The Lost Finale Was Incredibly Dumb

gawker ^

[JoeProBono]

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 [expletive deleted by Mod] backed with a syrupy soundtrack.

Everyone loves to see characters who haven't been around for a while, right? Juliet! Where have you been? Shannon! Long time since you were around, irritating all of us and ruining Sayid. But good to see you, I guess! Rose and Bernard! Nice beard, bro! And Vincent! The goddamn dog! There you are, doing dog stuff. How great is it to get all these characters back? Not very great at all, as it turns out.

[dead]

It's kinda funny to me when I read that people think the island equals purgatory or limbo.

It simply wasn't. People lived there. People died there. People left and went back to the real world. It had nothing to do whatsoever with limbo.

It's like somebody reading Moby Dick and concluding it was about a dolphin.

[Ingtar]

From what I read, Mr. Eko had another opportunity and asked to be written out.

[mad_as_he$$]

I was bothered by Aron being in the church apparently with the “dead” as an infant.

[mad_as_he$$]

With you brother. I also got the water going - not and easy thing to do. When Kate and jack finally told each other how they felt - after all the crap - I was very moved.

[SuperSonic]

I’ve come to the conclusion, because this is common in anime (Japanese animation) is that people often equate incomprehensible with deep and meaningful because they assume there is a meaning there that they can’t really see. Sometimes, it really is just a bunch of nonsense that’s not particulraly deep or profound but simply a confusing mess.

I believe that your statement sums up "LOST" quite nicely. After investing so much time and interest in a show, it really didn't offer answers to the questions posed.

[depressed in 06]

My take on the final episode:

All things end. Move along, nothing to see here. Thanks for wasting 6 years.

[Corin Stormhands]

Your crassness aside, don’t tell me how “huge” a fan of the show you are if you don’t recognize Libby.

[discostu]

It’s actually a pretty fun discussion. It’s one of the reasons I like shows like Lost, nobody ever has these kind of discussions over Family Feud.

[Hoosier Catholic Momma]

LOL! You got that right :)

[discostu]

I only watched one ep of Seeker and thought it was dumb, it was just the first fantasy show that jumped into my head. Lost does have an internal logic, it just isn’t sci-fi logic. I always find it useful to remember that one of Carlton Cruse’s first gigs was Brisco County Jr; there’s a lot of similarities between the Island and the Orb, they both can heal characters, they both can kill characters, they both can time travel characters, and they’re both highly sought after by people who probably shouldn’t be allowed to play with them. There’s always going to be people disappointed with the end of a show, can’t be helped.

That technobabble never actually explained anything. Dharma built the hatch to contain something they screwed up, but they still never explain why the magnetism is there in the first place. They have ways to get to and away from the Island, but they don’t know why those work, the pendulum predicts where it will go but there’s still no explanation of why. The Black Rock wasn’t technobabble, somebody had that theory when we first encounter it, then it turned out to be how Richard got there. It would be unreasonable to expect everything to be explained, because in the end the Island, just like the Orb, is a MacGuffin, it’s there to be the object of contest and a source of complication to keep the plot going. If you explain a MacGuffin it stops being a MacGuffin, and you lose most of the audience because your explanation will probably be dumb. It’s important to avoid midichlorians, they just wind up annoying the audience.

I think “holy crap I’m dead” is bigger than “hey that kid isn’t real”. And again, NOBODY dealt for even one second with their situation in the pocket heaven, once they found out it wasn’t the real world they accepted the implications (which of course included being dead for all of them) and moved on. Making Jack different would have broken the structure.

Jacob didn’t really give much advice. The important part of Jacob’s visits was him touching them on the shoulder, everybody he touched survived the crash. Most of his talking to them was the generic “you’ll be fine” kind of stuff. I’m not saying anything was a stretch, I’m saying where the characters were in post bomb world emotionally was a clue to what post bomb world was. Another good one is Sawyer, in no bomb world he was a con-man but eventually became head of security for Dharma, in post bomb world he was a cop. There were tons of these kinds of matches between the character in post bomb world being in the same state as their multiple year older selves on the Island. These were clues, clues I took a long time to figure out, and clues others never did, but they were there as available indications that post bomb world was something other than just life without the Island.

Unfortunately it turns out you were wrong, it was not just life without the Island, it was life AFTER the Island. Hurley’s fun in the pocket heaven was vastly different than on the Island, but it does follow the path. When Hurley is making the golf course he’s almost apologetic, by the time he’s in pocket heaven he’s gotten good enough at helping people that he just does it, no hoping for acceptance he just does it.

[discostu]

But you have to have Aaron at the end because the pocket heaven was following the time line. It basically went through the same time frame as the first season, only in a world without the Island. Aaron’s born near the end of season 1, Sun is unknowingly pregnant in that time frame. That wasn’t a punt that was the structure, pocket heaven was following the beginning of life on the Island, only where Island season 1 ended with a few characters getting on a raft, pocket heaven “season 1” ended with a whole bunch of characters going to the after life.

Again, NOBODY reacts to ANYTHING about their fake world in pocket heaven. If Jack reacts to something then they all have to. It’s a matter of consistency, and time. By the time Jack figures out what’s going on the story is over, it would be a lame story beat to then have stop everything so he could say “that means David was fake, what happens to him if we leave” and get that answered. By then it’s time for the big finale scene and rolling the closing credits.

It’s not lazy and cheap, it’s how it goes. Over 50 characters of this show just disappeared. A whole bunch of survivors from the first crash, the second crash, the Dharma/ Others merge, and the cult of Jacob just kind of evaporated. Sun and Jin’s kid was one of them. Gotta move on eventually, you only get so many 42 minute blocks of story telling.

No, them getting together after being dead isn’t the payoff. Them being together for the rest of their lives, even if it’s only 2 minutes, is the payoff. The question for those characters was always if they’d manage “til death do we part”, if Jin leaves it’s no, if Jin stays it’s yes, if it’s no then their whole struggle to find each other emotionally is pointless.

Hurley changed a lot. Hurley from the beginning was a guy who wanted to help but was convinced he couldn’t. The first words he says in the series are “I can’t do that”, and he says it repeatedly. By the end he knows he can, he knows he can help Jack save the Island, he knows he can become the new Jacob. What Hurley WANTS to do doesn’t change through the series, the change comes in his BELIEF that he CAN.

Ben’s dead, dead people don’t grow much. And he can still move on, he even says he will later. I’m sure he wants to move on with Alex, and maybe Rousseau. He already remembers her getting murdered at that point, the question is can he still spend time with her, in pocket heaven and in what comes later. A lot of Islanders are still in that pocket heaven (Alex, Rousseau, Miles, Faraday, Faraday, Charlotte, and those are just the ones we saw), maybe it’s his job to organize the next group out.

They didn’t play around with the rules. It just turned out the rules weren’t what you thought, but they never said those were the rules, I thought those were the rules too until the second to last episode, then I figured out those weren’t the rules.

They didn’t promise anything. You assumed some promises, but they didn’t make them.

[Deb]

Your Chris Carter comparison is perfect. I could forgive David Lynch because is clinically insane, in my opinion, but Carter and Abrams played their audiences like rubes and idiots who would happily follow every jerky twist and never know they were being had.

Every TV show has a "Bible" that's supposed to have a complete compendium of every character and every story line so the show makes sense no matter who is brought onboard to write or be the show runner. Abrams obviously missed that day at writing school.

[Tanniker Smith]

Considering their sad miserable lives, yeah, those probably were the best days of their lives.

[eccentric]

Okay, if they were all dead to start with, what was the airplane leaving the island at the end with Kate, Clare, etc.?

The end sucked.

[eccentric]

Speaking of the music, “Nadia’s Theme” before it was taken by a soap opera, was on the old movie “Bless the Beast and Children.” It was titled “Lost” and similar to the music on this show. The lyrics fit this show: “lost, stumbling blind, after a dream, I just can’t find.... My bright new world, is growing old. It’s getting dark and I’m getting cold. And I am lost.”

[eccentric]

The end made more sense when Juliet set off the atomic bomb. Nothing on the island after that was real. The people then acquired their memories of the island -— but the “DEAD” ending doesn’t fit with that idea.

[fr_freak]

It's kinda funny to me when I read that people think the island equals purgatory or limbo.

It simply wasn't. People lived there. People died there. People left and went back to the real world. It had nothing to do whatsoever with limbo.

OK, but if what you are saying is true, it makes the ending all that much worse, because it means that the alternate timeline/church ending had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the show. Having all of the characters meet up to go to heaven together in Lost would be no different than having one of those hospital shows, for example, end the exact same way. The hospital staff go through a bunch of drama together, and then the show ends with all of them in a church waiting to go to heaven.

The only way that the church ending would have any relation to the actual show, is if there was, indeed, some crossover between the limbo world and the real world going on. For example, if the original characters did, indeed, die with the original crash, but were revived on the island in a limbo\purgatory state to work out their issues because the island is an intersection of purgatory and earth. Meanwhile, people from the "real" world also found how to get to the island, and so there was a mixture of people who never died with people who have died but were revived in limbo, and the spirits of people who died but can't move on to heaven (e.g. Michael).

That theory would explain, also, why Jack was convinced that they weren't supposed to leave the island. It might also explain why babies couldn't be born on the island (new life) and why some people couldn't be killed, or were healed completely when they reached the island. I often thought, during the show, that the reason Locke could walk and Rose no longer had cancer was because they had died but were "rebooted" on the island without their previous health problems.

Whether this is the true explanation that the writers had in mind, I don't know. Quite frankly, it is entirely possible that they had nothing specific in mind. Plenty of Hollywood writers do that these days - they simply write a bunch of weird stuff that seems meaningful, but they, themselves, have no idea what it means.

[discostu]

no the “alternate timeline” was a an anti-chamber to the after life they created unconsciously. The Island was real, the flash sideways was sort of not. And it does tie into the rest of the show, because the events of the rest of the show are what bound them together so tightly they wanted to cross over together no matter how separated their deaths were. Also the events of the real show clearly demonstrate there’s something after death, and thus something to cross over to.

Jack was convinced they weren’t supposed to leave the Island because they were all still candidates to replace Jacob, and the Man in Black still needed to be defeated. Jacob brought them to the Island for a reason, and those reasons were as yet unfulfilled. The ones that couldn’t be killed were because of either Jacob making it a “rule” of the Island (Richard, and MIB’s inability to directly harm Jacob and the candidates) or because they were already dead (MIB). The Island did heal people from sickness and non-fatal injuries.

[Corin Stormhands]

Abrams obviously missed that day at writing school.

Indeed. No doubt he'll die a pauper and be found in a dumpster reeking of urine.

I'm just sayin' is all...

[fr_freak]

The Island was real, the flash sideways was sort of not. And it does tie into the rest of the show, because the events of the rest of the show are what bound them together so tightly they wanted to cross over together no matter how separated their deaths were.

Yes, but that was my point. You could just as easily have a hospital show where the staff were so bound together by events that they wanted to cross over in to heaven together. The only difference between Lost and that hospital show would be if Lost included some of the life-after-death "limbo" elements before the finale, rather than tacking it on at the end.

Lost did have some references to life after death, because we saw "ghosts" left and right, but most of those ghosts turned out to be the evil man in black masquerading as dead people, rather than the dead people themselves. If we were seeing real ghosts, then it would be better explained that the island was a real world/limbo crossover. Once again, I'm not saying that is what the writers had in mind, but it would be a far better explanation, and would account for many of the mysterious properties of the island, which the writers did not bother explaining.