Last season of "Lost" aka WTF?!

[Riva]

Hey Curzon, read my last post up there re soap opera; it may resonate and bring you closure and even peace about the "loose ends" ...

Thanks. I did read it, and it does make sense. And I am a genuine lost fan. Watched every bloody episode and loved each one of them. Doesn't need justification of the way it ended to keep me as a fan. it's not the ending that i am worried about. I actually liked the ending. It is the loose ends. And many it had, and it does not feel right to leave them that way. Leave them loose.

And i always recommended Lost as a show people should watch. But never again I would do that. With all the mysteries it had it was surely a marterpiece. But then it didn't tigh them and it is not a masterpiece anymore. Just so dissapointing.

Loved the ending though. I am glas that they finally had a happy ending.

 

[The Outsider]

I don't feel comfortable calling either of them bad or good.

Jacob got screwed over too, remember; he never wanted the job but he was too responsible to just abandon his obligation ... nor alleviate his own guilt in the death of his brother.

It also doesn't justify all the people that TMIB killed on the island. The castaways were trapped too... but for many of them, killing others was a hard line they were not willing to cross, yet the TMIB didn't even flinch. He was a self-absorbed pragmatist, vs Jacob's inflexible moralist. As much as you'd like to separate the human TMIB from his "darkness," I don't know if that is possible; it was still "him" and thus his responsibility regardless.

Both of them seemed like both victims as well as instigators to me. Both had been orphaned, both had been screwed over by people they loved (their "mother"), and neither really wanted to be in the situation they were in.

I'm guessing Hugo handled things much differently than Jacob did.

Yes, I agree that Jacob was also a victim, plus he didn't know what throwing the man in black into the light would do, other than it being 'worse than death'.

However, to me the scene where Jacob lay down his brother next to his "mother" signified the passing of the human man in black. What was left was clearly something other than human. It was this rather primal urge to leave, with little regard to anything else. But in the end I would have expected the man in black to act the same way he did anyway, smoke monster or not, he was still trapped on that island for what seemed to be eternity, for a cause that he didn't believe in.

I do suppose Jacob had the moral highground in the big picture, or at least he thought so, saving the world and all that, even though I tend to think that it was never even in any need of protection, it was basically the same situation as with the original hatch.
However, Jacob did not care about human lives when the bigger picture was concerned. Remember, he had all the Dharma people killed.
They both killed out of necessity to further their goals.

 

[MacGuffin]

However, Jacob did not care about human lives when the bigger picture was concerned. Remember, he had all the Dharma people killed.
They both killed out of necessity to further their goals.

I interpreted it that the MIB had them killed, acting through the Others and Ben (both of which he corrupted).

 

[Salomé]

Deus ex machina - the standard device of weak writers who fail to resolve their own plot lines into anything interesting.

Get outta my head! I wrote this almost exactly elsewhere! The annoying thing is, the producers even told us they would do this in the title of the first episode they co-authored in Season 1. I alternate between being amused and irritated by their cynical, self-congratulatory, smarminess.


I like Charlie Brooker's burn in the Guardian:

Limbo's very much in vogue at the moment. In fact there's roughly a 50% chance that any serial you're following will turn out to be set there. All this publicity must be doing wonders for the Limbo tourist industry.Of course saying "aha, it was limbo all along" is just a marginally more profound way of saying "aha, it was a dream all along", a trope which became a cliche through overuse. There's no room for any more limbo-based programming, so anything currently on air is going to have to find a different way of ending, which sadly means 24 (Sun, 9pm, Sky1) – which finishes for good in a fortnight – won't conclude with Jack Bauer kicking his way through Hell and kneeing Satan in the bollocks. Another twist is necessary. Here's hoping it transpires the whole thing took place in a paperback novel being read by Shaz from Ashes To Ashes, who was herself being daydreamt by Sawyer from Lost – while he was trying to think up a satisfying conclusion for Heroes. That or it pulls out to reveal it all took place in a cat's bum. A cat's bum doing a poo. I am 39 years old.

"Lost in cat poo" would make a good spin-off.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yes, I agree that Jacob was also a victim, plus he didn't know what throwing the man in black into the light would do, other than it being 'worse than death'.

However, to me the scene where Jacob lay down his brother next to his "mother" signified the passing of the human man in black. What was left was clearly something other than human. It was this rather primal urge to leave, with little regard to anything else. But in the end I would have expected the man in black to act the same way he did anyway, smoke monster or not, he was still trapped on that island for what seemed to be eternity, for a cause that he didn't believe in.

I do suppose Jacob had the moral highground in the big picture, or at least he thought so, saving the world and all that, even though I tend to think that it was never even in any need of protection, it was basically the same situation as with the original hatch.

The problem is that we'll never know. You can attribute this to purposeful ambiguity or you can attribute it to bad writing. Who the "good guys" were was never clarified.

However, Jacob did not care about human lives when the bigger picture was concerned. Remember, he had all the Dharma people killed.
They both killed out of necessity to further their goals.

Actually, I think the insinuation has been at this stage of the game is that the TMIB was manipulating Ben the entire time... i.e., the Jacob in the cabin was never Jacob at all, it was TMIB who was masquerading as him, and thus it was TMIB who had them all killed. This sort of blows your reasoning out of the water here.

That reading would also fit more in alignment with Jacob's character. Once he killed his brother, he seemed to never want to take a life again; and even when Ben went to kill him, he did nothing to stop him (and had expected better of Ben). He also didn't want to interfere with other people's choices because he felt like he never got a choice about become the guardian, which is why he let members of the group volunteer instead of selecting one. Jacob actually being the one to order the extermination of Dharma seems really out of character to me.

(In addition, my personal feeling is that the shack/Jacob in Season 3-4 or whenever it was was one of those things where the writers were trying to provide some "future hooks" in the storyline... then changed course later in the game and the two pieces did not match up as well as they should have; it could and should have been done far better. Most of my gripes come from mismatched joinings like this.)

 

[The Outsider]

Well damn. It may well have been the man in black. <_<

Oh well.

 

[Riva]

The series had so many mysteries that were never answered. Well yes it wouldn't have been a good idea to reveal the reasons behind all the mysteries as someone mentioned in this thread. But some of them really need to be answered.The island is a mystery and the Famous five would one day solve it. So no need to poke it.

What about Michael?
Why wasn't he capable of dying. As I recall the fat gay guy who had a loud mouth said that Michael could never kill himself? Why not?

And Walt?
Didn't he have some kind of power in which he could simply stare at a person and kill him/her? (if you don't recall he used it to kill his own mother and a bird). Is he the Darth Vader or is he Darth Sidious?

There are many more... It's next to impossible to type all the unanswered questions. It is easier to type questions related to characters than plots. There were way too many plots. Sigh!!!

 

[Totenkindly]

What about Michael?
Why wasn't he capable of dying. As I recall the fat gay guy who had a loud mouth said that Michael could never kill himself? Why not?

The "fat gay guy" I believe was Tom, and back on the island he was married to head of security until she died and Jack couldn't save her. Tom died on the island too at some point, in a bout of some violence or other.

I'm not sure why Michael couldn't die. Either he was still a candidate, or else he had a job to do in order to make up for what he had done on the island and he wasn't allowed to die until it was finished. Tom tells him that the island will not let him die until he agrees to go on the frieghter and kill all of the crew, as they are planning to kill all his friends.

(Which I think is why the last thing Michael sees is Christian Sheperd saying, "You can go now, Michael." He redeemed himself for his crimes by doing his job at the island and letting Jin leave while he tried to defuse the bomb alone because Jin was a father.)

Technically I think if the church scene at the end was an 'objective' view of everyone and not Jack's subjective perception, Michael should have been there; he paid for his mistakes and proved himself honorable. However, if it was a subjective view, then it would explain why Michael was not there (Jack didn't have regard for him), and also why Shannon might have been there (rather than Nadia, who Jack did not know) with Sayid. Objectively, Nadia should have been present with Sayid... except Nadia was never on the island.

Yes, it's a hodgepodge.

And Walt? Didn't he have some kind of power in which he could simply stare at a person and kill him/her? (if you don't recall he used it to kill his own mother and a bird). Is he the Darth Vader or is he Darth Sidious?

Who says he has to be either?

Not much of the Walt stuff was followed up on. I'm wondering if Michael hadn't taken Walt off the island (by murdering two of his friends) if the island would have had more plans for Walt. We only see him as an apparition later, when Locke is almost ready to kill himself. Are Walt and Christian in the same category -- "good imagery" the Island uses to accomplish its goals? What of TMIB pretending to be Jacob... if he did?

Ambigious and never tied up.

You can read
Lost TV Show - ABC Lost Episodes Recaps and News from the Lost TV Show
List of Lost episodes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
LOST Wikia - The LOST encyclopedia you can edit!
for a lot of the detail of forgotten episodes (and About.com has close to a full transcript of each espisode).

 

[Usehername]

1.) The images of the plane wreckage at the end didn't air in Canada; apparently they were only stock images added by ABC to the credits to allow people to "decompress" after watching the episode. They weren't intended to form part of the show; the last thing you were meant to see was Jack's closing eye.

The plane wreckage did air here in Canada.

 

[Totenkindly]

The plane wreckage did air here in Canada.

Interesting. Was that in a rerun or online, or was it specifically the primetime airing in Canada, and which city in Canada, and which station were you watching?

 

[Usehername]

Interesting. Was that in a rerun or online, or was it specifically the primetime airing in Canada, and which city in Canada, and which station were you watching?

I only watched it live. I very intentionally stayed away from rewatching it online, and have not seen any alternate endings. I think I watched it on CTV, and it was viewed in a prairie city that I will rep to you.

(Unless they replayed the ending on the Jimmy Kimmel thing after and I'm thinking of that, because I stayed to watch the first 15-20 minutes before I went to bed.)

 

[PeaceBaby]

'Lost' exclusive: ABC sets the record straight about the series finale's plane crash images | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times

You know what's kind of interesting: people who liked the first season generally didn't like anything after the second; people who liked the middle seasons generally disliked season 1.

 

[Totenkindly]

'Lost' exclusive: ABC sets the record straight about the series finale's plane crash images | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times

I personally think the images were a bad call, since they were so misleading. If they wanted to help people decompress, they could have put anything in those photos... but since it was executives making the decision, they managed to completely gum up the viewer perceptions by putting something confusing there.

I was fooled by them and was wondering if it meant it had all been in Jack's head, and him ending in the same place he was starting was a way to "reboot" back to the reality that everyone had orignially died.... despite everything his dad had said. (because it's easy to forget specific bits of dialogue a minute later, but the images linger).

You know what's kind of interesting: people who liked the first season generally didn't like anything after the second; people who liked the middle seasons generally disliked season 1.

Season #1 for any series is usually both a testing ground and also has some of the strong original bits imagined by the writers. Later seasons, things change as the writers and actors fall into a groove and the story starts writing itself, but it also means they are probably into material that was never pre-imagined for the series. Which means there's often an evolution and/or discernable difference from Season 1 to the following seasons.

I happened to like everything about the same...

 

[MacGuffin]

I wasn't bothered by the plane wreckage images, I got what they were instantly.

 

[Totenkindly]

I wasn't bothered by the plane wreckage images, I got what they were instantly.

I was sitting about 20 feet from the TV (it's a decent widescreen but too small for the room), and I couldn't see enough details to tell what I was looking at in terms of specifics, and I couldn't remember if the engine and stuff had stayed on the beach all that time or had been swept away during the course of the series, because it wasn't shown for so many episodes in the series.

 

[PeaceBaby]

And too, the wreckage looked aged and distressed, not fresh. I'm not sure I totally believe the ABC backpedalling, but ah well, as I explained earlier, I'm feeling more peaceful about the show now ...

 

[MacGuffin]

And too, the wreckage looked aged and distressed, not fresh. I'm not sure I totally believe the ABC backpedalling, but ah well, as I explained earlier, I'm feeling more peaceful about the show now ...

Backpedalling from what?

 

[PeaceBaby]

The plane wreck images ... over the credits at the end of the show. ABC execs have said they added them, not the writers / producers.

 

[Totenkindly]

And too, the wreckage looked aged and distressed, not fresh. I'm not sure I totally believe the ABC backpedalling, but ah well, as I explained earlier, I'm feeling more peaceful about the show now ...

What reason would anyone have to lie... especially if the writers have shamelessly ruined the rest of the series for you? Why should they backpedal now and blame execs?

it makes more sense to take it at face value.

 

[PeaceBaby]

^ I don't know ... maybe just to make it more controversial? Generate more talk and spin? I'm just going from the press statements.

And LOL, taking LOST at face value? That's almost impossible!

But as I said earlier, interpreting LOST as a soap makes it all make sense.

I am at peace.