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.
Also didn’t like that EVERYONE wasn’t included in the reunion at the church.
Thought maybe Ben didn’t go in because he was too evil and wasn’t invited. I don’t think he did one redeeming thing on the show.
Some people are just too addicted to a wrap it up ending, they want all the answers handed to them. They need to think for themselves, decide what THEY think it was, and run with it. Be more than just a passive experiencer and turn on their brains.
If there was a “Purgatory”, more correctly Tartarus, that’s where Ben is headed. I believe he said something about not being ready yet.
The Island was a reality but it was also a common thread. Step outside the mental limitations of Christianity’s box and look to the Greek and other nonethical retribution based underworlds.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the superior position of the crescent moon and star over the cross but secondary to the Magen David in Semitic and Arabic sentence structure and reversed in Western.
He didn’t spend 6 years marooned on the island. From crash landing to semi-leaving was under 4 months within the show.
Because in their “pocket heaven” he’d reunited with his “adopted” kid and her mom (Russeau). He actually found something to “live” for not related to the island, and he never really was one of them.
Watched the first two years, third year it seemed to me they really didn’t have a coherent idea for the show except to introduce new stuff without any explanations or real ideas to link it all together.
Began watching 5th year again because of the Christ/Satan-type theme being played out between Jacob and Locke. The whole desting thing, protecting the island kind of stuff.
Extremely disappointed at how this ended. They started off interesting, didn’t know where they were going midway, got an idea again and started trying to tie stuff together in the last couple years, but there was too much garbage nonsense crap when they didn’t know where the story was going to explain or make sense, so they punted on the ending with a big shmooze-fest and soraing music reunion scenes. And an ending that was extremely dissatisfying and disappointing, as it really explained nothing major (and plenty unexplained minor) issues at all.
For example, we still do not know:
1. Exactly what was the smoke monster?
2. How are dead people able to ‘build’ a place after death where they wait and meet each other again?
3. What really was the deal with Jacob then and the whole light of the island and protecting it?
4. Jacob went off-island to get others to ‘help’. Appears to have god-like powers and personify ‘good’ versus the man in black. These people seem to exist independently of the crash folks, so how can this all just be something created in the minds of these people as they are dying.
5. If man in black is satan and somehow trapped on the island, which some might say is purgatory, satan wouldn’t be in purgatory, he’s not going to be saved, or have any enormous power over those in purgatory.
6. What’s with the frickin polar bear?
7. All the kids don’t seem to mean anything and as a thread are unexplainable - appear to be just something the writers would soon forget. Remember the outsiders taking the kids was a big deal for awhile.
8. The blond kid saying to Locke you can’t touch them. No explanation.
9. No explanation of what the hell the light in island is.
10. No explanation of the woman who kills Jacob and the man in black’s mom. Or how she was the caretaker.
11. Not explaining why pregnant women would die because of being pregnant on the island. Might be able to explain why pregnancies don’t work out in a timeshifting place but not why the mom dies.
12. Really unhappy about the church window at the end equating all faiths are equal and all get you to end up at the same place.
Just extremely disappointing. But this is what happens when you start out with a interesting premise you haven’t thought about a sound storyline arc that gets you to a rational ending. they started out with a very interesting premise, then threw way too much new stuff in to keep things confused and complex but later on when they thought they had a way out, too much of the already seen complex/complicated crap can’t make sense anymore so they basically decide to ignore it and not explain it, and end with a sappy music, little explanation, lots of bright lights and a Jimmy Kimmel Live sendoff.
Very sad. It had great potential. They did not live up to that potential, at all.
That window is basically telling you the writers are saying all faiths get you to the same place. Muslim, Hindu, Chirstian, etc. This was very sad and a cop-out. And untrue. Of course since I thought they did a crappy ending and they are secular, not surprising they stick that false message in there.
You’d never see that stuff in a bible-believing Christian church window.
The stained glass, and the church as a whole, had all the faiths of the characters. There was Buddhist (Kim and Sun), Jewish (probably Jack, and some naturist (Locke I’d guess) symbolism also, Sayid was almost definitely Muslim.
For sake of argument, if that’s true why didn’t they know they were in purgatory? If you’ve read stuff about purgatory, people know they’re dead but are in a place being cleansed of sin before they are let into heaven. Further if it’s purgatory you’ve just said all faiths go to heaven. And you know that isn’t true. Plus you have to believe in purgatory in the first place to make your premise even a possibility.
We’re also free to criticize it. Some of us tried to give it a second chance and were disappointed. We have the same right to express that disappointment as you do to express your point of view.
It would be tedious and requires no imagination at all, on the part of the writers or on yours, to simply answer all those questions and “explain everything”. I joked all through last night that “they aren’t going to explain *anything*” and they didn’t. The explanations and how they all fit into our worldview are what keeps our interest, keeps people wondering, and will be part of the mythology that will keep people busy for some time.
I enjoyed it fully without understanding it entirely. :~)
It is one thing to not explain some things and leave them for speculation. It’s another thing to not explain a ton of things, major an minor.
What you consider great form some consider sloppiness. How satisfying would a mystery be if they start out with a great story, then toss a hundred different threads at you, then seem to be going somewhere for awhile on a certain storyline, but then end it with music and bright lights and never tell you what it was all about or who the killer was?
No, they started out with a great premise, then tossed a bunch of weird but fantastic stuff at us, didn’t know where to go, then figured out somewhat where they wanted to go, but had so much stuff from the fantastic thread-tossing they couldn’t wrap up, they ignored it, and totally wimped out on the final story thread that had real promise.
The star had symbols from many religions, including non-monotheistic religions.
star = window in my previous reply.
My problem with the ending was much less a matter of not answering questoins as it was in how much they flushed down the drain to make it happen.
Not sure which story thread you thought was more interesting...
I didn’t have a small box I wanted them to fit it all in to at the end, I didn’t know what to expect.
Personally I realize that for many the story was mostly about Jack... but I always found Locke more interesting. But I don’t feel like whining that they didn’t do what I wanted right now. They kept me entertained for 6 years, they kept the suspense of a very long complex story going that long in a short-attention-span era of reality shows and a vapid writing everywhere else. That’s a pretty good run. :~)
I don’t know of anything they flushed. It’s all pretty reasonable, the Island stuff happened, the flash sideways was a pocket afterlife, we still don’t know what the Island is but any deeper explanation beyond “it happened” would get hokey. I think of it as a lot like Fantasy Island, FI was a place people went to get fixed, all the characters on Lost were seriously broken people at the beginning, but most of them managed to finish in some semblance of whole.
Been hearing that Jack has a downer of an ending. I’m guessing they don’t kill him off, so what could it be?
I’ll put down my guess: The plane to LA carrying daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter went down near an uncharted island in the Pacific. (Well, I HAD to get the “Lost” reference in there).
I am guessing that after he cleans up the crooked Presidents of the US and Russia, he’ll be told that the plane crashed, but they didn’t want to tell him until they got to the wreckage to confirm his family was killed.
I totally agree :)
The draw of ‘Lost’ for me was the total package—the humor, the romance, the complexities of life and relationships, the great characters, and the fun of trying to guess what was going on. It got me to think outside the box, which I liked a lot.
If they had come at it from a completely pure sci-fi angle, they would have lost me as a viewer. In writing it the way they did, they opened up their viewership immensely. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t going to watch this show initially and just got sucked into it as my husband watched the pilot. Now I think I’m a bigger fan that he is (although he watched every episode with me).
Thanks, ‘LOST’, for giving me something entertaining and something that is not likely to be repeated anytime soon. It’s been a great six years...now for my ‘mourning’ period. LOL
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