LOST - Smoke monster's name finally revealed. Oh, and Cuse & Lindelof openly shit on you. - Page 2

Ugh, hated that episode. Two from the finale and we grind to a halt to introduce the Yellow Cave Of Unimaginable Power.

Yeah, that Jacob episode.  So bitter.  Never in the show's entire run had an episode promised so much and delivered so little.  The finale is the exception, obviously. 

And while we're all venting about season 6, whats with the shitty production value?  Despite some dodgy CG sprinkled in here and there, Lost has always looked mostly great.  So in season 6, why do all the sets and effects look terrible all of a sudden?  From the temple to the piss cave to Widmore's sub, everything looks cheap and shitty.  

Yeah, opinion was widely divided on that episode. I just felt it had a great Gaiman-ish mythic quality to it that I actually preferred to all the temple and lighthouse nonsense. The end also had one of the only character moments that touched me all season. Piss-cave probably should've been introduced earlier on in some form or another though.

I think the info-dump nature of the episode is the worst part. Had that origin been eased into more naturally, and the mythology integrated instead of splatted down in one fell swoop, it would've sat better. The continued teasing of "you thought these guys were top of the food chain? Nyah nyah!" will always be grating, though.

I might put "Across The Sea" as my personal worst of the series.  Didn't it come immediately after the sub explosion?  A total momentum-killer in addition to all the terrible mythology nonsense.

First of all, in terms of badness, nothing compares to the Bai Ling episode. Oh, Bai Ling . . . so half-naked, so terrible.

I thought "Across The Sea" was subpar, but the biggest crime was placing it so late in the series. If that episode had taken place, say, instead of the Kate episode early in the season, it would have been received more positively.

And seriously what the hell was up with all the temple nonsense?  People dying and coming back evil, or somehow under the control of Locke?  Then Sayid seemed to be normal for a while, which made no sense considering how he was all zombie for a while.  They abandoned that shit, and never refrenced it again.  Another example of writers having no clue what the hell was going on. 

I was completely along for the ride, even in season 5, when a lot of people started bitching, I was still loving it.  But the final season, not just the finale, was a massive misfire.  It just seemed like they had no idea what they were doing, or where it was all going.

As bad as the Bai Ling episode was (and it was very bad), it was harmless filler.  And filler was pretty much a Lost staple, especially back in the first 3 seasons, when there was pressure to crank out 24 episodes each season.

'Across the Sea' is a complete failure on every level.  As you guys have pointed out - the timing, the momentum killing, the exposition dumping, the fan wanking, the clunky and nonsensical mythology building.  Its just such a thoroughly bad episode.  

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Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

As bad as the Bai Ling episode was (and it was very bad), it was harmless filler.  And filler was pretty much a Lost staple, especially back in the first 3 seasons, when there was pressure to crank out 24 episodes each season.

 

'Across the Sea' is a complete failure on every level.  As you guys have pointed out - the timing, the momentum killing, the exposition dumping, the fan wanking, the clunky and nonsensical mythology building.  Its just such a thoroughly bad episode.  

I know that the tattoo episode is not a "good" episode of Lost, but I never quite understood the outright hate for it.  I know that part of it was the timing, right when things were at their most filler-y, but I don't recall it being appreciably worse than the early S3 Kate/Sawyer episodes. 

As for "Across The Sea", it's only assets are Alison Janey and Titus Welliver, and there's still only so much shoveling they can do.

Nabster's post reminded me of that lighthouse that meant nothing, and the temple crap, and the way the show completely wasted the great John Hawkes. Oh, and the complete destruction of John Locke's character, who went from "misunderstood man seeking redemption" to "some dude that died so he could become another character's meat-suit."

This thread is like a 'Nam flashback. So many horrible memories rising to the surface . . .

My hate stems from 2 things: 1) Bai Ling is really, really bad; and 2) while other episodes were filler, this is the one that, upon rewatch, people can easily skip and not miss anything regarding the show.

EDIT: "Expose" can probably be skipped as well, but I enjoyed that episode.

I have no idea why people dislike "Across the Sea" so much. I feel like that one dude in the room who loves BOONDOCK SAINTS.

The tattoo episode is the first ep of Lost that I can remember actively hating. Not as in "nothing interesting happened this episode" but as in "fuck that was bad!".

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Originally Posted by Mangy 
...and the way the show completely wasted the great John Hawkes.

We can add Lance Reddick to the list of great actors that Lost completely wasted.  

I'm not going to defend "Across the Sea". It didn't really tell us anything new (although I guess it did if you demand everything be EXPLICIT), and they placed it at a spot in the season where nobody wanted to wait a week to continue the present storyline.

Expose was awesome though.

As for Sayid, the implied most likely explanation: there was no 'infection'. For anyone. Ever. The other people they claimed to be 'infected'? Claire (clearly not) and Rousseau (clearly not). Sayid was a torturer/murderer they didn't want around (remember, these are the 'Others' - they knew what he did and had already judged him previously), but he showed no signs of 'infection'. His 'zombie' state came after he helped murder a whole shitload of people in barter to see his love again, which makes shock/PTSD a simpler explanation. Nothing Sayid ever did was so out of character to need a supernatural explanation, and everything the Temple Others did indicates that the 'infection' was a combination of myth and bullshit designed to let them kill who they want without their friends getting all uppity about it.

Just because I love me some Lost discussion...

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

 

As for Sayid, the implied most likely explanation: there was no 'infection'. For anyone. Ever. The other people they claimed to be 'infected'? Claire (clearly not) and Rousseau (clearly not). Sayid was a torturer/murderer they didn't want around (remember, these are the 'Others' - they knew what he did and had already judged him previously), but he showed no signs of 'infection'. His 'zombie' state came after he helped murder a whole shitload of people in barter to see his love again, which makes shock/PTSD a simpler explanation. Nothing Sayid ever did was so out of character to need a supernatural explanation, and everything the Temple Others did indicates that the 'infection' was a combination of myth and bullshit designed to let them kill who they want without their friends getting all uppity about it.

They clearly intended for something to be up with Sayid and Claire.  They were planting seeds of infection all the way back in the first season (the serum, claires baby, quarantine hatch, etc).  You could argue its misdirection, but that's lazy.  Sayid and Claire start acting really weird after their respective death/near-death experiences.  Like David Lynch weird.  Then Dogen starts spouting out nonsense about infection, this time in a more spiritual context.  I don't necessarily have a problem writing Sayid's condition off as PTSD, but there's just no consistency from season to season and any piece of information supporting that has two pieces of information disproving it.  Its that way for just about everything in season 6, which is why its so damn frustrating.  

Its been a while since I watched season 6, but I remember being most satisfied (relatively) just assuming that when someone dies on the island, and comes back, they're sort of possessed by Smokey.  

Also any mention of Sayid's "true love" makes me lol.  

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Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

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We can add Lance Reddick to the list of great actors that Lost completely wasted.  

They didn't make much use of any of the talent they imported from Deadwood:  Hawkes, William Sanderson, Paula Malcomson, Robin Weigert.  I guess Kim Dickens had a fairly substantial part for a flashback guest, but even Welliver, cast as the archvillain of the entire show, didn't get to do the juicy bits of that character.

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

They didn't make much use of any of the talent they imported from Deadwood:  Hawkes, William Sanderson, Paula Malcomson, Robin Weigert.  I guess Kim Dickens had a fairly substantial part for a flashback guest, but even Welliver, cast as the archvillain of the entire show, didn't get to do the juicy bits of that character.

I'll throw them a bone for Kim Dickens though.  Really liked how she was used.

Is it bad I don't even remember who Paula Malcomson played on Lost?

You don't remember Trixie?!  I especially remember when she shot Hearst. Heh.

Oh I remember Trixie.  I'm having trouble remembering who the hell 'Colleen' was.

Edit:  Ah yes, Danny Pickett's wife.  From the terrible string of episodes in season 3 that I like to pretend don't exist.

Malcomson was the Other Sun shot and killed early in S3.  She had probably 2.5 scenes over 2 episodes.

Oh crap.  My bad, I totally misread that.

Weren't Rousseau's shipmates quite explicitly infected?

Yes.

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Originally Posted by Evi 

Weren't Rousseau's shipmates quite explicitly infected?

I thought they were meat puppets a la Locke. 

But then, she shot her husband, and Flocke was bulletproof...So there is an infection, but neither Sayid nor Claire was actually infected?  Can that be right?

Maybe but I don't remember smokey having the power to be 2 people at the same time. 

Haha, oh God it's happening again!

I think my biggest beef with the show is that I feel like I put more thought into it than the creators. Probably an unfair charge, but conversations like these get me worked up.

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Originally Posted by Evi 

Weren't Rousseau's shipmates quite explicitly infected?

We never saw enough to know. The only person who claimed they were 'infected' was Rousseau herself, who was... unreliable. The little bit we saw (her lover smirking and trying to shoot her) was completely without context.

Rousseau was apparently hanging out on the beach with two corpses. It's just as likely that her lover thought -she- was 'infected'. But that story was intentionally left ambiguous.

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Originally Posted by Evi 

Maybe but I don't remember smokey having the power to be 2 people at the same time. 

He could. He appeared as numerous people while leading Eko to his death. He also often caused visions of multiple people at once. I'm not sure if he ever took on two forms -with-mass- at the same time. 

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

They didn't make much use of any of the talent they imported from Deadwood:  Hawkes, William Sanderson, Paula Malcomson, Robin Weigert.  I guess Kim Dickens had a fairly substantial part for a flashback guest, but even Welliver, cast as the archvillain of the entire show, didn't get to do the juicy bits of that character.

Some of those actors weren't available for major roles. It was either cast people these people whose work they liked in cameos, or not at all.

Lance Reddick was their original choice for Eko, but they couldn't make the schedule work when The Wire got renewed.

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Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

They clearly intended for something to be up with Sayid and Claire.  They were planting seeds of infection all the way back in the first season (the serum, claires baby, quarantine hatch, etc).  You could argue its misdirection, but that's lazy.  Sayid and Claire start acting really weird after their respective death/near-death experiences.  Like David Lynch weird.  Then Dogen starts spouting out nonsense about infection, this time in a more spiritual context.  I don't necessarily have a problem writing Sayid's condition off as PTSD, but there's just no consistency from season to season and any piece of information supporting that has two pieces of information disproving it.  Its that way for just about everything in season 6, which is why its so damn frustrating.  

 

Its been a while since I watched season 6, but I remember being most satisfied (relatively) just assuming that when someone dies on the island, and comes back, they're sort of possessed by Smokey.  

 

Also any mention of Sayid's "true love" makes me lol.  

(Note: I never said 'true love') :)

It wasn't misdirection, it was mythology. The characters in LOST are not historians and most aren't scientists, and none were capable of really knowing what the fuck was going on. Since the vast majority of our information comes from them, it should all be viewed as unreliable.

The pregnancy issues (Claire's baby) were quite heavily hinted as being the result of exposure to the Island's energy (radiation) post-Incident. The timeline fits, and the rules (pregnancy only comes to term if it initiated off-island, ie less exposure) work. Also, what writer could resist the irony of Juliet herself causing the problem she was recruited/kidnapped to fix?

The quarantine hatch was designed to get/keep people (like Desmond) in. There was never any evidence that anyone involved with the hatch ever believed there was an infection.

Claire starts acting weird after getting bombed, losing her child, having her friends abandon her and spending years in the jungle with a shapeshifter in the skin of her dead father, while being hunted by jungle-people who want to murder her.

Dogen was looking for a way to convince Jack to kill Sayid, or to convince Sayid to kill himself. 

So the 'infection' was a combination of ignorant theory from characters trying to explain the crazy shit happening all around them, and willful misdirection by characters using the ignorance of others to their own benefit. That they also happened to misdirect the audience is simply a part of the show's theme of mythology.

To steer the conversation in a slightly different direction for a moment... I'm not sure I get where all the "anti-religious ending" stuff is coming from.  The final scenes in the church were simplistically new agey and "spiritual" at best, and if anything the church setting, lingering shots of angel statues, etc. veer too close to making the ending explicitly Christian. 

If you add in all the symbolism and whatnot from throughout the show, you basically have a whole shitload of Biblical allusions (Eko and his brother, who is presented as a moral paragon, being Catholic priests, Charlie's explicitly Catholic dreams/visions and Aaron's baptism in "Fire + Water," Eko's Jesus stick and its prophetic influence on Locke, the main character's last name being Shepherd ((and his father's name being CHRISTIAN Shepherd, at that)), Jacob himself being Biblically named, the obvious God/Satan parallels being Jacob and "Barry," and on and on) up against the Dharma symbol (which represents a group of fucktards who tampered with things and essentially broke the island).  When it comes to being all-inclusive with their spiritual frames of reference, Cuse and Lindelof have Fox News beat in the "fair and balanced" department.  

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Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

Just because I love me some Lost discussion...

 

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They clearly intended for something to be up with Sayid and Claire.  They were planting seeds of infection all the way back in the first season (the serum, claires baby, quarantine hatch, etc).  You could argue its misdirection, but that's lazy.  Sayid and Claire start acting really weird after their respective death/near-death experiences.  Like David Lynch weird.  Then Dogen starts spouting out nonsense about infection, this time in a more spiritual context.  I don't necessarily have a problem writing Sayid's condition off as PTSD, but there's just no consistency from season to season and any piece of information supporting that has two pieces of information disproving it.  Its that way for just about everything in season 6, which is why its so damn frustrating.  

 

Its been a while since I watched season 6, but I remember being most satisfied (relatively) just assuming that when someone dies on the island, and comes back, they're sort of possessed by Smokey.  

 

Also any mention of Sayid's "true love" makes me lol.  

Anyone remember the season finale of Season 2 where the Hatch blows up and Charlie survives and then acts really weird when he talks to Claire, totally apathetic about the potential deaths of the other 3 characters that were in the hatch? I thought we were seeing signs of infection there, but it was just bad writing and acting. Maybe the infection was a metaphor for the writers phoning it in.

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

It wasn't misdirection, it was mythology. The characters in LOST are not historians and most aren't scientists, and none were capable of really knowing what the fuck was going on. Since the vast majority of our information comes from them, it should all be viewed as unreliable.

The characters don't have to know whats going on, but I feel like the writers should at least have some idea.  Why include all that nonsense with Rousseau's expedition?  Why continuously use the word 'infected' in all these different contexts?  These are distinct and intentional creative decisions that feel like half-assed attempts to address questions raised in previous seasons.  Season 6 was all about cramming magic down our throats, so at the end of the day, the 'infection' simply amounting to 'island myth + PTSD' with no supernatural component at all just doesn't sit well with me. 

There's no winning the argument with Farsight, because his belief that the creation of mythology was the whole point (and that the audience participated in this) can't be shaken.  I mean, it's totally wrong but it's also not something you can disprove to somebody willing to be an apologist over it.

The fact that Lost was must-view television for me and so many others, and that so many of us would never buy a DVD or watch the series again tells me what I needed to know.  I didn't misunderstand the point, I just wanted in the end to feel like the show runners cared as much about the story and the characters as they'd gotten me to care.  Instead we were left with a final season (which they proudly told us was planned out in advance) of horrible pacing and obviously cut sub-plots because all of the filler they shoved down our throats finally caught up to them.  "Across The Sea" was just the most obvious example and the easiest one to point to in order to prove they just had no idea how to make things dramatically satisfying as they were crossing the finish line.

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Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

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The characters don't have to know whats going on, but I feel like the writers should at least have some idea.  Why include all that nonsense with Rousseau's expedition?  Why continuously use the word 'infected' in all these different contexts?  These are distinct and intentional creative decisions that feel like half-assed attempts to address questions raised in previous seasons.  Season 6 was all about cramming magic down our throats, so at the end of the day, the 'infection' simply amounting to 'island myth + PTSD' with no supernatural component at all just doesn't sit well with me. 

 

 

Other than, "I wanted the infection to be real", I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

People believed the infection was real because the Dharma mindgames from the 70s made a convincing ruse. They used it to explain conditions they didn't understand (failed pregnancies and people acting crazy from exposure to radiation). They also used it to trick other people into doing what they wanted (Clancy Brown's character w/ Desmond, Dogen w/ Jack n Sayid). The major source of "infection evidence" was proven to be Dharma bullshit in season 2 or 3. Why wouldn't they continue to use it as an ongoing reference story point? There doesn't appear to be any contradiction there.

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Originally Posted by A-Pathetic 

There's no winning the argument with Farsight, because his belief that the creation of mythology was the whole point (and that the audience participated in this) can't be shaken.  I mean, it's totally wrong but it's also not something you can disprove to somebody willing to be an apologist over it.

 

The fact that Lost was must-view television for me and so many others, and that so many of us would never buy a DVD or watch the series again tells me what I needed to know.  I didn't misunderstand the point, I just wanted in the end to feel like the show runners cared as much about the story and the characters as they'd gotten me to care.  Instead we were left with a final season (which they proudly told us was planned out in advance) of horrible pacing and obviously cut sub-plots because all of the filler they shoved down our throats finally caught up to them.  "Across The Sea" was just the most obvious example and the easiest one to point to in order to prove they just had no idea how to make things dramatically satisfying as they were crossing the finish line.

Your argument could be directed back at you as well. There's no winning when someone has already locked into their mind that everything was a waste of time and nothing could possibly change that.

And for an apologist, I'd say I've voiced a surprising number of criticisms in this thread and others. If not thinking the show has personally assaulted me in some way makes me an apologist, so be it. At least I haven't gotten shit on.

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

 

Your argument could be directed back at you as well. There's no winning when someone has already locked into their mind that everything was a waste of time and nothing could possibly change that.

 

And for an apologist, I'd say I've voiced a surprising number of criticisms in this thread and others. If not thinking the show has personally assaulted me in some way makes me an apologist, so be it. At least I haven't gotten shit on.

I never said the whole show was a waste of time.  I watched it, I strongly disagree with the point of the show, I never intend to watch it again.  I enjoyed more episodes of it than I didn't enjoy but taken as a whole I find it very unsatisfying.  The show didn't rape me or shit on me, it just convinced me that it aspired to greatness when in reality it was quite happy with being frighteningly mediocre once the dust had cleared.

The thing is, you're filling in a MASSIVE amount of information that is not provided to us by the show.  You're satisfied in doing this because you're convinced this is some weird social experiment trying to make a point about creating mythology so in your mind you're supposed to be doing just that.  You think you're a participant and even though the text (in my opinion) doesn't support this in any way you've happily placed yourself in the middle of this theory and can refute any intelligent argument with "Well, you just didn't get it".

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

We never saw enough to know. The only person who claimed they were 'infected' was Rousseau herself, who was... unreliable. The little bit we saw (her lover smirking and trying to shoot her) was completely without context.

 

Rousseau was apparently hanging out on the beach with two corpses. It's just as likely that her lover thought -she- was 'infected'. But that story was intentionally left ambiguous.

See, again, you're doing too much of the writers' work for them. Given his nasty demeanour and the fact that he was trying to trick her I wouldn't say it's likely at all that he was thought she was infected and if it was just smokey attempting to kill her, well, he could have done it the way he killed Eko and, like Schwartz said, wouldn't have died when shot.

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

Other than, "I wanted the infection to be real", I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

 

People believed the infection was real because the Dharma mindgames from the 70s made a convincing ruse. They used it to explain conditions they didn't understand (failed pregnancies and people acting crazy from exposure to radiation). They also used it to trick other people into doing what they wanted (Clancy Brown's character w/ Desmond, Dogen w/ Jack n Sayid). The major source of "infection evidence" was proven to be Dharma bullshit in season 2 or 3. Why wouldn't they continue to use it as an ongoing reference story point? There doesn't appear to be any contradiction there.

Yeah, the serum and stuff was proven to be Dharma bullshit.  Radzinsky says as much, and we see characters living on the island for an extended period of time showing no symptoms.  Fine.  The issue I have is that when we get to stuff like Sayid possibly being possessed, the word 'infected' starts getting tossed around again and I'm not sure if Cuse/Lindelof et al are thinking they are being clever by attempting to bring this stuff full circle, or they are creating some kind of meta commentary on the creation mythology as their end game as you seem to be claiming.  Either way, its not logical or dramatically satisfying.

What I'm trying to say is that its bad writing.

Also, I just want to go on record saying that I love Lost.  From beginning to end, its easily my favorite television experience.  No question.  That don't mean its perfect.

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Originally Posted by Evi 

See, again, you're doing too much of the writers' work for them. Given his nasty demeanour and the fact that he was trying to trick her I wouldn't say it's likely at all that he was thought she was infected and if it was just smokey attempting to kill her, well, he could have done it the way he killed Eko and, like Schwartz said, wouldn't have died when shot.

My point was that we have no idea what the heck was going on with Rousseau's team. I wasn't filling -anything- in, just showing the scene was ambiguous. The people trying to use that lone 30 second scene as proof of an 'infection' are the ones filling in massive blanks.

You can't have it both ways, accusing anyone who suggests an implied statement as making things up while simultaneously assuming a single ambiguous scene proves the writers changed course midstream.

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Originally Posted by A-Pathetic 

The thing is, you're filling in a MASSIVE amount of information that is not provided to us by the show.  You're satisfied in doing this because you're convinced this is some weird social experiment trying to make a point about creating mythology so in your mind you're supposed to be doing just that.  You think you're a participant and even though the text (in my opinion) doesn't support this in any way you've happily placed yourself in the middle of this theory and can refute any intelligent argument with "Well, you just didn't get it".

 

What's funny is that the only counterargument that you've offered is that I don't get it. 

Dharma using the Hatch as mind-experiment is in the text. Clancy Brown's character lying about an infection is in the text. People acting nutty from exposure to the island's energy is in the text. Claire and Sayid suffering extremely traumatic experiences was in the text. Dogen wanting Sayid dead was in the text. The rest of what I offered was pointing out things that WERE NOT in the text, like any evidence that Dogen was correct (or even being honest), any evidence that Rousseau had any real knowledge, any evidence that anyone at Dharma ever believed there was an infection, or basically any evidence that an infection existed. 

You're rejecting anything without an explicitly stated answer. IMO that's intellectually dishonest and an unrewarding and frankly boring way to watch a show. Strip away the implied from any quality show (Sopranos, Mad Men, etc) and you're left with a much less interesting show.

Whether you buy my 'mythology' theory is totally separate from whether the writers left answers in the text without a character screaming them from a mountaintop. When you state that the writers fucked up or didn't know what they were doing or didn't care, the burden of proof is on you.

Sayids problem was definitely not PTSD.  But that's a pretty funny theory.  There was definitely supposed to be something more, like he was infected or he was under the control of Smokster.  They just realised they didn't think it through like the majority of the Lost mythology, so they abandoned it.  I think this is obvious.

I'm sure the same thing happened with the sideways verse.  They just threw it out there, thinking they'd figure out what it meant somewhere down the line, but they couldn't make it work, or even have it make any sense, so they went with the easiest and shittiest possible route.

I remember reading an early Lost script, and in one of them they described the polar bears as mechanical and robotic, but obviously they changed their minds.  Just an example of how random and chaotic the planning was in this show.  They were able to con us for 5 seasons, but when they had to finally put it all together, the truth was exposed.  I guess its not surprising so much of it just doesn't gel, or make any sense.

Oh and why did they have polar bears on the Island again?  For experiments right?  Seems like a really dumb explanation.

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

 

Dharma using the Hatch as mind-experiment is in the text. Clancy Brown's character lying about an infection is in the text. People acting nutty from exposure to the island's energy is in the text. Claire and Sayid suffering extremely traumatic experiences was in the text. Dogen wanting Sayid dead was in the text. The rest of what I offered was pointing out things that WERE NOT in the text, like any evidence that Dogen was correct (or even being honest), any evidence that Rousseau had any real knowledge, any evidence that anyone at Dharma ever believed there was an infection, or basically any evidence that an infection existed. 

 

You're rejecting anything without an explicitly stated answer. IMO that's intellectually dishonest and an unrewarding and frankly boring way to watch a show. Strip away the implied from any quality show (Sopranos, Mad Men, etc) and you're left with a much less interesting show.

 

Whether you buy my 'mythology' theory is totally separate from whether the writers left answers in the text without a character screaming them from a mountaintop. When you state that the writers fucked up or didn't know what they were doing or didn't care, the burden of proof is on you.

 

The Sopranos and Mad Men are not action adventure mystery shows.  There are different ambiguity thresholds in different types of stories.  

If you think the infection thing not making sense made a thematic point about myths as a cultural Rorschach test that was important enough to offset alienating us from two of the main characters during the culmination of their arcs and obfuscating the stakes of the adventure story as it reached it's climax, then fine.  But for a lot of us, it was the characters and the mysteries that kept us coming back, and the themes don't land if we can't stay interested in them.
 

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Originally Posted by Nabster 

There was definitely supposed to be something more, like he was infected or he was under the control of Smokster.  They just realised they didn't think it through like the majority of the Lost mythology, so they abandoned it.  I think this is obvious.

 

I'm sure the same thing happened with the sideways verse.  They just threw it out there, thinking they'd figure out what it meant somewhere down the line, but they couldn't make it work, or even have it make any sense, so they went with the easiest and shittiest possible route.

Based on what? Any evidence from the show itself to support your claim? Anything other than your own certainty?

You've done what a lot of the loudest and angriest people have done: decided on your conclusion and argued backwards to reach it. It's faulty reasoning.

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

If you think the infection thing not making sense made a thematic point about myths as a cultural Rorschach test that was important enough to offset alienating us from two of the main characters during the culmination of their arcs and obfuscating the stakes of the adventure story as it reached it's climax, then fine.  But for a lot of us, it was the characters and the mysteries that kept us coming back, and the themes don't land if we can't stay interested in them.
 

-Perhaps- they wanted the audience to truly wonder/worry which side some of the characters they liked would fall on? To make their eventual 'return to the light' less predictable and more exciting?

Regardless, you don't have to like the answers that they gave, or heavily hinted at. That's a different discussion than, "They didn't have any answers! They just contradicted themselves constantly and made up random shit!" One is a valid opinion (that in some cases, I share), the other is a claim of fact that I've only seen supported by bile-filled opinions and assumed knowledge of the writer's deepest thoughts.

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Originally Posted by Farsight 

-Perhaps- they wanted the audience to truly wonder/worry which side some of the characters they liked would fall on? To make their eventual 'return to the light' less predictable and more exciting?

 

Regardless, you don't have to like the answers that they gave, or heavily hinted at. That's a different discussion than, "They didn't have any answers! They just contradicted themselves constantly and made up random shit!" One is a valid opinion (that in some cases, I share), the other is a claim of fact that I've only seen supported by bile-filled opinions and assumed knowledge of the writer's deepest thoughts.

It doesn't matter if it's predictable or not if we don't even understand what's going on.  I still don't know how meaningful Sayid's turn back to a good guy was because I don't know if dying and being dipped into a magic pool (but a muddy one!  That means...something...) had some kind of tangible effect on his mind/body/soul, as was suggested but never really confirmed or denied. 

Also, I don't think you need to presume knowledge of the writer's deepest thoughts to see that the mythology contradicted itself at times or infer that it was largely thrown together on the fly.  If there was a master plan in place from the start, they did a very credible job of making it feel tossed off and arbitrary.   So imo, it's Fail either way.

There is literally no arguing with Farsight.

"It wasn't misdirection, it was mythology. The characters in LOST are not historians and most aren't scientists, and none were capable of really knowing what the fuck was going on. Since the vast majority of our information comes from them, it should all be viewed as unreliable."

So, essentially, you can believe whatever you want and construct whichever theory you want and that's that. Nobody knows what's going on, so nothing is concrete, so whatever you believe to be true about the narrative can be made true by simply pointing out whoever said xyz is unreliable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Farsight 

My point was that we have no idea what the heck was going on with Rousseau's team. I wasn't filling -anything- in, just showing the scene was ambiguous. The people trying to use that lone 30 second scene as proof of an 'infection' are the ones filling in massive blanks.

 

No Farsight, it's the writers filling in the blanks for us. Rousseau says her shipmates got Infected --> CUT TO shipmates enterring smokey's hole --> CUT TO her child's father acting really out of character and gleefully trying to kill her. That's actually the writers going out of their way to prove that the infection does exist. You can't just say "Who knows what really happened?!" when the writers are being this explicit.

Now, if they'd had added a scene or even an implication that what we're seeing is not to be taken at face value then sure they'd be giving us a reason to distrust the idea. And if they really wanted to undercut Rousseau's infection claim, they could've written her as being the one who goes nuts. But they don't. So as it stands, if there weren't an infection there would be literally no reason to show those scenes. 

But it's not misdirection, it's MYTHOLOGY!

For what it's worth... if Dogen isn't trying to kill Sayid because he fears he might be "infected" by Smokey... then why is he trying to kill him?  You could argue that he's somehow prescient, I guess, and knows that Sayid will eventually end up killing HIM, but, but... Sayid only killed Dogen because Dogen KEPT trying to kill Sayid.  So that's just circular reasoning, there.

Also:

Why did the Monster freak out and run away when it saw Juliet in "Left Behind"?

Why was Desmond in prison?  Why does Daniel write that "Desmond will be [his] constant" in his journal?

What would have happened if Smokey had been allowed to leave the island?  This is NEVER explained.  And you can't say the whole thing was about stopping him from destroying the island, because he never would have had the ability to do that w/o Widmore bringing Desmond back to the island (at Jacob's behest).  Circular reasoning (read: lazy plotting) again.

Why does killing Dogen invalidate the circle of ash surrounding the temple?  And when/how did Smokey get into Jacob's cabin (which was also surrounded by ash)?  He didn't have to kill Ben or Locke (the leaders of the Others at that time) in order to do so.  You could say he was able to do it b/c Claire broke the line of ash late in Season Four, but then why do we see Christian/Smokey's silhouette inside the cabin in the first episode?

And what about "The Man Behind the Curtain?"  If the invisible guy in the cabin was Smokey, why do Damon and Carlton explicitly refer to him as "Jacob" in the commentary for the episode?  And how did he get in there, when the circle of ash didn't appear to be broken at that time?  And why is Ben still with Dharma as an adult when a later ep (Dead is Dead) establishes he left Dharma as a young boy?

If the Sideways universe was really purgatory rather than an alternate timeline/universe created by detonating the bomb on the island, then what DID setting the bomb off do?  And why does Daniel spend half the season drilling it into our heads that "you can't change the future," only to have the characters explicitly try to do that later on?  Why do we see the island sunken at the bottom of the ocean at the beginning of Season Six, if this is not set in a timeline where the bomb went off and the island sank?

Why does Jacob and Barry's mother tell them she's made it so they "can't hurt each other," when we explicitly see Jacob attack (and later kill) Barry at the end?  Why does Jacob bring people to the island?  Is it to "prove his brother wrong," or because he's looking for a replacement for himself?  And what IS the island... is it a cork holding some kind of evil at bay, or a magical shiny light connected to everybody's souls?  And why does being thrown into the light turn Barry (but not Desmond or Jack, who like Barry was near death at the time) into a smoke monster?  How were people who didn't properly understand magnetism ("metal behaves strangely here") able to build a system capable of teleporting the island through time and space?  How does Barry know he'll be able to leave the Island by activating it?

You REALLY have to stretch to assume the writers had ANY idea what was going on while they were making this show, much less that they provided satisfying answers to anything.  And if you believe, as you claim, that the whole theme of the show was somehow about myth-making... what exactly in the text supports THAT?  That seems like a nonsensical interpretation, to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

There is literally no arguing with Farsight.

 

"It wasn't misdirection, it was mythology. The characters in LOST are not historians and most aren't scientists, and none were capable of really knowing what the fuck was going on. Since the vast majority of our information comes from them, it should all be viewed as unreliable."

 

So, essentially, you can believe whatever you want and construct whichever theory you want and that's that. Nobody knows what's going on, so nothing is concrete, so whatever you believe to be true about the narrative can be made true by simply pointing out whoever said xyz is unreliable.

Wow, you really don't get it.

And by "it", I don't mean LOST.

Everything we were ---shown--- is reliable. Information we were only ---told--- by a character has to be filtered through who that character was, how much they actually knew, and whether they had any motive for deception. Most of LOST's characters are either ignorant of the bigger picture, or liars.

And saying, "You can't trust what X said" does not translate to, "You can believe whatever you want is true." That's logically false.

Do you go through life believing everything anyone tells you? That's what you're arguing for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evi 

No Farsight, it's the writers filling in the blanks for us. Rousseau says her shipmates got Infected --> CUT TO shipmates enterring smokey's hole --> CUT TO her child's father acting really out of character and gleefully trying to kill her. That's actually the writers going out of their way to prove that the infection does exist. You can't just say "Who knows what really happened?!" when the writers are being this explicit.

 

Now, if they'd had added a scene or even an implication that what we're seeing is not to be taken at face value then sure they'd be giving us a reason to distrust the idea. And if they really wanted to undercut Rousseau's infection claim, they could've written her as being the one who goes nuts. But they don't. So as it stands, if there weren't an infection there would be literally no reason to show those scenes. 

Wasn't Rousseau's claim of infection a scene separated by multiple seasons from the others? That's not exactly a "CUT TO".

Also, 'explicit' isn't the correct word for what you're trying to show. Explicit would be showing us something infecting him, or showing him developing the infection - you know, the portion of the story they intentionally left out to keep it ambiguous.

But let's assume the guy we never knew was acting crazy. The other case of someone acting insane on the show was actually explicitly shown -not- to be caused by an infection, but rather by exposure to the island's energy field. 

It makes sense for Rousseau to call what happened an 'infection'. She has no available knowledge to make any other connection. That doesn't mean we're supposed to accept her explanation as gospel.

If every example of an 'infection' had played out like this, I'd tend to believe that they were heavily implying the infection was real. But multiple other examples were -explicitly- shown to be false, either due to ignorance or deception. So you have numerous instances of the infection being shown as false, and one ambiguous sequence that lines up just as well with one of the 'non-infection' sequences (Widmore's people going insane on the boat before they even reached the Island). I'd say that hardly makes the infection explicit. 

Intentionally ambiguous or not, most of that equates to sloppy unsatisfying storytelling.

Re: The infection...

The word "Quarantine" being written in the hatch (and Desmond's injections) can easily be explained away using Jack's reasoning in "Orientation" (i.e., Dharma put it there to intimidate people into staying in the hatch), combined with the fact that Kelvin obviously had his reasons for manipulating Des.  There's other stuff that doesn't add up though.

Rousseau refers to her shipmates as being infected and says, "What if we'd been rescued?"  This, to me, implies there was danger of the infection spreading if they got off the island, possibly througout the world.  For what it's worth, one of the online "alternate reality games" involves an offshoot of the Hanso Foundation (remember them?) trying to engineer a virus that would target a certain portion of the population.  The other game involves the Dharma Initiative trying to change one of the numerical values of the Valenzetti Equation (*eyeroll*) in order to avert the end of the world.  Could one of those values represent... population?

Essentially, I think Darlton's *original* plan involving the Others was that they WERE what was left of the Dharma Initiative.  They were working on engineering a virus ("the sickness") that would reduce the population, thus altering the equation and averting (or at least postponing) the end of the world.  The virus was way more lethal than they intended, and killed off most of Dharma; the ones left (who we call "the Others") can't leave, because they still might be carriers.  I think this was also meant to be the original explanation for the Others' fertility difficulties.  And it would explain their references to being "the good guys" and "saving the world," since in their minds that's exactly what they were doing.

It's worth noting, I think, that the Others basically disappear after the third season.  They barely appear during seasons four and five, and they get killed off pretty unceremoniously during season six.  I think all this stuff was meant to be revealed during season three, but everyone had it figured out WAY before then, and it just would have come across as a bunch of crappy non-revelations (like the acknowledgment that Christian was Claire's dad, over a year after 100% of the fanbase had figured that out).  It's also worth noting that the underlying mythology of a show called "Millenium" is very similar to what I've been talking about, so they may have been worried about being accused of ripping that off as well.

Either way, they decided to drop their original plan and reveal the Others as a separate group that was on the island before Dharma, and wiped the Dharma folks out.  They started dropping references to "Jacob" throughout season three as set-up for a (new) explanation  of where the Others came from and what they were doing on the island, but eventually lost interest in that and decided (more or less) to drop the Others altogether.

I also think (based on interviews where Darlton talked about wanting to do around 100 episodes total) that they originally planned to do two more seasons after year three, with season four dealing with the characters leaving the island and season five showing them come back.  Either the show would have ended with them setting off the bomb and ending up in the sideways world (basically a condensed version of the first episode of season six), or they would have skipped the time travel stuff altogether and jumped straight to them getting back to the island and beating Smokey.  Since their hearts seemed to be more with the sideways storyline, the first one would be my guess. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyB79 

Rousseau refers to her shipmates as being infected and says, "What if we'd been rescued?"  This, to me, implies there was danger of the infection spreading if they got off the island, possibly througout the world.

 

Essentially, I think Darlton's *original* plan involving the Others was that they WERE what was left of the Dharma Initiative.

 

It's worth noting, I think, that the Others basically disappear after the third season. 

That's my point about Rousseau - we're never given any evidence that she knows what she's talking about. We know she isn't an expert, and that she didn't see what happened to her people, and that she's extremely traumatized (and sometimes crazy). She's less knowledgeable than one of the doctors on House who claims, "It's Lupus", and they're -always- wrong! :)

As for the Others, their absence in season 4 was for obvious reasons, we do see a decent amount of Alpert, Widmore, and Eloise in season 5. The Others are definitely present in the Dharma era. And I considered their slaughter in season 6 fairly ceremonious... :)

I don't see evidence that the Others were originally supposed to be 'infected' Dharma in the show. For one thing, if they had Dharma's knowledge, you'd think they would care a little more about The Hatch. They also let Micheal and Walt leave in season 2. I'm sure the show did alter storylines over time, I'm just not sure what support in the show itself you're basing that idea on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Farsight 

That's my point about Rousseau - we're never given any evidence that she knows what she's talking about. We know she isn't an expert, and that she didn't see what happened to her people, and that she's extremely traumatized (and sometimes crazy). She's less knowledgeable than one of the doctors on House who claims, "It's Lupus", and they're -always- wrong! :)

Two related issues here:

1)  It's fine that Rousseau doesn't really know what she's talking about; she's introduced as insane and she clearly is in much the same position as the Losties, just with a few more scraps to go on.  The problem is, we NEVER find out what the deal is, even when it becomes a major plot point and completely alters our relationship with some of the most important characters on the show.  And yeah, yaddayadda ambiguity and mythmaking and all that, but if we're supposed to take away some lesson about how people complicate the unknown by adding layers and layers of their own faulty explanations on top of a simple question, it needs to be made clear at some point that there really is no such thing as an infection.  And as people have pointed out, even the later seasons are extremely muddled on whether Smokey's influence on the nearly/formerly dead is literal or figurative.
 

2)  The show piles unreliable source on top of unreliable source on top of unreliable source for 5+ seasons, and then somewhere in the sixth we're supposed to just take Jacob/Smokey/Ilana/Widmore/Richard's word about various things (what the island really is, who is really on whose side, what happens if Smokey gets off the island, the nature of the candidates, how/if they can kill themselves/each other, whether Smokey can hurt them, whether he can pass over water, and so on) and go with it.  But the show has inadvertently or not trained us too well to distrust any and all information we receive, which cripples the adventure/suspense side of the show.

This thread has brought back so many memories. My current thoughts are that I love Season 1-4, think Season 5 started the decline, and Season 6 was complete shit. But it's funny. When I said this to a friend of mine after seeing the comic con video a few weeks ago, he reminded me of an email I sent him after the series ended defending the show. I'm posting, mainly because people are griping about specific plot points that ,yes, the show built up to make us care, but ultimately don't matter. Personally, I think its more important to focus on the broader themes the show presented and let us ponder on our own. Am I disappointed with how the show ended, yes. But I will never feel disappointed about how the show got me to engage with philosophical debates with Chewers and friends alike. It will always hold a special place in my heart. I own and watch the DVDs since the series ended. Lost has some episodes that are legitimately the best ever aired on TV. To dismiss all that because of a crappy ending is a disservice to oneself and the art of making good TV shows.

Diva said what I tried to say way better.  Thanks Diva!