series finale is a daunting project. The history of tv finale success is spotty. There are the famously poignant.



The famously funny.



The infamously awful.



The controversial



And the sublime.


Obviously the boy wonders knew everything LOST had ever been was hanging in the balance on May 23. Carlton Cuse himself described the metric by which he knew they'd be judged.


We don’t know whether the resolution between the two timelines is going to make people say, “Oh, that’s cool” or “Oh, fuck those guys, they belly-flopped at the end.”

So which was it? Cool? Or a belly flop?


I've been MIA the last third of this wretched finale season. It turns out it's not really much fun to hate on something that you once loved. It feels terrible actually.



I'm embarrassed to remember how naively I approached this season, described by Cuse as a precious Christmas present they were going to slowly let us unwrap. I even went back last fall and recapped the glorious Season One in excrutiating detail, believing the hype that we were finally about to revisit that masterpiece and watch all its mysterious potential be fulfilled.



I tried to imagine how cool, how fun, how satisfying, it would be to see the big clock come together under the hands of the master watchmakers.


Instead what we got were gears and springs and meaningless numbers strewn all over the floor like a fish kill of red herrings, while the "watchmakers" mocked the audience for ever mistaking them for people who cared. Yes, if you're wondering, I do feel kind of stupid. I had faith in these two bozos. What can I say?


As tempting as it may be, it's probably wrong to blame Darlton. After all, it was our own choice to keep watching. We decided all on our own to imagine that we were playing some kind of puzzle. No one told us to expect that! Why would we think that a story about six magical numbers that were magically connected to cataclysmic events, or a story about an island where diseases are cured but pregnancy kills, or a story that wove intersecting timelines into a vast interdimensional web of coincidences and fate - why would we think any of that was meant to be a puzzle??? We must really be stupid!


It was our own free choice to gabble away on message boards these last few seasons talking about wormholes and string theory and exotic matter and Schrodingers goddamn cat. We did it long after it became obvious that these two guys weren't able to write that kind of story. It was obvious they weren't quantum physicists. Or even the kind of guys who passed physics in high school.



No one told us we had to prattle like morons about determinism and gnoticism and Manicheism and Buddhism and Catholicism and Egyptology and Philip V. Dick. I mean look at these two guys. Why would we think they had some kind of wisdom to offer?


You know who these two really remind me of now? The two con men who pretended to be tailors in Hans Christian Anderson's The Emperor's New Clothes. They convinced the dopey Emperor he was getting a new set of gorgeous threads, but really he just ended up walking down the street with everyone laughing at the pimples on his butt. The Emperor, it turns out, was us.

At least we were in good company. In the days after the finale, I got calls and emails from pretty much every family member, friend, frenemy or casual acquaintance who had ever loved LOST, or knew that I once did. There were sighs, sad shakes of the head, muttered expletives, viral video exchanges and the always hilarious fancraft that LOST fans had raised to an artform.



The consensus was unanimous:



But how did the finale fare out in the land of media, both old and new? Did they stick their landing or did they ...

?

I realize there were some in the fast food media who, as expected, were bowled over by the cliche overload of the finale. USA Today not only found it "thrilling", " clever" and "profound", but they mocked those of us who'd bought into that silly mystery crap.
If you were looking for explanations for every twist and turn, you didn't get them. (Some viewers won't be satisfied until the producers churn out a multi-volume island manual that answers questions that were never actually posed.)
And as expected, both "I live next door to Damon" Kristin dos Passos and Cheerleader in Chief Jeff Jensen dissolved into predictably soggy heaps of teary satisfaction.
“The End” was an emotionally draining epic that had me crying with almost every single “awakening” and has left me mulling the true significance of the Sideways world, which was revealed to be a Purgatory-like realm created by the souls of the dead castaways themselves. (Purgatory! The irony!) I was so happy The Island was saved. I was so moved by Jack’s heroism and sacrifice and the glorious significance of ending where he began, as well as that Doubting Thomas allusion there at the end. … I loved Ben’s contrition. I loved Locke’s forgiveness. I loved it when Ben told him to stand up and walk again, and Locke did.


But if Darlton let themselves listen to anyone other than their friends in lowbrow places, they probably realized they're going to have to stay in that bunker a little bit longer than anticipated. The New York Times trashed it on both the Arts page:
But you have to think that the gauzy, vaguely religious, more than a little mawkish ending of ‘Lost’ – “Touched by a Desmond” — will not sit well with a lot of the show’s fans. ... The “Sopranos” finale was ambiguous and a bit of a shrug, but not puzzling; to me the “Lost” finale, in the immediate aftermath, felt forced and, well, a bit of a cop-out.


and the Editorial section:
Across six seasons, it’s true, we learned endless facts about the island — about its geography, its inhabitants, and what had happened on it across decades and centuries. But we never learned the whys behind the facts. And with the final season in the books, there’s good reason to think that we never learned them because the show’s creators never had a well-thought-out “why” for their story in the first place. The island wasn’t a real mystery — it was just a MacGuffin.


Max Read at Gawker thought "The Lost Finale was incredibly Dumb", which pretty much sums up the consensus of my inner circle:
Once upon a time, there was a television show about a bunch of people on an island. For six years it was one of the most fascinating things on TV. And then it ended, in the worst way possible. ... Lost ended tonight, and with it the hopes and dreams of millions of people who thought it might finally get good again. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't. What did we learn? Nothing. We learned nothing from two-and-a-half hours of slow-motion bullshittery backed with a syrupy soundtrack.


Televisionary's Jace Lacob tried really hard to hide his disappointment in this piece at The Daily Beast, but he couldn't quite do it.
“The End” didn’t so much answer the long-dangling mysteries—Why do pregnant women die on the island? Why was the character of Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) special? What is this island? What was with all of the Egyptian hieroglyphics? What was the character of Desmond’s ultimate purpose on the island?—as it did ignore them altogether....Considering how much time viewers have spent trying to figure out the relationship between the island timeline and the Sideways one, it is also frustrating that it turned out that there is none—or more precisely, that what happened in the Sideways timeline didn’t affect what happened on the island at all.


Aside from coining the pithiest descripiton of the finale - "a prom of the dead in a chapel of love where everybody is farting rainbows" - Chadwick Martin of Slate nailed one of the finale's main flaws:
There are second chances in life, but there are no do-overs. At least all the time travel, the donkey wheels, the smoke monsters were vehicles to explore the human condition. They were as fantastical as purgatory, yes, but they were also grounded in the terrestrial realities of life, death, and the pursuit of happiness. The show's purgatorial clusterfuck is not. It is a venue for wish-fulfillment. Thus, the finale wronged not just me, but the show itself.

As did Laura Miller at Salon :
A series like "Lost" doesn't need to solve all of its riddles, but it does need to address the right ones.... The comic-book paraphernalia and texture of the island -- its secret bunkers with their code names, Jacob's migrating cabin with its creepy paintings, the ersatz normality of the Others' compound ringed by those sonic pylons and the fantastically mechanical grinding and dragging sounds that used to accompany the appearance of the smoke monster -- were not peripheral to the heart of "Lost." They were the very essence of its appeal.
And the message of the Hero Quest in mythology is certainly not the gauzy, happy, angels-at-the-doorway one "Lost" fans had to settle for last night. Once Jack stepped into the church it looked like he was walking into a Hollywood wrap party without food or music -- just a bunch of actors grinning idiotically for 10 minutes and hugging one another.

Scott Mendelson's fine essay, republished at The Huffington Post, decided that the finale was so bad that it managed to nullify the series almost as a whole, although he - like me - hopes it will still be possible to enjoy the first three seasons before this series started its sad, end date driven decline:
By leaving everything unanswered right up to the end, and then pulling a narrative switcheroo instead of finishing the story that was being unveiled, Lost basically mocked those who bothered to watch from the very beginning, as such rabid viewership proved entirely unnecessary. Thus, the finale of Lost rendered the entire series run relatively pointless and effectively killed any and all rewatchability of the prior episodes. So, in the end, Lost ended for me with season three.
With all that and so much more being said, is there really any point in me writing anything else about this sad spectacle ? Is there anything left that really needs to be said? I'm over it. I could live without never giving LOST another thought. I'm literally itching to erase it off my dvr. But I promised I'd do this. Inquiring minds seem to want to know what it all meant to me. So, here we go, one last time, for old time's sake.


I think others have pretty much covered the shameful way we were taunted with questions that were never intended to be answered, even as recently as the run-up to this season. They were running full speed ahead right up until late April, not only implying that we'd be rewarded for our detective work, but throwing new questions at us! Of course everyone was excited to see what the answer to the puzzles would be. And then we got this:


The superclunker episode Across the Sea. We found out the only thing worse than getting no answers was getting the LAME answers they came up with. Why did they even bother to answer the pointless Adam and Eve "mystery", for instance? Was that at the top of anyone's mind? As compared to things like - who bankrolled all Ben's trips off the Island, who was Penny's mother, why did Libby give Desmond a sailboat, what was the sickness, why did Rousseau's crew hear the numbers on the radio, why did Claire leave Aaron ... not to mention all those silly little trifles like why was Walt so special and why did pregnant women die and what the hell was up with those numbers? But nope. They didn't feel the need to address any of those mysteries. They needed to give us a bogus backstory for two skeletons that almost no one remembered. Why?



My guess is because Damon had stupidly bragged about it back in 2007:
Of course, in his hamfisted way, he managed to prove exactly the opposite. It added nothing to that remembered moment to find out that Jacob, the 40,000 year old virgin, buried his bad twin and his another raising mother in the cave after a night of interfamily murder. We just met these people. They meant nothing to us.



Their story was tacked on, like everything else in Season Six. In fact, the whole finale could have been slapped on at any random endpoint. It wasn't a culmination or an inevitability or a hard earned catharsis. The message that after death we'll all live happily ever after with our bestest BFFs could have been, as one reviewer noted, a perfectly good finale for Saved by the Bell or Happy Days. Or a kiddie cartoon, for that matter.



What's more, by bottom loading all the mysteries and saving them for the end, rather than building them organically into the fabric of the story, they belied the pretense that they were master storytellers. A good story needs pacing. I had assumed their need for a fixed end date was in order to allow them to pace their story. But we all know now that had nothing to do with it.


We could tell that Mama Clegg was not the Island's Eve. She was only another interim hermit guardian, just like Jacob. Someone came before her, maybe the people that carved the cuneiform marks into the big stone plug. Someone before Momsy built the light sealing contraption inside the big shiny hole. Who was that person? Why did they do it? We never really learned why the Island was special, what was the source of its power, what its power really was. We never learned why the Smoke Monster had to be contained on the Island, what would have happened if he'd escaped. We entered the final battle of the story without knowing the stakes.



We just knew it was really important for Jack. Because he used to be a man of science. And now he is a man of faith. Faith in the Island. OK. But why?


The story never created any meaningful metaphor for the Island. It was the "warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt." It was a little piece of "something that's inside of every man." The enemy was "evil incarnate". It would all "only end once", except that - since Hurley became Jacob - it didn't! It was a myth that was never told, a myth, if we can even call it that, that never coalesced into anything more than mawkish abstractons. It meant nothing. It was just pretty pictures.



What's more, the characters themselves experienced no consequences. The very same second that The Great Jacksus laid down his life, he was handed his eternal reward. His sacrifice wasn't a sacrifice at all, just the last step in him being handed all the presents and goodies and heavenly lollipops that anyone could ever dream of.



It was a pretty sweet deal. Save the world and go straight to heaven. Doesn't really tug at my heartstrings. Or make me feel anything at all. No stakes. No consequences. No metaphor. No myth.




But all this ground has been covered, and better, by others. Few disagree that in the end the LOST "storytellers" failed in their central mission - to pull together a coherent and satisfying end to the mysteries they themselves had chosen to create. But I was surprised to see how many, at least in the immediate aftermath, seemed to think that the finale succeeded in a different area - that of giving resolution to the characters. It became like the one good thing people could say about LOST - that it was a terrible ending, but at least the characters all got "satisfying resolutions". I don't know where they're seeing that. Maybe people just need to convince themselves that it couldn't possibly be as bad as it all really, really was.



To be fair, not everyone was fooled. But far too many were. If I have to pick what I consider to be the Number One Inconvenient Truth about the LOST Finale, it would be this:

It was NOT "about the characters."

The biggest secret that Darlton managed to hide from us was that the characters never really mattered. At all. Yes, LOST had a great cast of mostly wonderful actors, who emoted the shit out of the material they were given to work with, even if it was often insane nonsense. But charismatic acting is not the same thing as good characterization.


I think the primary failure of LOST's end story was its failure to respect and resolve its characters. Except for Jack, none of the characters got any better resolution than the mysteries did.



Let's start with a somewhat minor, but nonetheless pivotal, character. Claire and her baby, who she'd been apocalyptically warned must not be raised by another, seemed to be mystically connected to the Island.


But then Claire dropped Aaron in a cabbage patch. He got raised by another anyway. And Claire became a crazed axe murderer.




That was her character arc. We never saw how she went crazy. We never saw what happened when Aaron got his Mad Mama back. We missed every interesting thing that Claire's story could ever have been about. All we know is that Claire eventually died and re-birthed Aaron in her self created purgatory while she waited for her big brother Jack to arrive, so she could spend eternity with Charlie - the guy whose death she never even mourned.



How was this character arc resolved? What is satisfying about this characterization? How is it even a characterization? It's a collection of cutesy coincidences - She's Jack's sister! She's crazy like Rousseau! Only worse! - that ultimately went nowhere and meant nothing.


Ok, maybe you say Claire's a bad example, because she wasn't an important enough character. Let's take the great John Locke then. Because no one can say Locke wasn't an important character. How did this great character get his resolution in the finale?



Well, basically he stayed dead.



Until Jack came to fix him.



John Locke, who so wanted to be special and who came to the Island and had his legs magically restored and who had a child's faith in the beautiful Island and who tried and failed to convince Jack to stay and who left what he loved and sacrificed his life for the sake of his Island - his "resolution" was that he got to wait in Limbo Land until Jack - freaking Jack - got around to not only dying, but to accepting that he was dead.



Locke's character "resolution" was to further the glory of Jack, even in death. What once seemed like an epic duel between equally matched protagonists went out with a weak, faint sounding pfffffffft. By the time the big showdown happened, Locke wasn't even there.


Like so much of the audience, Locke got screwed. Sorry, John, you were just road kill on the Highway to Jack's Heaven.



But don't worry. Be happy! It's not like there's anything we can do about it now. Except maybe this ...



Sun and Jin's "resolution" came at the end of three long seasons wherein they both did, collectively, nothing.



Finally they reunited. Then they died the next day, with not even a passing acknowledgment of the daughter who had been at the heart of their story. In Purgatory, or Limbo, or whatever the hell that Sideways bullshit was, they had to wait - for Jack, of course - until they could speak English (the language of Jack's heaven) and follow their dear leader into the light.



We can also add Sayid to the list of screwed over characters.



In post-9/11 America, it was shocking to see an Iraqi soldier in the Revolutionary Guard presented as a sympathetic character. But Sayid worked his way into our hearts, despite being the sickest killer in the bunch, because he was a passionate man. Who loved Nadia.



Nadia was at the nexus of all his moral quandaries - he betrayed his country for her, he betrayed his boyhood friend for her, he struggled off the Island and married her, only to lose her again. And with her death, he lost his soul. His character resolution? Well, first - of course - he had to wait for Jack. Obviously. Then ... uh ... he hooked up with Shannon and he got to go to Heaven!



Did this make sense to anyone???? Was this supposed to be a joke?


Sadly no. They were serious about this shit. See, Sayid didn't really love the woman he'd devoted his life to, the woman his entire story had been about. He only wanted what all men want in Geekland - a blonde American babe.


Hurley apparently lived out his roly poly life on the Island, maybe for centuries, with Ben. Although that might have made a great season of LOST all by itself, we never got a glimpse of it.



Instead we learned that the only great thing in Hurley's extremely long life was Libby, the girl he once almost went on a picnic with the day before she got shot. Nothing else. So once he finally died, he - like everyone else - waited for Jack, and then finally, I guess, he got to have a girlfriend, even if they were both dead.


Sawyer's story ended in Season Four.


We had watched his evolution, one of the most beautiful in the show,



from guilt ridden, self loathing orphan to passionate lover and hero.



But in Season Four, fanboys everywhere rejoiced as Sawyer's hotness got sucked away and he was reincarnated as a neutered Deputy Dawg, flashing big buttery grins at his tall blond Dharma-wife.



And that was it for poor Sawyer. He got to scream and cry while Juliet died ... over and over again ... then he sat on his ass until it was time for Jack to save the world. Then he did absolutely nothing for all the rest of his life until it was time for the most anticlimactic and uninspired cup of coffee in tv history. And then he hugged Jack, and he too got to pass through the pearly gates.



Character? Resolution? I can't find either one in this story. The complex, charismatic character that stole my heart and first addicted me to LOST disappeared the day he jumped off the helicopter and saved the life of the woman he loved. I watched and I hoped and I put up with Carlton's insulting insinuations that we were only watching to see him take his shirt off, but the Sawyer that I loved never ever returned to LOST.



Kate didn't do any better. We don't know when she died but we know she never met anyone better than Jack. That's sad enough. You didn't deserve that, Kate.



This is where the poor character development leads straight into The Second Inconvenient Truth About the Lost Finale:

It had a very depressing message.

In order to believe in whatever the Shiny Happy Afterlife was meant to be, we have to believe that nothing that ever happened to Kate, Sawyer or Claire after they left the Island ever meant a damn thing. They had to wait TO DIE before they could live.



Well, technically, they had to wait for JACK to die before they could live again.


If we accept that the gang in the church had to be there together because they were the only people that truly mattered to one another, we have to realize that all these people lived HORRIBLE lives here on earth. Think of all those who didn't matter to them:



Charlie Hume didn't matter to his Mom and Dad, and neither did Ji Yeon, a fetus for all eternity.


Hurley didn't want to be with Grandpa Tito or Mami Carmen or any of the people who loved and raised him.

Helen was good enough for Locke's purgatory, but she didn't rank high enough to make it into his heaven.


Jack's alcoholic, philandering daddy was the High Holy Priest in his Heaven,



but the old Moms who put up with being married to this creep didn't rate any heavenly reward.



Sorry, Margo, your son just wasn't that into you.


Juliet had no place in her heaven for the sister and nephew she longed to see for so long.



Nadia? She was no biggie to Sayid. Just a passing fling.



Boone never had anyone in his life who meant anything to him at all and the greatest moment of Shannon's life were those few weeks she spent trying to breathe without her inhaler in the Rape Caves before she got shot in the gut.



Kate and Sawyer never missed their mothers either, or Tom, or Clementine, or Kevin, or each other.



The only thing this "heaven" proved is that all of these people lived sad, loveless lives on earth. But so what if life sucked for all the Losties? They got to be in a clean, perfect heaven with all the other pretty people, paired up like the giraffes and zebras on Noah's ark.



In the LOST credo, it turned out the only thing that ever matters in life is finding a Schmoopie. Parents, children, lovers, friends - none of it means a damn thing. The key to life is The Schmoopie.



Throughout the years, LOST made a big show of flashing various religious symbols at us like stolen watches from under a trenchcoat. The Church of Shiny Happy People felt like self parody, what with all the spiritual tchotchkes stuffed into every available corner.



A dharmachakra, an aum, a menorah, a Ganesh ... I guess they couldn't find space to shove in any voodoo chicken feet or Rasta spliffs or Wiccan wands.



But no one should have been fooled. The religious message of LOST was conventional Judeo-Christian group think of the most joyless kind.



Humans must unquestioningly accept the will of a capricious, often vicious Higher Power, because he's Jacob and you're not. Life's a bitch and then you die, but in the religion of LOST, once you find your Schmoopie ... and once the great St. Jacksus arrives of course ... even cold blooded killers can all go to Hollywood Heaven together.


Damon Lindelof: This is the critical mystery of the season, which is, “What is the relationship between these two shows? ... Where’s Libby? Where’s Ana Lucia? Where’s Eko? These are all the things that you’re supposed to be thinking about.

Got that? The only question Darlton cared about answering in their finale season, the ONLY one, was this: What was the Sideways universe? The Sideways that didn't even exist until this season. And what was the big revelation about the Sideways? That it was a completely separate, non intersecting, non connecting afterlife that the characters "created for themselves" while they waited to enter Heaven, or the light, or what the fuck ever. After swearing for years their story wasn’t about Purgatory, they made their finale season all about ... frigging Purgatory! Haha! Gotcha!



It's not that making the story about Purgatory would have been such a terrible idea. It could have been a coherent theme to carry over the seasons, showing us each person's passage to Enlightenment after their death. But this mish mosh didn't even make any kind of theological sense as Purgatory. What was the point of it, except to bide everyone's time until Jackie-poo arrived? Sawyer did not create a purgatory where he could repent for the murder of the innocent sweet shrimp seller.



Kate did not atone for the wrongs she'd done. In fact, she made herself a world where she was innocent, wrongfully accused. All that bad stuff? Nevah hoppened.



Charlie was still on the junk needle in his self created purgatory, only richer than Croesus this time around.



Sun and Jin for some reason created a purgatory where they were even more miserable, where Jin killed people and Sun got shot.



And Sayid apparently filled his self created purgatory with even more murders – I guess the ones he didn’t get around to committing in his killing spree of a life.



By creating a trite, pat purgatory, all the stories we'd invested in suddenly felt shallow and pointless. In one fell swoop, they managed to dishonor almost every character and render their stories meaningless. It didn't reflect the reality of our human experience, where all our acts have real consequences, where we don't have an escape hatch into paradise, like we found out the Losties had. But this purgatory had other problems as well. Basically it just didn't make any goddamn sense.



Was the highpoint of Aaron's life really the day he was born? It's hard to imagine how horrifying this poor kid's life was if the first six hours were the highlight. Or was Aaron just a symbol, not an actual human baby with a soul of his own? Even in death, was Aaron just a prop in Jack's Heaven?




Why was Eloise worried that Desmond would take Daniel away?



If she was "awake" and understood that she was dead, why was she still in purgatory? And why didn't she understand how it worked? She had been paired with her Schmoopie, so why couldn't she get on the Ark?



What was Ben waiting for? Did he need Danielle Rousseau to wake up too?



Because of course Danielle would want to spend eternity with the mouse faced creep who made her life a living hell, rather than the dearly beloved father of her child. She just hadn't woken up yet and realized who her true schmoop was.



Why wasn't Michael allowed into Jack's heaven? He blew himself up with a bomb just like Sayid did. Why did he have to be trapped on the Island as a whisper? Was it because he didn't have a Schmoopie?



And what about poor Walt? Not only wasn't he special in any way, but none of the other 815-ers wanted him in the heaven they created for themselves. Can you believe it? They wanted Libby there, but they didn't want Walt! They wanted Penny there and most of them didn't even know who she was! Boy, they really, really held that puberty thing against him, didn't they?



Why was Juliet Jack's wife?


Seriously. Why in the hell would she create that for herself? And why would she have an imaginary son with him? Forget about the realization that her precious sister actually never meant anything to her. I'm more hung up on that numbingly redundant candy machine conversation. When Miles listened to her dead body, remember that he heard her say "it worked"? What was she talking about? The bomb worked? Her hope to never have met Sawyer worked? No! She was talking about the candy machine of course!



When Sawyer unplugged it and plugged it back in, it worked! Wow! How clever was that? I mean, that's why we all stuck with LOST, wasn't it? For stupid gimmicky shout outs and conversations written entirely in cutesy catchphrases.



See? Look! It was an Apollo candy bar! And Number 23! Holy moly! My mind, she is blown! Darlton, you iz geniuses!



So the whole Sideways/Purgatory/Bullshitland that the characters "created" for themselves after death was not about Redemption (except for Jack.) And it wasn't about Free Will, one of the other alleged "themes" of LOST. The characters may have created this place, but they didn't know they were doing it, and they didn't know why they did it, and most of the connections they unwittingly created for themselves meant absolutely nothing in the final denouement, just like all the connections built into the pre-crash flight and the off Island world meant absolutely nothing.



LOST wasn't about connections at all, you see.



It was all about how many times you can pull a meaningless WhatTheFUCK plot twist on the audience. It turns out, you can pull an entire show out of your ass based on nothing but constant gotchas and contrivances, and you'll be able to fool ... well, a whole lot of people. For a really long time. Like for six years.



I think so far we’ve established one thing: Thinking about the LOST finale is not a useful exercise. The whole Man of Faith vs. Science debate, as presented on LOST, was designed to undermine the value of thought and contemplation, to degrade intellectualism. Just believe. Just have "faith". And what we were asked to have Faith in on LOST was ... Nonsense. On LOST, the Faith argument was used to hide lazy thinking and cheap storytelling. The only thing we were having Faith in all along was Chuck E. Cheese.



So here's another Inconvenient Truth that we learned from the finale:

LOST had no intellectual design behind it.

In the past if I'd seen this image of the Monster being thrown off the cliff:



I'd have dug out my favorite Dore print of Lucifer being thrown out of heaven. But at this point that feels like it would only be giving them a respect they don't deserve. I wasn't impressed that Jack's hicky turned out to be a mark from the tip of a knife. I really didn't care that Jack stumbled to his death from a wound to his right side, like the wound Doubting Thomas pondered in the picture Jack gazed at in 316. I can't be bothered to dig out images to illustrate these things. I get it. Symmetry. Mirrors.


I always did love the visual imagery of LOST, but you can't just throw random symbolic elements onscreen and call that a story.

By the end, LOST had lost all its intrigue for me, 100%. Without a story behind them, symbols alone feel superficial, and cloyingly facile.


I had given up on the idea that there was an intelligent design behind LOST's Famous Thinker Namedropping, but I was still dumbfounded by how incredibly facile and superficial the use of imagery became.




Not only could we tell that a man was good based on whether he was blond and blue eyed (Aryan=Good) and wearing a white tunic, but we could even tell the moral destiny of a baby by the color of his blanket! And see! They were playing a game. Like how the LOST writers were playing a game with us.


I can't have been the only one who misread Damon Lindelof's New York Times editorial some years ago. Remember how he had the audacity to lecture J.K.Rowlings on how she should end the Harry Potter books? I think a lot of people thought he was advising her to be brave, to do the unexpected, to do the unpopular. But re-reading that thing, it's obvious he was saying no such thing. In point of fact, he was laying out exactly the way he planned to end LOST - catering to what he considered to be the stupidity and short attention spans of the American public.
THE BOY WHO DIED...

"We Yanks, however, do not want froufrou endings. We want things definitively tied up. And by “things” I mean lots of people dead."
"We really like gratuitous explosions."


"Because if there’s one thing we like more than explosions, it’s surprises."

I kind of wish, as an American, that people like Damon wouldn't speak for what "we Yanks" appreciate. I'd just like to let the global audience out there know that not all Yanks tell their kids to shut up and eat cheese and not all Yanks are proud of being stupid and unimaginative.



I am one Yank who became totally enchanted by the "froufrou" of LOST's endless literary, religious, scientific and philosophical allusions. Yes, I gradually recognized that it was an exercise in futility, but I still hoped against hope that there was some bare bones design behind it all, some order to the chaos. But the truth is out now: There wasn't any. Ever.

In other words, they were saying that great minds in history had addressed great issues and told great stories ... but Lindelof and Cuse weren't trying to do that. They were just copycats. Who didn't have the skills. Sort of like this:



I think Darlton should have taken this full disclosure thing one step further. The writers who influenced them weren’t Lewis Carroll or James Joyce or C.S. Lewis. Come on, guys! Be honest. The literary influences in your writing room were more along these lines, right?


Killer the dog WAS. Now Killer was born to a three-legged bitch mother. And he was always ashamed of this, man. And then right after that, he's adopted by this man, Tito Liebowitz. He's a small-time gunrunner and, uh, rottweiler fight promoter. So he puts Killer into training, next thing you know Killer's GOOD! He is DAMN good! But then, he had the fight of his life. They pit him against his brother Nibbles. And Killer said, "No, man, that's my brother, I can't fight Nibbles!" And he made him fight anyway. And then Killer, Killed Nibbles. And Killer said, "That's it!" And he called off all his fights, and he started doing crack, and he ffffffff-FREAKED OUT. And then in a rage, he collapsed, and his heart... no longer beat. Wow.
Anyone who ever followed Damon Lindelof on Twitter, begging people to vote up LOST on some poll where it was losing out to Ghost Hunters or something, knows that this dude believed in the power of the button pushers. He said as much in another inadvertent admission hidden in that infamous NY Times editorial:
"I read an article recently saying that 80 percent of American poll respondents said they thought Harry wouldn’t survive the final book. As is the case in many polls, there’s probably a degree of wish-fulfillment here. In other words, we want the little bugger to die."
I don't see how poll watching could ever be a good practice in any creative enterprise. It seems to me that "conventional wisdom" is in itself the death knell of originality. But we do know the boy wonders liked to follow polls, and given the dumbassery of the LOST fandom, this may possibly explain how LOST managed to fail so utterly. Let's look for a minute at the kind of fans who truly and deeply loved this LOST finale. First of all there's people like this lovely young Jate fan:
Fuck you all, dirty whores. Yes I'm talking abotu real people because you suck and fail at life. I loathe you all haters, you deserve all the spit and shit on your faces as you can get for all those years trolling the internet. Our fandom doesn't have any respect? STFU you son of a bitch you! Keep fooling yourselves that Skate was eyefucking the whole season. You're only embarrasssing yourselves, even some decent skaters can see. Yes, there are sane skaters out there who appreciate them sanely.

These are your fans, Damon. You own them now. Don't look now, but they may be all you got left. We've learned now that fanmail campaigns and obsessive poll rigging pay off when the writers have neither balls nor any kind of plan. Sure, you managed to destroy your show's reputation and legacy, and sure, your name will be mud to any LOST fan who ever tried to follow the show on an intelligent level, but you did manage to satisfy geniuses like the poster quoted above. So, uh ... Congrats?



It would be wrong for me to blame the batshit Jate/Suliet fans entirely for how inane and angry the LOST online discourse became. By far the bigger culprits were the vicious, often misogynist fanboy types who camped out at the site run by my old friend DarkUFO. Given Darlton's addiction to pandering to the lowest common denominator in the fandom, there's no way they weren't aware of the whims of Fanboy Central. On that loud, big, spoiler whoring board, any sensible disagreement or alternate viewpoint about LOST was systematically shouted down, mocked to shit and banned out of existence by the torch and pitchfork carrying villagers.


It's sad to think that LOST was once considered cutting edge precisely because of the cyber-conversation that had grown up between fans and writers, a conversation that may have ultimately destroyed the integrity of the story. Laura Miller's Salon piece makes a great case for another Inconvenient Truth:

LOST was "Ruined By Its Own Fans"
From statements the producers of "Lost" have made over the past five years, they developed a dynamic with die-hard fans (and disillusioned fans and skeptical non-fans) that was infinitely more complex than any of the personal relationships among the series' characters. Could it be that in resisting the geekiest, nitpickingest, most Aspergerian demands of their audience they swung too far in the opposite direction, dismissing as trivial everything but the cosmic (the tedious and largely unnecessary Jacob-Smokey background) and the sentimental (making sure that every character receives his or her designated soul mate or therapeutic closure of the most banal Dr. Phil variety)? If so, "Lost" may be the quintessential example of a pop masterpiece ruined by its own fans.
Infintely more complex, indeed. DarkUFO was despised, and rightly so, by the LOST inner circle, because of his thoughtless and selfish spoiling of their big Season 3 and 4 finale surprises. So, was it REVENGE that made Darlton write an endgame that fanboys hated even more than Skaters? If so then the irony of Fanboys and Skaters being on the same side is delicious. Nice job, dudes.



Fanboys and Skaters were the natural enemies of the LOST Fan Kingdom. Aside from Andy Page's smarmy egotism, the defining feature of his site was his petty vindictiveness towards Skaters, most likely because we were the ones who unmasked him for the poll rigging liar and all around skeevebag that he was. How petty was he? I don’t think anyone outside of Fishbiscuitland quite understands. For years he lurked 24/7 on our board under his chosen alias:
mary2009!



Miss Mary mostly just used our site as one of the many from which he’d steal spoilers or pictures or media mentions, all of which he’d post on his own board without credit. But in the run up to the finale, his juvenile pettiness was on full display. One night, when I guess he was getting bored down in that basement bunker, he put on his best squealing imitation of what he thought a dumbass Skater fangirl would sound like:
I juust had my friends sister email me about the finale. She works on the set if LOST She told me that in the finale that Kate tells Jack she loves him Uve now given up on this show after the Juliet kiss scen
And then a few moments later:
They are sending me scans tomorrow. And they will send to dark UFO tomorrow as well I promise I am not lying and this is real I wish it was not: (((((((((
I busted him right away, explaining that even squalid fangirls were smart enough to trace an IP, and he ran straightaway, skirts flying over his head, to erase the evidence that he was, in fact, every bit the petty, juvenile twit we’d always known him to be. Apparently he didn’t want anyone to know that the great and powerful DarkUFO loved to troll among the squalid shippergirls he always claimed to despise. We banned the bastard after that, but Lord knows how many other sock puppets this douchebag had over the years, or how deeply into the pie his poll rigging fingers really were. It’s all water under the bridge now, thankfully – one more reason to be happy that LOST is over.


LOST is over, MaryAndy. Suck it up. You have to go out and get a job now.

MaryAndy may have just been one of the creepy curiosities of the LOST fandom, but his Skate Hate was something that was shared by most of the fanboys who followed LOST, including, it seems the Alpha Nerds who wrote this dreck. It brings me to one of the biggest downers of my LOST experience. Maybe it doesn't quite count as an Inconvenient Truth, but it's a Truth nonetheless.

Nerds hate romance.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that most nerds wouldn't know Romance if it jumped up and kissed them on the mouth. That’s part of what makes them nerds, after all. Sci Fi and Fantasy genres have never been a romance friendly milieu. Romance, when it appears at all, is generally very stilted and unrealistic, and caters to the male sensibility exclusively. Most women in this genre are blond. All women are beautiful, although beauty is completely optional for the male half. It is common, and preferable, in Nerd Romance, that the female abjectly worship her mate. Strangely, though, Nerd Romance rarely features ... s.e.x.



I'm sure many are wondering how I feel about Sawyer and Kate being left flat in the finale, about them being the only couple left out of the great cosmic circle jerk. Every obscure, asexual couple in the show's history, from the non starter of Daniel & Charlotte to the anti-romance of Ben & Danielle got some kind of validation in the story, yet the long romance of Sawyer & Kate, deeply embedded into the fiber of the story, was ignored completely. I was disappointed, but not shocked, and not all that broken up over it. It's hardly the only thing that didn't make sense, and it’s not like it made the finale any worse. I don't think there was any way it could have been any worse, to be honest. It may well have been a blessing in disguise that they didn't pander to Skaters. If they had, I might have been tempted to watch it again, and this way I'm forever protected from that fate.


The gloopy cheese-bubbles that were meant to signal eternal schmoopiness in the "The End" made the Gray's Anatomy's finale look like Shakespeare. I don't think LOST could possibly have trivialized the idea of romantic love more if they tried.


Basically, the way Romance ended up being depicted on LOST, the uglier a romance was,


the less we saw it happen,



the less sensual it was,



the more weird and shallow and gimmicky it was



- the more likely it was to end up depicted as Twu Wuv in the finale.



Sayid and Nadia's series long love story, just like Sawyer and Kate's, ended up meaning nothing. In both cases, the women were swapped out for the leggy blonde at the last second. Meanwhile, Jack and Kate, who spent the last two seasons in a deep funk of apathy towards one another were magically transformed with one last WTF into the most vapid kind of Nerd Lovers imaginable.



These writers had no intuitive sense of how to write romance, and what's more they seemed to have a strange antipathy towards the concept of passionate sexual love. It's incredible, but true, in the entire run of the whole series, there was only ONE deeply romantic, loving sex scene in the full six years.


Yes, it was one of the greatest tv love scenes ever and yes, it will be remembered long after this dreadful finale is forgotten, but still ... Only one! In six years! That's shocking. It almost makes you wonder what other issues these guys were repressing. Women were never important to these writers as anything other than babymakers and schmoopies. Sex for the most part was invisible, except when it was making women pregnant so they could die. But when it came time for the Darlton to imagine what the secret in the bowels of the Island would look like, they created a big rod. And a shiny wet hole.



I know. Ew. But don't blame me. I didn't write this shit. The ultimate denouement of this phallic fantasy was that the big hero man had to stick his rod back into the hole. Then the world was saved. And Jack was bathed in an orgasm of light.



Sheesh. These two guys should have just taken their Jack Action Figure and gotten themselves a room.



The LOST writers, of course, chose to make a love triangle central to their story from the very beginning, and to keep it there and promote it until the bitter end.



For years, we heard - from the mouths of the Darlton themselves - that Sawyer was their Han Solo. Even a Star Wars neophyte understands that Han is the romantic hero of the story. He's charismatic and sexy and adorable in all the ways that Luke is not and can never be. It's a type, an archetype, and an especially entertaining one, in my opinion.



But LOST, since it couldn't be original in any other way, decided that this well loved archetype would be the one, the only one, that would stand on its head. They de-sexed their Han Solo and made sure that he ended up getting gotz in the end of the story. There could be no romantic victory for Sawyer, just like there could be no heroic victory, because nothing could be allowed to deflect any light from the greater glory of the magnificent Jackass. Sawyer's fate, and the fate of Sawyer and Kate as a love story, was one more casualty of LOST's Revenge of the Alpha Nerds.



And here's the last saddest, most Inconvenient Truth :

LOST was never anything more than The Jack Show.

All of it was just passing time until it was time for Damon's surrogate, Jack Shephard, to win all the marbles. The only character that got any true resolution in this story was Jack. Jack became Jacob! Then he gave up being Jacob! Then he killed the bad guy! Then he saved the world! Then he died a great hero, knowing he'd saved the world! Then he won the Kate trophy! Forever! In heaven! If you ever doubted that this was The Jack Show, check it out: No one could go into Heaven until Jack got there. He was even the most important person in Heaven!



It's a very inconvenient, but unavoidable, truth that these two rich, mainstream Hollywood white guys could only envision a story that revolved around a privileged mainstream white guy like themselves. It's laughable to think back at how LOST was once considered a groundbreaking show because of its multicultural cast. As the years went by, the black people disappeared, the Asians learned to speak proper English, the Middle Eastern man became an evil beast and the females all became interchangeable schmoopies. Even the lesser white men had to take a backseat to the Great Jacksus. Locke ended up inert,



Desmond ended up not being very special after all,



and Sawyer was kept around as nothing but eye candy.



The decks had to be cleared to make sure no one, at any time, outshone the Great White Hero. Face it, even Purgatory was Jack's Wet Dream. Who besides Jack got a damn thing out of this Sideways world we're told they all allegedly created for themselves?



Claire was still the unwanted bastard stepsister who was pregnant with a baby she didn't really want. Kate was still a fugitive. Sayid still a killer. Charlie still a junky. Locke still crippled. In Jack's wet dream, Sawyer couldn't even get a woman! If nothing else, that proved that we were living in Jack's fantasy world.


But look at what Purgatory was like for King Jacksus. He was the generous kindly brother to Claire that he had never been in real life. He got both of Sawyer's women before he did, and even impregnated one! He magically cured Locke’s spine. Who needs a miraculous mystical Island when you’ve got St. Jack? Miracles were just all in a day’s work for him.



Purgatory was so custom made to make sure Jack would be comfy in his new afterlife that he even got a whole fake person tailor made for him - David.



Now, David, of course never really existed. Poor kid, I'm sure it would ruin his day to find that out. Once Jack had been convinced that he would have been the bestest daddy in all the world, David, I guess, just poofed away. Jack was done with him, he returned to the void to which all things go that Jack no longer has any need of. His only function was to help Jack work out the all important Jackiness of being Jack.



I really can’t think of any way they could have undermined their quasi-spiritual “message” any more completely than by focusing the entire endgame on the glorification of only one character. I know LOST prided itself on making pseudo-religious pudding out of all the world’s great faiths and philosophies, but I’d really like clarification on which mutant religion they drew their inspiration from for this final act. In what faith is the individual ego considered a viable path to salvation or nirvana or enlightenment? Make no mistake: this final episode was about about one person and one person only. It was about Jack fulfilling all of Jack’s dreams,



about Jack becoming the hero that Jack always wanted to be,



about Jack not being a drunk or a stalker psycho ex husband,



about Jack having the perfect son who loved him perfectly,



about Jack getting the respect from Dad that Jack always wanted,



about Jack fixing everything for everyone just like Jack always obsessed over,



and about everyone loving and wanting and waiting for Jack before any of them could start their eternal afterlives. The message wasn't "Live together or die alone". It was "die alone and wait for Jacksus to lead us into paradise."


With this predictable, but disastrous, narrative choice to focus on only one character above all the others, Lost managed to destroy the last hope that LOST could ever have been a great story with a message that was universal or transcendant. The strength of LOST had once been in the variety of its characters, in the way, that each one of them represented a slice of humanity, a slice of heroism, a slice of each of us. If there had been a truly humanist vision behind the LOST story, each of us could have seen ourselves in some incarnation within the story. We could have come away with some unifying vision of what it means to be human and to be connected to other humans. I think this is what many of us had hoped for. I know I wasn’t the only one who imagined that's what we were witnessing. This TIME Magazine article gives a great interpretation of what LOST could have been, what so many of us thought it would be, but what it sadly decided it didn't want to be:
But Lost has not a single protagonist but a huge ensemble of heroes and antiheroes with checkered pasts. The loser, the con artist, the arrogant doctor, the fugitive, the junkie: each has his or her part in the quest, which has less to do with good beating evil than determining how to be good, less to do with getting the happy ending than finding out what it means to have a happy ending. Collectively, they are — to borrow the title of Joseph Campbell's classic study of myth — the Hero with a Thousand Faces, or at least a dozen or so. It's a concept of heroism for our complicated, connected world, where problems are too complex for a single savior.



LOST's problems weren't too complex for Jack. He solved them all, all by himself. Locke tried to save everyone but only ended up giving the Monster a body to use. Desmond thought he could do it, but he couldn’t. Sawyer, Kate, Sayid, Sun, Jin, Charlie, Claire, Hurley, Ben – they may have moved the problems along, but none of them helped to solve or fix a damn thing. It was Jack, all Jack, only Jack.


The Geniuses in Chief liked to say that the show was telling them what it wanted to be about. We couldn't hear it, being mere peons of the audience, but I guess what the show was telling them was that it wanted to pretend for a really long time to be about cool, intriguing characters and ideas and mysteries ... but then at the last minute it wanted to be about Jack getting his ass kissed, his balls washed and a big fat halo super glued on to his head.


So, LOST is over. Finally. And good riddance to it. Sometimes I still find questions popping into my head. Like:



Why did Kate wear a dress into the church but then showed up inside wearing pants?



Or, if Michael said the whispers were souls trapped on the island, why was Duckett who died in Australia trapped there telling Sawyer “it would come back around”?



And like why did Hurley and Ben have to stay behind on the Island if the Smoke Monster was finally DEAD?


But then I slap myself and realize – I don’t have to think about this shit anymore! Ever! And that’s good, because finally it's safe to admit what many of us suspected, but never wanted to say: It was all bullshit.



Is there anything good to say about LOST in the wake of this debacle? Well, the music of Michael Giacchino was always stirring and emotional. The visuals of this show were magnificent. All kudos to the Art and Cinematography departments of LOST. The acting was often stellar and I hope to follow many of the actors into bigger and better careers. And of course, I’ve made some great friends, some of the smartest and wittiest people on the internet, and we made a home at Fishbiscuitland, which is staying open for business. But that’s about it. This was the kind of finale that nullifies a series, that ruins it forever, that renders any rewatch moot. And that’s not an easy thing to do. That kind of failure comes around only once every few decades. So I guess Darlton can claim that distinction. However, I really don't think they should ever show their faces at another Comic Con.



It occurs to me we still haven’t settled on an actual, literal last word. I think we know what Darlton's last word to the fans was:



But as for myself? I always enjoyed sprinkling quotes on my LOST recaps. How about this? LOST was ...


... a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Oh, well.

950 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Sayid choosing Shannon.
This is one of the few things I enjoyed, as being a longtime Shannon-hater and an advocate for Sayid-Nadia, I think now that Nadia always represented darkness to Sayid - his past, his torture, his betrayals. Shannon did represent light to him - a new beginning, accepting Shannon without prejudice and her accepting him the same way. While at the time I found the relationship totally perverse to Nadia's memories (and still do - I cheer every time Shannon gets shot), on retrospect I can buy that Shannon would be there instead of Nadia. That's about it really.


Sayid and Nadia also accepted each other while knowing the absolute worst about one another. They also managed to get a new start after he returned from the island, in the flashforwards. They were together and happy. And unlike Jack and Kate whose relationship spiraled into an ugly mess because of inner issues, Sayid and Nadia were over because of outer circumstances (her death).

At the end of the day, I didn't need to see all the characters paired up and grinning like idiots (especially, not in heaven, after they fucking died). I just needed a conclusion that matched their story arcs of six seasons. In Sayid's and Sawyer's case, the endings did not do their stories any justice, but that's just me.

I would've been totally fine with Sayid's story ending with his death and with knowing that Nadia was the great love of his life. He did a lot of bad things and he had a tough life. There was nothing wrong IMO with his story getting a sad conclusion.

But I hated the flashsideways anyway. I was interested in Losties' lives, not their afterlives. I think it should've been left up to viewers to decide whether or not they wanted these characters to "live" even after death.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Only by waking up from the Sideways were the characters allowed to move to whatever came next. Does that help at all?

Nope. Thanks for trying, Zonkers. Still sounds like random fanwank to me, as does every other "interpretation" of the bullshit ending that I've read. However it's described, it sounds like a mindless empty platitude tacked on at the end of a story to which it had no organic connection whatsoever.

And the character motivations that you've described don't even make sense. Juliet just appeared randomly for one last wtf - look! she's david's mom! psyce! She didn't work through anything. She was a plot device and nothing more, to the bitter end. What did Kate wake up from? What did Locke accomplish by going through purgatory? I don't think Jack was shown as narcissistic either - he was perfect emo dad and kind loving brother to the pathetic sister.

No rhyme, reason, logic or story structure to any of it. Completely, irredeemably stupid and cheap.

Zonker said...

Well, it certainly was contrived, and I think the real reason they did it this way was 3-fold:
1- To pull off yet another long-con on the audience regarding what we all assumed was an alt timeline in the wake of Jughead.
2- To give the fans a shout-out to Season 1 & 2 characters who'd died.
3- Finally, if you believe the Bad Robot Intern posting, to re-purpose JJ Abrams' original Purgatory ending for the show.

But nevertheless, this part of the story worked for me. Maybe I'm not describing my solution well, or maybe I'm just a lot more tolerant of fanboy wanking, LOL ...I'm saying the Sideways was actually a neurotic place that had to be overcome. Locke created a comfy ghost Helen and consequently was afraid to get out of his wheelchair. Kate created a wish-fulfillment world where she was actually innocent. Jack created a happy family unit that let him be emo-daddy. I'm not saying sideways Jack behaved in a narcissistic way, I'm saying Jack's narcissistic "soul" if you will, shaped the very nature of the sideways reality, to give him an opportunity to look good. Just as dead Sayid neurotically wanted to pick at his Nadia guilt, and dead Desmond wanted to be Widmore's valued right-hand man, and dead Eloise wanted to keep the son she had killed around as long as she could. The sideways was the ultimate magical-thinking, wish-fulfillment do-over attempt, and when on-island Jack tells Desmond there are no do-overs, that whatever happened mattered, I think he's speaking not only about why Jughead didn't work, but also why the sideways doesn't work: they've gotta remember, and accept the reality of their past choices before they can move on to what comes next.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Zonkers, I think the thing is - if you WANT to rationalize the finale, and you want to find a way to like it, it's possible to just convince yourself of some interpretation you find personally acceptable. But that's not the same thing as telling areal story. I think this idea that Lost can be whatever you want it to be is giving a free pass to a very gutless writing staff that doesn't deserve one.

they've gotta remember, and accept the reality of their past choices before they can move on to what comes next.

If this is what was intended then it might have been nice of them to actually WRITE THAT INTO the ongoing story as it was developing. This is almost a random "lesson" tacked on to the end of a story that - again - wasn't about that at all. They had six years to write a story that was about that. There's no way to justify contriving a bland platitude in the last 2-3 hours and trying to make us believe that's what we were watching all along.

But like I said, I understand some people want to come away from the six years with a good feeling, so if that makes it feel better for you, then more power to you.

Zonker said...

Yeah, the writers certainly could have thrown us a friggin' bone to make their intentions clearer! Certainly they wanted some level of fan speculation to continue past the show's demise (like The Prisoner), but obviously they went way overboard on the open-to-interpretation front!

Having said that, just a couple of points for how their end-game was touched on earlier in the show:

- In Season 3, at the Hydra station, Jack hears dead Christian's voice over the non-working intercom: "Let it go..."

- Also Season 3, Ms. Hawking telling Desmond that the timeline is unchangable, the universe course-corrects on you.

- Most explicitly, the whole Season 5 conceit of "whatever happened, happened." Turns out the writers actually meant it.

So, FB, I'm guessing you're not that interested in reading my multi-paragraph fanwank retrofitting some sense onto the 6-season on-Island storyline? ;)

Gary C said...

Hey Fishbiscuit,

I loved Lost through season 6 and up to the finale. I enjoyed the finale love fest, but I felt disappointed by the island story ending. I just found a couple links to this blog on the blogs I usually go to, so this is the first piece by you that I have read. I like a good rant and yours is a peach. Well written and passionate. You make some good points and I found it very persuasive. So good I read it twice. But I disagree with your overall conclusions. I still feel hooked like a fish by Lost, and I'm willing to forgive the writers for not finding great solutions, when they posed so many fascinating problems.

A couple of thing come to mind where I can explain how I disagree with you on specific points. For me it is not all about Jack the Hero, or a celebration of ego. Quite the contrary. First, Jack did not kill the monster, or defeat the monster by himself. When Jack was on the ropes, and about to get his throat stabbed, Kate saved the day by shooting Flocke. We actually had a triune of heroes. Desmond, Kate, and Jack.
Yes it sucks that the woman does not get credit, but neither did the other guy who made it possible to defeat Flocke. It's a TV show, after all, and simplicity plus groupthink rules in the end. TV is a collaborative medium.
Jack deserved a lot of credit because he went through some huge changes. He let go of a LOT of ego. Listen, I've worked with surgeons, and these guys, the heart surgeons, brain and spinal surgeons, they are wound up very tight. It's still mostly male dominated and very status oriented. Letting go does not come easy. Jack did his work, mostly on the island. He opened his eyes, he woke up, by degrees, to a reality he was not able to believe before, and he let go. By the time he got to urgatory, he did not have that much work to do. And yes, what people did in urgatory did not make much sense to me either. Jack mostly waited. But I can fill in those narrative blanks. Sometime you just have to wait until you feel ready. Plenty of processing happens on an unconscious level. It was not about ego, but letting go of ego, which goes in accord with the religious themes, mostly Buddhism.
As for the love fest as a whole, I did not find it offensive. They just amped it up from the usual level. The love stuff is all throughout the show, but I think it always got balanced by the WTF? craziness of show's drama. In the finale, they no longer had a dramatic crisis to balance out the show, so with the crisis resolved, the whole thing tilted into the goo. "Everyone grinning and farting rainbows". I liked it. I loved what MeriJ said here about how she allows emotional responses to occur regardless of the rationality of the set up. Lost always had that sentimental side, and they served it up warm and goey. So sweeet it would put a diabetic into a coma. Still, it works for me. Consider this: I loved Six Feet Under, and I especially loved the finale (which you linked to under "sublime"). But many people would regard that ending as a smarmy gag-a-thon. Such people would have probably quit watching long before the finale, but still, those people exist. Different strokes for different folks. Yeah, the chosen few did not make perfect narrative sense, but I took it as symbolic, because how many people do you want to jam into this church? If you get all the families and friends and grandparents in there, it would not make a practical show ending, trying to pick out all the Lost characters among the crowd. Seriously.
I posted elsewhere though, how I compare the finale to Virgin Mary Heroin. A feel good- put- you- to- sleep ending wrapped in religious icons. I wanted one more WTF? wake up moment. I wanted the writers to leave the audience feeling lost. I wanted the smoke monster to live.
I described it on eyemsick and tubular almost week ago, in case you want to check it out. It relates to a posting I did there May 30th, too.

Gary C said...

My Favorite Disappointment

I've seen a lot of disappointing finales to network and cable TV shows. But nothing disappointed me more than Deadwood. I should put a spoiler alert here. Can you spoil someone's disappointment? I would hate to do that, because people should experience the full impact of that disappointment. In Deadwood, we have one of the worst villains ever. A bit like the main villain in Inglorius Basterds. The "Jew Hunter". He would act so polite and courteous, so matter of fact, just before ordering you killed. Deadwood had a villain like that. George Hearst. In a Western TV drama, you have certain expectations. You have a hero gunslinger sheriff who barely keeps his instincts in check, and you have a villain that needs killin'. What do you expect to happen 99.9% of the time? I don't think I have to spell it out. Well guess what, that did not happen. No, the villain rode out of town on a coach, waving his hat and gloating, while the sheriff and other people who wanted to kill him stood by and watched, helplessly. The bad guy gets away, to cause mayhem somewhere else, and ruin other peoples lives, order other people killed, and make tons of money in the process. The guy did know how to make money, finding and mining gold.
I hated that ending. It seemed designed to build up to a climactic battle that did not happen. I hated it hated it hated it.
But now looking back on it, I respect David Milch, the writer of Deadwood for making that choice. Deadwood tried to reflect today's political landscape by putting it in a little microcosm. Now I think that disappointment reminds me so much of the real world I live in. The "too big to fail gang" rode off recently with 700 billion dollars of taxpayer's money. Watch for BP to rip us off next, after creating a monumental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in their search for "black gold".

So I call it my favorite disappointment, because David Milch, instead of writing a feel good ending, told us the truth. Maybe the actual historical truth, I have not checked. A harsh and bitter truth, however. He did not "talk pretty to me". So even with a disappointing ending, I would recommend that show to anyone, and I'll check out whatever Milch produces next. I don't have that kind of respect for the writers of Lost. They succeeded in doing what they set out to do, and gave most the people what they wanted. The bad guys mostly die, (Whitmore and Flocke) and the good guys mostly go to heaven.
For me though, the good things from Lost, the gifts or boons, transcend the faults. I even did an outline for what I titled the "Ten Boons of Lost" that I wanted to write up and post. But after reading your post and writing this, I feel like my motivation for writing that has fizzled. I think because I realized that although I could list 10 great things I got from Lost, that only one of those things keeps me thinking about Lost up to this moment. One thing keeps me hooked. The smokemonster. And although I go on about it at great length at those other sites, it begins to look as if I've mostly projected it from my own quest to define the great beast of our times that heretofore seemed undefined. I don't see much posted on the smoke monster lately though. I'm surprised in fact to read how many people look at Lost as escapist entertainment. I never thought of it that way, but instead wondered how the metaphors of Lost reflected in the reality of our social and political landscape. So while I view the smokemonster as a political metaphor, and I get mostly positive responses to my theory, I feel like I might as well go bark at the moon.
Hmm. Maybe this is how it feels for me to start letting go.



Anyway as time passes, you may find that your scale of balance shifts toward the positive. Not that it needs to. I'm just sayin'. That's happened to me over time after I written long rants over one thing or another. Later I'll wonder why I got so carried away.

Oh well.

Fishbiscuitland said...

It's a TV show, after all, and simplicity plus groupthink rules in the end.

You've described perfectly why network tv, at least in America, is such trash. And now Lost is no exception.

I don't characterize what I wrote is a rant. It took a long time to write. I cut a lot out. I thought long and hard about every point I decided to include.

I loved Six Feet Under, and I especially loved the finale (which you linked to under "sublime"). But many people would regard that ending as a smarmy gag-a-thon.

Six Feet Under is widely regarded as the epitome of a great finale - not because it was sentimental and revisited each wonderful character, but because it was in keeping with the spirit and ethos of the storyline that we had watched.

One of the beauties of SFU, and an area where Lost failed miserably, is it never insulted us by elevating one person's journey above the others In the case of Lost, they not only fell back on the stereotype of an individual hero, but they chose the MOST stereotypical, culturall regressive dolt to position front and center. Jack never had big problems to overcome, at least not in comparison to the other characters. Yet we were forced to sit at his pity party for six years and then asked to clap madly because he won all the lollipops and every other character sat on the sidelines, happy just to see him win all the marbles. I don't think 'revolting" is too strong of a word to describe how that makes me feel.

Zonker said...

I'll never make you like Jack, that's a losing battle. But I don't think it's 100% about him... Desmond in particular is more important to the endgame than I think is generally acknowledged. Here's the 1st part of my reverse-engineering of the on-island part of the storyline:

Start with what actually happened and assume that was Jacob's plan all along, then work backwards.
1.1. Man in Black could only be killed by first un-plugging the island. OK.
1.2. No one except Desmond could survive the EM radiation at the heart of the island when it was burning at full force. (Assume Jack only survived as long as he did because he was re-booting the island light... it took a while to get it up to full intensity from its startup).
1.3. So Desmond needed to be dosed with an EM jolt to be effective as Jacob's weapon. Hence the Swan Station implosion back in Season 2.
1.4. So Jacob sent those dreams to Locke in Season 1 to lead him to first find the hatch, and then to lose his faith in button-pushing and therefore cause the failsafe to be activated. Perhaps Jacob was ok with either Desmond or Locke becoming his weapon.
1.5. So Jacob influenced Dharma to build in the failsafe system to the Swan Station. Arguably that was the reason for the 108 minute countdown: over the years it charged whatever system eventually powered up Desmond when the failsafe was activated.
1.6. So arguably, Jacob engineered the Incident, maybe going so far as to flash Jack, Kate, Sayid, etc. back to the 1970s to trigger the Incident and influence the building of the Swan Station in such a way as to eventually power up Desmond.
1.7. Also arguably, Jacob brought Dharma to the island in the first place so they would build the Swan Station and eventually produce someone who would activate the failsafe and be useful as a weapon. Possibly Jacob thought Dharma could produce a candidate as well as a weapon for him.
1.8. So Eloise Hawking was acting on Jacob's behalf when she kept Desmond stay on track, and when she helped the Ajira 316 crew back to the island (they were needed to trigger the Incident, etc.)
1.9. Built in to this is an assumption that Jacob was actually a step ahead of the MIB. He knew or thought it likely that the MIB would use Locke's corpse to motivate Ben to kill him. And just like Mother, (who said "Thank you" when she was killed), Jacob was ok with dying as long as he had some belief that the island would continue to be protected, and that through his death, the MIB would be defeated.

Anonymous said...

"One of the beauties of SFU, and an area where Lost failed miserably, is it never insulted us by elevating one person's journey above the others In the case of Lost, they not only fell back on the stereotype of an individual hero, but they chose the MOST stereotypical, culturall regressive dolt to position front and center. Jack never had big problems to overcome, at least not in comparison to the other characters. Yet we were forced to sit at his pity party for six years and then asked to clap madly because he won all the lollipops and every other character sat on the sidelines, happy just to see him win all the marbles. I don't think 'revolting" is too strong of a word to describe how that makes me feel."

The Jack character has always been front and center though. Why soo insulted now? The Jack/Jack vs Locke story was always elevated above all the other character stories. That was clear from the get go. Why did you continue to watch for 6 years if it was that insulting? And I don't think anyone can argue which characters had it worse than other characters. They ALL had it bad. They ALL had problems. None of them were happy. All the other characters did NOT just sit on the sidelines in the finale. They all had those realization moments, and apart from Locke, those moments had nothing to do with Jack. Jack was just the last of the bunch to let go. So Jack won all the marbles? He gave up EVERYTHING for the island. All the other characters, who were left, got to live. After they did what they had to do, Kate/Sawyer/Claire/Frank/Miles/Richard got to leave, Hurley/Ben got to take over as protectors, and Desmond, after he dealt with the EM energy, got to go home to Penny. Jack got what he wanted BUT it cost him his life. And in the end all the characters were happy. It wasn't all just because Jack arrived. How is Jack the only character that "won"? They ALL got to move on TOGETHER into the light. Doesn't that mean,in the end, they ALL won?

Fishbiscuitland said...

The Jack character has always been front and center though. Why soo insulted now? The Jack/Jack vs Locke story was always elevated above all the other character stories. That was clear from the get go. Why did you continue to watch for 6 years if it was that insulting?

This is probably one of the most repetitive examples of how shallow the groupthink of the Lost fandom really was.

He was always front and center? Really? In the last three seasons, he was probably one of the least active, least complex characters on the show. We had his addiction that magically disappeared, in a totally fake story contrivance. Then he came to the island, and did nothing until it was time in the finale for him to suddenly be "pivotoal". It wouldn't have been so bad to have to swallow a stereotypical hero if they'd even TRIED a little to make him interesting, organic to the story or original in any way.

And it's always interesting to me when people drag out that other groupthink meme: It was all about the Jack/Locke conflict. How do people just brush over the fact that Locke was GONE for the last 2/3rds of the story? The central conflict between two characters didn't even have the second character for the climactic moments in the story .

He gave up EVERYTHING for the island. All the other characters, who were left, got to live.

What did Jack give up? The job he'd lost by being a drunk? The woman(Kate) who didn't seem to give a damn about him for the last 2 seasons? The family (his mom, sister, Aaron) he didn't ever care about? Locke gave up everything - because he loved the island. Charlie gave up everything - we saw and witnessed that. Jack got what he had always wanted - the only thing he had always wanted - to be a hero. He gave up nothing he cared about and got the only thing he did care about.

The people who got to live? What did they get? Lives that meant so little to them that they were only waiting the whole time for death, when they could be with the only people they'd ever cared about. We know nothing about their lives, only that they were invalid compared to what happened to them on the island. Not much of a prize - to get a life that's worth nothing.

The kind of people that worshipped Jack will always be a mystery to me. I don't understand the authoritarian mindset, but more than that, I don't understand the kind of people who became so committed to Jack, to defending him. No matter how poorly, inconsistently and erratically the character was written, they continued to see him as a complex protagonist. I have to admit that, even though I now see Lost as a horribly written story, they did know how to market to the unthinking, stereotype-craving masses.

They could show jack shitting all over Aaron and this group will continue to repeat things like "jack raised Aaron". He could treat Kate like crap and still these people saw ridiculously phony, overwrought "love". He could make fake, unmotivated character twists and these people would be sold on the most synthetic kind of "character development". I think the simple mindedness and love of cliche is what gave Darlton the feeling that they could write trash and keep calling it genius.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

No offense to those who liked the flash sideways and finale, but I can't understand what there was to like. Not one character in the sideways world got any kind of resolution:

Sawyer was looking for Anthony Cooper. He didn't even get to find Cooper and confront him and maybe decide this time to not kill him. Who got to meet Cooper, instead? Jack. Who had no history with Cooper and didn't even know about him.

Kate claimed she was innocent, but she did the same thing in her real life, and we never even found out what she supposedly did or if she really was innocent. If she was innocent, it seemed to serve the purpose of Jack never dealing with Kate being a crim, so she was made innocent.

Locke didn't get to marry Helen. The minute he remembered wonder boy, it was Helen who?

Sayid didn't finally get together with Nadia, instead he got together with his island bimbo.

The Sun/Jin stuff seemed pointless. Character resolution for them would be caring more for their child then they did for themselves.

The Charlotte/Sawyer hook-up seemed to be done because it was what Rebecca Mader had been pushing for and may have been the price tag to get her back. Not that they really needed her since she did precious little but boink Sawyer in the flash sideways.

Ana-Lucia wasn't a crooked cop. She only broke the law to get revenge on the man who caused her to lose her baby. What they did to her was pure character assassination, but since they thought no one liked her character, they thought no one would care.

Keamy, Omar, Rose and Benard's lives in the sideways all seemed pointless.

And I echo the sentiment that Lost was not the Jack Show for the last few years. The show realized how much the character sucked, so others like Sawyer, Locke, Ben, Richard, etc became major players, while Jack was little more than a background character in season 5.

Even in season 6, until the last few episodes, it wasn't the Jack Show. The show had evolved from this one dimensional character and then it devolved back again to come full circle and end with the closing of Jack's eye ball.

Seeing all those wonderful character in that church all being sacrificed on the altar of Jack, is what made me cry when the show ended. They were all sacrificed for the glorification for one lousy character [who should have been killed off in the pilot episode] and for one lousy actor.

Fishbiscuitland said...

And I don't think anyone can argue which characters had it worse than other characters.

Oh, I sure can. I will argue without apology that seeing your parents killed by gunshots in front of your 8 year old eyes is exponentially WORSE than having a daddy who gives you weird advice when you lose a schoolyard fight.

I will argue that being an unloved foster child who ends up being pushed out of a window and paralyzed by the father who stole your kidney is exponentially WORSE than having your wife ask for a divorce because she's tired of being married to a workaholic.

EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER had worse problems than whiny, whingey Jack. Whether it's an unwanted pregnancy or cancer or betraying your country to protect the woman you love or being a heroin addict or being morbidly obese and afflicted with constant bad luck or having an abusive drunk as the father you didn't know was your father or growing up impoverished in a warlord dominated society ... EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER on Lost had real, difficult problems.

Jack's problems were the bourgeois problems of a self pitying elitist. His daddy wasn't always encouraging. He didn't do well with women. Excuse me if I can't give a damn. Meanwhile he's rich, he's a gifted doctor, he's admired by everyone. And he can't stop yelling or crying about it. It was ridiculous and I really think it succeeded only because a large segment of the audience is only comfortable with caring more about the rich white male than they are dealing with any other archetype as hero.

In the end of course even Jack's story was trivialized. The epic father/son conflict piffled out to some nonsense where Christian was suddenly the good saint. His addictions, unlike Charlies, were a meaningless plot contrivance, instead of a means of developing him as a truly flawed human being. And since the actor was incompetent as a romantic leading man, even his "romantic" ending had to be pasted on as an afterthought - instead of being developed on film in a coherent manner.

I'll stand by my belief that Jack was the weakest link in this story. The insistence on adhering to his preprogrammed ending (eyes closing, wow, how profoundly simplistic, LOL) was a great example of how a moment that could have been great became empty and predictable. Feeling sympathy for a self pitying whiner is bad enough, but when he's in the company of people with REAL problems, it's either laughable or a disgrace, depending on which way you look at it.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Great summary of how every character other than Jack was screwed by this finale, SockeRock. It really couldn't be more obvious, could it? Amazing that the two crooked tailors were able to convince so many unthinking fans that they everyone was getting beautiful new clothes, when really no one but Jack got an ounce of respect from these writers.

I laugh every time someone says all the characters got satisfying resolutions. How could that even be possible when the last two seasons had done nothing but gut all the characters and turn them into stick figures? I'd love to know - How do stick figures get satisfying resolutions?

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

The sad thing is there were so many roads they could have taken to that closing eyeball.

One possibility was that Jack and the survivors are escaping from the sinking island on the outrigger, when the other outrigger suddenly materializes and Jack is shot by Juliet. There was no reason or need for Jack to have to flop down on the same spot he woke-up on.

The thing that bugs me the most, is they didn't even try to write a decent ending to the show. Sometimes if you try, you actually pull it off and they didn't even try.

As you said, they failed miserably in Jack's final confrontation with his father. Sorry, Foxy, it didn't rank up their with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. It didn't even rank up there with Homer and Bart Simpson.

Seeing a bunch of pod people worshiping at the throne of St. Jackass didn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy, it made me want to vomit.

Lost was much more than one whiny little rich boy with daddy issues, who beat-up his father and stalked his ex-wife. They could have had whiny boy be hero without doing what they did to the show.

The sick thing is even in that goal they failed miserably. Jack wasn't a hero. A hero cares about others more than he does himself. It was all about the vain glorification of Jack and the only one Jack ever really cared for was Jack.

He only cared about saving the island because he thought it was HIS destiny, otherwise he wouldn't have lifted a finger to save it. Days earlier he thought it was his destiny to destroy it. It was always and ever about ME ME ME for Jack. And that makes you a selfish pig, not a hero.

True heroes care about others more than they do themselves, that's why the great hero fails on all counts. Sayid was a hero. Michael was a hero. Sawyer was a hero. Charlie was a hero. Jack was a big fat zero as a hero.

Ultimately, Lost attracted a strange breed of fans that would turn this jerk's unheroic actions into the acts of a hero. You could give them a list of the selfish unheroic things this doofus did and still justify it into the acts of a hero.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Ultimately, Lost attracted a strange breed of fans that would turn this jerk's unheroic actions into the acts of a hero.

Agreed. I think it's impossible to discuss the failures of Lost without admitting to the weird psychological makeup of the fans that were ultimately satisfied by it. Since Damon Lindelof in particular was a poll whore who apparently rewrote his story to cater to fan whims, the type of fan that cared enough to vote in these polls makes a difference. In the end, the loudest online group still following Lost was an ultra-conventional crowd of generally authoritarian minded fans. Still Damon had to have known that Jack had become an unpopular character, but that was one area where he wouldn't budge - since Jack had become his taller, handsomer, more goyim alter ego. So he tuned out the voices that didn't match up with his own need to project, and decided instead to listen exclusively and to feed into the group that shared his set of nerd specific psycho-issues.

Jeff Jensen also set the tone by cheering on literally every ridiculous plot twist and every vapid character assassination his buddies came up with. He was very much a partner in the way Lost failed this final season. From his often asinine pimping of Suliet to his bleating of the party line that Lost was always meant as a fuzzy headed Rorschach test for the audience, he was playing along with Darlton the whole time and trying to make whatever they dished out palatable to the masses.

So while in the end, the fans are largely responsible for the fuck up of Lost, it was only that group of fans that Damon cared about that ever had the power to do the damage. The rest of us mostly got censored and silenced and ignored. We weren't complicit in the destruction of Lost because we were never important enough to be heard.

Anonymous said...

Can I ask why everyone hates on Shannon that much?

I'm an Arab guy, and despite what the American media force feeds everyone about Islamic people and such other crap like we make the women in our society be submissive, I've always found white women to be more interesting and physically attractive than most of the women I've been with. (none of them blonde or caucasian, sadly)

I wish I could live in an open-minded society like yours, where women aren't burdened with faux guilt and religion. To me, it's a triumph that your society has such beautiful, independent women and I find it difficult to understand why you would hate her that much.

I wish I could date/romance someone as beautiful as her. From one brown man to another, if I was Sayid, I would have jumped at the opportunity to be with her.

I also find it insulting, on some level, that the arab guy must end up with the arab girl. Where's your supposed tolerance? Is it wrong for an arab guy to be with a "tall, leggy blond playboy bimbo", as you say? Is that something that's frowned upon in your society?

Anyway, good day to you miss. If you decide to ignore/delete my comment, that is fine by me.

Fishbiscuitland said...

I also find it insulting, on some level, that the arab guy must end up with the arab girl.

It had nothing to do with her beign Arab. It had to do with her being the woman he loved for the entire series.

I'm not up for discussing all the racist stereotypes in your comment,except to say Nadia was never portrayed as submissive. She broke the cultural restrictions and was a free spirit who had left an oppressive society and lived her own life. She was a role model of sorts. However, she didn't amount to squat in the male dominant Lost lexicon where the job of women was to be completely obsessed with and ultimately subservient to their mates. In general, they were also required to be blond - another oppressive cultural stereotype that mainly serves to sell a whole lot of hair bleach.

Anonymous said...

I sincerely apologize if I came off as rude or racist on my first post. Heh, the racist Arab guy, who would have thought?

Thanks also for your quick reply.

I agree with your view of Nadia, she endured torture, managed to escape from her oppressors and start a new life elsewhere. Yes, I also am willing to believe that her and Sayid are soul mates. If Nadia and Sayid had headed into the light together, I would have been fine with that too.

But the fact that early on in the show, the producers took a bold step and paired an Iraqi torturer with someone who could have been Miss America, I am willing to cut them some slack. I mean, looking elsewhere in American media, Islamic terrorists are in every corners of your cities on 24 or comic relief on some other shows.

... where the job of women was to be completely obsessed with and ultimately subservient to their mates. In general, they were also required to be blond - another oppressive cultural stereotype that mainly serves to sell a whole lot of hair bleach.

I don't know if I'm smart enough to debate the above with you, but what about the non-blond women on the show? Kate was never subservient to anyone, to me, she has always been the real hero of the show, a good-hearted person who was handed a crap life. Sun had an affair and was even going to leave Jin. Ana-Lucia was tougher than most of the male cast.
Ilana is also another example.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Kate was never subservient to anyone, to me, she has always been the real hero of the show, a good-hearted person who was handed a crap life. Sun had an affair and was even going to leave Jin. Ana-Lucia was tougher than most of the male cast.
Ilana is also another example.


I would disagree with you on all points. Kate was entirely subservient, throughout the series. Although constantly mistreated and disregarded by Jack, and although she had a more egalitarian relationship with Sawyer, we were told that she lived only to be by Jack's side. They never showed us her side of things - what she got out of her hero worship - but they didn't feel the need to, since her only function was to serve as one of the hero's many trophies. I do concede though, that at least she wasn't a blonde.

Sun did nothing but ask where Jin was - for three years. Ana Lucia and Ilana got fridged.

I do agree that having Sayid on the show was one of the few areas where the story broke with convention. The American media has been insidious in perpetuating anti-Muslim stereotypes and Sayid was a breath of fresh air, at least in the first few years. Like everything else on Lost, however, that faltered in the inferior later years of the series. He became a murdering cartoon character and his story ended idiotically with the foolish Shannon reunion.

Anonymous said...

Alright, I give up, you win :/

Anonymous said...

what about the non-blond women on the show? Kate was never subservient to anyone, to me, she has always been the real hero of the show, a good-hearted person who was handed a crap life. Sun had an affair and was even going to leave Jin. Ana-Lucia was tougher than most of the male cast. Ilana is also another example.

I didn't even know what shipper meant until I watched Lost. For a long time the story involved Sawyer and Kate getting to know each other, finally culminating in Kate's "definitive choice" of Sawyer in season 3 (Lindelof's and Cuse's words, not mine) and the exploration of the "next stage" of their relationship in season 4 (again their words). Then this relationship was only teased, as all the characters became stick figures moving a brand new mythology plot along. But anyone commenting on this or other characters was marginalized as a "shipper". When the greatest writers in our civilization (and that would include men) have always known that characters and plot are linked. Then after enduring abuse on that point, dismissed with "we're not writing a romance novel here", to be told "it's all about the characters" (again, their words) to justify the superficial sickly sweet ending that could have been tacked onto the end of any story about anyone was a bit much.

Shannon was never portrayed as anything but selfish and shallow until Walt left, and even then she had a long, long way to go. For Sayid, in their few brief, shallow, mostly sexual encounters to overcome his lifetime attachment to Nadia, who he knew very well and whose story was enmeshed with his own for most of his adult life, is rather unbelievable.

Kate why don't you die already, bitch, whore, and worse comments were spouted by fanboys everywhere. It got to a point that even the actor playing Kate said she was fed up with the way they were writing her character, going from one guy to the next and then back again in the blink of an eye. For such a young woman, we were told she had loved many men, but rejecting Jack was unforgivable - she had to be punished for that. Sawyer and Kate brought up too many bad memories for the fanboys, Sawyer is the man who always gets the Kates they want, and Kate is the woman who always rejects them for the Sawyers. Sawyer had to be neutered and Kate turned into a nun for these guys to be happy. And Lindelof and Cuse obliged.

Sun had an affair because Jin was behaving like a sexist pig. Ana Lucia and Ilana were tough but were completely unnecessarily killed in horribly violent ways (like a number of other strong women in the series - Danielle, Zoe, etc.) Eloise we thought was important, but later turned out to be characterized as an excessively sentimental mother. Speaking of mothers, besides adoring sex partner, mother was the other role for women - Claire's and Sun's arcs were about the babies (after Jin suddenly stopped being sexist). Even Kate was initially ruled out as a candidate "because she was a mother" (when actually she was a post traumatic stress victim who kidnapped a baby to cope) - but why not also rule out Sawyer since he was a father? Juliet was presented as a calculating doctor but to get Sawyer out of the way, they turned her into a jealous insecure teenager - if I can't have you I'll blow everyone up! and humiliating herself by repeatedly pleading with Sawyer (a redneck she'd have never given the time of day in the non-"playing house" world) to kiss her bloody face. Jack the hero The hero stalked his ex-wife and forced Achara to give him a tatoo at great cost to herself. Jack physically restrained Kate when she tried to get away from him, constantly shamed her (no other word for it), and screamed at her in a red-faced rage fueled by jealousy of another man and a baby, and we were supposed to think this was all an expression of "love".

Anonymous said...

Lost was a terrible show for women. Very backwards. I think maybe people have gone so far backwards they are becoming more sexist and that's why so many didn't notice and didn't care how badly women were treated by this show. It's like a minor concern considering how bad this whole season turned out to be but it was always something that bothered me and made it harder to enjoy the show.

Unknown said...

Great review. I agree with a lot of your comments and overall feeling.

A few days prior to the finale, a youtube video surfaced of the Muppet Rizzo the Rat seeing Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and determined to ask them a question. When Rizzo finally got to them, he asked about the Dharma food drops. What was with the Dharma food drops? The writers laugh it off.

When I saw this, I thought, "Cool. They are aware this is a question they have never resolved! At least this is one loose end they will wrap up!"

And, well, I was nothing but a puppet being toyed with.

Now when I think of the LOST finale, I think of that muppet sketch. It fits, really.

Miss Anthropy said...

Six years of my life and one magic glowing cave later, I wish I'd never started watching. Oh well. Thanks for the excellent recaps, Fish, you were always my favorite.

Kris said...

Thank you, Fish! Now I can finally let go of Lost - the saga who turned out not to be a saga but bullshit with a cherry covered of disappointment on top.

Darlton, do us a favor and never wtite anything ever again. Leave it to the real writers out there.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

Considering how they wrote the women on this show, I can't imagine them writing a show with a woman as the lead character, as originally conceived. I think the original concept was JJ Abrams, since he has a history of doing shows with women as lead characters. I think when ABC ordered it rebooted with the Jack character as lead, Abrams got out of dodge. He didn't stay with the show much longer after that. The excuse was he was working on the new Star Trek movie.

I also had to laugh when Darlton wanted Abrams to come back for the final season and he declined, saying it was their show now. In retrospect it makes you wonder if Abrams knew these two losers were going to completely mess it up, and maybe the two losers were hoping Abrams could help them get out of the mess they made, and he wanted no part of it.

While the two doofi's gave the Kate more to do than the other women, they also objectified her more. I mean, how many times did they have this chick strip down in season 1? She stripped down in the first episode to give herself a bath, that the audience really didn't need to see, as it didn't play into the story, at all. A few episodes later they had her strip off her shirt when she got chased by bees. Then she stripped down again when she and Sawyer went for a swim. There was also that creepy voyeuristic scene in season 2 of Kate taking a shower while Jack watched from outside. The Kate in the shower scene was done repeatedly throughout the show.

Rewatching season one, you notice they, at first, tried to make Fox the shirtless hunk, only he couldn't pull it off, so that mantle got handed to Josh Holloway. When Holloway proved to also be a better actor than Fox, IMO, it seems like Darlton started objectifying JH, as well, trying to make it seem that all he was good for was taking his shirt off, because he was outshining their boy Fox.

So I guess they're equal opportunity objectifiers when it comes to make their boy Jack/Fox look good.

Fishbiscuitland said...

I think the original concept was JJ Abrams, since he has a history of doing shows with women as lead characters.

It's funny. I wanted to include a mention of J.J. in this review but it was already overstuffed. I wonder how much of a coincidence was it that J.J.'s excellent second season of Fringe was doing a peerless rendition of an alternate universe at exactly the same point in time that Damon was making a mess of the same general idea on Lost. Fringe's AU addresses all kinds of issues - the true meaning of the father/son bond, the ethical issues of tampering with other people's reality, the emotional issues of where our identity originates and what it really means. Just masterful, meaningful storytelling.

NOt to say J.J. is perfect, but there's no contest between him as an artist and these two ass clowns.

While the two doofi's gave the Kate more to do than the other women, they also objectified her more. I mean, how many times did they have this chick strip down in season 1? She stripped down in the first episode to give herself a bath, that the audience really didn't need to see, as it didn't play into the story, at all.

I know. It was so insulting on every level. Even their idea of a feminist statement by Sun was ... her having the courage to wear a bikini. It's like a caricature of what a woman's self worth should look like in a misogynist's fantasy world. Feminism means having the courage to embrace your own objectification!

There were so many ways, large and small, that these writers managed to diss women. The more I look back on it all, I have to wonder what the hell I was hanging on to with this show or why I ever respected it.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

On another note, the way they treated the Ana-Lucia character has been appalling. Her death was treated as nothing. Less than nothing. I've lost count how many times Michael has apologized for killing Libby, but he never expressed one bit of sorrow for killing Ana-Lucia.

I forget, what horrible thing did she do that deserved her death to be treated as less than nothing? Oh, she shot snotty Shannon after she'd been terrorized by the Others for 48 days to the point she was ready to shoot anything that moved. It was an accident. Yet, her death is less than nothing in comparison to Libby, who was about to give Fat Boy a magic carpet ride, apparently.

Then we had the latest spitting on the character by making her a crooked cop out for money, which she never was.

I was one of the people who couldn't stand the character, but it really bothers me that her murder has always been treated as nothing, and Libby's death the only one that counted.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Oh that's an easy one to explain. The fans didn't like Ana Lucia, so the poll whores who wrote the show figured they didn't need to show her any common decency. If she had been popular, she'd have had a better sendoff, or maybe even been kept around.

Careful about calling Hurley Fat Boy though. The same people who will slag off on any female's looks will take gigantic umbrage at any hint that men should ever be judged on their looks. Like most standard pop shows, Lost bought into the idea that men can be fat or funnylooking or bald or old, but there is only one mold women can be shoved into. Every once in a while it looked like they might break out of their conventions, but then Rousseau got fridged, Eloise was reduced to nothing but another mad mommy, and poor old Rose ended up getting about 3 lines a season to say. They truly couldn't see beyond the booty when it came to women. It's not a mystery why they never portrayed them as fully developed human beings - they never saw them that way themselves.

Fishbiscuitland said...

I'm going to start printing these comments now. I think it's only fair that people get to see what kind of haters this blog is afflicted with. This is why I redirected comments to here from Doc's blog. I realize this fandom is full of disturbed young men, as this comment shows. But this shit is over now. Doc's blog would have been full of spew like this if I hadn't redirected them here. I won't print most of what they write, but I think it's interesting to give people a window into the mindset of Lost's most devoted fans.

Jon said...

Hi there! Long time reader, first time commenter.

After reading your article twice, I fully understand your frustrations and disappointments with the show. You are very clear, concise and you call it like you see it. There's just one thing that's bugging me.

Why do you feel the need to link to other articles that share a similar view to your own? Are you not confident in your own writing? Do you think those other opinions add more weight to your own? Or is that just your clever politician side?

Based on what I've read on your blog for the last few years, I'd say your opinion alone speaks for itself. And no reinforcements of any kind are needed.

Fishbiscuitland said...

Why do you feel the need to link to other articles that share a similar view to your own?

I did that for a few reasons:

1. I think the writers were particularly on point in their criticisms, more than I was able to be. I enjoyed all those articles and thought they were all extremely well written.

2. I wanted to demonstrate that the finale was poorly received by a great many intelligent bloggers and journalists out there. A meme had developed that "most" people liked the finale. I thought that was demonstrably untrue, so I demonstrated it.

3. I wanted to deflect the inevitable claim that many would make that I was alone in my lack of respect for the finale. In fact some still tried to jump on the predictable "you only hated it because of Sawyer and Kate", but I think the wide range of dissatisfaction I linked to rendered that criticism moot.

Jon said...

Ok, that's fair enough I suppose, but I still like your articles a whole lot more. Take care :)

amy said...

Sigh. I'll miss you're reviews fish, they were always passionate and insightful. I read them over at DocArtz, where the response was, well, you were never ignored.

I have hope that LOST will be re-watchable- at least seasons 1-3. I have this hope because I still love and enjoy the first Pirates of the Carribbean film. I hated the sequels and was so disgusted with how they ended it I decided to pretend the last two don't exist. The story, as far as I'm concerned, ended after film one. Otherwise, I can't watch that movie without feeling sad. My hope is that after awhile the final days of LOST will fade from my memory, and I can watch the first few seasons with something like of old LOST joy.

marylandsawyer2 said...

Sent to Damon after watching an ABC salute to the finale.
I still wish you would have given something more than the final few moments. The moment between Locke and Ben is touching. The reunions, in a sense, were good.
But to have Kate, Sawyer and Claire hauled back into their selves at the time of the finale is absurd. They went back, lived, loved, progressed. We see nothing of Claire's reunion with Aaron... See More. Nothing of what I hope is a happy resolution for Skate which is totally ignored in the finale. Nothing of Richard who has so much to share about the island and its purpose.
Jack dies. Juliet dies. Why not just leave them together in the alt world.
What did Jin and Sun's sacrifice about their daughter really mean. Nothing. She's not there with them.
What does Locke loving Helen mean? Evidently nothing.

marylandsawyer2 said...

I wish we could have a reset. There are 9 fascinating characters still alive -- 6 in the real world, not including the children, two adults on the island and Desmond trying to get home to Penny and little Charlie.
This would make a strong and compelling story that deserves to be told..
We need to see why Aaron is special. Sawyer and Kate's true reunion and him becoming Clementine's daddy. Miles and Richard. Frank Lapidus. What happens with Hurley and Ben?
And I wonder how these characters would work together if reunited against a new threat appears.

Henry Holland said...

[sarcasm on] Pffffttt, all you chicks bitching about how women were portrayed on the show! What about gays and lesbians? There was exactly *one* for six seasons, Tom. And guess what? The extent of his gayness was a) having a crush on Jack (!!!!) and b) having a part-time lover who we never hear of again. Of course he gets shot in the end, that's how all GLBT end up, right? What about THAT huh? HUH? [sarcasm off]

Totally agree with the comments about how poorly the women were written. It just never had any credibility to me that Kate could grab a shotgun from James and coldly threaten to blow Aldo's knee off if he didn't tell them where Karl was and then turn to jellyfish (i.e. spineless) in her interactions with Jack.

She should have been in the Glowy Church Of Pat Resolutions with Tom anyways. :-)

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

The mentality is unless they had Jack in their life, their life was meaningless, worthless and pointless. Which is pretty ridiculous, but that's what the idiots are trying to sell. That's why Sun never sought revenge against Jack for Jin, even though he was the one she should of sought revenge against. Both him and Kate, since Kate promised to get Jin and Jack, [her lord and master] told her not to, so she did what he told her. Jin meant nothing to either Widmore or Ben, but Jack was supposed to be Jin's friend, and he left him to die to save himself and a select few. That's why Sawyer never called Jack on abandoning him and everyone else and lying that they were dead and not returning for three years. Because gosh-darnit, Jack is just so special. His mere presence makes people's lives better.

The hilarious thing is that most of the best moments on this show didn't feature Mr. Special. Most of those moments that kept us watching and made us overlook all the bad stuff had little to do with Mr. Special.

Like finding out Locke couldn't walk before he got on the plane. Or that Sawyer wrote the letter and became a con man to find the person he blamed for his parents death.

To those declaring the show was always all about Jack, let me tell you that if it was, it would have been canceled the first season. All the characters Darlton treated like nothing as they canonized their precious one are the ones that made this show a success. Jack was the albatross that dragged the show down; the other characters were the ones who kept it afloat.

I'm still ticked off that they ended the season one finale with Jack looking down a hole, when a more powerful last scene would have been Walt's kidnapping by the Others. And that's in a nutshell how these two losers ruined the show. They could never accept Jack wasn't a good or interesting character and fans weren't just hanging to know every minute detail of his boring little life. So, they ruined the season one finale by ending it with Jack staring down a hole and ultimately ruined the entire show for this one boring, dull, uninteresting character.

I stopped watching Lost halfway through season two because I felt the Jack character was ruining the show. I started watching again back in season 4 when there was nothing good on because the writer's strike. I thought they'd finally got it that Jack shouldn't be the total focus of the show because his character was one of the least interesting on the show. But, ultimately, I see they didn't get it, and Jack did ultimately ruin the show.

Anonymous said...

Damon and Cralton weren't obsessed only with polls, but also with blogs and forums where people discussed their shows. There have been too many times when it seemed like they actually picked up ideas from fans and wrote them into the show. When it comes to romance, they completely retconned the Sawyer/Juliet relationship according to what Suliet fans were saying. That's where the "brilliant" engagement ring/marriage idea came from. As did the "Blondie" nickname, which BTW was an improvisation by the actor. And various other things.

I wouldn't be surprised if Damon is even posting in some places. :D

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be surprised if Damon is even posting in some places. :D

I think I once read that Damon Lindelof used to post on TWOP but I wouldn't be surprised if he was still doing it.

Henry Holland said...

So, they ruined the season one finale by ending it with Jack staring down a hole

Nah, not buying that. That was really the only way to end season one since getting in to the hatch was a focus of so much of the story in that season and was obviously going to be important in season 2. I notice you don't mention that John was staring down that hole too.

Anonymous said...

I think I once read that Damon Lindelof used to post on TWOP but I wouldn't be surprised if he was still doing it.

He must be the infamous JaterSulieter who dominated the Skate thread, driving people away - the one who masqueraded as multiple users and quoted/agreed with/talked to himself.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

Sorry, Henry, but breaking away from the dramatic raft scene to watch the undramatic scene of Beevis and Butthead looking down a hole in the ground, ruined the suspense of the finale.

The Beevis/Butthead scene should have come before the raft scene. The finale would have been far more powerful ending with the raft scene.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Fish. Every thought I've had about this show in the past weeks, brilliantly and lucidly set out point by point. Very cathartic. I will never watch another second of Lost (and I shall try very hard not to think of it ever again) nor anything the two idiots ever look at sideways.

Anonymous said...

Here's the thing about JJ: I still respect his artistic vision. But, really, he created this amazing pilot/first season and then just ... abandoned it to two hacks. They are hacks. So I'm mad at him.

Jeff Jensen, ugh, don't get me started. An intelligent person -- what in heaven made him sell out any shred of critical honesty and pretend this was all so awesome, when he was the one who had been giving the assclowns 3000% more credit than they'd ever deserved? Is he just saving face? Or is he just a total wanker?

And Kristin Dos Brain Cells -- she and her minions really were the ultimate Darlton target audience, in the end. Was the show ruined the first time she "squeeeed" at Suliet? No, because that implies it was ever about anything or ever going anywhere. But I cantstander. Ick.

Anonymous said...

I still chuckle at poor, demented Kristin and her notion that we'd turn into Sulieters after watching that wedding ring scene in WKD.

Uh, sorry, no, for one thing the wedding ring was a total retcon, and the idea of Sawyer wanting to marry the woman who took an active role in holding them prisoner and threatened to kill Kate just makes Suliet look even more moronic than ever before.

Poor Kristin. I used to think she was a smart, thinking woman, but now it's clear she just obediently runs along with the rest of the herd.

Anonymous said...

^^And seeing as Juliet was DEAD at by time the writers pulled that engagement ring thing out of nowhere, I don't see how anyone was gonna switch ships LOL. Silly me, I always thought that when one member of a ship was dead that they weren't an viable option anymore haha.

Merij said...

Deadwood, Six Feet Under and death/LA X in general:

Deadwood never had a finale -- It was cancelled abruptly between seasons. So we’ll never know how they might have ended. I’m still extremely bitter about that. But since we know George Hearst went on to prosper and give birth to William Randolph -- without whom, there would be no “Citizen Kane” -- it is safe to say that he would not have received his just deserts in any case.

Still, I am far from over Deadwood’s lack of proper resolution. That show was Shakespearean, both in the writing and acting. Only with the word c*ck thrown into every other sentence, which I loved! Plus there were so many actors who then appeared in minor roles on Lost. (“MIB” was superb in Deadwood.)


Six Feet Under was, indeed, the perfect finale. (See the YouTube link in Fish’s recap.) Remember that this was a show about death, as seen through the lives of a family-operated funeral home.

In the last minutes of the finale, they show each characters’ moment of death. One dies tragically two or three decades later, but most live well into old age and die pretty much exactly as they would have wanted.

But even knowing that, it was so extremely upsetting to watch. At the time, I hated it and felt depressed for days. Mortality is awful, the few times you actually have to face it. Especially for those of us who are left behind.

Until you lose a loved one, you can’t really understand how it feels. We know it will happen someday, but it’s very different when it does. Both my parents died this last decade, and even at the reasonably young age of 52, I can feel that my own death is not as far off as it once seemed. Dying is scary, but knowing how my children will feel when I go upsets me even more. One of my closest friends lost his 16-year old son to a car accident a couple of month ago, which is simply unimaginable.

The idea that all the characters on Lost eventually die is hardly a shocker. Seeing them in the church and knowing therefore that it had already happened was nonetheless sad to me. But realizing that they cared enough about one another to move on together felt beautiful at the time.

Yes, that was merely an emotional response. All of Fish’s observations about our two Emperors having no clothes stand annoyingly tall. I hate that she’s right, but there it is.

It’s a telling symptom that the more I think about how Lost ended, the less good I feel. But I’m still glad my initial response was a Hallmark one. Those characters deserved better than they got (from the writers). But at least they had a moment together at the end – contrived or not. Deadwood just died without warning.

Anonymous said...

FANTASTIC recap. I feel sorry for all of the Lost fanboys and girls who are fooling themselves into thinking the finale was actually good. I seriously have no idea what they are thinking.

MeriJ said...

Echoing the general sentiment here, Anonymous observed: I feel sorry for all of the Lost fanboys and girls who are fooling themselves into thinking the finale was actually good. I seriously have no idea what they are thinking.

It’s not that complex, really. Once you allow yourself to love someone or something, you overlook or forgive weaknesses that might otherwise annoy you.

I loved that show. Surely anyone bothering to talk about it this long after its demise must have loved it at one time.

I wanted it to end well. I wanted the characters to find peace of one kind or another -- preferably redemption in most cases. I wanted to believe that Darlton knew what they were doing, that Lost hadn’t become a mediocre ghost of a once-great show.

If I had watched more of those Darlton interviews or frequented places like Dark UFO, I might have seen through the veil sooner. Instead I hung out with fellow fans at the Washington Post’s Lost watering hole. We didn’t experience name-calling there. We just pushed one another’s thinking and shared our obsession with the show.

What I find odd is the contempt many people posting here seem to feel for those who liked the show up through the end.

Is it that you dislike people who are beneath you, intellectually? (I going to guess “no” on that count.)
So is this about past unpleasantness with so-called fanboys? I valued Fish’s recaps *way* above all others, but I never read the comments section until this one on the finale. Presumably I’m missing the historical context?

I say, hate the writers if you wish. I’m certainly starting to. But why hate fellow fans just because they haven’t seen your light?

And, really, why even bother hating idiotic young men who insult the nearest target every time their fingers touch a keyboard? As long as there is an Internet, there will be an endless supply of those fools strutting about. Life is so short; they barely qualify as background noise – until someone takes the bait.

Creators like Fish are what make the Internet worthwhile.

That said, I’ll admit that part of my addiction to Fishbiscuits was that I loved their sharp tanginess. So maybe a little hating is a good thing, when delivered with style. But without the style, it just feels ugly.

Anonymous said...

What I find odd is the contempt many people posting here seem to feel for those who liked the show up through the end.

We obviously have had completely opposite experiences with commenters, bloggers and posters after the finale.

All I see is a group of people who liked the finale trying to label those of us who didn't as stupid, unable to understand what it was all about, ungrateful, whiny etc.

Even the actors have disappointed me in their post-finale interviews. Elizabeth Mitchell and Michael Emerson, in particular. They made it seem like those of us who didn't like it are horrible people who just like hating on things. Blech. So disrespectful from them.

I wish people would stop saying the finale was satisfying on an emotional lever. For me , that part sucked the most - I HATED how the characters and relationship stories ended.

And sadly, the finale completely ruined the whole show for me. So much that I never plan on watching a single scene of Lost again.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

I want to thank you for a place to talk about this where I didn't have to get, "No, you don't get it, but if I explain it to you, you'll see the greatness of it." I think I'm finally ready to let it go and just move on.

I guess we must applaud them in the fact they created a finale that totally destroyed the show and made me, and many others, have no desire to ever watch a single episode of the show, again. Not great when you might want to rake in money from syndication, but there you have it. I mean, since they provided no answers, what's the point in watching mysteries that will never be solved. What's the point in watching a show where the only character that got a happy ending was Jack. [He got to be the hero he always wanted and in death he had everyone's life revolving around him.] Or to watch Jin and Sun separated for several seasons and when they finally find each other again, they're snuffed two seconds later.

Since fanboys love to use the phrase EPIC, Lost failed on an EPIC Scale in every way it could fail. There was no satisfaction or pay-off in anything.

What was satisfying about seeing Sayid walk off in the light with Shannon when Nadia was left to rot in domestic misery? Or to watch Locke once again choose some man, this time Jack, over Helen, and not give a crap about her. Or to see Sawyer end up with his rebound chick. Or to see Claire stuck with Charlie, a guy she never even seemed to love. To see Danielle getting romantic with the man who stole her child from her.

The whole thing was a travesty, but to quote Sawyer, it is what it is.

MeriJ said...

What I’m finally admitting to myself is that it’s not that they wrote the finale badly and therefore ruined everything. It’s that they finally ran out of room to hide the fact that the “there” hadn’t been there for years. Which most of you apparently realized a long time ago.

I was one of those apologists who wrote at length to convince skeptics in my group that it was a great ending, despite a number of annoying flaws like Sayid-Shannon, etc. None of us were hostile to those who had lost faith, since we had been talking to one another for years and had great mutual respect. But people like me did try mightily to sell the ending to our skeptics.

I don’t think my doubts even rose to the conscious level until I read Fish’s recap, which I had been checking for on a daily basis for what seemed like a couple of months. Since then, it’s all sunk in pretty deep.

I never cared that much about whether every mystery was resolved or whether a single grand explanation would tie it all together – although that would have been nice.

What struck me most from Fish’s recap was how incompetently they handled the relationships over the last few years. If many of you considered yourselves ‘shippers, maybe that’s what clued you in so early.

The rest of us kept filling in the blanks with more interesting explanations than actually existed. In that sense, it was still a great show up until the end. They provided ambiguity and the fans created meaning.

Kind of hard to feel that now, however.

Fishbiscuitland said...

People can use this place to vent as long as they like. Comments are off moderation now. If the dimwits come back, I'll take care of them.

MaverickHunterAsh said...

I disagree with your sentiments wholeheartedly, Fish; like many others, I loved the finale for several valid reasons, but I can tell from looking at the nasty discussions going on here that it is not worth discussing because neither side is willing to be budged from their position, and in fact, both sides seem unable to discuss the matter maturely, without resorting to personal insults or name-calling.

Thank you for all of the work you have done concerning Lost. While we may never have seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things, your writing ability and knowledge of Lost cannot and should not be disrespected or understated. From one writer and hardcore Lost fan to another, I respectfully agree to disagree with you about the way Lost ended, and I hope that you are able to show others who disagree with you the same kindness and respect.

I'm truly sorry for you that you felt cheated by Lost in the end; you deserved to be satisfied by the ending as much as I or any hardcore fan, and unfortunately you weren't. Hopefully you still feel the journey was worth it.

Take care, and I wish you well in your future endeavors.

Henry Holland said...

And sadly, the finale completely ruined the whole show for me. So much that I never plan on watching a single scene of Lost again

Nah, nothing for me will ever take away how awesome I think the first 4 seasons are (while acknowledging all the faults too). I emotionally checked out early in season 5, when all the flashes were happening. I sat there thinking "Oh jeebus, they're wasting time and there's only about 35 episodes left!". It drove me nuts that they were still doing the old "We're going to reveal something important here i....oh wait, we're not, someone's going to suddenly get a bullet in them or cut off in conversation" crap.

Or to see Claire stuck with Charlie, a guy she never even seemed to love.

Or, to look at it another way: To see Charlie, an interesting, cool character (at least to me) be stuck with the deadweight of MY BUY-BAY! MY BUY-BAY! MY BUY-BAY!!!!!!! God, talk about a one-dimensional character, she only ever existed to be Aaron's Mom. Even the potentially interesting connection with Jack was treated as an annoying plot device.

To see Danielle getting romantic with the man who stole her child from her

Ben's my favorite character by light years, but even I didn't buy that bit of wish-fulfillment. I wish they would have developed the Annie story, that's who Ben should have been with in the FSW.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, lost ending was retarded.I knew it would be stupid but I did not expect it would SOO S-T-U-P-I-D.Now people at any price trying to make sense of it and it's only make them look desperate. It's sad actually.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

I totally disagree with the guy that said Giacchino lost his way. Anyone can argue that the show lost its way after TTLG but not the music. I thought it was the 1 brilliant thing through all 6 seasons. Landing party is one of the 5 best lost songs.

Also Jack and Kate, seriously? BOO TERRIBLE.

John Locke sure used to be my favorite character on tv. I loved that guy. Sadly after the episode "This Place is Death" John Locke was done. There wasn't 1 single thing about his character that happened after that episode. I sure am mad about that. I thought FOR SURE that once his alt verse mind remembered his memories that it would somehow flash him into his body on the island and basically kill hisself to stop smokey. Of course none of that happened at all he just died. AND THATS IT. Yay! Good story for mr Special! Bastards...

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say "Giacchino lost his way" but the music on Lost has become so overused and so loud in later seasons.

Darlton are absolutely horrible at writing dialogue and they too often didn't even try to come up with something meaningful for characters to say. They chose to let loud music take over the whole scene instead and "dictate" what the audience should be feeling.

Gary C said...

In the end, I did not even have to LET GO as some annoying posters kept saying. I noticed after reading your, um, critique and posting here, the wind stopped filling my sails. My obsession with Lost just faded to a whisper.
Thank you fish for the critique and your reply to my post. I lost my motivation to argue or post further on that, and you do make a good point.
After all the noise dies down, the show will find the find the place it deserves, based on it's merits. I wonder how much of my own evaluation of Lost has gotten mediated by all the fierce criticism of the last season and ending. But I know I loved it enough to still recommend the show to someone who has not seen it. Kind of a bottom line test.

I did not feel like I needed a new obsession to replace Lost, but I just started watching John From Cincinnati, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. David Milch, the creator of Deadwood created this show. I guess some critics trashed it, and HBO did not like the ratings enough to give it a chance, so they canceled it after the first season. Gutless morons. What happened to HBO? They dumped Deadwood, Carnivale, Rome... All had disappointing, abrupt endings. I understand they had to cut expenses, but John From Cincinnati does not look expensive.
While JFC does not have the amazing language of Deadwood, the show had great potential. Milch tries to convey, among other things, how much people modify their experience of the miraculous by interpreting it though memory, language, and their personal psychological issues. He put miraculous events in an ordinary and current context, not on some island or some "other" time and place. So the psychology of these characters relates directly to our own. Anyway, I just started watching it, so I'd better shut up now.

Anonymous said...

Right after the finale I didn't quite know what to think. Some of it angered me, some of it initially felt uplifting (I found a couple of touching moments amid the mess). And yet ... I have not been able to watch the finale again, or any of Season 5 or 6 (an attempt at rewatching S5 during the last hiatus didn't make it past a couple of episodes). A friend who had given up in S4 asked if she should go back and catch up ... I said that if she'd been frustrated at that point, it wasn't likely to change. We were both going to rewatch the whole series together, but starting it got postponed, and now I don't think I want to do that. Maybe in a few years ...

I hate to think that this ending has ruined the whole series, because there was so much that was good. I was one who wanted to justify my devotion, and didn't acknowledge the negatives simmering these last two seasons (especially S6), hoping that somehow it would all end well. There were still good moments and individual elements/episodes. But I now don't even want to watch what was good. Again, maybe in a few years ...

I was pissed that JJ Abrams checked out of the show so early. I don't watch Fringe, but the fact that it is apparently getting it right is very interesting. I really blame one person in all this mess, and that is Damon Lindelof. I don't think Carlton Cuse was as bad, though he was complicit. Or maybe he was a victim. Watching the two of them onscreen, Lindelof was like a gleeful kid getting his revenge on the world, while Cuse often looked embarrassed. His head was often down, and his facial expression often didn't match his words. The biggest offense was in the "special" that was shown right before the finale, when Lindelof ruthlessly flogged him for wanting to "be" Sawyer, as if that were some kind of sin. Massive warning bells went off right then that the finale wasn't going to go well. Such a public beating was not only unprofessional, but small. I think of Lindelof now only as a bully, who likely insisted that he was the senior partner, who would get his way no matter what. Whether Cuse had any real say or not we'll probably never know, but it does make one wonder now why JJ Abrams really left. I would probably take a chance and watch something new Cuse was involved in, but Lindelof? Forget it.

One thing I know - I will never be involved in an online fandom again. My opinion of this show might have been completely different without it, and I was never able to rewatch episodes without various comments I'd read ringing in my mind, rather than being able to just keep my own opinion. Maybe that says something about me that isn't complimentary, but those things stuck in my mind nevertheless and it has ultimately only had a negative effect, despite also finding some like-minded opinions. I read an article somewhere about how much better it is to watch a series on DVD after it is over, just going through at your own pace, and without all the online fan noise, for this very reason. I intend to at the least avoid the online communities for any future series.

Fish - it has been a pleasure reading your analyses. Yours was often one of the like-minded views out there. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Is there any special reason why Doc Jensen mentioned Fishbiscuitland a few times in his reviews for season 6? Did he ever mention this place during previous seasons.

Also, has he ever baited any other Lost fans like he has Skaters in his review for episode 6x16 (I think it was that one)?

Has there been some ship war going on between Jensen and Skaters that I haven't been aware of?

I just don't get understand behavior.

Anonymous said...

Jensen became a jealous little shipper in S6. He was baiting Skaters because he loved Suliet. He loved Fish's reviews and always complimented them but then he turned when he realized she wasn't an asskisser like him. He got way hung up on being the grand poobah of the Lost fandom and now he can't accept that it's all over. He's on his way to being a creepy obsessed fanboi.

Anonymous said...

Jensen is the epitomie of the clueless Lost fanboy. He refuses to acknowledge the many shortcomings of Lost; in fact he ridicules people who do.
He must have pictures of someone at EW to keep that job of his.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the replies.

I don't even read his reviews, and I was really surprised to see that baiting bit from his review when someone posted it on a forum.

I know he has a reputation of being a serious, intelligent reviewers so I was really taken aback by him pretty much pointing fingers at Skaters and laughing at us because our ship lost and his own.

It's even worse because he did it before the finale even aired and he probably already knew the endings. He was on the set while they were filming and, from what I understand, he's close to Darlton and used to get info from them.

Why is he so bothered by Skaters.

He was one of those loud fans who managed to convince Darlton to change their plans and go with a Suliet ending. Congratulations to him.

But I would hope he understands why some of us were left disappointed by how it all played out?

Anonymous said...

Oh, and while I'm at it, does anyone here know what the deal was when Damon tweeted the video of Han Solo and Leia kissing?

Anonymous said...

"It's even worse because he did it before the finale even aired and he probably already knew the endings."

I'm sure he knew the finale when he was taking those nasty jabs. So he wasn't only petty and nasty, but unethical and sneaky. A real all around doucher.

Unknown said...

This might be the most pointless, insipid, worst written critique of a genuine work of art I have ever read. I find myself alternating between laughing at your ideas and feeling sorry for your misguided sense of entitlement. Please, go write something yourself, and leave the appreciation of a truly well-crafted story to others. I weep that the Internet gives a forum for people like you.

Anonymous said...

^^And who wants to bet money this person just came from Doc Jensen's site? Oh, LOST apologists - never change. Actually, for the sake of the future of humanity, DO change.

Anonymous said...

" I weep that the Internet gives a forum for people like you."

Translation: RIchard P. Stevens is crying because the Internet lets people publish ideas he doesn't agree with.

Anonymous said...

It seems like this Fish person is a Damon and Jack Sawyer hater. Don't hate on them or on Lost. Many people love it, including me. Why is that so terrible????? Why do you have to tear the show apart, looking for inconsistencies and mistakes? Couldn't you just enjoy it for what it was?

Kyle from Kentucky said...

2 things.

The guy that said something about Darltons reactions in the last recap show before the finale caught on to something I also feared. But you have to understand Damon has been cryptically .. I mean blatantly ripping on Sawyer for just being there to take his shirt off for years. You could just tell that he didn't care about the character. That always ticked me off.

In the middle of season 3 they had this Charlie's gona die storyline that I enjoyed quite a bit. However this is one of those mysteries/answers that I felt like HAD to get acknowledged before the ending. In fact I kept saying to myself for the last three years that they CANNOT end the show without Claire and Aaron getting into the helicopter together leaving the island. What am I to think since that did not even come close to happening? That Desmond is a liar? That Charlie's wonderful sacrifice meant absolutely nothing besides bringing a team of mercenaries to the island? Charlie's death meant absolutely NOTHING. And that is something I am extremely disappointed by. I think i am just supposed to assume that Desmond was a liar and wanted Charlie dead?? What about the greatest hits letter? And the DS ring? Dexter bloody Stratton. Sun picks up the ring and thats it?? Very disappointed by that. The letter wasn't even brought up ever again and I found that letter incredibly important to those three characters. They really really fucked up on the Charlie's sacrifice, Claire and Aaron, DS ring story. The bitch didn't even care he was dead. It was like the next day HEY do you want a cheerful cup of coffee with us.

That's just a big fuck up that nobody seems to remember. AT LEAST have Desmond give Claire the letter at some point. Charlie literally sacrificed his life because Desmond saw Claire and Aaron being rescued off the island by helicopter. Didn't you all love Charlie? I mean wasn't he one of the first to steal your hearts in a way? Just fucking completely ignored it. I mean the NOt Penny's Boat scene is one of the 5 best scenes in the history of this once great show. But now when you watch it you're thinking...uhh why did Charlie die exactly?

It bothers me.

Pfffft

Anonymous said...

"The guy that said something about Darltons reactions in the last recap show before the finale caught on to something I also feared. But you have to understand Damon has been cryptically .. I mean blatantly ripping on Sawyer for just being there to take his shirt off for years. You could just tell that he didn't care about the character. That always ticked me off."

If you've ever listened to any of their podcast, you would have noticed the same thing.

For some reason, Damon always seemed to talk about Sawyer with a huge dose of resentment and mockery.

Still, he wasn't brave enough to kill Sawyer off in earlier seasons. Probably only because of the character's popularity.


About Desmond's vision with Claire and Aaron getting on the helicopter: didn't Darlton address the issue and say that Desmond's vision was true?

Yet another "little" detail they forgot about.

Anonymous said...

Jeez, someone call the whaaaambulance! This is a network TV show we're talking about after all! It's sole purpose is to deliver an audience to it's sponsors (which LOST did quite well), and to fill-in the time between ads. Once in a while a show ends up being mildly entertaining and/or engaging to watch, but none of them are perfect or aspire to be, so get over it and your over-inflated sense of self-worth and relevance. Considering the notoriety you gained from writing recaps - for a show you now despise so vehemently - you should really be thanking Damon & Carlton for giving meaning to your sorry little life. You can go back watching American Idol now, it seems more your speed.

Danni said...

I've been thinking about the finale and the last season again and one of the things that annoys me the most if the way Locke's character was treated.

More specifically, I hate that they made it seem like Locke wasn't able to move on without Jack and that he needed Jack to save him, to make him walk again.

Locke had already been saved. By the fucking island. He was able to walk the minute he landed on that island he had so much faith in.

Anonymous said...

I feel soooo much better!!!
Thanks to Doc @ EW's mention of you & link, I have found your site and MY VOICE!
I've been reading your stuff for the past 2 hours and forgot to even go back to read Doc's newest LOST-bandage-an explanation of the impossible to explain-why LOST tanked in The End and how to live with it.
I 1000% LOVED the journey of LOST but I also feel cheated now that I know the destination.
I still feel this was a better show than I've ever seen on TV before, (and I started watching TV before remotes existed!) but TPTB PROMISED they would not end it poorly and yet they did... dang it!
I wanted a multidimensional, crazy, odd and delicious ending and they gave me a pretzel! Some twists, some salty bites, slightly filling but over-all... bland.
I can't help but wonder... Did they bank too much on Mr Fox? Remember when his career looked like it was about to "take off"? Was it then TPTB signed a big fat future check to keep "the star" Did they think he'd be the next Cruise or Clooney and so they hitched up the wagon prematurely? If yes... opps... cause Vantage Point & Speed Racer tanked so they bet on the wrong horse.
I'm not sure this is "IT" but S-6 smells of back room negotiations and dirty handshakes to me.
Anyways, glad to find this space, albeit LATE! haha
I do feel better... Thanks Fish! Best wishes to you and yours.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Oh trust me. I listened to every one of those podcasts for years. I don't remember them saying anything about Desmond's vision of the helicopter but can you even really believe what they said now?

Oh John Locke.

I used to argue vehemently with people about John Locke being right. He ended up being special after all and he "was right about most things". But it just ended up being about Jack. I loved your character John. But to steal a line from fish once again:

John Locke's once wonderful story

PFFFFT

(I cant help it, it's just so right.)

PS - Vision true or vision untrue Desmond should've have given Claire Charlie's greatest hits letter..
Pffft..

Erin Michaels Nall said...

Fish, I agree with you 100%. I cannot see the day when I'll have the minimal interest necessary to throw away my money purchasing the sixth season of Lost. They can't get any more of me than they already have.
PS - Don't look at the comments over at docarzt.com. Disturbing, shocking, and so incredibly disappointing. It's why I don't listen to political talk radio.

Target Addict said...

Fisbiscuitland, I found your blog by way of Doc Jensen (don't shoot me!) but I'm so glad I did. You have put my feelings and frustrations about the final seasons of LOST into words. I couldn't agree with you more. Unlike you, I will re-watch (at some point) seasons 1-3, which I own on DVD, but that's it. For me, the show started to wane with all the time-travel crap, and once they started to introduce so many new mysteries without addressing any of the current ones I knew they were headed for an epic "fail". As for show being the "Jack Show" in the end: isn't that a bit ironic seeing that the character of Jack was originally supposed to DIE in the pilot episode?

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be surprised if Damon was the one behind keeping Jack around, and not some anonymous ABC exec who didn't like the idea of killing off Teh Hero in the Pilot episode.

What a show this could have been, if we didn't have a pair of sexist little turds in charge who can't write women outside of schmoopy romance arcs, and Kate could have stayed the awesome character she was in season one.

Anonymous said...

"Even when ratings are lukewarm as was the case for the Lost season finale social media chatter can be overwhelming in volume. But a lot of those mentions online expressed a negative sentiment."

Lost (6.3 million viewers)
50% negative
17% neutral
33% positive

Dancing With The Stars (10.7 million viewers)
80% positive
12% neutral
8% negative

http://mashable.com/2010/06/24/neilsen-vs-social-media/

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Kate was an awesome character in season 1.

I found this LOST comment on youtube. I generally find most youtube lost fans to be casual fans. But I saw this comment and it just cracked me up:

- Man, they totally dropped the ball with Jacob's cabin. I'm sure they had some cool shit planned with what happened there but for some reason they couldn't continue it.

Lmao.

Jacob's Cabin - .....Pffft

BURN IT. Just BURN IT so we don't have to answer any freaking ?s.

Danni said...

Wasn't Darlton's original intent to have Hurley see the figure of himself sitting in that chair in Jacob's cabin? But the network was against it.

I think they said it somewhere and IMO it shows how poorly all of it was conceived and written.

Hurley was still alive at that point so how exactly was Jacob supposed to take over his body?

It also shows that Christian Shephard never meant much to the story.

Anonymous said...

It really saddens me that Lost will probably get several Emmy nominations this year. I always thought it was overrated, but the final season was particularly bad.

Still, they'll probably get nominated for best drama series, best writing (LOL!) and best lead actor (Matthew Fox).

I think even the editing was clumsy this year.

person said...

Some people liked it, some people didn't. Can't we just all accept that without having to villify and degrade each other?
Jesus, you people.

MeriJ said...

PS - Don't look at the comments over at docarzt.com.

They're not so bad, really. At least not compared to the ones she must have received here and didn't publish.

Actually, I was rather amused by the ironic person impersonating "DD," who usually trashes Fish. While on an announced one-week vacation away from the Internet, DD appeared to comment:

Fishbiscuit’s final post was fantastic, and it has made me miss her work.

Impersonating another person in a chat room is low class, but I thought this one was hilarious, since most people posting there would immediately have realized that it could not have been the real DD.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad I am not a Skater. Here's the thing: if Kate and Sawyer had ended up together, none of this post-The End reaction would have been written. None of it. It's just nothing but drivel created by petulant crybabies. You didn't get your way so now you're trashing one of the greatest shows in TV history. That's how dishonest many of you skaters are. Jate is Fate!

Danni said...

I'm a Skater who has had issues with the show ever since season 4. I always expected Damon to force the Jate ending, but I hoped Dralton wouldn't sell the story out with the Suliet ending. Unfortunately, they did. Because they started relying on polls and forums to tell them what to do.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Jate may be Fate but it just doesnt feel right.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad I am not a Skater. Here's the thing: if Kate and Sawyer had ended up together, none of this post-The End reaction would have been written. None of it. It's just nothing but drivel created by petulant crybabies. You didn't get your way so now you're trashing one of the greatest shows in TV history. That's how dishonest many of you skaters are. Jate is Fate!

Fish, you have been right all along that the Jaters are the stupidest breed of fans, and the only ones the show seems to have satisfied. This dingbat obviiously didn't read your review before bashing it or she'd have read the approx. 15 reviews you linked to that made valid, non shippery arguments about why the finale and the whole last season sucked so bad.

How tragic that this once great show was reduced to Jate is Fate - the catcall of the idiot tweenies who never understood what was going on in the first place. How pathetic that THEY turned out to be the only ones who were right about Lost and pretty much the only ones who enjoyed the crappy ending.

Anonymous said...

Jate was fate because Jack and Kate were the male and female lead. Lost turned out to be as generic and conventional as 99% of shows on TV.

Anonymous said...

Jack and Kate BECAME the lead roles... if you break out the S-1 bonus video and watch the auditions all the men actors read for the Sawyer role. Then in the "Before LOST" section you'll see Evie (Kate) read from her Kate script and btw... it has the cover title "Our Hero".
My connection was/is (especially since the Jack character was originally suppose to die in S-1) that Kate would be the hero like she was... kinda ("saved you a bullet") and more than likely, back then, the plan was Sawyer as THE one for Kate.
BUT... Jate, Skate, (yawn)
none of that is what most of the fans I know are disappointed about.
They (and I) care that we had a glorious build up of a complex, well cast, intelligent, fun, unpredictable science AND faith story that TPTB PROMISED (and this is what hurts the most... they really PROMISED!) would end way better than anything before it. They even specifically mentioned the disappointment of Twin Peaks and X Files.
But in The End...
we were only handed a freakin' rose!!!
Was it beautiful? oh yes...
Did I cry? hell yes...
Do I still love LOST? yes... but not like I loved LOST before The End.
Sucks for me... Dude.

Anonymous said...

IMO EW's Doc Jenson and several other reviewers did what we all do to keep our paychecks coming. Customer service!

And never be fooled... the media works for the industry! A real reporter of real news is very rare anymore. Opinion shows and web sites are the news now, be it entertainment or hard core.

So if anyone from the show came to you for your help selling this story and promised you a VIP badge to the insiders club, you might sell your soul and take it too!
We all get stars in our eyes!
For their service they got swag, elbow rubbing with cast members and seats in the front row. They also made their bosses very happy and in turn... cha-ching! Get to keep getting a paycheck!
After all LOST is not their life, fan or not. Just a link in a chain.
I get it and being a hater sucks so I'll just... LET GO! :)

Anonymous said...

Howard Stern on LOST:

I bailed out on the TV show Lost several seasons ago. I couldn't take it anymore, I felt manipulated, I felt played, I felt betrayed... I put a lot of time into this thing and then I started to get aggravated. It's almost like when you have an itch and you have to keep scratching, it's like all right already, OK, and every week it would end and I'd go, ah, I don't know any more. Once in a while give me a resolution, give me a little something to tickle my fancy...

JJ goes into production, everyone thinks the show is a bomb... so he started the show ... and I'm telling you, they found a show that Lloyd Braun liked and they had no answers, nobody asked them for a story arc, they never had any answers, and now everybody got sucked into it... I got sucked in for two or three years... and I saw about two years in, you know what, these bastards, they got me, I spent all this time watching this dumb show, I'm bailing out, because Lloyd is not at the network anymore, Lloyd would have forced them to have a story arc but he's gone.

We were all conned, face it... I'm not smart but I challenge myself... I'll tell you who are the smartest people who watched lost, the ones who bailed out early.

Anonymous said...

Negative Reviews of the Lost finale:

* New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/tv/reviews/66293/
* Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2242745/entry/2254778/
* Mother Jones: http://motherjones.com/riff/2010/05/lost-season-6-finale-the-end
* Baltimore Sun: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2010/05/lost_finale_john_locke_terry_o.html
* Salon: http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/review/2010/05/24/lost_season_finale_recap/index.html
* Miami Herald: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/changing_channels/2010/05/why-i-hated-lost.html
* People Magazine: http://tvwatch.people.com/2010/05/24/lost-finale-review-final-episode/ & follow-up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-gliatto/yes-i-am-still-mad-at-ilo_b_593989.html
* New York Times: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/lost-watch-embracing-the-white-light/
* Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-lost-review-20100524,0,289843.story
* Hollywood Reporter: http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/05/lost-finale-highestrated-episode-in-two-years.html
* Sci Fi Wire: http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/how-lost-tricked-you-into.php
* MSNBC: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/
* Gawker: http://tv.gawker.com/5546274/the-polarizing-lost-finale-cop-out-or-redemption-song
* Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/
* Variety: http://weblogs.variety.com/bltv/2010/05/lost-the-variety-islanders-react.html

Anonymous said...

Part 1 of 2

Negative reviews of the LOST finale with excerpts:

* New York Magazine:
"It definitely didn’t help that the show shifted from a diverse cast to the repeated tableaux of white guys bickering about fate while the female characters were either shot or (worse) congealed into bland love interests... the series had become obsessed, in both overt and unconscious ways, with manipulating its own relationship with its fans, alternately evading and reflecting their critiques, and then finally satisfying them in the most condescending possible way, with sentimental sleight-of-hand."
http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/tv/reviews/66293/
* Slate:
"After six seasons, you call a prom of the dead in a chapel of love where everybody is farting rainbows, where all the primary Oceanic 815 survivors are redeemed, where a loving "Dad" opens a Spielbergian door of light to the greater beyond ("Where are we going?" "Let's go find out.")—a finale?"... The series, which started with so much promise, stalled some time in its third season and will now be remembered as a monstrosity that fused kitsch to camp."
http://www.slate.com/id/2242745/entry/2254778/
* Mother Jones:
"The show's creators want fans to just "let go" of all the red herrings and dead ends and forgive the huge plot holes writers dug themselves into sometime around the end of season two."
http://motherjones.com/riff/2010/05/lost-season-6-finale-the-end
* Baltimore Sun:
"If this is supposed to be such a smart and wise show, unlike anything else on network TV (blah, blah, blah), why such a wimpy, phony, quasi-religious, white-light, huggy-bear ending... Once Jack stepped into the church it looked like he was walking into a Hollywood wrap party without food or music -- just a bunch of actors grinning idiotically for 10 minutes and hugging one another."
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2010/05/lost_finale_john_locke_terry_o.html
* Salon:
"In the final showdown between Faith and Reason, put me down for "None of the Above": I have no faith in the reasoning behind the series finale of "Lost," and see no reason to take it on faith... If I want to contemplate the nature of good and evil, I'll turn to Nietzsche or Hannah Arendt (or, for that matter, Joss Whedon), and if I want ruminations on love, give me Emily Brontë or John Updike (or "Big Love"). From "Lost" I wanted less profundity and more fun. And I still want to know what the deal was with those numbers."
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/review/2010/05/24/lost_season_finale_recap/index.html
* Miami Herald:
"What I saw was a mishmash of cliched characters, everything but the kitchen sink plotting, see it coming from a mile away "poignant" deaths, "ethnic diversity" in which nearly all the significant characters are white and the hero is a classically handsome white man and the black father and son have completely disappeared, "spirituality" that would sound superficial coming from a 14-year-old, a surprise ending you could figure out 30 minutes in, and oh yes, lots of people bloody and screaming."
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/changing_channels/2010/05/why-i-hated-lost.html
* People Magazine:
"It was so mistily open-ended as to be pointless: It was The Sopranos with a heavenly choir instead of Journey on the jukebox. The difference is that I wouldn’t have expected The Sopranos finale to clear up my questions about a giant stone foot."
& "Frankly, I don't think nearly as many people would be thinking along these lines if the show's creators, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, hadn't spent so much time talking with the press on their victory tour leading up to the broadcast."
http://tvwatch.people.com/2010/05/24/lost-finale-review-final-episode/ & follow-up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-gliatto/yes-i-am-still-mad-at-ilo_b_593989.html

Anonymous said...

Part 2 of 2
* New York Times:
"You have to think that the gauzy, vaguely religious, more than a little mawkish ending of ‘Lost’ – “Touched by a Desmond” — will not sit well with a lot of the show’s fans... The 'Sopranos' finale was ambiguous and a bit of a shrug, but not puzzling; to me the 'Lost' finale, in the immediate aftermath, felt forced and, well, a bit of a cop-out."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/lost-watch-embracing-the-white-light/
* Los Angeles Times:
"Well, it could have been worse. It could have all been a dream. Actually, that might have been better... The sound you heard 'round about 10 Sunday night was thousands of nonromantics wishing for a time slip that would give them those 2 1/2 hours and possibly six seasons back."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-lost-review-20100524,0,289843.story
* Hollywood Reporter:
"Did we need to spend half the final season explaining what happened to all the characters after they died?... Yet in the finale, the big revelation was an answer to yet another in-season question ("What are the flash sideways?") rather than the central question... At the end of "Lost," we did not learn what the island really was."
http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/05/lost-finale-highestrated-episode-in-two-years.html
* Sci Fi Wire:
"What was happening on screen mimicked what was happening to us in front of the screen, it was a neat little bit of transference. We're all flawed, but in the end none of it matters as long as we love each other. So, really, you don't ever need to know what the island is."
http://scifiwire.com/2010/05/how-lost-tricked-you-into.php
* MSNBC:
"In the end, the electromagnetically charged mystery island gave way to a hug-filled waiting room leading to a pan-spiritual afterlife, led by the aptly named Christian Shephard. Whew! It’s a daring way to end “Lost” — leaving plenty of questions unanswered and winking out on what has to be its least satisfying twist to date."http://today.msnbc.msn.com/
* Gawker:
"This was not a cathartic farewell as might have been intended. It was like your mom just straight up telling you they put your Labrador down because he was too much trouble, instead of just telling you he went to this farm where he was happier... I'll just conclude by stating that once again, that ending did NOT do it for me, and it's hard not to buy the interpretation that the series itself was the ultimate 'long con.'"
http://tv.gawker.com/5546274/the-polarizing-lost-finale-cop-out-or-redemption-song
* Boston Globe:
"“Lost” did not end its six-year run with intellectual resolution. We never got a concise, specific explanation of the island – where it was, when it was, what it was. And the answer to the question of why anyone – nevermind Hurley and Ben -- would need to take care of this island remained obscure."
http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/
* Variety:
"I'm not the kind to be overwhelmed by an overtly spiritual payoff, especially when the resolution reminds me so much of "The Twilight Zone." And I can't escape the feeling the flash-sideways arc was a waste of time..."
http://weblogs.variety.com/bltv/2010/05/lost-the-variety-islanders-react.html

Anonymous said...

B-b-but the Jate is Fate fangirl said only Skaters hated the finale! None of those people sound like Skaters! Could it be that the finale was such an incredible pile of suck that the only people who DID like it were dumbass Jaters and their Suliet cousins?

MeriJ said...

BUT... Jate, Skate, (yawn)
none of that is what most of the fans I know are disappointed about.

They (and I) care that we had a glorious build up of a complex, well cast, intelligent, fun, unpredictable science AND faith story that TPTB PROMISED (and this is what hurts the most... they really PROMISED!) would end way better than anything before it. They even specifically mentioned the disappointment of Twin Peaks and X Files.

But in The End...
we were only handed a freakin' rose!!!
Was it beautiful? oh yes...
Did I cry? hell yes...
Do I still love LOST? yes... but not like I loved LOST before The End.
Sucks for me... Dude.


Well said, llisa.

MeriJ said...

This is a cross-post from comments I made at docartz yesterday (on the short piece he wrote called Doc Jenson Has Not Forgotten Lost – Have You/I?). That’s one of the places where Fish’s recap has been discussed.

Most of what I wrote came from observations made here, including the many comments visitors wrote above. Those of you who disdain so-called fanboys will note that I make liberal use of the “E word.” Because, you know, I really like that word! Guess I’m a fanboy…
----------------------------

What struck me most from Fish’s critique was the dawning realization that Darlton had no clue how to tell a story on the epic scale. Many of us trusted that they knew what they were doing despite evidence to the contrary, because without them needing to resolve anything we could choose to believe that. Because we loved the show.

Turns out they were indeed masters at making each episode great, but the epic storyline ended up being shockingly thin. All tactics, no strategy. If they had been brilliant at either the mythic storyline or the individual character arcs, I would have been happy. But they don’t appear to have had a clear mythology at all – just a series of wonderfully tantalizing ambiguities which the rest of us filled with meaning. On top of that they wantonly abandoned the rich potential in so many of the character arcs they’d built up in the early seasons. In retrospect, it feels like they were driven only by the weekly ratings.

I loved the finale and loved it even more the second time I watched. Hell, I cried like a baby. I spent countless hours over six years, like the rest of you, analyzing this show and loving every minute. My sons grew up on Lost. It was an anchor in our family.

But when a truly great show ends, you come to love it even better as the months or years pass. I loved Lost through every season, but the more I think about it now, the more shocked I am at how they blew it.

I liked Season Six as it played out. But now that the nature of LA X has been revealed, I can only say WTF. Nothing that happened in LA X prior to The End mattered? They were just sleepwalking, waiting to awaken before they left? I loved the “leaving together” part. But why spend hours of time on the prologue activity while not finishing up the richer storylines from earlier seasons?

(see part two below)

MeriJ said...

part two:

It feels to me like they decided to finish with the original ending that JJ and Damon wrote (allegedly from the church scene on) because it would be cool to say they had. And then they built a contrived sixth season just to get there, abandoning the earlier storylines just to set up that last 15 minutes or so.

And then you start thinking about the key character arcs and how extraordinarily promising many of them once seemed. I guess I was expecting resolution in the quality range of A Tale of Two Cities –- amazing interaction among this complex web of storylines plus redemption tales to make a hard man weep.

Instead: the real Locke turned out to be merely a weak fool?! Both Ben and Widmore ended up being inconsequential?! Sawyer ended just being dumb eye candy? Yes, Sayid did get a redemption arc, but it was hardly epic. More like an aside. Sun and Jin became throw-aways, after years of interesting layers of potential being built?

Go down a list of your favorite 5-10 characters, think about the intriguing backstories Darlton told early on and then ask yourself if the potential you saw was fulfilled. If you are still happy after that, then all the more power to you.

To be honest, I wish I hadn’t read Fish’s recap. It was much better when I was joyfully looking for new explanations to make the show seem as brilliant as I once thought. And it’s not like I agree with everything she says. But now that she’s pointed out that the Emperor has no clothes, the blinding obviousness of it keeps coming at me during odd moments of the day – just like all the meaning I used to find/create used to creep up on me after a new episode.

I loved those characters. With a few exceptions, they deserved much better than they got.

Anonymous said...

"To be honest, I wish I hadn’t read Fish’s recap. "

I don't think anyone should ever be sorry they read something that opened their eyes to the truth.

Target Addict said...

>>Didn't you all love Charlie? I mean wasn't he one of the first to steal your hearts in a way? But now when you watch it you're thinking...uhh why did Charlie die exactly?

Kyle from Kentucky: I believe they killed Charlie off b/c the actor wanted to leave the show. If I recall correctly, whasshisname wanted to go back to doing movies in his native England and asked to be written out. Which is kinda ironic, isn't it, since he landed on FlashForward a couple of years later and then came back to cameo on Lost for season 6.

Target Addict said...

>>It feels to me like they decided to finish with the original ending that JJ and Damon wrote (allegedly from the church scene on) because it would be cool to say they had. And then they built a contrived sixth season just to get there, abandoning the earlier storylines just to set up that last 15 minutes or so.

MeriJ, you nailed it. That's probably what happened in the race for the writers to finish out Season 6. And the more I think about the finale and how sucky everything ended, the more disgusted I get.

Anonymous said...

Kyle from Kentucky: I believe they killed Charlie off b/c the actor wanted to leave the show. If I recall correctly, whasshisname wanted to go back to doing movies in his native England and asked to be written out. Which is kinda ironic, isn't it, since he landed on FlashForward a couple of years later and then came back to cameo on Lost for season 6.

If I remember correctly Dom sounded kinda unhappy and made several digs at the Lost producers in some of his farewell interviews from the show. He did not sound like someone who made the choice to leave.

Fishbiscuitland said...

I believe they killed Charlie off b/c the actor wanted to leave the show. If I recall correctly, whasshisname wanted to go back to doing movies in his native England and asked to be written out.

This isn't true.

Henry Holland said...

Great post(s) MeriJ.

Instead: the real Locke turned out to be merely a weak fool?! Both Ben and Widmore ended up being inconsequential?!

This. I remember being totally dumbfounded at the end of season 5 at where they had gone with John and Ben. John: He was right, but only Jackass gets to play that out. Ben: a pathological liar who ends up being the administrative assistant to a fat tub of goo who made bad choice after bad choice and....was rewarded with being King of the Island.

Dom was NOT happy about leaving LOST, nor was Ian Somerhalder. A big part of the hype early on was "anyone can die" but we soon saw that wasn't true--Jack, Kate and James were untouchable, so was Hugo.

The way they treated Michael and Walt, and the actors who played them, was appalling.

MeriJ said...

I liked Jack.

A little whiny at times and definitely one screwed-up puppy, for sure. But he kept trying. I thought it admirable that he was willing to explore leadership styles that were not natural to him.

Following, for example.

But he was almost never cool. That recap Fish did where she contrasted him stepping off Sawyer's boat with Saywer stepping off the helicopter said it all.

However I'm a guy, you see. And most of us guys are not chick magnets like Sawyer. So I identify more easily with Jack.

Except for the spinal surgeon part, of course.

Nonetheless, I loved Sawyer too. And I'm pissed that he didn't get a ending worthy of all he had given us. Not even close.

"It's about bunnies" alone should have guaranteed him an epic ending.

(I'm going to attempt to say epic as often as I can now. My girlfriend's 11 year-old son uses it in practically every sentence when discussing Lost. He is truly a fan boy. Maybe even one of the ones spewing out hateful scorn to you shippers. But I hope not.)

Target Addict said...

Hi Fish. Sorry...I really thought that Dominic Monaghan wanted off the show. Guess I was wrong. Or maybe that's the story they tried to SPIN at the time to justify Charlie's death on the show.

Target Addict said...

Anyone see the Emmy Noms. come out this morning? Lost is nom'd for Best Dramatic Series, Matthew Fox is up for Best Actor, Terry O. and Michael E. for Best Supporting Actor. Even Elizabeth Mitchell is up for "Best Guest Actress". I'd be OK if Emerson won - as he kept Ben interesting right up to the end - but others aren't really deserving, IMO. I love Terry O'Quinn, but he basically played a zombie in season 6, and it wasn't his best work.

Anonymous said...

well the Emmy noms will fuel the fire...
M Fox as "Best Actor", instead of "Supporting" like Terry & Michael is just wrong.
There were never "lead roles" in LOST except The Island. Then the Island wasn't given a voice so... (shrug)
Besides there isn't a "Best Non-Human entity" Emmy award. HA!
I'll be rooting for Michael Emerson. I love Terry and he did great but Emerson was pure gold thru-out the season. I would LOVE to have a beer with that guy!
Also Kudos to E. Mitchell!

Anonymous said...

What did Liz do besides cry and bleed to death this season? Foxy, same question.

If anyone deserved a nom it was Evi and Josh. Darlton deserve a kick in the nuts.

MeriJ said...

I don't know which episode Terry was nominated for, but I thought there were a couple where he was masterful at varying his presence in the two roles -- MIB on the island vs. Locke in LA X.

So some of you really do hate Jack and Juliet, eh? I missed this whole shipper thing. Reading Fish's recaps led me to become a skater. I just don't get the passion against competing 'ships.

But it's practically history now, so no need to catch me up!

Anonymous said...

I'm interested in why so many of you that didn't like the finale are so convinced that all of us who did are gullible, disgusting Darlton worshippers.

I've done some of my own theorizing on my blog, but I'm wondering what your own reasons for writing us all off because a few people have behaved like jerks.

Anonymous said...

The Elizabeth Mitchell nomination is a make-up nom for season 3. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The Darlton nom in the writing category was predictable but it doesn't make it any less of a joke. The Fox nom was predictable too after the finale.

NoOne said...

Issun said "I'm interested in why so many of you that didn't like the finale are so convinced that all of us who did are gullible, disgusting Darlton worshippers."

Blogs have a groupthink amplification effect. Usually the dominant opinion of the blog gets amplified by the blog's followers and drowns out contrarian opinions.

As for the LOST finale, my heart loved it and my mind hated it (afterwards). I was emotionally moved by the finale and the beautiful way things were wrapped up. But, of all people, my wife asked me why they were focusing on pairing people up (Sayid/Shannon, Sawyer/Juliet etc.) and David Brin on his blog asked why there was a preponderance of blondes. I didn't notice either point during the finale.

Anonymous said...

Hello issun! I only speak for me and I'm new to Fish's place but I don't think the finger of frustration gets pointed at everyone who liked The End. Just those that want to argue it was perfect and what all fans should have wanted/needed to wrap up the show.
Those folks are ??? not sure what to call them without being rude...
Maybe they weren't as invested?
I in no way "hated" it.
I hated that it was all we got! That TPTB broke their REPEATED promises from the begining to not pull a Twin Peaks or X Files and build a complex story only to pull the bait & switch. I was a big fan of those shows so I knew exactly what they meant (or should have). But then Darlton did exactly the same thing as those shows. All mysteries reduced a puddle of piss-on-you-fans.
I totally "get" what they did give us. I have a big imagination so I can theorize my ass off coming up with some answers of my own and I know the DVD is suppose to help with some more answers.
But to completely ignore the meat of the story and act like that was the plan all along is CRAP on their part.
It was an elaborate magic trick where they took the diamond of a story and told me it was mine to have and cherish and I did. Then the magic, they made it disappear in S-6. When they made it re-appear in The End it was a bunny... I like bunnies.. soft, cute, cuddly... but I had an investment of a diamond and I wanted my freakin' diamond back in The End.

Anonymous said...

So some of you really do hate Jack and Juliet, eh? I missed this whole shipper thing. Reading Fish's recaps led me to become a skater. I just don't get the passion against competing 'ships.

It was never about "competing ships", it was about the characters. Many of us didn't even know what "shipper" was until we watched this show. In the real world, characters always matter and romance is not a dirty word.

Here are some objections observed across the spectrum of fans (that means not just "shippers") about the Juliet and Jack characters - and the actors who played them:

They changed Juliet from a strong independent woman to an insecure jealous fool. They paired her with Sawyer not because of anything to do with their characters as they had been developed, but to get Sawyer out of Jack's way. Juliet was suddenly a kid with a crush, in adoration of this guy she'd have never have even noticed in the real world, so much so that she blew everyone up because she was jealous of his feelings for Kate. And Sawyer was made a shadow of his former self because he, too had to have a personality transplant in order to be paired with her. That was commented upon across the spectrum of fans, many said that "relationship" that we never even saw came completely out of the blue.

They took Sawyer from hero to zero just to build up the Jack character. They had already established a loving relationship with Sawyer and Kate that had spanned the entirety of the series, all the way up to the finale, then suddenly they pulled a WTF moment with Kate and Jack out of thin air. That was also commented upon across the spectrum of fans, many said that moment came completely out of the blue. Jack is a male chauvinist pig. He treated Kate horribly and this behavior was never acknowledged and therefore we assume was OK with them because they ended making him the hero in the end. He stalked women, he forced them to do things they didn't want to do and or from doing things they wanted to do, he marginalized them, he talked down to them, etc.

Also there are a lot of fans who never cared for the performances of either of the actors. There were reported difficulties on the set with the actor who played Jack, Matthew Fox, but he also appeared to be Jack offscreen as well in the male chauvinist pig department. He gave an interview where he boasted about his cock and said he thinks women want someone who is "edgy", "brutal", "base", "very violent" "animalistic". As for Elizabeth Mitchell, the actor who played Juliet, a lot of people just couldn't get past the bad plastic surgery.

This was an ensemble cast and the story lines were always equally distributed until suddenly Juliet, who wasn't even in half of the series, (and even then, she wasn't one of the main characters, she was one of the ones who kidnapped and tortured the main characters) was suddenly the focus with Jack, who was made into the hero at the expense of the other characters. This was just plain bad storytelling.

Target Addict said...

I'm gonna barf....
check out what Cuse and Lindelof had to say to EW about Lost's Emmy noms:

“As storytellers, you rarely get to end a story on your own terms,” executive producer Carlton Cuse tells EW. “Most shows kind of fade away or drop dead. We finished our story on our terms. Let’s face it, there were very high expectations for how Lost should end, and for us, it was enormously gratifying that we were recognized for doing a reasonably good job of ending the show.”

Executive Producer Damon Lindelof was particularly surprised by the wave of emotion he felt when Lost was announced as a contender for Outstanding Drama. “I basically started to weep,” he told EW. “I didn’t realize how much I was still holding on. My wife looked at me and asked what I was feeling, and I said ‘relief.’ You don’t want to say ‘Oh, my God I really want a nomination.’ We should just be proud of the work we did. And we are incredibly proud. But the fact that our peers still care about the show ended up meaning a lot more than I expected."

Anonymous said...

Thank you to the people that responded to my question. It's nice to know that things are (hopefully) settling down.

Also, to FB: While I disagree with almost everything in your review, so many ofthe responses you've gotten over the last few months were completely uncalled for. If nothing else, I respect the sheer tenacity you showed by putting this up, knowing what you'd see written about you every day.

Anonymous said...

I think they played all shippers until the very last moment and the same way they wrote the Jate ending, they could've written a Skate ending. I'm pretty sure Josh H. and E. Lilly could've pulled them off and people would've bought it just the same.

Darlton kept both couples and both groups of shippers hanging until the finale - mostly by not giving much to any ship.

And that's just another thing I found dishonest and non-sensical from a writing point of you.

If they intended for Jate to be seen as the big romance of the show, then why not write some nice scenes for them throughout the last season and give them an actual story.

It looks like Darlton preferred making fun of Skaters and getting their hopes up for nothing instead.

I see it as another indicator that they wrote the show having in mind what was and what would be written on blogs and forums, rather than thinking about what would be best for the story.

I think they may have started hating Skaters somewhere along the line and with Suliet's internet popularity it was easy to mock Skaters. They had a reserve couple that they knew people like Jensen or Kristin would like and praise.

Anonymous said...

Sbujero here...
I'm with everyone who says FSW was Jack's imagination, there more I think about it the more it makes sense, how can the island be the most important part of all of their lives???how???? for jack maybe (coz he saved the world, for Ben maybe coz he luuuuur that island) but Juliet??? the island was a prison for her, Jin and Sun value u the island time more than their baby girl??come again?? Jack has never met Jiyeon which is why she wasn't there, Jack has met Hurley's mom that's why she's in the FSW but not in the church, basically jack has met everyone in that FSW except Helen. And everyone's life is still shitty except his. His even got a son!!!!His even a good brother to Claire!!! and somone mentioned how as an ex he doesn't even have his stalker tendencies!! and he doesn't drink as much (he declinded a drink from his mom!!!) And also everyone else had to wait for him to awaken before moving on without their mothers, siblings, children etc and also Jack died on island, so is far fetched to think he would imagine he's father telling him the most important time of THEIR lives was on island, coz if u think about who left the island??? Sawyer and Kate...if I was Jack I would have imagined purgatory exactly like this! LOLZ

MeriJ said...

I started to go for this "LA X was only in Jack's head" explanation because it would have solved so much that was wrong there. (Plus Mulholland Drive is about my favoritest flick ever.)

But I don't think so. At least I don't think that's what the writers intended.

Desmond flashing there and then back to the island for example. And the whole Daniel/Eloise angle, which I'm not sure Jack was even aware of -- since none of those bozos ever seemed to share useful information on the island.

But over time I've learned that my personal interpetation of songs, poems and whatever are far more meaningful to me more than discovering what the author intended.

So I may have to go with this explanation just for my own sanity.

MeriJ said...

BTW I don’t believe the implication was that their island experience was the best time in their lives. Rather that it was the most significant. For some, that would mean most traumatic. There was also the implication that the group bond was a strong pull, relative to their experiences elsewhere. Live together, die alone.

Finally, if you believe that young man from Bad Robot (who got in trouble for posting insider info just after the finale) the writers were considering reincarnation as well. Not as the explanation, but as one possible explanation. In that scenario, the group had been bonded in prior lives as well and departed the church for another stab at the ole mortal coil. Thus they were fated to be together in this life regardless of Jacob. Bad Robot Greg mentioned that in a later post, I believe, which I know because I joined that Buffalo Bills site before all his comments was deleted.

However, I imagine anyone drawn to FB’s website realizes that there’s not much value in trying to make that church scene work, person by person. The details don’t add up, period.

I still liked the “leaving together” part. Too bad they didn’t execute it better.

Anonymous said...

BTW I don’t believe the implication was that their island experience was the best time in their lives. Rather that it was the most significant. For some, that would mean most traumatic. There was also the implication that the group bond was a strong pull, relative to their experiences elsewhere. Live together, die alone.

No, that doesn't work. Fish went through this in more detail, but there were for nearly every person outlined more significant and/or traumatic events. And certainly more meaningful ones. And the group bond of a few months with people who were never united or cared that much for each other - there were some friends made, but so were there friends made in their lives off the island, and friends for deeper reasons and of longer duration. The twu wuv scenarios were for the most part, except for the couples established prior to the pilot, laughable for their superficial nature too. Most of us have a number of romantic pairings throughout our lives, some very memorable, but not meaning more than others. Many believe it was Jack's dying fantasy because that's the only way it makes at least a bit of sense, there are only a couple of "buts" to that interpretation and those can be explained by Jack's instincts being correct (and human beings have pretty good instincts).

The Bat Robot guy was disclosed to be an intern who only briefly worked on the show long ago. Much of what he said was sheer conjecture on his part. It was all built off of the probably real assumption that the show was originally intended to be about purgatory, but from there he diverged into his own thoughts which were no more credible than any of ours, as he force fit his own take into that one correct assumption.

Anonymous said...

But over time I've learned that my personal interpetation of songs, poems and whatever are far more meaningful to me more than discovering what the author intended.

That's the way it's supposed to be. The work stands on its own. Once released into the world, the work belongs to the world. If the author intended one thing, but the audience heard another, then did the author really say the one thing? Or did he indeed say the other. Because once you get into trying to figure out intention, you're on murky ground. Perhaps the author really wanted to say the other thing and is fooling themselves. And so on. But in the end, all that's left it the work and how it is heard. Part of being an effective writer is that the audience hears what you want them to hear.

What we saw with the Lost finale was incredibly bad writing. That's why half the viewers hated it, which in itself is remarkable.

MeriJ said...

The Bat Robot guy was disclosed to be an intern who only briefly worked on the show long ago.

Not true. ABC allegedly told DarkUfo that he had been an intern at ABC several years ago, which has been broadcast across the Internet as proof of what you said.

But I've spoken with a number of his longtime friends about this. He did work at Bad Robot starting about two years ago, but not as a writer on Lost (which he never claimed). He is indeed an aspiring screenwriter, but was a junior employee at Bad Robot -- assuming they didn't fire him over that post.

You can see him in the credits at IMDb as a production assistant for Star Trek and Cloverfield. (Also as a junior writer on recent episodes of Super Dave's Spike Tacular.)

Anonymous said...

One thing that really bugged me about the finale was the whole "leaving in two's" rule. Why did everyone need to be coupled off? And why in Heaven's name did Locke get paired off with Boone?? That made no sense whatsoever. If that was their plan, they shouldn't have been so half-assed about it. Locke should have been with Helen, Sayid should have been with Nadia, and Boone and Shannon should have been left out of the deal entirely.

MeriJ said...

Anonymous: I can't say that I entirely understand what you are implying. But Greg's full name and his IMDb listing were exposed all over the Internet before I joined that Bills site.

A week or so after joining, I posed a question -- which I'm sure is still there for all to see -- asking why the others thought he worked at Bad Robot -- that is, why they were sure he wasn't a fake. I was getting suspicious because I’d noticed that his posts five or six years ago make it clear he lived in LA and worked in the industry but was not yet associated with BR.

A few people responded publicly and several responded privately -- which, btw, is a nice option at that site that I wish I'd known about before posting my query. The people who responded privately knew him personally. All these people have extensive posting records going back at least six years on that site. It’s a very small group of people who’ve been together for a very long time.

MeriJ said...

But if your point is to attack Bad Robot Greg's credibility because you fear that his post shores up Darlton's credibility, then read this:

I went to the Bills site because I needed to believe the ending wasn’t horrible. Plus I wanted to convince my skeptical friends at the Washington Post site that it wasn’t.

At first I found it reassuring to think that they had the ending in mind all along.

But if you reread what I wrote here a few days ago, you will see that I ended in a very different place, triggered by Fish’s recap.

It now seems to me like a superficial gimmick to have ended that way, which may have contributed to their otherwise unfathomable decision to abandon the prior storylines in favor of the LA X setup in season 6. As if LA X was created just so they could end with the church scene and brag that they’d used the ending that JJ and Damon wrote at the end of season one.

Add that to the inane Adam and Eve thing, and it does feel like Darlton were trying to pretend they had the meta-story planned out just like they’d always claimed.

LA X (“haha it’s purgatory but not the one you all guessed six years ago”) + the Jacob/MIB angle was their idea of how to get out of the show with style. As someone we all know observed: big belly flop. They abandoned the richness of the prior storylines to end with clever gimmicks. The End.

Anonymous said...

I went back and re-read the Bad Robot intern item over at Doc Arzt's site. I suppose it's possible that the church ending was contemplated from the beginning, though I think even if this guy were genuine he was certainly wrong in claiming that "the reason Ben’s not in the church, and the reason no one is in the church but for Season 1 people is because they wrote the ending to the show after writing the pilot." There were non-season 1 people in the church (Juliet, Desmond, Penny) whose existence, I imagine, weren't contemplated at the writing of the pilot or even the end of season 1. And I don't suppose Michael's ultimate exclusion was foreseen at that point, either.

I suppose for me the more interesting question is whether the church ending could have been a satisfying conclusion to Lost. I think it could have been, if so many island mysteries hadn't been abandoned and if more of the character arcs had made sense or come to more satisfying conclusions.

I think Locke's story is one that could have been brought to a more satisfying conclusion and, puzzlingly, wasn't. It's hard to know how much of the flashsideways that the Losties actually experienced. But for Locke to spend even a brief amount of time in the afterlife feeling guilty for harming that shitbag of a father seems cruel and unearned. Or was that Locke's punishment for having manipulated Sawyer into killing Cooper? If Locke is working through past-life guilt in the sideways, why isn't Kate?

And Locke's story would seem to have otherwise come to a satisfying conclusion when he refuses Jack's offer of surgery--suggesting that Locke has accepted the happiness that's available to him and is no longer longing for what he no longer has. But in that case, Jack wouldn't get to "fix" Locke--which further cements my cynical view that the flashsideways ended up mostly being about convincing Jack that he is in fact a really, really awesome guy.

If the writers ever decided whether the flashsideways lives were truly purgatory--working out and atoning past sins and problems--or just heaven's anteroom, they never adequately conveyed their decision. As it stands it's a muddle. Some characters seem to be working things out, but others are just treading water (eg, Juliet) and Jack, as mentioned, is just being reaffirmed at every possible step. And excluding Michael, not even giving him a chance to reconcile or atone, seems pointlessly cruel--and it's the pointlessness which bothers me.

I think with more clarity and more thought the ending could have worked in a satisfying way.

lizziefitz

MeriJ said...

Nice post, lizziefitz.

BTW, I never took the Bad Robot guy's post to mean they'd always planned to use that ending and stayed true to that plan.

I assumed that JJ and Damon wrote that ending for a much shorter show and then Darlton decided to go back to it after wandering so far afield that they no longer knew how to end the damn thing. Because it would be cool to say they had.

Henry Holland said...

And excluding Michael, not even giving him a chance to reconcile or atone, seems pointlessly cruel--and it's the pointlessness which bothers me

Me too. It's almost as if they are punishing Michael to punish Harold Perrineau for some less-than-flattering comments he had about how his character had been handled.

And WAAAAALLLLLTTTTTTT! I'm still totally baffled about what they were thinking with him. He didn't have to be pre-pubescent, that wasn't a plot point, so why didn't they cast a 15-year old if they knew the story was going to be told over a span of years? But in any case, he comes back when he visits Hugo at Santa Rosa and.....nada, zilch. We see him one more time, on John's Tour O' Total FAIL and that's that. Grown Up Walt could have easily been woven back in the story but I guess that wouldn't have helped us discover Jack's totally awesomeness, so it was dropped.

Anonymous said...

What a great analysis! I really agree with the majority of what you are saying. I've never been more seethingly angry at a bunch of nut-job producers. I feel like I was visited by robbers in the middle of the night who stole my best book collection, never to be returned or found at the pawn shop. They could have been great...they chose to be boobs, and not a very nice pair either...certainly not worth looking at more than once...and after the initial shock of seeing them, they actually now are repulsive. Make sense?

Why not try something else a TV series has never tried...A REWRITE!!! That'd be a first! Why the hell not? Couldn't be worse for an ending, would make headlines and we'd all tune in to see just how they'd fix the mess they made.

I've said this on every page I visited. I'd smack those two sons-o-bitches in the face with a huge fish if I saw them.

Target Addict said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Target Addict said...

>>Why not try something else a TV series has never tried...A REWRITE!!! That'd be a first! Why the hell not? Couldn't be worse for an ending, would make headlines and we'd all tune in to see just how they'd fix the mess they made.

The person that made this comment may not be that far off base. Perhaps not a rewrite, but a remake. Alan Sepinwall commented on his blog today that ABC is considering a remake of "Alias," with "a new cast and a streamlined approach that was heavy on the spy missions and lighter on (if not absent of) the convoluted Rambaldi mythology." He also reported that CW is introducing a new version of "Nikita" only nine years after USA's "La Femme Nikita" ended.

While I would love a "course corrected" ending to Lost, I highly doubt anyone will ever revisit it, as it was such an expensive show to produce. But I guess we can all still dream ;-)

Target Addict said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MeriJ said...

Sorry, Anonymous, I missed all those posts that were self-deleted, so I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say the WP declined to comment. (?)

Since you're selectively quoting me on the subject of Fish, here's my entire first post on June 16 at the Bills site regarding Fishbiscuits:

Did any of you used to read fishbiscuitland's recaps? I didn't agree with her a lot of the time, but she was reliably brilliant. She was especially hard on Jack, but always with at least a grain of truth. And she was a very persuasive skater -- combining acid wit with screencaps and java doohickeys to make her case. She certainly convinced me.

If you're still interested in Lost, check out any of her recaps. They will definitely stimulate your Lost brain. Each is a visual feast, pulling images from all six seasons and whatever else she could find to make her points. The one below came near the end. She is beginning to suspect the worst. The images on the first few screens alone are worth the trip.

http://fishbiscuitlandblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/point-of-no-return-life-must-be.html

Anyhow, I'm embarrassed to admit that I always assumed she was a guy. In my mind, she writes like a guy. But apparently her name is Fiona. So I am proved an idiot, once again.

Reading her long-awaited take on the finale, I learned that she has major bad blood with Andy Page, aka Dark UFO. She and her friends apparently caught him in numerous petty lies, involving rigged polls and such.

I have to say I never liked the vibe of that place. Really depressing, in fact. But it had so much stuff, I often visited anyway. At least on Tuesday nights, since my Washington Post site was not available till mid-day Wednesday.


Lest there be confusion: the "that place" I was referring to was DarkUFo.

MeriJ said...

Someone there responded that he would have a hard time reading Doc Jensen's recaps that week because they were so long, much less adding Fish to his reading list. I responded back:

Fishbiscuit recaps are very long, even though they are half pictures. And I can't recommend that anyone read her recap on the finale. It will kill your motivation to talk about Lost. She was very disillusioned and is highly persuasive that the writers took us for a ride. Which is sad, because she was one of the most intellectually interesting persons I used to read regarding this show. Doc is fun, but he goes so far sideways I find him more amusing than accurate.

Sorry if that offends Fish or anyone else, but I stand by it: If you still think The End was great, Fish's finale recap may burst your bubble. Buyer beware.

I must say I don't appreciate being quoted out of context. But I have a thick skin and this is the Internet, so whatever...

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

I guess the thing that bugs me about the Church of the Pod People [I swear most of the characters were acting like characters in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers after they'd been podized] is no character got any kind of resolution.

Sawyer was looking for Cooper. Having him finding him and not killing him would have been a resolution, not having him end up with his smirking blonde island bed warmer. Ditto for Sayid. What resolution did he get hooking up with his blonde island rebound chick. And what about Sun and Jin? Putting their child before themselves would have been resolution, not dumping their kid for Jack.

For all the finale was a love letter to Jack, even he got no real character resolution. His story was about his relationship with his father, and ten minutes of Daddy telling Jack everyone's lives revolved around little Jack did squat to resolve anything about their relationship.

They don't have to rewrite anything, all they have to say was Jack imagined it all. Since he'd gotten touched by Jacob he'd be all knowing just as Jacob was and would know all the intimate details of everyone's lives. It also explains why Jack got to screw Juliet and have a kid with her before she got with Sawyer. Payback for Sawyer screwing Kate before Jack got with her.

I mean, Jack laying there dying imagining the whole world revolves around him is just so Jack it's not funny. So all they need to do is a movie, with no Matthew Fox or the Darlton idiots and write the wrong that was committed against the viewing audience.

Anonymous said...

I do hope that your last words on Lost were cathartic for you. I don't feel like I need to rationalize the worth of the finale. Frankly, I was one of the lovers of the show to the very end. Love it or hate it, Lost was still the best serialized tv show I've ever seen, but I'll never invest so much time and emotion into another.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

So I'm sitting here watching parts of Some Like it Hoth on ABCs late nite Friday reruns and a couple thoughts come to mind

Whats going on that makes me kind of angry is the Bram and Miles conversation in the van. Where Bram is trying to persuade Miles not to get on the freighter because if he's working for Widmore he's fighting for the wrong side. Really?? Sure if in the real world about 2004 the smoke monster has taken the form of Charles Widmores dead body. But thats not possible right? So Bram and Illanas purpose is to fight for team Jacob against team Smokey. But what the hell does the freighter have to do with any of that war. Sure you can say that what happened as a result of the freighter is all part of MIBs plan to kill Jacob but Bram cant predict the future and say that he knew that Ben would turn the wheel. And Jacob even if he can see the future would not tell Illana every excruiciating detail. Basically all he told her was that she was special and to ask Ricardos.

The freighter had little to nothing to do with the war between brothers. It is unbelievable to me that Damon can sit there and put out this shit of a storyline at the end of season 5 and ignore it or just totally blow it. If it was the middle of season 2 I could understand but this conversation happens at the end of season 5. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Terrible.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

I don't know if I've mentioned this yet or not but I have to say something about Mr. Eko.

He is THE character that had great potential that they had to kill off because he was weird and hated Hawaii. But to end the show with the last thoughts of the character EVER being "Checkmate Mr. Eko" is goddamn terrible.

It's so hard to hate on something you once loved. It feels terrible actually. yea it feels terrible. Damon Lindelof sucks

Anonymous said...

OMG, you all are so pathetic. Maybe if you had been watching LOST like everyone else, you wouldn't be so angry.........although you've always been like that. The ending was perfect and everyone ended up with who they were meant to be with. But please go on with how gooey and stupid you though it was, because you all are still so very entertaining. Jate is forever and so is James and Juliet......suck it up and DEAL!!! And by the way, I seriously doubt Damon and Carlton give a crap what you sad people think. I know most people DON'T! But do go on. I need something to make me laugh during the day and this is by far the best place to come. When you get the DVD's make sure you get LOST and NOT Imaginary Lost, like you all were watching for six years!! Carry on LOSERS!!

Anonymous said...

Hey, Fish, ^^^^: Looks like Daffy DocLoser discovered your finale review. Proving once again that if nothing else the dumbest people in America enjoyed the way Lost ended.

Anonymous said...

Daffy, honey, I hate to break this to you, but "Jate" and "James & Juliet" are MAKE BELIEVE. They aren't together forever. They're gone. I know this is hard for your itty bitty brain to understand, but it's all over, sweetie.

Meanwhile, the legacy of REAL LOST (not Imaginary) was trashed for perpetuity by the way it ended. Your make believe dollies are gone forever, but Lost's ruined reputation will last forever.

So congratulations dumbass.

Anonymous said...

Well, well, well. The vaulted Jate kiss tanked at the Tater Tops. In fact Lost tanked across the board.

I don't know whether to point and laugh or sob in a corner. Damn you, Darlton.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

its not about the make believe relationships and who's together forever and ever ...

its about the dozens and dozens of fantastic storylines set up in the first 3 seasons, a LARGE percentage of them were just dropped, ignored all so we can end up with the glorification of the 1 terrible character for 6 years - Jack.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

What kills me is I'm reading some of the comments even on this site and people are discussing Suliet and how great it was.

I specifically remember my reaction to that kiss scene which was ...oh WTF! son of a bitch..

It's like I'm the only fan that cringed during that scene.

Yet right after that there were LEGIONS of braindead zombie fans I noticed that just took over the lost sites and considered Suliet to be the greatest thing on the show.

I remember thinking, "Uhh if this is so great why didn't they show any of the relationship. It was I don't wanna stay here all alone. Flash to 3 years late - SOUL MATES"

I read Fish's review of The Incident again. It also makes me cringe because I was so into the mythology of the show. Turns out NONE OF IT MATTERED.

Its sad how my opinion changed after the finale. 3 fucking years I kept thinking this finale has been planned for years it has to be wonderful. Belly flop. Unbelievable. I really was shocked it was so terrible.

Carlton - I don't care I knew you were a fucking clown all along. Look at him. Thanks for being a Sawyer fan though.

Damon - I'll never forgive you for ruining this show. Cool earring Vanilla Ice. Dork.

Anything Damon Lindelofs name is ever on for the rest of his life I will absolutely NOT WATCH 1 SECOND OF. Ditto for Matty Fox whos character was just as much of an uninteresting prick as ... he acts in real life!

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Look it's Walt and Uncle John >


They're special right? NOPE!

The conclusion to Walts story was "The boy's been through enough."

The conclusion to the infamous Locke and Jack rivalry was "We've been waiting for you."


Dammit.....

Kyle from Kentucky said...

For 2 years one of the minor minor storylines I thought was going to get an answer was this one:

Locke
C4 in his pack
Walks down the dock.
Gets in the sub.
Sets the C4.
Gets out of the sub.
Walks back down the dock.



Soaking wet
WHY

I remember for a fact that they mentioned this in their podcast right after that something like "Theres a reason he was wet and we'll get back to that" or something to that extent.
Nope!
Blame the writers strike or Rebecca Mader I'm sure.

Can someone please explain why he was soaking wet? It wasnt sweat because he was just as dry as he could be walking down the dock.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Saw 2 things on MaryAndys site. had his top 50 favorite episodes posted (along with about 60 honorable mentions...). Listed Walkabout at #25. Really? 25? Absolute bullshit.

Then I saw this typical Matty Fox interview:
DR. JACK SHEPHARD WAS ESSENTIALLY THE SHOW'S "EVERYMAN" CHARACTER. HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT CHANNELING SUCH AN ICONIC ROLE?

Fox: I put a lot of myself into him, so it was tremendously emotional. He started as the hero of the show and we thought the audience would be bored out of their minds if he were the knight in shining armor all the time. We wanted to take the first four years and destroy him. So, that's what we did. And in the end, Jack redeemed himself before he could move on; I think that's why I was nominated. It has more to do with Jack than anything I was doing for six years.

EVERYMAN CHARACTER?!?!?! YEA OK.

Damon and Matty over lunch sometime in early 2005:
Damon "I love you"
Matty "Join the club"
Damon "You're going to be the god of the show in the end but I want to make people hate you for the first 4 years."
Matty "So I get to be the God right?"
Damon "Of course"
Matty "What are you going to do with Josh? I get Evie right?"
Damon "Hes just there to take his shirt off for the old lady fans"
Random fan "Can I have you're autograph Mr. Fox"
Matty "Do not speak to me unless you are spoken to. $108 for my autograph."

MeriJ said...

Kyle and Matthew Fox:

But other than all that, you really like him a lot, right?

Anonymous said...

Isn't an everyman character supposed to be someone you can relate to and identify with? Because I find it kind of hard to identify with a white male spinal surgeon with an ego the size of Montana.

Anonymous said...

Fish with each passing day and week, your verdict on the finale becomes more true. I don't talk to anyone who has any respect left for Lost. It ended as a joke. What a shame. If it weren't for the brain dead Jaters, who never appreciated anything about the show aside from Jack and Jate, there wouldn't be anyone at all with a kind word to say about Lost. Except for Jeff Jensen I guess tho I notice even he nutted up after his last attempt at "analysis" got him laughed off the stage.

talliann said...

Thank you for this review and putting into words what many of us think about the Lost finale. As always outstanding, witty and brilliant.

When some tv show I enjoy is cancelled and the plot isn't solved at the end I don't get angry nor dissapointed anymore 'cause I think, 'hey wait, it could have been worst. Look at 'The End' of Lost'. I don't think a good show being cacelled is a bad thnig anymore ;)

MeriJ said...

I thought this Alan Smithee description of the upcoming box set was pretty funny, especially for disillusioned persons like ourselves. Be sure to read past the first 2 paragraphs:

http://www.movieline.com/2010/06/23-secrets-of-the-lost-dvd-box-set-revealed.php

Not new, but new to me.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

You and me aint done Zeke

Anonymous said...

This is the first time I've posted on this forum. I've never read Fishbiscuit before. I got a link from, funnily enough (after reading this review) DarkUFO.

I agree with most things you pointed out. Why else on Earth would Damon & Carlton go into radio silence, instead of embracing their work? They knew the reponse it was going to get. Also, the actors are very vague to not over the moon when asked about it. Daniel Dae Kim: "I'm generally satisfied" at Comic-Con. To quote an episode "That's not the strongest reaction."

The whole season was a train wreck that focused, mostly, on two things that weren't introduced until the end of season 5 (MiB/Jacob) and beginning of season 6 (flash-sideways, limbo, place with no time).


I wonder how Sayid felt been in a Christian Church in his afterlife. Not saying he's against any specific religion, but in the first seasons he always mentioned respecting people's religions and was shown practicing Islam. That got dropped pretty quickly. A bit quicker than Naveen Andrews dropping the Middle-Eastern accent for a London stage school accent. Shame really, because, along with Sun, he was one of my favourite characters. Sun, because she was gorgeous and a liar up there with the likes of Ben Linus.

Capcom said...

*sniff*

Thank...you...for writing this. I wish I'd read it sooner, it would have helped heal the pain, but I couldn't bear to even read any Lost blogs after it was all over.

And your final quote reminds me of the words of Homer Simpson (sorry if it's mentioned here already, I haven't gone thru the entire 364 posts): "There's no moral to this story, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened."

P.S. Check out Fox's opinion of those who didn't like the finale, on Kimmel this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEQtsRJZg9M

:-(

MeriJ said...

Here is a three minute clip of footage with Ben and already-grown-tall Walt. I guess it's from the upcoming DVD bonus material:

http://jezebel.com/5606489/

MeriJ said...

Nice interview with Michael Emerson at the Washington Post:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/celebracitology/2010/08/talking_lost_with_michael_emer.html

In the excerpt below, he shares his shorthand explanation of the ending.
------------------------------

Michael Emerson: Sure. I mean, people seem delighted to run into me but some of them will say, “Okay, now you have to explain the finale.” And if I have a moment, I can do a credible job of it in about two minutes and people seem happy. I explained the finale in the doctor’s office yesterday afternoon, and the lady said, “You know, that’s amazing. That’s exactly how my daughter-in-law described it.” So I thought, well, good. I’m on the exact same wavelength as some other people.

Jen Chaney: Can you do that quick two-minute explanation? I’m curious to know how you describe it.

ME: Well, I mean everything that happened on the series was real. The plane crash was real, everything that happened on the island was real. Everyone lived those adventures. Eventually, they died by one way or another. After death, apparently the newly dead cling to a more idealized version of their life, of the life they could have or should have led. And I think that accounts for the flash sideways in season six.

And that’s why Desmond -- who has the power to travel between dimensions, between the present and afterlife -- is going around saying, “Let go. Let go. Let go of this fantasy. Accept your death and move on.” And then of course the control of the island falls into the hands of Hurley and Ben; that may have gone on for centuries. We don’t really know except that at the end of the show we’re gathered in what appeared to be a church. It’s really more of a waiting room or an anteroom to the hereafter. And it exists outside of time, but it exists after life. And they’re waiting to pair up two by two with their mirror redeemers so that they can forgive one another, forgive themselves and pass on into eternity.

Ben Linus is the only one who can’t do it.

MeriJ said...

The link didn't come through properly. I'll try again:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/celebritology/2010/08/talking_lost_with_michael_emer.html

MeriJ said...

Wow. That bites. One more try. Combine the two URL segments below:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/celebritology

/tv/lost/

Anonymous said...

And they’re waiting to pair up two by two with their mirror redeemers

Uh, their "mirror redeemers"? Sorry, that's just BULL.SHIT. I guess Michael Emerson learned how to shovel the bullshit while he was on the Lost payroll.

How was Shannon Sayid's redeemer? Hurley knew Libby for like 3 days. Was she his redeemer because he almost got a kiss off her? Boone doesn't get a mirror redeemer. Locke doesn't get a mirror redeemer. Claire is redeemed by the guy who she didn't care about when he died for her. And don't get me started on the Sawyer-Juliet and Jack-Kate hogwash. God, it's all so insulting.

Nothing can ever fix this pile of shit. It's just perpetual garbage that will never feel any better. It deserves only to be forgotten.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

Thank you, I couldn't agree more about ME shoveling the shit, like he's done on more than one occasion. He became Darlto's official mouth-piece to the media justifying their garbage for a long time.

Personally, I don't need him to explain anything. I got it. Thought it was garbage.

The sad thing is they made it a complete waste of time to ever try to rewatch the show. What mysteries they answered, the answers were so bad they didn't explain all the parts of the mystery. You could watch for the characters, but they got no resolution. Not even golden boy Jack.

Sawyer, after a wonderful journey, ends up with the rebound chick he has nothing in common with and is a bad joke that he's even with. Jin and Sun find each other again, are separate and are snuffed two seconds after they finally find each other again. Michael killed to save his son, and returned to save everyone to atone for his sins, but he never got to go back and be a real father to his son, while his son was lied to by the big turd that his father was still alive. And it's the same story for every single character.

Yeah, Jack got to be hero, but none of his issues with her father were ever resolved, issues we had shoved down our throats ad nauseam.

Darlton are a couple of hacks that like the mysteries, left the characters hanging with no true resolution.

Remember Ben's obsession with Juliet? Did he ever even react to her death? Remember this great Ben/Widmore war? What really happened to Claire and why? What brought Sayid back? What happened to Juliet wanting to go home to her sister? All dropped by the two hacks.

The only cohesiveness of Lost is the show ending and beginning with Jack's eye opening and closing.

MeriJ said...

I like almost all the Lost actors. Especially ones like Michael Emerson. I'd think less of them if they trashed the show -- at least before the Emmy's. A classy person doesn't bad mouth his own team.

I reserve my bitterness for Darlton, and Damon in particular. Even there, I could argue that they are merely human. Not many humans seem to be capable of greatness in the TV industry.

But all those smirky interviews and claims of awesomeness to come stick in my craw. Such an A$$hole.

MeriJ said...

Such a shame that this all went sideways. (Pun intended.)

Otherwise I'd suggest we pitch in to bid on the original fishbiscuit dispenser to give to Fish. Or maybe Sawyer's beach camp chair from the plane.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com
/celebritology/2010/08/10
_lost_auction_items_that_wil.html

(Sorry, you have to piece those three fragments together to get the full URL. I'm sure there's a site listing everything in the auction, but these are a nice sampling)

notWalt said...

As time goes by, don't you feel just a little bit silly at the extent of your anger and lenght of your final post?

Anonymous said...

Even the Superman comics writers are making fun of the finale:

http://amazingexgirlfriend.blogspot.com/2010/08/raspberry-to-dc-comics-superman-702.html

Kyle from Kentucky said...

I bought the season 6 blu ray yesterday.

I didn't think I was going to do it but it was $45 for the bluray at Best buy yesterday and the final clincher for me to buy it was the bonus disc that came with it which was by the way far and away better than the actual bonus material on the actual final blu ray disc.


I'm still very upset that season 6 was such a dissppointment. The new man in charge was disappointing but answered the pregnancy and nurley bird fairly well to me.

As usual in the bonus material Michael Emerson and Matty Fox ran most of the talking with Evie Lilly in a close 3rd place. And as usual Terry O'Quinn and Henry Ian Cusick were Nowhere to be seen and on the whole 2 bonus material discs Mr. Eko never gets mention.

there was a hilarious clip of Evie where she asks an Italian audience in Italian (who knew) if they wanted Jate first which got crickets and if they wanted Skate to get together which got a ROAR equivalent to the island breaking apart which was hilarious. The Italian stuff I just mentioned was a Lost farewell tour that happened in about April 2010 or may when shooting was over.

Maggie and Naveen get more bonus material screen time they become the 3 stooges for some reason of the extras of the final season extras for some damn reason.

I really don't know why I'm righting a review here but I'm just giving my immediate reactions for some reasons. I still love several of the actors and actresses but...I really watched the hell out of lost seasons 1-3 and even to a certain extend 4 and 5 dvdsblurays. ESPECIALLY 1 and 2. But there is a good chance that I will never ever watch the actual episodes that are actually on this season 6 blu ray. But I will set it on a shelf as a daily reminder: KYLE do not get involved in another tv show so much because it will almost surely end in cancellation, disaster, or most likely extreme disappointment.

The season 6 bloopers ironically are tied with season 5 as the worst bloopers and S1S2S3 had the best bloopers. I really expected S6 to have bloopers that would have left me on the floor laughing but no just like with the actual show of S6 I had huge expectations that went pffft.

Damon Lindelof mentions Darth Vader the death star luke skywalker boba feett and Star Wars in general probably about 15 times. Especially when talking about the Hero's Journey.

I havent been thinking about it as much as I did early in the summer but I have to say one of the bigger disappointments that nobody has really said anything on here to me was this: LOST was always at its best for me when an episode ended and I stood up and said WTF. That is when LOST was at its best for me. And even with my lowered expectations after 2 awful seasons I thought for sure they would end it with a WTF moment. Nope The last 25 minutes of lost was sunshines lolipops and rainbows. No wtf moments at all.

MeriJ said...

Yeah, I kept expecting mind blowing revelations interweaving at least some of the character threads -- along the lines of a Charles Dickens novel.

Those too were serialized stories that called for cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter. But he still managed WTF endings that tied everything together in grand style.

I kept expecting these guys to pull off something similar.

The one thing I'll say for the LA X reveal is that I didn't anticipate it, even seconds before it was revealed. I just don't get why they thought they needed to abandon the original story lines for the last season or so in order to get there.

There was sooo much they could have done with the investment they'd already made in those back stories.

Sigh.

MeriJ said...

Two paragraphs from a Wikipedia entry on Charles Dickens:

Many of his novels […] first appeared in magazines in serialized form, a popular format at the time. Unlike other authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next installment.

Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions.


My point being: faced with similar opportunities and pressures 150 years ago, one man working alone regularly pulled off what a large team of creative talent failed to accomplish today. You have to give genius its due.

That said, I will always treasure the way Lost used to make me feel.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

I just finished watching this summer series on NBC called Persons Unknown [don't think they'll be bringing it back for a second season with the way NBC messed with the show's schedule]. It was about these people who are kidnapped and wake up locked in this strange hotel room to discover they're trapped in this weird deserted town.

It was a cross between The Prisoner and Lost. Granted the actors and characters weren't as good as Lost. On the upside the show wasn't stuck with a Matthew Fox/Jack Shephard who always had to be propped as the hero, and have the show sacrificed on the altar to make him end as the big hero.

They also did what Lost couldn't do, and that was answer the questions of why those people were trapped in that town. However, that answer only lead to more questions. It was like an onion and ripped off the outer layer even lead to deeper and deeper levels. It ended with a killer cliff hanger, that makes me want to know more, and I'm not upset. I'm still thinking about it and wondering what happens next and if they'll ever escape from The Program.

At one point, the two hour finale was becoming as ludicrous as Lost had, but they pulled it off, by showing they were just tricking The Program to escape.

They even had a triangle at the heart of the show that was far superior to the triangle Lost put out. Both men in the triangle were written believably.

Maybe someone will pick up the show and bring it to syndication. I'd love to see what happens next. If it comes out on DVD, I'll buy it, something I wouldn't do with the last season of Lost and waste my money on a pile of crap. The biggest difference between these two shows if PU treated the viewers with respect and answered the important questions in an intelligent manner. They also created new mysteries that weren't pointless or mindless filler.

The question is if this show could create a show, introduce characters, reveal their back stories, reveal what's going on, and create new mysteries in a handful of episodes, why couldn't Darlton manage to do that in three seasons?

Apologists like Michael Emerson can defend the pile of crap viewers were treated to, but this show proved what Darlton failed miserably at is more than possible if you really care about the story your telling, opposed to glorifying the worst character on the show and sacrificing all else to do it.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

I just finished watching this summer series on NBC called Persons Unknown [don't think they'll be bringing it back for a second season with the way NBC messed with the show's schedule]. It was about these people who are kidnapped and wake up locked in this strange hotel room to discover they're trapped in this weird deserted town.

It was a cross between The Prisoner and Lost. Granted the actors and characters weren't as good as Lost. On the upside the show wasn't stuck with a Matthew Fox/Jack Shephard who always had to be propped as the hero, and have the show sacrificed on the altar to make him end as the big hero.

They also did what Lost couldn't do, and that was answer the questions of why those people were trapped in that town. However, that answer only lead to more questions. It was like an onion and ripped off the outer layer even lead to deeper and deeper levels. It ended with a killer cliff hanger, that makes me want to know more, and I'm not upset. I'm still thinking about it and wondering what happens next and if they'll ever escape from The Program.

At one point, the two hour finale was becoming as ludicrous as Lost had, but they pulled it off, by showing they were just tricking The Program to escape.

They even had a triangle at the heart of the show that was far superior to the triangle Lost put out. Both men in the triangle were written believably.

Maybe someone will pick up the show and bring it to syndication. I'd love to see what happens next. If it comes out on DVD, I'll buy it, something I wouldn't do with the last season of Lost and waste my money on a pile of crap. The biggest difference between these two shows if PU treated the viewers with respect and answered the important questions in an intelligent manner. They also created new mysteries that weren't pointless or mindless filler.

The question is if this show could create a show, introduce characters, reveal their back stories, reveal what's going on, and create new mysteries in a handful of episodes, why couldn't Darlton manage to do that in three seasons?

Apologists like Michael Emerson can defend the pile of crap viewers were treated to, but this show proved what Darlton failed miserably at is more than possible if you really care about the story your telling, opposed to glorifying the worst character on the show and sacrificing all else to do it.

Anonymous said...

I saw the most amazingly braindead quote by Matthew Fox in the paper today:

Q: Did you see the speech in which Damon Lindelof ("Lost" executive producer) shared some of the most intensely negative reactions to the finale that he received on Twitter?

A: The thing is, you can't please all the people all the time. Damon knew that. We all knew that. There was a certain segment of the audience that really just only cared about answers that can't be answered. Some of the big questions that the show took on are big, philosophical questions that all of us deal with in our lives. They're not answerable questions. So I think certain members of the audience looked at "Lost" in a way that might have been more intense than normal, because they felt like there were answers they wanted answered, that they couldn't answer themselves. Those people will probably have to deal with that for most of their lives.

Check it out yourself. I was speechless, but somehow not surprised.
http://o.seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/television/2012722603_lost29.html?prmid=head_more

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Well LOST didnt win any emmys. I had two reactions - disappointment and laughter.

Laughter because season 6 was by far the worst season and Damon got what he deserved.

Disappointment because all that time LOST wasn't winning most of the emmys they were nominated for I kept thinking yea but wait til the end of the series and they will sweep the Emmys like Lord of the Rings did the Oscars after the last movie came out.

I really had hoped that Michael and Terry would tie for the one they were nominated for. Terry did especially good work this year playint 2 characters well.

BooHoo Matthew Fox didn't win. Thank God for that.

Anonymous said...

Did you see the weird squirmy thing Foxxxy did in his chair when they called his name? I wonder if he realized at that moment that it was an embarrassment for him to even be there. He sure looked it.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

I was thrilled when I heard Lost got the same thing it gave the viewers...nothing. For Darlton to be rewarded for the crap they put out would have been horrible.

Josh Holloway should have been nominated, since all his performances were far superior to Fox. I'm still trying to figure out just why Fox got nominated? Was it for breaking a mirror?

I've come to think of Lost: The Final season as Darlton throwing out all that came before in exchange for an exercise of total self-indulgence and glorifying their buddies Matthew Fox and Jorge Garcia. I think it's no coincidence a second banana character like Hurley was suddenly pushed as a lead character in the final season and he ended up being the big island guru.

Lost had all the ingredients for something great that they threw it away to force an ending where Jack Shephard is the ultimate hero, much like forcing a square peg in a round hole, opposed to letting the story take its natural course which wouldn't have lead to Jack the Great and his majestic eye-closing moment.

In regards to Emerson and O'Quinn for all intents and purposes Ben Linus died in the Ajira plane crash, because what was walking around afterwards was just a pod of his former self, and Locke died in season 5. Darlton kept O'Quinn around because fans would have had a fit in he had been off the show. But Christian Shephard should have been the living embodiment of the Smoke Monster as he had been for five years.

Aside from playing favorites, they were pretty gutless and to into pandering to the fans. It's what helped ruin the show in the end.

It's sad, but it is what it is.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

Anonymous, the Lost Apologists really need to stop justifying the unjustifiable. It just makes them seem like total idiots.

I really don't think most people were looking for the answers to the mystery of life in a TV show. A lot of the things people wanted answers to had nothing to do with the great mystery of life.

Sounds like Poxy wasn't acting on Lost, he was simply being himself, cause what he said is a very Jack Shephard thing. Jack could never admit to anything wrong about himself, it was always someone else's fault. In this case, the viewers.

Sounds like he had as much respect for the viewers as Darlton did. Maybe he shouldn't judge us all based on his psycho fan group who wanted to have sex with his nose.

Henry Holland said...

Nice to see this place still getting some comments.

I really don't think most people were looking for the answers to the mystery of life in a TV show. A lot of the things people wanted answers to had nothing to do with the great mystery of life.

THIS x a million. God the ego and pomposity of Lindelof, constantly hinting that people watched the show for the mystery-of-life stuff. No, dumbass, they wanted to know how polar bears ended up in the desert!

Remember Ben's obsession with Juliet? Did he ever even react to her death?

Um, was he ever *told* or *shown* that she had died? I don't think so, he was a kid who became an Other in 1977 and in 2007 he was part of the group with the MIB, not the group at the Temple. I'll gladly be corrected though. :-)

Remember this great Ben/Widmore war?

Another throwaway plotline, though they give Ben his great line "You don't get to save your daughter". Even though Ben had passed on shooting Penny, but oh fuck it, I'm not going down the LOST plotline rabbit hole again.

I enjoy the extra scenes, they could easily continue the show with Ben, Hugo and Walt.

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

To be honest, Ben seemed to get over his obsession with Juliet at the end of season 4. He turned the wheel and left the island and in season 5 when Jack mentioned her name, Ben didn't even bat an eye or care.

I suppose if you want to be generous to the show, when Alex died a new obsession took over the Juliet one, and that was killing Penny to even the score for Alex dying.

Cause after that Juliet wasn't even a blip on Ben's radar.

vdayvickileigh said...

I just have to say that I've been waiting months to read this column and I'm so glad that I did! It's the perfect description of how I felt!

I'm glad to know that I wasn't the only one. I can't imagine the epic amount of work it took to put this together but THANK YOU! And I concur on the other commenter's request for a couple of words on Deadwood (if you watched it!) Good night!

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Every night that I have free I want to rewatch seasons 1 2 and 3. Its like I have an itch to return to the good days of LOST. Sadly even when I finally do it will suck because the things that drew me to the show ended up meaning nothing in the end. There were so many good storylines that became trash in the end. Sigh..

I'll watch it all again someday and maybe I can just imagine what should have happened after the end of season 3.

Andy is still posting hordes of shit every single day on his website. Andy its not May 2nd, 2007 anymore. Move on with your life.

Anonymous said...

vdayvickileigh: "I just have to say that I've been waiting months to read this column and I'm so glad that I did!"

....why????

Anonymous said...

"Lost had all the ingredients for something great that they threw it away to force an ending where Jack Shephard is the ultimate hero, much like forcing a square peg in a round hole,"

There was nothing forced about it. Jack finding his purpose and fulfilling his destiny was built up clearly through out the series. If it was ANY OTHER character, besides Jack, It would of felt like forcing a square peg in a round hole. It HAD to be Jack.

"LOCKE: No. You need to finish what you started.
JACK: Why?
LOCKE: Because a leader can't lead until he knows where he's going."

"LOCKE: The Island. The Island brought us here. This is no ordinary place, you've seen that, I know you have. But the Island chose you, too, Jack. It's destiny. JACK: I don't believe in destiny.LOCKE: Yes, you do. You just don't know it yet."

"LOCKE: But you're not supposed to go home.JACK: And what am I supposed to do? Oh, I think I remember. What was it that you said on the way out to the hatch--that crashing here was our destiny?LOCKE: You know, Jack. You know that you're here for a reason. You know it. And if you leave this place, that knowledge is gonna eat you alive from the inside out...until you decide to come back."

"BEN: Thomas the Apostle. When Jesus wanted to return to Judea, knowing that he would probably be murdered there, Thomas said to the others, "Let us also go, that we might die with him." But Thomas was not remembered for this bravery. His claim to fame came later... when he refused to acknowledge the resurrection. He just couldn't wrap his mind around it. The story goes... that he needed to touch Jesus' wounds to be convinced.JACK: So was he?BEN: Of course he was. We're all convinced sooner or later, Jack."

"JACOB: Jack is here because he has to do something. He can't be told what that is. He's got to find it himself."

"JACK: This doesn't feel right.
SAWYER: What doesn't feel right?
JACK: Leaving the island.
SAWYER: Wanna tell me why not?
JACK: Because I remember how I felt last time I left...like a part of me was missing.
SAWYER: They got pills for that, doc.JACK: We were brought here because we're supposed to do something, James. And if Locke--that...that thing--wants us to leave; maybe it's afraid of what happens if we stay.SAWYER: Get off my damn boat.JACK: What?SAWYER: You got a decision to make and you make it now. Either you’re with us, you keep that damn crazy talk to yourself, or you're going in the water.JACK: James, this is a mistake. And I know there's a part of you that feels that. The island's not done with us yet."

"JACK: I'm going to take you to the plane but I'm not getting on it. I'm sorry, Kate. I'm... I'm not meant to go."

"SAYID: Because it's going to be you, Jack."

"JACK: I'll do it... This is why I’m here. This is... this is what I'm supposed to do.JACOB: Is that a question, Jack?JACK: No.JACOB: Good... Then it's time."

"LOCKE: So it's you.JACK: Yeah. It's me.LOCKE: Jacob being who he is, I expected to be a little more surprised. You're sort of the obvious choice, don't you think?
JACK: He didn't choose me. I volunteered."

Jack's journey was always going to end with him saving the island.

"opposed to letting the story take its natural course which wouldn't have lead to Jack the Great and his majestic eye-closing moment."

Jack's eye closing WAS the ending of the "natural course". It was a perfect bookend. It was the right way to end it.

Anonymous said...

Whose the Jater that is still coming here to pimp their shit? Is it that Erica freak. She has gone off the deep one. She is talking her fake ghetto trash on tumblr, sounds like a deranged person. This chick wants to be a doctor I kid you not. Her med school should read her tumblr and see it's not right to put a crackhead like this around patients. It's her sexual frustration talking. She's like 25 and never even kissed a man. She admitted it. Taht's why she talks so much trash about other people being ugly. Erica be careful. Somebody's going to post that stuff about you admitting you're an overweight virgin and all the stuff your dad did. Your crazy has gotten outta control.

MeriJ said...

vdayvickileigh: "I just have to say that I've been waiting months to read this column and I'm so glad that I did!"

I thought she meant that she'd been waiting that long to find a column expressing what she felt. Welcome to your people, vdayvickileigh!

As for the "Jack was always positioned as the hero" post and the personal attack that followed it. Whoa.

It's not about whether we liked Jack/Matthew Fox or whether we would have prefered someone else to be the hero or end up with Kate.

The point is that the writers always appeared to have Jack in mind as the primary hero in the end. His years of pathetic wandering in the wilderness always seemed like a middle stage in his "hero's journey."

I liked him some of the time and found him whiny and annoying at other times. If I'd been in charge I'd have gone with a community of heroes in keeping with the "live together die alone" theme.

But I don't think it's out of line to suggest that Jack as hero was planned all along. The indications were certainly there from the start.

Anonymous said...

Jack was supposed to die in the Pilot, but ABC threw a fit at the idea of the "hero" dying. So yeah, it is out of line to suggest he was the "hero all along", because originally it was supposed to be Kate. (a woman as the main character, what a shocking idea!)

Frankly I think a Jack/Matthew Fox-free Lost would have been heaven.

MeriJ said...

I do remember that, so yes I misspoke when I said "always." But by the time they finished the pilot, I believe the writing was on the wall.

I didn't know about Kate, though. That would have been cool.

I'm just glad Fox wasn't cast in any of the other roles he auditioned for.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, from 9/1:

"There was nothing forced about it. Jack finding his purpose and fulfilling his destiny was built up clearly through out the series. If it was ANY OTHER character, besides Jack, It would of felt like forcing a square peg in a round hole. It HAD to be Jack."

No, it didn't have to be Jack. Jack was a choice, not an inevitability. Lost was an ensemble show--wasn't that one of the things that set it part? Why not choose to highlight the contributions of each? Why not have the island-saving be a group effort by the remaining survivors? Why not have them all perish heroically? And, more importantly, why not make an effort to bring all of the characters' stories to some more fully rounded, meaningful conclusions? I agree that having Jack's eye closing as the final image was perhaps a natural choice--but the events leading up to that final moment could have been quite different and, for many of us, more satisfying.

lizziefitz

Anonymous said...

"No, it didn't have to be Jack. Jack was a choice, not an inevitability."

IMO, Jack ending as the ultimate hero WAS an inevitability. His story over the 5+ seasons was built for those final block of episodes. That was his time to step up. The other remaining characters were NOT built up for that ending. Not the way the Jack character was. Jack was the character who evolved into the island believer. The Locke 2.0. He was the character that talked with Locke about purpose and destiny. He was the one who jumped of the boat in 6x13 because he knew the island wasn't done with him, while all the others wanted to leave. The island needed a new protector. Jack was the only choice. Why would Kate "I need to get Claire back to Aaron" take the Job over Jack? Why would Hurley "I'm just glad it's not me" take the job over Jack? Why would Sawyer "I'm done with this island" take the job over Jack? Why would any other character, besides Jack, have a finale showdown with the MIB? Jack the new island protector, fighting for everything that Locke believed in, is now fighting the man who previously took the form of his father and is now in the form of John Locke. That fight belonged to Jack.

"Why not choose to highlight the contributions of each? Why not have the island-saving be a group effort by the remaining survivors?"

Jack didn't do it alone. If it wasn't for Desmond pulling the cork, Flocke wouldn't have been mortal. Kate saved Jack and dealt the death blow to the MIB. Hurley/Ben selflessly chose to stay on a sinking island to help Jack. Sounds like a group effort to me.

"And, more importantly, why not make an effort to bring all of the characters' stories to some more fully rounded, meaningful conclusions?"

I agree with you. I think Jack/Kate/Hurley/Ben did have meaningful conclusions. But Sawyer and Claire got shafted. And the last we saw of Desmond he was unconscious.

The point that I was making in my original post was that you just can't make the argument that Jack ending as the ultimate hero was forced or unnatural. Thinking that is just ignorant, IMO. I'm not saying you have to love the character or anything like that. All I'm saying is you can't say Jack's ending was forced or out of place. Jack evolving into the island believer and ultimately giving his life in service of it made complete sense. The groundwork for that character's ending was laid out clearly early on in the series and was continued to be built up through out the 120 episodes leading up to "The End".

Anonymous said...

and was continued to be built up through out the 120 episodes leading up to "The End".

Not even close. He was set up as the stereotypical hero in the first season but after that the show became an ensemble and he was less and less crucial to anything that happened. The writers forced him into prominence but only because they'd hitched their wagon to having a standard hero type, not because anything about Jack made it inevitable.

Your list of examples shows you didn't understand the point lizziefitz made. She was talking about a show that reached an emotional crescendo by having all the characters play equal roles and have equal importance. The writers chose to go with Mr. Rich White Male instead. Others got the honor of supporting Mr. Rich White Male. That's not an ensemble story about the human race. That's just standard hollywood bullcrap where rich white men write about themselves.

Thinking that is just ignorant, IMO.

How typical of the Fox freaks and Jaters to write something dumb and then accuse others of ignorance. Is there a one of you who isn't deep down a passive aggressive bitch?

Brown Public Library Book Store said...

Going back to my contention the Jack ending was manufactured:

Jack goes from trying to blow up the island and murder everyone on it to wanting to save it? Totally unbelievable.

As was his sudden morphing into Locke with no groundwork or anything. One minute Jack doesn't want to go back to the island, and the next Locke mentions he saw his daddy and then he suddenly wants to go back.

Jack as a hero is also unbelievable. The man, despite Jack fans claims to the otherwise, didn't go back to the island to save the people he left behind, he didn't give a squat about them, all about he cared was the glorification of Jack. He didn't care about his nephew. He didn't care about his mother. He didn't care about his sister. All Jack cared about was Jack, and that's not a hero.

Jack wasn't even chosen as island protector. He volunteered because of his arrogant belief it was his destiny and it was supposed to be him. Need I remind you, two days ago in island time he thought it was his destiny to destroy the island.

Even the whole eye closing thing came off as manufactured, because how was he able to get out of the well without anyone helping him. Did all that hot air in his head allow him to magically rise to the top and stumble around until he found the exact spot he woke up in so he could die in? Totally lame.

Yes, opening your eye and closing your eye on the same spot was the only cohesiveness this show had in the end, but it was totally manufactured.

But I doubt Jack fans will ever admit it, since the ending made all their pathetic wet dreams come true. Jack fans don't care if it made no sense storywise, and they never did. Like Jack, all they ever cared about was the glorification of Jack at the expense of the integrity of the show.

Little Jack Bunny, why don't you take your marbles and go home. You're not going to convince anyone here that the rubbish that was presented and your presenting as pre-ordained is true.

Anonymous said...

Too much logic, Sockerocke. You're never going to convince a Jacker/Jater using simple common sense and intelligence.

I think it says everything that the only people still online defending this crock of shit are these airheads.

MeriJ said...

I take it you all know one another from past skirmishes?

It's interesting that the show still generates such heat so long after its demise.

Kyle from Kentucky said...

Don't forget the reason that he wanted to destroy the island which is the funniest part of all was to start over with Kate.

The character motivations in the incident are still hilarious to this day.

Anonymous said...

The character motivations all through season five were a joke.

MeriJ said...

I assume you all know one another from past skirmishes.

Interesting that the show still generates such heat so long after its demise.

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