Posted on 05/23/2010 11:06:39 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Edited on 05/23/2010 11:17:47 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
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.
Sure you COULD, but that doesn’t make it a bad ending. The life after death limbo has been the entire flash sideways for the entire season, we just didn’t know that’s what it was until the end.
Only 3 total “ghosts” were Smoke in disguise: MIB, Jack’s dad on the Island, and Locke on the Island for seasons 5 and 6. All the other “ghosts” were real dead people talking to Hurley or Miles. Though there are indications that the occasional whispers in the jungle were also ghosts, just unable to fully manifest possibly because of who they were trying to talk to.
So they were all dead all along? Cop-out! Remember Dallas when Bobby came back? “It was all a dream, a terrible dream”.
The problem is that for many people, the internal logic wasn't very logical, either, because so many things were just dropped and the things that were left didn't fully make sense, except in a very crude way.
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.
Oh, it's even worse than that. We're told that it's Very Important to keep pushing that button and something Very Bad will happen. So when they finally stop pushing the butting, the special effects turn on and the sky glows and then Desmond goes down and turns the key on the self-destruct mechanism that had been there from the beginning and, Bang!, nothing all that bad happens, Desmond survives, and nobody has to push the button anymore. So it turns out you can stop pushing the button without it being the end of the world. And here's where that, and several other events in the show like it, are a problem...
In the whole beginning of the show, again and again, depicts blind faith and simply trusting what people say as being foolish because so many things turn out to be lies. Whether we're talking about people that were in a station filling out notebooks that simply get dumped in the jungle or Sayid checking out "Henry's" story to find out Ben was lying, it's shown as never being a good idea to trust what anyone says about anything. But pushing the button has the closest parallels to the end.
People were told that if the button wasn't pushed, terrible things would happen and it turns out that all you needed to do was activate the self-destruct and let the station blow itself up and then the problem actually went away and nobody had to push any button anymore. Why should we believe that something terrible will happen if the cork stays out and the island sinks into the ocean? Because the woman who viciously murdered Jacob's mother said so? Because Jacob did? Pulling the plug made the evil force on the island weaker and defeatable, so how was it a bad thing? Further, nothing particularly awful was rising up out of the drain while it was out. So why should we or anyone else put faith in Jacob and the cork story and feel it's important to put it back in?
Good writers show rather than tell. In this case, they had some characters of questionable realibility tell us that bad thing will happen but what they show us doesn't really show that. Yes, the Island starts falling apart but rather than seeing any evidence of evil being released into the world, as promised, we actually see the bad guy made mortal so he could be defeated. So we should believe that just letting the island sink into the Ocean and the light going out is bad because, oh yeah, Jacob and the woman who murdered his real mother said so. And we should put our faith in Jacob because?
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.
The problem is that an important aspect of a MacGuffin is that the audience not care too much about what it is and that it's nature and details not be important to the plot. Once the audience cares about a MacGuffin or it's nature becomes important to the characters or plot, it ceases to be a mere MacGuffin.
With The Maltese Falcon, a classic MacGuffin, for example, it mattered whether it was real or fake and that's shown in the story. In Lost, all be get is that several of the characters said or felt that the Island was important and that bad things would happen if it's not protected but we were told the same thing about the button in the hatch, and that turned out just fine. So why should we believe them this time and why did the characters? Because the writers needed them to?
I think "holy crap I'm dead" is bigger than "hey that kid isn't real".
Are you a parent? Before I was a parent, that might have made sense to me. Now, it doesn't ring true to me. Maybe your mileage varies if you do have kids but my kids are more important to me than I am.
But even just within the context of the show, characters risked everything for their children (look at Michael's obsession over rescuing Walt at the expense of his own soul, both Clarie and Rousseau going insane over the absence of their children, Ben wanting to murder Whidmore's daughter in revenge for his adopted daughter's death, Desmond protecting Charlie and Penny and then, at the end, sorry, not so important. And the son they give Jack in the alternate universe that helps him better understand his relationship with his father? Not even 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.
For some characters, it didn't matter because they weren't giving anything up in the alternate reality. Sawyer was single. Charlie was single. Desmond was single. Kate was headed for jail. Sayid was single and headed for jail. Hurley was single and lonely. Etc. Other characters, on the other hand, lost things if the alternate universe was fake. So in order to produce a Kodak moment, the authors decided to lobotomize the characters so they wouldn't think about any of that and just smile and/or cry?
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.
The problem is that there were plenty of other clues leading in different directions, including Faraday's sudden discussion of parallel universes in the altnerate universe and changing the past before the bomb. They provided plenty of clues to provide the forked universe theory and it's not as if looking deeply for meaning in various clues always had a pay-off. Often, it didn't. So if you want to fault people for not being attentive enough to spot the clues, you can't also fault them for being too attentive and being annoyed about the clues that never amounted to anything.
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.
Hurley still isn't sure of himself in the alternate reality. He needs Desmond to push him into following up with Libby. Yeah, I get what you are saying but I think that even that interpretation produces fairly muddied results because the characterization became so sloppy.
But you have to have Aaron at the end because the pocket heaven was following the time line.
OK, so was the story "character oriented", "plot oriented", or was it all about filling in some sort of structure to create a Kodak moment at the end, regardless of how much damage doing so did to the characters, plot, and logic of the story? People who were upset that the mysteries weren't answered are told they're all MacGuffins and it was a character related story. OK. Great. So now I'm telling that a lot of what happened didn't make sense from a character perspective and now you are telling me it was about filling in a structure, instead, which is really just conforming for me that the authors basically just forced a certain ending without worrying about whether it made sense or not, which means it really was just a pile of meaningless crap. If the mysteries didn't make any sense, the events didn't mean anything, and the characters weren't true to character at the end, then what's left worth caring about? The "structure"? Thats the tail wagging the dog.
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.
Libby doesn't get introduced until the second season. Sayid also doesn't get with Shannon until the second season. Desmond isn't introduced on the Island until the second season and he isn't reunited with Penny until after Charlie is dead. Juliet isn't introduced until the third season. So how does that fit that structure? It doesn't.
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.
Yes, nobody really reacts to anything in any meaningful way at the end, which is why, despite the best efforts of the soundtrack to convince me that I was watching something very emotional and meaningful, I just stopped caring about the revelations after the first few.
Even if they could have found a way to have Jack ask that quesiton, what possible answer could they have for him? "Bazinga! Fooled you! Sorry you took him seriously."? Well, I guess that would have made some sense, since that's essentially what the authors are telling the fans disappointed by the unanswered qutestions in the show. That the authors had Locke tell Jack that he didn't have a son means that the authors were trying to hang a lantern on the problem but that just didn't work for me.
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.
Somehow, other authors manage to write stories and even entire multi-year series without treating much of what they write like litter unworthy of proper disposal. Why should I give these guys a pass on sloppy writing?
There is a scene in the movie The Princess Bride, written by the talented screenwriter William Goldman, where the young boy listening to his grandfather tell the story is stunned when it seems the hero is dead because then who will get the bad guy because "somebody's got to do it". His grandfather informs him that, "Nobody kills him. He lives." The boy's response?
"Jesus, Grandpa! What did you read me this thing for?"
If you want people to care about stories, you can only jerk them around so much before they say, "Jesus, Grandpa! What did you read me this thing for?" That's the reaction plenty of people had to the last episode of Lost.
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.
If you say so. I'm not seeing it. What I'm seeing is an orphan girl abandoned by her parents despite the fact that she was supposedly terribly important to both of her parents. And even though Romeo and Juliet being my favorite Shakespearan play, I don't find the idea of a suicide death pact romantic.
Ben's dead, dead people don't grow much.
Really? Then what's the point of Jack and his fake son helping him come to terms with his father when Jack is dead? Do dead people grow or don't they? Or is it just an inconsistent crap shoot like so many other things turned out to be in the show?
And he can still move on, he even says he will later.
But if he doesn't grow much, as you claim, then what's the point of waiting if nothing is going to change and time has no real meaning there? At this point, it seems like you are making up excuses as you go, not unlike what it seems the authors of Lost were doing.
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.
And how would that work out, exactly, once Alex and Rousseau remember what happened on the Island? "Sorry I robbed you of seeing your daughter growing up and, oh yeah, for letting the bad guys kill her in cold blood."? "Sorry I ignored you pleading for your life, Alex, but I was scared."? How exactly does Ben make that right with them, especially since they are already dead and nothing that's happening to them is real? Alex's scholarship and future? Nothing but a fantasy that doesn't mean anything.
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.
Are they? Are they even real or are they fake, like Jack's son? How do we know who is real and who is fake?
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.
Why bother letting the audience in on the rules because then they might guess your super-secret ultra-clever purgatory ending, right?
They didn't promise anything. You assumed some promises, but they didn't make them.
Authors inherently create a promise for a satisfactory ending when they tell a story. Plenty of writing books clearly talk about the implicit contract the authors have with their audience. You can blame the audience for being suckers if you want, but it's the author's job to satisfy their audience, not the audiences job to be satisfied regardless of what an author shoves at them.
What about Ben’s mother? Smoke monster or ghost? What about Mr. Eco’s brother? Smoke monster or ghost? What about Hurley’s imaginary friend? Smoke monster or delusion or ghost?
Um....no.
Most of the time people think something wasn’t logical it’s because they’re misreading the situation.
Plenty of bad stuff happened when they stopped pushing the button, that’s how their plane crashed. It’s actually pretty well explained that the button is all about allowing experiments to continue, they’ve got things rigged for the magnetism to keep going but it needs to be released periodically, the fail safe ends the buildup but also ends any possibility for further experimentation. And we don’t know what happens if that build up is left completely unchecked, we know the first time Desmond failed to push it the magnetism yanked a plane 1000 miles off course and broke it.
Sorry you’ve got the MacGuffin thing completely backward, audiences MUST care about the MacGuffin because if they don’t then the characters’ caring about it loses believability. There’s still a chunk of audience out there trying to figure out what was in the Pulp Fiction briefcase. And remember in the Falcon they keep running after the statue, once they find out that one’s fake they figure the real one must exist, the MacGuffin in that movie isn’t the physical falcon, it’s the CONCEPT of the falcon and there’s a good chance there is no “real” falcon.
What do you think Jack should have done? It’s easy to complain but really what should he do? the kid’s not real, now what? Should he weep for the kid? Should he throw a temper tantrum? Should he refuse to leave until the imaginary kid reaches adulthood? Should he arrange for an adoption by other imaginary people? The writers got the right answer: he should MOVE ON, he’s dead and it’s time for him to go.
Faraday also theorized that they’d just disappear from the Island, then the bomb went off and they were still there. There was your good clue that Faraday’s theories weren’t hot. And not our first clue, remember Faraday’s back story, lost one test subject, put another in a coma, and fried his own memories. I’m not faulting anybody, it too me until the second to last episode to spot the clues, I’m just pointing out that the clues were there.
Hurley’s resistance to following up with Libby wasn’t lack of self confidence, it was because she got hauled away to the nuthouse. Girl comes up to you and says your soul mates and then you get told she’s nut you’re not necessarily going to go sprinting after her.
It was character driven. People that obsess with the solving of mysteries are ALWAYS upset because when you do solve them you don’t give their solution so they still hate it. Best to leave the MacGuffins as they are, unexplained. You still get to have structure in a character driven story. The flash sideways followed the same couple of weeks season 1 followed. And again this complaint boils down like your whining about Jack: what should they have done? Brought in a bunch of new actors for the church scene to play the adult versions of the kids? Should we age the adults too? What about Hurley and Ben who likely didn’t age before dieing? I’ve got an easy answer: respect the structure you established and put everybody in the church in state they would have been at the end of season 1 assuming they survived, it’s nice and easy, you don’t have to introduce new actors, or apply a bunch of makeup. There’s nothing saying they’re going to be that way on the other side, so it’s not like Aaron will be stuck an infant forever.
Libby doesn’t get introduced to US until the second season, but she’s a tail section survivor, so she was on the Island, and she was important to Hugo. Similar situation with Desmond, he was on the Island and his failure to push the button caused the plane crash, and Penny is important to him from before he was on the Island. The structure is actually pretty neatly followed, even if you won’t admit it.
By the time they’re in the church Jack is the only one who hasn’t accepted they’re death. And part of the mission of the pocket heaven seems to be not just knowing they’re dead but accepting it. And you just accidentally showed why they didn’t have Jack react over the kid, it’s a nowhere path for the story to go.
Everybody writing TV, especially arc TV, winds up dropping characters and stories seemingly in mid-stream. It’s just part of how the medium works, an idea or character seems interesting when working on this episode, but then a month or season later they try picking it back up and it just doesn’t fit with where the story has gone anymore. If they got to write the whole thing then film it that might not happen, but that’s not how things go. Show me an arc show that went at least 2 full seasons and I can show you at least 1 character and 1 plot per season that just vaporized. Sun and Jin’s kid got inconvenient in the final days, it happens.
Coming to grips with their life and death seems to be the point of the pocket heaven. Ben isn’t yet. It was very important to him to apologize to Locke, he probably really wants to apologize to Alex and Rousseau too, he’s still got some work to do before moving on. He was a really bad person for quite a while, coming to grips with that life might take a while. And I don’t know how he makes it up to them, but it’s clear when he apologizes to Locke and Locke accepts that some level of forgiveness is very important to him. And if he doesn’t get it from Alex and Rousseau maybe he’ll stay in some sort of self chosen punishment. Don’t know, but it makes sense for his character to stay on many levels.
We know from Desmond’s discussion with Faraday’s mother that he, she and Charlotte are real. That’s why she didn’t want Faraday to play at the event or meet Charlotte, she was afraid he’d accept his death and leave (she explicitly asks Desmond if he’s taking Daniel), she’s not ready to let go of him yet, she’s not only real but aware. Since we know those three are real it’s not a big leap that the other Islanders we see (Miles, Mile’s father, that cop) are probably real too.
They didn’t tell the audience the rules, we’re just able to figure them out because they exist and we’re smarter than chimps. If you watch enough of a sporting event you eventually figure out most of the rules even without the commentators. By the end of watching season 6 most of the rules for pocket heaven are pretty apparent.
A lot of people are satisfied with this ending. It’s got a 74 out of 100 on metacritic.
No for your other question. Ben seeing his mother was instrumental in him snuffing Dharma which really helped Smoke, probably was Smoke. Eko’s brother had tried to reach him before, through a revived girl, probably ghost. Hurley sees ghosts on and off the Island, probably ghost.
Ping for later.
Not going to read thru the entire thread, just watched the finale today because I had company and wanted to enjoy it by myself. I thought it was great and never understand people who believe that those who enjoy a show want to hear that they hate it. I thought the ending was well done, it took me a while to understand that they all died at various times (because death is outside of time). I agree, it was satisfying, and altho I had considered the possibility that they were dead at various times thru the years, I loved the way they brought everyone together. It was happy and I’m glad I stuck it out.
Real life has enough sadness. One of these days I think I’ll rent the entire 6 years and spend a summer rewatching. Not yet tho.
Isn’t it amazing how many people cannot find the channel changer and how many of those people will come to these threads to tell the rest of us how boring and stupid we are? (and how many of them will then give opinions that are completely wrong?)
I agree, I loved the last show. I actually kept stopping the TiVo to do other things so I could savor it and not let it end. I have never done that with a finale show before. But I just didn’t want it to end.
I liked the fact that it could be seen as Christian. Or not.
On the one hand you've got a story that's headed towards a certain ending.
On the other, viewers want to see all their favorite characters one last time (or the television people are convinced that viewers want to see that), whether or not such appearances have anything to do with the story line.
So yeah, I got very tired of seeing all these actors who hadn't been on the show in four or five years pop up in the "flash sidewayses" just to say "Hey, I'm still around, and am available for work."
Someone may have answered this but I heard that they had written Mr Ecko in, but the actor wanted too much money or he refused, one or the other.
Though producers say they envisioned Eko’s death from the beginning and knew Akinnuoye-Agbaje might not be sticking around for the long haul, the actor is the first Lost star to vote himself off the island. (He’s the fifth series regular to leave the show.) After Eko’s first flashback episode aired last season, Akinnuoye-Agbaje felt ‘’the character was complete. It was such a well-written episode that I knew I would be able to sew him up in a season.’’ Says exec producer Carlton Cuse: ‘’In a perfect world it would’ve been great to have Mr. Eko for a little longer. But it was the best time to go our separate ways.’’
My wife and I got hooked on Lost because of the weather. We had a four day weekend at our place in Aransas Pass and it rained the entire time. There is absolutely nothing to do when it rains down there so we watched four days of Lost.
Season six was the only season we watched “live”. I watched a few episodes I missed because of work on Hulu which was great.
Or maybe it's just not all that logical? Penny was never on the Island but she's in the church at the end, but without her father or son, but with Desmond, who wasn't really part of the core group either. Why? Something that can be hand-waved away? Maybe. Logical? Not really, at least not inside of the story.
Plenty of bad stuff happened when they stopped pushing the button, that’s how their plane crashed. It’s actually pretty well explained that the button is all about allowing experiments to continue, they’ve got things rigged for the magnetism to keep going but it needs to be released periodically, the fail safe ends the buildup but also ends any possibility for further experimentation. And we don’t know what happens if that build up is left completely unchecked, we know the first time Desmond failed to push it the magnetism yanked a plane 1000 miles off course and broke it.
Who is going to do the further experimentation? The corpses of the Dharma Project? So they ended it? No more button. No more danger. Problem solved and the hatch no longer mattered. My point here is that when we saw the full scenario play out that was supposed to result in a terrible catastrophe and it even started to look that way while it was happening, but the end result was an Island that was actually safer than it was while they were pushing the button.
Sorry you’ve got the MacGuffin thing completely backward, audiences MUST care about the MacGuffin because if they don’t then the characters’ caring about it loses believability. There’s still a chunk of audience out there trying to figure out what was in the Pulp Fiction briefcase. And remember in the Falcon they keep running after the statue, once they find out that one’s fake they figure the real one must exist, the MacGuffin in that movie isn’t the physical falcon, it’s the CONCEPT of the falcon and there’s a good chance there is no “real” falcon.
Merriam-Webster defines a MacGuffin as "an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance". Once the audience cares about the MacGuffin beyond the parameters needed to understand it's role in the story (i.e., the briefcase is valuable) and it gains intrinsic importance to them, it stops being just a MacGuffin whether the author likes it or not and you get things like people wondering about exactly what's in the briefcase.
Here is a an article about the importance of the reader-writer "contract":
When an author sits down to write a book, she enters into a contract with the reader. The reader's part is to buy the book, and to recommend it to his friends. For her part, the writer promises the reader that she will take his hand and guide him safely through the world created in the book. She promises she will not suddenly push him off the path into an abyss, or put boulders - big or small - in his way, to trip him up. She will not lead him down side paths that lead nowhere. She knows that readers have many other activities to distract them, so she will make the book as intriguing, easy to read and compelling/enlightening as possible. She will do her best to ensure that he experiences what the characters experience fully and vividly, so that when he finishes the book he will feel that the events in the book have happened to him. To the extent you are able to accomplish this, your work will stand out above the pile. Fortunately for authors, many readers are easily pleased when it comes to choosing a good read, and what is "great" for one may be borrrring to the next.
What do you think Jack should have done? It’s easy to complain but really what should he do? the kid’s not real, now what? Should he weep for the kid? Should he throw a temper tantrum? Should he refuse to leave until the imaginary kid reaches adulthood? Should he arrange for an adoption by other imaginary people? The writers got the right answer: he should MOVE ON, he’s dead and it’s time for him to go.
What do I think Jack should have done? React! Weeping, anger, shock, a temper tantrum, refusing to leave... something. He basically just lost a child he thought he had and so did Juliet. Anything other than indifference would have been the human response.
Faraday also theorized that they’d just disappear from the Island, then the bomb went off and they were still there. There was your good clue that Faraday’s theories weren’t hot. And not our first clue, remember Faraday’s back story, lost one test subject, put another in a coma, and fried his own memories. I’m not faulting anybody, it too me until the second to last episode to spot the clues, I’m just pointing out that the clues were there.
If I ignored everything that characters on Lost said because they'd been wrong in the past or in their backstory, I'd always assume everything they said was a lie. Like I said, above, using the same logic, there should be no problem just leaving the cork out because nobody saying that it was dangerous was reliable.
Hurley’s resistance to following up with Libby wasn’t lack of self confidence, it was because she got hauled away to the nuthouse. Girl comes up to you and says your soul mates and then you get told she’s nut you’re not necessarily going to go sprinting after her.
Eh. He's still taking Desmond's lead and so on. Like I said, I don't see big changes in that particular character which is part of why I figured he'd get the Jacob gig at the end.
It was character driven. People that obsess with the solving of mysteries are ALWAYS upset because when you do solve them you don’t give their solution so they still hate it. Best to leave the MacGuffins as they are, unexplained. You still get to have structure in a character driven story. The flash sideways followed the same couple of weeks season 1 followed. And again this complaint boils down like your whining about Jack: what should they have done? Brought in a bunch of new actors for the church scene to play the adult versions of the kids? Should we age the adults too? What about Hurley and Ben who likely didn’t age before dieing?
It's not just Jack. Sun and Jin. Claire, Kate, and Aaron. Heck, what about Locke and Helen, if Penny is fair game? Why doesn't Helen make the cut, since she's there for Locke in the alternate reality?
What should they have done? I don't know because the whole premise that they'd all need to go to Heaven together from that one particular slice of life is flawed, in my opinion. For writers who talk about time having no meaning in the alternate reality, they don't seem to grasp what that means.
My father, a widower, remarried a widow. They've both been married about as long as they were married to their first spouses, if not longer. When they die, they'll be buried with their first spouses, with whom they had children. So who do they go to Heaven with? First spouse? Second spouse? Their children? Their friends as young adults? Or maybe it's just a pretty silly question because the premise is silly.
This is, in fact, an issue that Jesus specifically addresses in the Gospels because people were asking it two millennia ago. From Matthew 22:23-33 (NIV):
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?"
Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
The Bible deals with this. Other religions deal with this. The New Agey, all religions are right/place to find each other from the show doesn't really handle it. You mustn't think about it too deeply because it doesn't quite work right if you do. On a religious and philosophical level, it's weak, if not broken.
I’ve got an easy answer: respect the structure you established and put everybody in the church in state they would have been at the end of season 1 assuming they survived, it’s nice and easy, you don’t have to introduce new actors, or apply a bunch of makeup. There’s nothing saying they’re going to be that way on the other side, so it’s not like Aaron will be stuck an infant forever.
If they're not that way on the other side, then why do they need to be that way on the waiting room side? If time has no meaning, why are they waiting? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense because it's not driven by the needs of the story. It's a bit of artifice, so the audience can get their few minutes of music, smiles, and tears as each set of character gets to say good-bye.
Libby doesn’t get introduced to US until the second season, but she’s a tail section survivor, so she was on the Island, and she was important to Hugo. Similar situation with Desmond, he was on the Island and his failure to push the button caused the plane crash, and Penny is important to him from before he was on the Island. The structure is actually pretty neatly followed, even if you won’t admit it.
Why Penny but not Helen? If you have to make so many exceptions and cast a net so wide that they could have included just about anyone who was ever on the show, "neat" is not what I'd call the structure. Yeah, it sorta makes a vague sort of sense, but it doesn't hold up to a strong interrogation.
By the time they’re in the church Jack is the only one who hasn’t accepted they’re death. And part of the mission of the pocket heaven seems to be not just knowing they’re dead but accepting it. And you just accidentally showed why they didn’t have Jack react over the kid, it’s a nowhere path for the story to go.
But why hasn't Jack accepted his death until last, based on what we see? He went down to put the cork back knowing that it would likely kill him. He'd done his father's funeral and found out about Claire. He lays down and must know he was dying and he also died years before the others, some of whom died suddenly or surprisingly with unfinished business (e.g., Locke, Libby). So why was he the last one to accept his death, with the help of his fake son, especially in an afterlife where time has no meaning? Why wasn't Locke last? And if the kid was a "nowhere path for the story to go", why was he there? I'm not the one who wrote him into the story.
Everybody writing TV, especially arc TV, winds up dropping characters and stories seemingly in mid-stream. It’s just part of how the medium works, an idea or character seems interesting when working on this episode, but then a month or season later they try picking it back up and it just doesn’t fit with where the story has gone anymore. If they got to write the whole thing then film it that might not happen, but that’s not how things go. Show me an arc show that went at least 2 full seasons and I can show you at least 1 character and 1 plot per season that just vaporized. Sun and Jin’s kid got inconvenient in the final days, it happens.
Babylon 5. It ran for 5 seasons and while it endured changes in actors, a rushed 4th season, and a 5th season that wasn't really necessary, I'm at a loss to think of any major plots that were left unresolved and any characters that were left unresolved without a cast change driving it (you'll note that I'm not harping on Walt all that much because I do understand the practical reasons he was left out). And it certainly addressed the main philosophical theme in quite a bit of detail by the end. Or how about Chuck. It's run for 3 seasons so far. This season, they even brought back an ex-girlfriend character for a one episode side story. The various Stargate shows that have built up a fairly tight and consistent canon. Farscape, which was resolved in TV movies that really did wrap up all sorts of loose ends and answer questions I wasn't even asking (e.g., "Peacekeeper, do your job."). Smallville did well for the several seasons that I watched. Do you need more examples?
We know from Desmond’s discussion with Faraday’s mother that he, she and Charlotte are real. That’s why she didn’t want Faraday to play at the event or meet Charlotte, she was afraid he’d accept his death and leave (she explicitly asks Desmond if he’s taking Daniel), she’s not ready to let go of him yet, she’s not only real but aware. Since we know those three are real it’s not a big leap that the other Islanders we see (Miles, Mile’s father, that cop) are probably real too.
And how many other characters are real and how many are fake? Doesn't that very question and arrangement seem the least but odd to you?
They didn’t tell the audience the rules, we’re just able to figure them out because they exist and we’re smarter than chimps. If you watch enough of a sporting event you eventually figure out most of the rules even without the commentators. By the end of watching season 6 most of the rules for pocket heaven are pretty apparent.
Sporting events don't purposely include red herrings to confuse the fans trying to figure out the rules. And there are also cases where you can watch something and the rules don't make sense because there really aren't any.
A lot of people are satisfied with this ending. It’s got a 74 out of 100 on metacritic.
And a lot of people are unhappy with the ending and way the show went, judging from the reviews and message boards as well as the people who stopped watching before the finale. I'd love to see a real poll of what fans thought..
No for your other question. Ben seeing his mother was instrumental in him snuffing Dharma which really helped Smoke, probably was Smoke. Eko’s brother had tried to reach him before, through a revived girl, probably ghost. Hurley sees ghosts on and off the Island, probably ghost.
So that means the smoke monster appeared at least 4 times as ghosts, not three.
You got the point spot on.
Been watching Everest this season? According to EverestNews, there have been 3 deaths but no info except for the first one.
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