|
You’re not wrong. For all of the events that happened in and around the Temple, they sure did put the breaks on everything else during the same episodes. I wonder if some of that feeling of glacial pace stems from looking back in hindsight at what few things we really learned. We never learned why Drogen could keep the Man in Black out of the Temple or any details behind the mystical healing spa. Hurley may have built a golf course, but imagine is Shannon or Nikki found out there was a spa on the island
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2020 05:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 09:17 |
|
|
Yeah, the whole Temple plot was just them waiting around for bad things to happen. It was the only time I ever agreed with Kate for being like "I'm gonna run away and do my own bullshit again." I mostly defend the show for having some really bold and interesting storytelling, but the biggest drag for me was the flashes in S6. They presented it as an alternate universe, but when we finally learned what it actually was in the finale, in retrospect it's silly that they spent so much time on it. It could've been covered in like 2 episodes. It's like the episode 'Ji Yeon' where Jin's flashbacks are completely irrelevant once you learn they were set in the past and Sun's were set in the present, except for the whole season. Season 5 was supposed to have 'fixed' things anyway, so there's not even an in-narrative reason to have flashes in 6.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2020 20:17
|
|
|
sticklefifer posted:Yeah, the whole Temple plot was just them waiting around for bad things to happen. It was the only time I ever agreed with Kate for being like "I'm gonna run away and do my own bullshit again." Yeah, the flash sideways stuff felt like an extended misdirect that was there entirely to prevent you from guessing what the finale was going to be about. In many ways it's giving the characters catharsis and happier endings than they had in life, but the fact that it's played for suspense falls weirdly flat ultimately.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2020 07:32
|
|
|
I really, really don't like those sequences, and they're a major reason I've not rewatched the show in years (that and some of the deaths at the end of the show, which are really, really poorly handled). They're worse than being filler, they're an 18 episode long red herring whose solution is literally just "God did it and he loves you, but also he clearly hates vehicles which is why he smashed every car he could." It's such a poor decision, and I suspect it contributes a lot to the show's purgatory discourse. Because they honestly were in purgatory, for a not insignificant chunk of the show. Season 6 sucks a lot to be honest.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2020 07:59
|
|
|
I thought the flash sideways idea was clever, but too clever for its own good. You call it purgatory, I call it the show runners laughing at the audience. It’s an example of the show focused way to much on red herrings and not answering mysteries. It would have a made for a great couple episodes to set up the finale, but hanging the entire 6th season on the idea seems to be audience abuse. We get back to the JJ Abrams mystery box plan and it’s just unsatisfying. I have had a pet theory about season 6 and it’s general malaise since Across the Sea aired. On narrative construction, I wonder if some of stuck in neutral feeling could have been avoided if they placed the Across the Sea episode earlier in the season. Or maybe split up that flashback across a few episodes. I feel like waiting for some explanation of Jacob and Smokey’s backstory was actively unhelpful to the audience. The writers were clearly not going to go down the Greco-Roman and Egyptian rabbit holes and explain a ton of the island backstory, but maybe giving what little we got earlier on in season would have helped. He’ll seeing more of Smokey’s time scheming first vs his mother and then vs Jacob would have helped a ton. LaptopGun fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Dec 23, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2020 17:08
|
|
|
LaptopGun posted:I have had a pet theory about season 6 and it’s general malaise since Across the Sea aired. On narrative construction, I wonder if some of stuck in neutral feeling could have been avoided if they placed the Across the Sea episode earlier in the season. Or maybe split up that flashback across a few episodes. I feel like waiting for some explanation of Jacob and Smokey’s backstory was actively unhelpful to the audience. The writers were clearly not going to go down the Greco-Roman and Egyptian rabbit holes and explain a ton of the island backstory, but maybe giving what little we got earlier on in season would have helped. He’ll seeing more of Smokey’s time scheming first vs his mother and then vs Jacob would have helped a ton. The main thing Lindelof and Cuse have since said about Across The Sea (right in the episode commentary) is that they shouldn't have given so much information through characters the audience just met in that very same episode. It makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2020 17:13
|
|
|
I've always liked the weirdness of it being "the Allison Janney episode", where she turns up and is evil for an hour and then fucks off forever. I've always kinda liked it for being weird, tbh.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2020 23:04
|
|
|
I loved Across the Sea. It boiled down the story of the island into a syrup and put everything we'd seen up to that point into context.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2020 00:30
|
|
|
Yannick_B posted:The main thing Lindelof and Cuse have since said about Across The Sea (right in the episode commentary) is that they shouldn't have given so much information through characters the audience just met in that very same episode. I’ll have to dig out the Blu-rays. Either I don’t remember that or I didn’t watch it with commentary. That’s fascinating. I definitely agree
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2020 06:20
|
|
|
The island's distant history being the flashback gimmick of the season would've been really cool, actually.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2020 12:49
|
|
|
I imagine the writers room for the show included a whiteboard where the writers workshopped various interesting ways to kill people. “Wrestle Smokey and lose,” “drown in an underwater secret base that explodes,” “fail to stop brain hemorrhages caused by rapid timetravel,” etc sound interesting but it’s all about timing...
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2020 07:07
|
|
|
This is the show where its actaully a dogs dream and he wakes up and runs into a wall right? Or is whats going on actually dumber than that?
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2020 08:32
|
|
|
sure okay posted:This is the show where its actaully a dogs dream and he wakes up and runs into a wall right? Going from complete memory here so this is a top level recollection ignoring everything wrong with it. It's about an island acting as a prison for something supernaturally bad, where a bunch of scientists were drawn to do science things on it before a plane crashed with the destined protagonists to draw the whole thing to a close. All the other shenanigans were just a distraction. Oh and it's a bit like 24 where the entire show takes place over just a month or something.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2020 17:40
|
|
|
They're referring to a viral video someone made after the last episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXIOA_sgZoo lol if they actually thought that was real.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2020 19:32
|
|
|
The ironic thing about that fake ending is the showrunners desperately wanted to do a Vincent-centric episode, but each time they tried something didn’t work. The first and second seasons had attempts that the ABC execs talked them out of it. The news leak that season 1 finale originally was supposed to be the Vincent episode led to internet backlash that scared Lindelof and Cuse (if not ABC). The final episode of the mini-episodes for Verizon cellphones was the opening of the shows pilot from the dog’s POV. Vincent finds Christian (presumably the Man in Black) in the jungle and the ghost/Smokey tells the dog to go wake Jack. The quote “He has work to do” quote reflects the MIB’s attempts to manipulate Jack using Christian’s ghost I guess. Season 3 and 6 also had plans for Vincent POV stuff that never made the screen. Vincent canonically found Desmond in the well or so the MIB as Lock implied. Frankly I never understood why they wanted a dog POV episode. https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Vincent I do however remember the fun message board speculation of potential impending death whenever Vincent sat next to someone. LaptopGun fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Dec 27, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2020 08:34
|
|
|
I have to say I loved Lost for all that it was. It certainly was treading water in S3 but after the Writers’ Strike it came back and was more plot focused they never. I think I cared more about the side characters over the years. Boone. Rose & Bernard. Claire (Before the crazy) Cindy. I still absolutely loved the Nikki & Paolo episode. I don’t know why it’s so hated. If anyone hasn’t watched it, Chronologically Lost is a great recut of the series and well worth your time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 05:00
|
|
|
Andrew_1985 posted:
I liked it too, but people didn't like the characters because they clearly just materialized out of thin air and were shoved into the main character circle. Plus they introduced them when Hurley stumbled out of the jungle, immediately telling people what happened (I can't remember what that was), and Nikki said "when were you planning on telling us this Hurley!??" Like, he just did. First chance he could. Edit: People in the Lost threads had a sick compulsion to waaaaay over-complicate things with their theories. And it just kept happening for 6 seasons! You would think after Shannon was stabbed people would kind of settle in to accept the show as it was, but nah, gotta keep coming up with the most insane, off the wall theories... for some reason. stratdax fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 19:41
|
|
|
I seem to remember Exposé being an extremely well received episode (I loved it, personally), it's just that the characters up until then very much weren't. They were always shoehorned in, when a more natural approach would've been to have them be featured extras for a bit before getting subplots. Exposé is great both for the camp factor, the fact that these two randoms found everything on the island before anyone else, and for the fate of two hated characters being way more over the top grim than anyone expected.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 21:11
|
|
|
They were shoehorned in badly to pad out Season 3 because of its less than ideal production and airing schedules. ABC wanted a new Lost episode every week that counted as sweeps or a competitor aired something important. I do wonder if Nikki and Paulo didn’t arrive during when the writers were stalling and had half the cast on the Hydra station whether things could have turned out better. It’s a shame because I enjoyed all the references and fourth wall-breaking moments. In hindsight, it’s weird Smokey took the form of the spiders and bit the 2 of them since at least 1 of them was a candidate and that sort of violates Jacobs rule. But then again Smokey didn’t bury them alive so I guess this works. (It’s probable the rules weren’t sorted out yet).
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 18:23
|
|
|
stratdax posted:Edit: People in the Lost threads had a sick compulsion to waaaaay over-complicate things with their theories. And it just kept happening for 6 seasons! You would think after Shannon was stabbed people would kind of settle in to accept the show as it was, but nah, gotta keep coming up with the most insane, off the wall theories... for some reason. I barely remember the tv iv threads from back then. But I do clearly remember the "They said that everything has a scientific or realistic explanation, so it's not like all this stuff is magic" line repeated a lot. I saw this other places too. I guess that was just a rumor that got repeated so many times that people just believed the showrunners actually said that?
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 19:26
|
|
|
They did go on record with that, but their metric was pop culture references. They said everything had "a Mulder explanation and a Scully explanation", but they also didn't want to get too far into Midichlorian territory explaining the science/logistics behind everything. Then there was an episode of their podcast where they went down a list of things fans asked about, and differentiated whether they were Smokey or "island magic". So technically I guess they did have some magic in mind, but then there's Clarke's 3rd Law about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, so take your pick which one you buy into I guess.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 00:49
|
|
|
The writers seemed genuinely surprised people pitched a fit when the show got spiritual on the audience
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 05:10
|
|
|
I just kept thinking how different things would be, especially the Season 5 finale, if Jacob had, at any point in Ben's entire 30-some years on the island, just actually sat down and loving talked with him about poo poo instead of being a weird standoffish mystical rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 08:09
|
|
|
I thought the mysteries and answers we got were fine. It was always about the characters and their journey The final season flashbacks, i forgot what they were called - flash sideways or something?, were the weak point imo. and it's even more noticeable on a rewatch when you know they are pointless. Plus they seemed to genuinely confuse people, I remember even in the Lost thread on here people thought it meant they were dead the whole time
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 08:24
|
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:I just kept thinking how different things would be, especially the Season 5 finale, if Jacob had, at any point in Ben's entire 30-some years on the island, just actually sat down and loving talked with him about poo poo instead of being a weird standoffish mystical rear end in a top hat. Ben: “What about ME?!” Jacob: “What about you?” (Ben goes postal and murders Jacob just like the MIB wanted all along) The Man in Black sure exploited Jacob’s strange aloofness and Ben’s need for positive vibes Edit: it really should come as no surprise Hurley and Ben supposedly got along swimmingly on the island since Hurley was clearly not a DGAF island protector
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 06:35
|
|
|
Nikki and Paulo were intentionally shoehorned in awkwardly to make you go "wait why are they pretending these two assholes have been here the whole time?" only so they could go "gotcha!" with killing them off in the darkest possible way. It was basically a long meta joke. The finale of season 5 was so unbelievably epic and gut wrenching, and season 6 never did live up to that. I remember thinking the "flash sideways" was mostly frustrating because there weren't any clues to pick apart what it actually was, and it felt like it was wasting precious airtime not giving us what we want as the season ticked away to the end. Then, as another goon said, the finale reveals the truth to you, and you're like, oh, well that's cool, but it wasn't worth half the air time of the final season over. And yes, despite that Jack's dad spells out exactly what it means, many people still did not get it and to this day think that it meant they were dead the entire time. Overall just a really poor choice. I agree that the flashbacks should have been spent on the history of the island rather than regulating that to two episodes. To summarize my thoughts on my somewhat recent re-watch: the show holds up better than people remember in binge format. It doesn't feel nearly as much of the mess it's been notoriously made out to be. I agree that the answers we got were okay enough and most of the unanswered stuff can be either handwaved or inferred from what we already know. The one thing that does make the show somewhat difficult to binge, IMO, is the constant dramatic cliffhanger act breaks, which are very much a product of the time before "prestige TV" and streaming were things. There's also a fair share of filler. I believe the show could probably be edited down to about 80 episodes instead of 120 and have a much tighter narrative. Unfortunately, of course, that's never going to happen.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 11:07
|
|
|
SweetMercifulCrap! posted:Nikki and Paulo were intentionally shoehorned in awkwardly to make you go "wait why are they pretending these two assholes have been here the whole time?" only so they could go "gotcha!" with killing them off in the darkest possible way. It was basically a long meta joke. Nah. They were added to expand the cast roster, pulling from the unnamed survivors who were living on the beach -- the intention was to use their characters to explain more about the majority of the other survivors, and what they thought about the events on the islands, etc. etc. Logically, and I agree, their introduction was no different from introducing people in any other setting, pulling from the population of a school or a city or wherever a show typically introduces new civilian characters from. But they weren't liked at all. They killed them off in response to fan reaction. They've always been very clear on this part. Nikki and Paulo are not some sort of meta joke about characters suddenly appearing and disappearing. There was an original plan to do an entire Nikki episode in the style of an Alias spoof, only to reveal, at the end, that Nikki was a completely normal person, and the flashbacks you'd been watching the entire episode were actually flashbacks to her television show. You can see the remnants of that in the start to her flashbacks in Exposé. So there was the intention of making a similar meta joke to the one you're describing. But they were originally introduced with the intention of their sticking around for a long time.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 11:21
|
|
|
Open Source Idiom posted:Nah. They were added to expand the cast roster, pulling from the unnamed survivors who were living on the beach -- the intention was to use their characters to explain more about the majority of the other survivors, and what they thought about the events on the islands, etc. etc. Logically, and I agree, their introduction was no different from introducing people in any other setting, pulling from the population of a school or a city or wherever a show typically introduces new civilian characters from. But they weren't liked at all. My bad, I always thought that was an unconfirmed fan theory and that there were only weeks between their introduction and death when it was actually months.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 11:33
|
|
|
SweetMercifulCrap! posted:My bad, I always thought that was an unconfirmed fan theory and that there were only weeks between their introduction and death when it was actually months. Nah it's cool. If you wander around on youtube, you can probably still find their original introduction (cut from the second episode of Season Three for time). It's an odd choice, tbh, both to cut the introduction for two new cast members, but also the way they chose to write them into the show in the first place. They're found loving in Claire's tent, IIRC
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 12:28
|
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:I just kept thinking how different things would be, especially the Season 5 finale, if Jacob had, at any point in Ben's entire 30-some years on the island, just actually sat down and loving talked with him about poo poo instead of being a weird standoffish mystical rear end in a top hat. Ben was right to stab him. gently caress that guy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 19:35
|
|
|
Like their last encounter is the Man in Black, having pointed out that Ben has every single in the world to want to kill Jacob, telling Ben to kill Jacob....and Ben doesn't. Ben instead asks him why Jacob never said a single word to him in all the decades that Ben loyally followed orders. And Jacob blows him off. Yeah Jacob was hankering for that stabbing. The hilarious part is later on when what's his name, the psychic, tells Ben that Jacob didn't want to die and was hoping he was wrong about Ben. Well then jackass maybe you could have said literally anything at all to the crazy sociopath that is grieving the loss of his daughter and blames you.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 20:46
|
|
|
That was Miles! I love Miles. Lost was far from a perfect show but it had some of the best character writing I've seen in television. They did a decent job with their huge cast.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 21:17
|
|
|
The writers did a good job with Miles. His storyline could have been dumb or just comic relief but he wasn’t. Jacob needed to be a little more hands on with his candidates and followers. I feel like he put too much faith in people not falling for the MIB. Jack as island protector, however briefly, hedged his bets and even then he had to trust Kate wouldn’t run away for once
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 01:28
|
|
|
I remember those threads! I used to have a Lostatar before I lost my old account I had unpopular Lost opinions, though. I really wish they'd been dead the whole time and the island was purgatory. I don't care if everyone predicted it, that would still be a cool twist! I also really, really wanted Vincent to be the smoke monster.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 04:33
|
|
|
I mostly really like the show, though I think it peaked at the end of Season Three. (Seasons 4 and 5 have some cool stuff in them too, as does 1, and there are some good episodes all over the place). My unpopular LOST opinions though? That button plot sucked. Hard. There was literally only one way that plot could end, and they just doubled down on it for 25 episodes. There were some highlights to it, particularly the bit at the end, but way to milk it show. And Michael Giacchino's soundtrack needed to take some Valium. The actual tunes themselves are frequently quite lovely and textured, but everything feels overscored to the point of camp. A mate and I recently rewatched a random episode from the middle of the show -- Not In Portland -- and either that episode is particularly crap, or it just doesn't hold up at all within the context of the entire show. But, man oh man, that opening flashback reveal that Juliet isn't ON THE ISLAND, is honestly hilarious. The bit where Juliet throws open the blinds so dramatically, coupled with the plane zooming over her head, coupled with the NNNYYYRRRR screeching violin noise on the soundtrack is camp as hell. That's the kind of musical overscoring poo poo I'm talking about. Elizabeth Mitchell is really good though.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 05:17
|
|
|
You’re probably going to disagree with how Michael Giacchino won an Emmy for the music in 2005 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Lost
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 16:01
|
|
|
Thinkin about the character writing of Locke. How he's set up at the start to be some kind of survivalist badass but it's slowly revealed that he's not only confined to a wheelchair on the mainland, but he's also kind of a dweeb and a complete gullible rube. He falls for his father's manipulations and cons, just as he later falls for Ben's. He was almost a complete failure in every way. It's been a long time since I watched the series, but was he actually chosen by Jacob to lead the Others or was that just the MIB loving with him/Ben/Richard?
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 18:02
|
|
|
I went to Lostpedia to check. There had been a bit of an on again off again power struggle between Ben and Locke. Ben and Lock went to the Orchid to move the Island. Ben specifically told Lock to go back to the Others and succeed him as leader. Richard approved of this, but then Locke got caught in the time flashes. When the MIB impersonated Locke, he appealed to some others to join him as the rightful leader (Ben had regained leadership in convoluted fashion). https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/John_Locke
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2021 05:33
|
|
|
My problem with Across the Sea is that it badly explains stuff that we're already happy not really knowing. By S6 we're all pretty much on board with "magic island" and "evil smoke monster" and I'm not sure I needed to know any more than that. Especialyl when the explanation is kind of vague and rubbish. Android Blues posted:Yeah, the flash sideways stuff felt like an extended misdirect that was there entirely to prevent you from guessing what the finale was going to be about. In many ways it's giving the characters catharsis and happier endings than they had in life, but the fact that it's played for suspense falls weirdly flat ultimately. I really liked the idea of the Flash Sideways as an alternate timeline because of all the great dramatic irony in seeing how the characters are/aren't the same without the influence of the island. So Ben is a sad pathetic maths teacher pretending to be a big shot master manipulator, and we see that at the same time as his real-world master manipulator facade absolutely falls apart. Sayid has a mental breakdown in the temple and people insist he's a good man who keeps getting forced into horrible situations, and then in the flash-sideways we see whoops he actually is just a violent piece of poo poo who will torture people at a moments notice. It also paints Jacob as absolutely full of poo poo when he justifies bringing the candidates to the Island because they had nothing else for them in the outside world - but in the flash-sideways we see them all doing pretty fine without the Island mucking things up for them. But on the flipside, I do enjoy that we had 6 seasons of characters screaming that sometimes you just have to faith, and that not everything has to have a scientific explanation, only for them to take what first felt like a very obviosuly sci-fi conceit (parallel timelines) and give it a religious explanation. That's some top tier trolling.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2021 15:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 09:17 |
|
|
newts posted:I remember those threads! I used to have a Lostatar before I lost my old account My avatar comes from those heady days when gifs were a brand new thing. I asked for and got someone to make the WTF stinger ending of Jack playing football with the others. Whoever that long forgotten good soul was, they couldn’t get the file size down to Something Awful limits at the time without going monchrome. They selected the jungle green which ironically ended up being same primary color of the Season 3 DVDs. I don’t think I’m ever changing it. Hahaha Oh the theories we had. Hollow earth, Mount Olympus, it’s limbo not purgatory, Smokey was malevolent nanobots, they’re living out the Old Testament...
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2021 16:44
|
|