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Did the finale ruin Lost for you?

post #1 of 72
6/16/10 at 9:51pm
Thread Starter 
My plan once Lost was finished was to revisit the series from the beginning and see it as a completed piece. Now that I've seen the finale, I have second thoughts. The island stuff was, in my mind, satisfactory but the whole sideways world was in my mind a big cop out and sort of soured the whole Lost experience for me. I thought the series was going to go for the mother of all mind-fucks with the two universes merging or something more interesting than "they were dead and this is the afterlife".

I'll probably revisit the series later on but the way the Sideways world revealed itself to be the afterlife really dampens that enthusiasm. Anyone else discouraged to revisit the series as a piece after the finale?
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post #2 of 72
6/16/10 at 10:50pm
No. For five seasons, I was seriously entertained. The show didn't stick the landing for me and that does hurt it overall. But I still love it. There are elements about the ending that I love as well, just not nearly enough of them. I'll still take it over the X-Files.
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post #3 of 72
6/16/10 at 10:53pm
The finale did not ruin LOST for me.

But the entire last season might have.

I used to tell people that, as long as it sticks the landing, LOST would end up being my third favorite TV show of all time. Suffice to say, I wouldn't put it anywhere near my top five at this point.
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post #4 of 72
6/16/10 at 11:22pm
The entire last season was pretty awful but the first 5 seasons still hold up and the first season is probably my favorite television season of any show.

So, it wasn't perfect but I still really appreciate the series.
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post #5 of 72
6/16/10 at 11:54pm
Sadly, yeah. I was asked tonight at happy hour whether Lost was worth watching, and I couldn't say yes.
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post #6 of 72
6/16/10 at 11:58pm
Nope, it was four excellent seasons by two mediocre ones. I have already recommended newbies watch it.

As for the original post, I recommend you rewatch the series accompanied by reading Jesse's rewatch column. Not only will it make you appreciate the previous seasons more, but the finale won't look so far out of left field either. It still has problems, for sure, but on the whole I feel much better about the show, and more importantly the finale, having viewed it through Jesse's perspective.
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post #7 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:03am
It didn't ruin the series for me at all because I actually really liked the finale. And even if I didn't I'd still wholeheartedly recommend the show to friends, since there have been way too many great moments and performances along the way.
I'm still planning on going through the entire series again.
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post #8 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:06am
It devalued the flashsideways for me. Robbed them of the juice. The rest of the series remains intact.
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post #9 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:08am
The only thing I wasn't thrilled with was the last 15 minutes, so no, not ruined. And, as Diva said, after I read Jesse's column, I even felt a tad bit better about that (but not much).
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post #10 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:11am
Not at all. It probably did ruin the Sideways scenes when I rewatch season 6, and it wasn't my favorite finale (The Wire, The Shield, Angel and Farscape's finales all felt like better cappers), but I enjoyed it and what came before was too damned good for anything short of two hours of colonoscopy footage to diminish.
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post #11 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:15am
No, it didn't ruin it. It couldn't. Even if the series didn't finish as strongly as it started, it can't take away my previous enjoyment of it. It's not like "Well, the finale sucked, so that means 'Walkabout' and other great episodes are no longer great in hindsight". I dig the series more than I didn't.
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post #12 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:53am
Yes, to the original (titular) question. I have seasons 1-4 on DVD and had been planning on getting them all and re-watching at some point. But no longer.

I never believed I was going to get a satisfactory explanation for the island or the mysteries surrounding it after season 3, when the 4th season went far enough into wacky territory that it could never be anything other than a "magic island."

What I wanted was a satisfying resolution for the characters. I didn't get it. Let me put it in terms of who I saw as the 4 main characters over the course of most of the show:

I guess the whole point of Jack's character was to have him accept his fate as savior of the island. But since the island's relationship with the rest of the world is never fully revealed or verified, all we're left with is, "OK, I guess he saved the world... I think." Did Jack's ultimate sacrifice really matter?

John Locke's story came to a pathetically sad and quiet end at some point in season 5, but even though he was a favorite character among fans, we didn't know for sure until the 6th season that the writers had him killed off as a confused failure of a man, but tricked us by re-casting the actor as a brand new villain created just for the last season, like General Grievous.

I thought Kate was supposed to end up with either Jack or Sawyer, but she ends up with no one and does nothing in the last season, and ultimately serves no purpose in the series. She escapes with Sawyer at the end, but whether or not they get together after that is pointless, because they don't show it, and more importantly Sawyer's true love is apparently Juliet anyway.

And finally, Sawyer. What should have been the joyous reunion of Sawyer and Juliet in the alternate time-line, when they remember their life on the island together-- it turns out that was just part of remembering that they were dead, and that it was time to "move on." That was the most emotionally effective scene in the finale for me until the ending undercut it and robbed it of its power-- what I had previously seen as Sawyer and Juliet rediscovering each other, with the joy of realizing they could now spend their (real, or so I thought) lives together, was really just them remembering it was time to go to church. Forever.
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post #13 of 72
6/17/10 at 1:33am
I, too, bought all the boxed sets (just last month after a financial windfall of sorts) in anticipation of rewatching the series before the Season 6 boxed set came out, hoping for a changed perspective knowing where it was all leading. Now, I'll probably sell them, still unopened. But it's not that the finale ruined the show for me, it's that the finale ruined Season 6 for me, and resultantly S6 ruined the show for me. But just because the sum doesn't add up for me doesn't mean I have lost my love for the parts.


I am left feeling miffed like I was by The Matrix trilogy:

S1-3 were like The Matrix, mind blowing and absolutely the shit. I couldn't wait for what happened next.

S4-5 were like Matrix Reloaded, slipping in spots but thoroughly entertaining and foreshadowing the mind-blowing conclusion to come.

S6 was like Matrix Revolutions, compelling in and of itself but failing the mythos established by the previous entries. The explanations, and lack thereof, of what I had previously watched took the creative low road and failed to satisfy all the wonder and mystery alluded to earlier.


Still, I like Lost as a whole better than The Matrix trilogy inasmuch as I like a perfectly ripe Fuji apple better than an artificially-colored California navel orange. Ans strangely enough in retrospect I think my favorite episode of S6 was the finale.
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post #14 of 72
6/17/10 at 4:30am
Not ruined but certainly affected. I think a great feature on the DVD set of the last season would be where they edit out all of the afterlife storyline. I mean really you could actually have a strong last season with just the on island story although ya know shorter.
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post #15 of 72
6/17/10 at 4:44am
Not ruined. But the flash-sideways are definitely ruined.
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post #16 of 72
6/17/10 at 5:17am
No. I loved the series, overall. I hated the ending but for the most part I loved the ride.
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post #17 of 72
6/17/10 at 5:36am
No show has affected me the way Lost has. It had me leaping to my feet and shrieking with shock. But sadly yes, any plans I had to revisit it have been dulled to say the least. I will add that Jesse's recap brought to the show an entirely new level which I am grateful for. Jesse you really are the man.

Funnily enough I remember about halfway through season 4 (which is probably the highpoint for me) discussing with my wife what we would do if the ending wasn't up to scratch. If I'm honest the declining quality of season 6 softened the blow for me.

Having said that it remains one of my favourite shows of all time and I would have no problem recommending it.
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post #18 of 72
6/17/10 at 6:20am
As someone who likes the finale a lot, I suppose I should be irritated with all the people whining about it ruining the whole series for them. But all I can do now is laugh. But if you think the show was pulling a massive con, you were right. It wasn't the show you thought it was if you think the finale ruined everything. The same goes for Battlestar Galactica. I feel a little sad that you're depriving yourself of the future pleasure of revisiting these series five or ten years down the line and rediscovering all the wonders and insanity, but oh well.
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post #19 of 72
6/17/10 at 6:43am
Yeah, I'll never watch LOST again. The pretense that it was all going somewhere, contrasted with the nothing that we ended up with, has soured me forever. I kinda knew it was going nowhere once time travel showed up, and I started hearing Daniel's physics-babble, and when they spent an entire season ignoring the characters in favor of this go nowhere science fiction, I lost all hope. But it was fun to watch them crash and burn.
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post #20 of 72
6/17/10 at 10:38am
Yup. Lost is ruined.

As soon as the freighter storyline came up, the series dipped in quality. It went overboard.

I didn't expect to get all the answers, as it's Lost, but still, we barely got good character development, and as for the Island stuff, we got nothing.

All the intelligence of the first 4 seasons? Gone. I know the fans probably made a lot of stuff up (and let's be honest, it was better than the finale), but still, anyone with a brain could have come up with something better than the purgatory. Now that the story ended, the amount of filler storylines and characters is quite staggering. I'm all for open ends and mysteries, but there has to be a good structure to support it, By the end, Lost was hollow. All flash, no substance. We got good moments, but when a show goes with building a mystery and avoid delivering on it, you got to have a good theme behind it. Having the "they were great friends" theme was pretty sappy, even for soap operas. None of the hinted intelligence behind the first seasons (all the literary references, the names of characters like famous philosophers, the Cassimir effect name dropped, etc...)


EDIT: And Shark, sorry, but in my mind, the BSG had a pretty good finale that tied the series back to it's roots, not matter how flawed the last 2 seasons were. Lost's finale was garbage that capped a season that shattered the illusion of intelligence the series held up.
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post #21 of 72
6/17/10 at 11:17am
Nah. My interest began wavering around Season 4. Season 5 mostly brought it back, and 6 dashed it altogether. By the time the finale rolled around, I was watching simply to justify the time I'd invested in the first place.

Great premise. Mostly great characters. Crap storytelling, ultimately.
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post #22 of 72
6/17/10 at 11:34am
Put me in the "Didn't Enjoy The Finale" camp. (Although I did really enjoy Jesse's columns)

For me it's not so much that the finale ruined the show for me - I mean, I don't regret watching it. But knowing that a lot of the mysteries presented are simply never going to be answered sort of sours me on ever rewatching the show in the future.

Sort of my problem with rewatching BSG, too. I mean, it's no fun going back and trying to glean some hints/foreshadowing as to who the final cylon is...because they basically just chose out of a hat at the last minute.

I know you have to have a lot of flexibility in your narrative when you make a multi-season television show; but knowing that there was really no plan for the Smoke Monster, Walt, WHATHEISLANDIS etc would be difficult to swallow during a second watch-through.
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post #23 of 72
6/17/10 at 11:54am
As season 6 was pushing forward, I was lowering my expectations each week, so when the finale didn't stick the landing, I wasn't too upset. There was stuff that worked for me, and there was stuff that didn't. It certainly doesn't make the first 4 seasons any less great (well for me anyway, I'm sure someone will make the argument that it does). Even season 5, which I wasn't thrilled with watching it as it aired, got so much better watching it all at once on DVD. I suspect this will be the case with season 6 as well. And I still say there are a couple great episodes sprinkled throughout season 6. Sundown and Ab Aeterno come to mind.

In short, the finale may not have been a complete success (or even close), but in my mind, that does not make the entire show a failure.
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post #24 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:10pm
I'm definitely not as enthusiastic about rewatching the show or recommending it to other people as I once was, but I don't regret the time I spent watching the show. I'm disappointed in a lot of the dropped plot points and mysteries and I don't really care for the whole sideways-world-is-purgatory reveal (especially with the Holy-Shit-The-Island-is-Underwater! misleading openining to season 6).

Jesse's recaps definitely helped me to appreciate a lot of the final season.

Still, I've never been more wrapped up in a show that Lost. Hell, there's a friend who I kept in touch with over the last 5 years just because we would call each other up and talk about the show, which is pretty damn cool.
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post #25 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:28pm
I'm done with LOST forever. I sort of enjoyed Seasons 1-3, though I increasingly became frustrated with the show and had growing concerns the showrunners would never be able to dig out a satisfactory ending (I was right.) I gave up somewhere in Season 4. Skipped Season 5 entirely and most of 6 as well. Figured I'd show up shortly before the finale completely lost (strangely, I wasn't and had no problem jumping right back in) and was largely underwhelmed by the finale and downright bored by its ending.

So, no the finale didn't ruin it. For me, the show was ruined long before then. Having said that, I must admit there was some truly amazing television strewn throughout all that wreckage.
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post #26 of 72
6/17/10 at 12:29pm
it seems a bit tarnished in my mind.

I find it hard to imagine rewatching it ever again with the same viewpoint I once had during my previous, multiple rewatches ...

And i wasnt even put off by "magic" coming into play, but the fact that even when embracing it, they seem to never give a straight answer to even the plainest or most basic of questions the viewer had to have, and instead resorted to nonsensical or entirely unelaborated upon sight gags clearly conceived late in the game and solely with the design to be pleasing to the eye.

... There's no one and nothing behind the curtain, and always was.
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post #27 of 72
6/17/10 at 1:38pm
One thing that just popped into my head (and might be better for the season 6 thread, but what the hell) that never got an answer: The way that the sub moved to and from the island and the way that people were knocked out on trips. What was the point? To disguise how long the ride was? To prevent brain breaking? I always expected some kind of cool reveal about the way the Others (like Tom when he went to visit Michael, or when they nabbed Anthony Cooper) moved to and from the island, but I guess they were just using a sub the whole time.
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post #28 of 72
6/17/10 at 1:39pm
It didn't matter. They were good friends.
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post #29 of 72
6/17/10 at 1:55pm
Nothing was ruined for me. I'm not an apologist for the show and agree it had its share of problems (especially towards the end, parts of that finale still don't make complete sense), but for me the stuff I loved created so much goodwill that I could always overlook the shit I didn't like. I think being a horror freak helped, as we can be quite lenient.
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post #30 of 72
6/17/10 at 3:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike's Pants View Post
If I'm honest the declining quality of season 6 softened the blow for me.
That's how it was for me as well. When the season opener's big reveal was sprung (the plane never crashed) and I failed to be shocked or even a little surprised, the series began to lose a little bit of its luster. The fact that there were TWO treading water episodes (the Jacob/MIB and Alpert origin stories) just a few episodes before the finale basically let me know that I wasn't going to find what I was looking for with the series.

But that still didn't ruin the series for me; there were still some great characters and stories that weren't negated because some of the characters and stories were crap.
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post #31 of 72
6/17/10 at 7:50pm
Absolutely not. OK, I'll say it. I loved the finale. I loved Season 6. In fact I loved all the seasons.

So, I'm guessing by the tone of the question, the sticking point was the sideways reveal. I posted some thoughts on this on the Season 6 thread near the end. It ended up at the bottom of the second to last page, so I'm guessing most were already done with the thread. Allow me to repost it here as it deals with the sidways topic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jedi Gnome View Post
Anyway, again I was thinking about the complaints of the Sideways world, like it was tacked on, the timing of it, why the island was underwater there. Sorry if this was mentioned or already implied, but let me offer this theory/analysis/fanwank:

The end of season 5, the Losties tried to introduce Jughead at the Incident in hopes of changing history, of creating a world where Oceanic 815 doesn't crash and lands safely in LA.

This place in the afterlife was created by the Losties' subconsciousness. It is an amalgam of their hopes and what they thought they wanted/deserved. This includes the hope that what they were doing in the season 5 finale "worked." That is why the island is at the bottom of the ocean and thus Oceanic 815 never crashes, as they had hoped. It is what they thought they wanted.

When they are "awakened," I believe they also realize how important the island was in their life. They all grew and/or found what they were looking for, things they would have missed if they never crashed. It is all part of them accepting their lives so they can move on.

So, why introduce it this season? Technically, since this afterlife is timeless, it could have been introduced anytime. It makes the most sense introducing it in season 6 since the end of season 5 showed the Losties trying to introduce the idea of a world where Oceanic 815 never crashes.

As for when things are happening compared to Island time, I like to think when we first see Jack on the plane in the sideways world and he has that...moment...looking out the window was when Jack died on the Island (last shot of the show). So, in a sense, Jesse was right and the whole sideways was an epilogue. But showing things in this order preserves the perfect bookend last shot.

The writers always said this was not an alternate world and not assume Jughead caused a time split. So was the submerged island a misdirect? Yes. But, looking back, it makes sense in the logic of the narrative. The writers wanted to keep us guessing if Jughead "worked."

The thing is, they laid out how time travel worked in this show. Whatever happened happened. There is one timeline. (Which I predicted, thank you very much, even as others insisted Jughead had to cause a split in the timeline). Locke always appeared before Richard in the 1950's, Sayid always shot little Ben, and the Losties were always at the Incident with Jughead.

And, I'm more convinced Daniel is actually trying to continue the time loop by telling Jack & co. to drop Jughead down the shaft and his waving the gun around the Others' camp.

So, the next time you rewatch "Orientation," and Chang pauses before saying "an incident," he is also talkng about time travelers (including his own adult son!) who warned him to evacuate the island and dropped a hydrogen bomb down a shaft drilled into an electromagnetic deposit before disappearing.
I think one of the things the sideways reveal did, and not really addressed in the thread, was answer the cliff hanger to Season 5. Could the Losties change history? The answer was no. Time travel works just as Daniel originally explained it, whatever happened happened. As Jack says in the finale, there is no magic reset button. I think that is one of the themes of Lost.

Anyway, if you want a more literate analysis of the show (including the finale) you should really check out Jesse's column.

But, back to the original question, no the finale ruined nothing and I look forward to getting the series on Blu-Ray.
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post #32 of 72
6/17/10 at 7:55pm
you may have loved it, but it was still pure garbage. Like someone said above: great characters, poor storytelling.
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post #33 of 72
6/17/10 at 8:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jedi Gnome View Post

I think one of the things the sideways reveal did, and not really addressed in the thread, was answer the cliff hanger to Season 5. Could the Losties change history? The answer was no. Time travel works just as Daniel originally explained it, whatever happened happened. As Jack says in the finale, there is no magic reset button. I think that is one of the themes of Lost.
Which is all fine and dandy, except that the sideways world functions as one big magic reset button. Everyone gets a do-over before they go on into the Light.

It's kind of nice on a warm and fuzzy level, but it's so much so that it sets off our innate bullshit detectors. Someone in that thread said at one point "there's a reason why most stories don't end with all of the heroes going to heaven." That reason is that its reductive, shmaltzy, and plain boring.
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post #34 of 72
6/17/10 at 8:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz View Post
Which is all fine and dandy, except that the sideways world functions as one big magic reset button. Everyone gets a do-over before they go on into the Light.
But it's not a reset button. If it was an alternate universe that merged and gave the Losties their life back, that would be a rest, and a cheat. Everything that happened on the show happened. When characters died, they died.

This sideways world was more them coming to grips with their life before moving on and one last meet up. Was it "warm & fuzzy?" Yeah, it was. So what? Everything has to be so cynical?

Storywise, the sideways world was to keep you guessing if the Jughead plot worked or not.
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post #35 of 72
6/17/10 at 8:27pm
Jedi, I like your positiveness for LOST. Positivity? Awesome positive attitude? Anyway, I like it.
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post #36 of 72
6/17/10 at 8:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jedi Gnome View Post
.

This sideways world was more them coming to grips with their life before moving on and one last meet up.
Exactly. A do-over. A reset. Another chance to fix the things they didn't in their lives (and in some cases, to re-fix things they did fix in their lives). It all boils down to the same thing.
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post #37 of 72
6/17/10 at 8:31pm
Thanks, Teitr Styrr. I have problems with some things and some things just dropped on the show. But, I get sick of the dumping this show is getting as "garbage."
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post #38 of 72
6/17/10 at 8:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz View Post
Exactly. A do-over. A reset. Another chance to fix the things they didn't in their lives (and in some cases, to re-fix things they did fix in their lives). It all boils down to the same thing.
I guess it's just semantics then. I'm referring to life. You get one life. The decisions they made in life were their decisions. The sideways world was just reflections of those decisions. Note Jesse's mirror motiff!
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post #39 of 72
6/19/10 at 1:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin S View Post
you may have loved it, but it was still pure garbage. Like someone said above: great characters, poor storytelling.
You may have hated it but as it has been mentioned in this thread- it was still awesome. Great characters, great storytelling and all around one of the best show of all time.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Hill View Post
John Locke's story came to a pathetically sad and quiet end at some point in season 5, but even though he was a favorite character among fans, we didn't know for sure until the 6th season that the writers had him killed off as a confused failure of a man, but tricked us by re-casting the actor as a brand new villain created just for the last season, like General Grievous.
No offense but they tell you that he is dead for real like 6-7 episodes after his death in Season 5. I know the masses and the average person probably did not get or understand that until well into season 6 and felt tricked for some reason but that is not on the show, that's on you being slow.

And to the OP there is a nice long LOST thread, what's the point of creating a new thread over a topic that can be (and as a matter of fact has been) discussed extensively in that other thread? Some of us like all of our discussions about certain shows to be in one thread.
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post #40 of 72
6/19/10 at 1:32am
The finale solidified it as one of my five favorite series of all-time. I'll say that. But I'm pretty spiritual, so that definitely played into it.
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post #41 of 72
6/19/10 at 2:04am
I'm one of those freaks that liked the 6th season. I'm looking forward to revisiting it on DVD. That said, most of the limbo-verse stuff left me cold. I would definitely still recommend the show to newcomers, and have them borrow my DVDs, but not say anything about the 6th season, just wait to see what they say about it.
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post #42 of 72
6/19/10 at 2:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by J.Swanson View Post
No offense but they tell you that he is dead for real like 6-7 episodes after his death in Season 5. I know the masses and the average person probably did not get or understand that until well into season 6 and felt tricked for some reason but that is not on the show, that's on you being slow.
No, I knew he was dead in season 5. That was obvious because they 1) showed him being killed in season 5 and 2) showed us his dead body in season 5.

But Lost was a show about a magic island with magic powers and time travel and shit. So I thought John Locke was going to be resurrected. But I thought he would come back as John Locke, not some bad guy first introduced in the last episode of the second-to-last season.

EDIT: And the thing is, the way he was presented when he first seemed to have been returned to life was as John Locke, not someone else. They pulled a bait-and-switch with the last season. The character we cared about was replaced with an undeveloped character played by an actor we were invested in, and we were expected to care about this late edition character just because of his familiar face. It may have been an intentional mindfuck but it wasn't emotionally effective.
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post #43 of 72
6/19/10 at 10:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Hill View Post
No, I knew he was dead in season 5. That was obvious because they 1) showed him being killed in season 5 and 2) showed us his dead body in season 5.

But Lost was a show about a magic island with magic powers and time travel and shit. So I thought John Locke was going to be resurrected. But I thought he would come back as John Locke, not some bad guy first introduced in the last episode of the second-to-last season.

EDIT: And the thing is, the way he was presented when he first seemed to have been returned to life was as John Locke, not someone else. They pulled a bait-and-switch with the last season. The character we cared about was replaced with an undeveloped character played by an actor we were invested in, and we were expected to care about this late edition character just because of his familiar face. It may have been an intentional mindfuck but it wasn't emotionally effective.
But, in all honesty, the "bait & switch" was suppose to happen, both for a story twist and part of MIB's plan. He needed the Others, specifically Richard, to think he was Locke - the Chosen One.

And the writers did leave the clues if you look back. Ben said "dead is dead" and both Richard & Ben said Locke seemed different.

Was I upset that Locke, one of my favorite characters, died pathetically? Yes. But that was the story. Not a cheat or anything.
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post #44 of 72
6/19/10 at 12:07pm
I get that that was the story, and that it was planned that way from some point in season 5. The problem is that it wasn't planned that way from the beginning. The smoke monster was obviously not meant to be "Darth Vader" all along, so when he turns out to be big bad at the end, he feels more like, as I said above, a "General Grievous," a late edition to the story who we are asked to identify with because he wears a familiar face.

Locke died, and that was what the story became, sure. It just wasn't a good idea. Now what would have worked for me was if the alternate timeline had really been just that instead of purgatory, because even up through the 2nd hour of the finale, I thought they were moving towards merging the memories of both timelines in the character's minds. I thought alt-timeline Locke was going to remember all of his island time and we were going to in effect get back old Locke. I assumed then that the alt-timeline characters would be able to go back to the island or at least influence events there, and I thought it would be presented as a choice.

I'm not upset that they didn't do that, specifically. But I am upset that John Locke's ultimate purpose in the series was to die like a whiny bitch and then serve as a last minute, shoehorned-in inspiration for Jack, who they had no idea what to do with at the end but to have him fill Locke's old role. That isn't a bad idea but they obviously conceived of it so late in the series that they didn't have time to properly set it up.

It might have worked if it had been planned from the beginning. Then it might not have felt like a bait-and-switch.
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post #45 of 72
6/19/10 at 1:51pm
First of all, it doesn't really matter if it was "made up as they went along." A doubt most writers start with a fully formed story in their head. Most are developed. The main thing does it work at the end. It worked for me, it didn't work for you.

While during the finale, I did want the alt timeline merge to give happy endings for characters like Locke and Jin & Sun, I think that would be more of a cheat. You made choices all along that led to your fate, but don't worry, you get an extra life! That's like a video game.

And the "shoehorned" inspiration for Jack? The finale of Season 3 showed someone important died, Jack was so shook up about it, he was going to kill himself and we see he had an overwhelming obsession to go back to the island, an island he spent three seasons trying to escape. While this may be an assumption, I could say it looked like the writers knew this direction by this point.
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post #46 of 72
6/19/10 at 2:27pm
Not at all. But to keep this post brief I will only said this wasn't the ending/final season that the writers promised that would keep us talking about this show. As I said in one of my last post at the main thread, some speculation (merged timelines, Earth2 as a world without Jacob or trap for MiB etc) were better than the finale.
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post #47 of 72
6/19/10 at 2:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz
Exactly. A do-over. A reset.
That doesn't really make sense. You can call the ending too saccharin for your tastes, but it didn't undo anything. Everything that happened on the Island happened. The idea that an afterlife would undo any accomplishment and negate any value in life is as illogical as it is bleak.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Hill
But I thought he would come back as John Locke, not some bad guy first introduced in the last episode of the second-to-last season.
The bad guy was introduced in the first episode, was first seen a couple episodes later, and started having spoken lines a few episodes after that.
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post #48 of 72
6/19/10 at 3:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Feral Akodon View Post
Not at all. But to keep this post brief I will only said this wasn't the ending/final season that the writers promised that would keep us talking about this show.
Aren't we still talking about it?
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post #49 of 72
6/19/10 at 5:28pm
As much as I enjoyed the sixth season as it aired, overall I don't like the way it ended up, and unlike most, it has nothing to do with the sideways universe or unanswered questions. I'm fine with those. I agree now that most of the season was wasted time. It has a ton of great acting though and overall it is definitely still one of my favorite shows of all time. It is entertaining and beautiful and deeply flawed. It's the White Album for me. Better than most other shows despite its flaws and maybe even because of them.
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post #50 of 72
6/20/10 at 2:39am
I have said most of what I have to say in the main thread. In summary, after watching all 6 seasons, LOST is not only my favorite TV show of all time it is my favorite thing in ALL FICTION be it movies, tv, comic books whatever. Nothing has ever touched me as much as LOST has. I feel sorry for anyone who has the show ruined for them for whatever reason but I'm glad I'm not one of them. The lowest point of the show for me was the middle of Season 2 but since then rarely has the show disappointed me. Going into season 6 I was afraid that the show might end up disappointing me in some way and ruin the taste of the earlier seasons but my fears were quickly put to rest through a season which was a tribute to the entire show and captures the spirit of LOST. I'm glad I'll be able to watch LOST over and over again and appreciate it for the genius it is, for the entertainment it provided me and continue to get something from it. I don't think I will ever follow a show as obsessively as Lost, Lost was a once in a lifetime show and for me it completely succeeded in what it was trying to do. So to quote John Locke I'd tell the haters that I hope someone does for you what Damon & Carlton did for me.
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