Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

I'm not saying everything on Lost makes perfect sense, but people getting all brain-fizzled over tried-and-true concepts like alternate realities and time-travel is like if every time a cop show had a plot where the FBI and the local police had a dispute over jurisdiction and critics were all, "OMG what is this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo? How are we supposed to follow the inner workings of the justice system?"

To confuse things further about whether Sun & Jin married in the alt-timeline. The producers admitted that they fucked up from the beginning by giving Sun Jin's last name, since Korean women do not adopt their husbands' last names. Maybe in the alt-time line Lost hired more culturally sensitive fact checkers.

that would be ... confusing.

I think Ben is the only Dharma guy to turn to the Others, and kills the rest of them in the Purge (late 80s in theory).

think there was one real Dharma guy left after the Purge, Kelvin was locked down in the Swan before Desmond got there

I'd like to know who was watching this show about a magical island for four years and didn't realize they were essentially watching a fantasy-based genre show.

im with nrq, theres messing-with-factual-reality and then theres it-was-all-a-dream-deus-ex-machina-type sins against narrative

tired of the s3 panning. the second half was good and the last few superb - gbx you must watch them for cryin out loud

the more i think about it the more i realize how much better this show would have been as 5 or 6 12-episode seasons

not that i dont love the show with all my heart and soul

but im feeling a little bit abused at this point

Maybe in the alt-time line Lost hired more culturally sensitive fact checkers.

they're still going to get it loliciously rong when doing Des in England.

maybe he's a Rangers fan now

I'd like to know who was watching this show about a magical island for four years and didn't realize they were essentially watching a fantasy-based genre show.

naw dog, i was signed up for whatever, but in the makers' claims to have got it all figured out are not borne (sp? born?) out by the show as it unfolds. i don't really feel much is added to the show, quality-wise, by having the island move through space. i wish it was like a big novel where they publish it section-by-section but then can, ahem, go back, and tighten it up.

i don't care about stuff like jack meets bai ling. makes more sense to me than jacob being killed by -- not the smoke monster-as-locke, but by ben, because uhhh. and then jacob can actually come back to lyfe and tell hurley if he leaves it about 90mins, because hey what the fuck it's only a gunshot wound right?, he can go resuscitate sayid, but maybe sayid is now jacob, and sayid is now vitally impt... n e way this is kind of "and then he"-style storytelling.

jacob is just a ghost, altho it does beg the question what could he do alive that he can't now do dead - apart from catch fish and work the loom thingy

xpost i think they did the island moving in space/time thing because it was a convenient way of filling in the island's backstory - the dharma stuff, the origin of the Others, also Ben/Miles/Daniel/Charlotte/Widmore's stories...

okay not entirely sure why the O6 needed to be rescued at all, but i think the three-year gap and separation created some good developments wrt the character dynamics (though maybe these are the parts that everyone hates) - Jack being just that little bit more fucked up, Sawyer/Juliet, Hurley embracing the crazy, Jin now speaking fluent English, Desmond/Penny/Baby Charlie, Sayid working for Ben...

i'm going to give the Jacob/Smokey/Locke thing a bit of time - they introduced all of this in the last episode, so it's not even close to being completely fleshed out or explained yet...

(also you're nrq? haha sorry i just realised...)

makes more sense to me than jacob being killed by -- not the smoke monster-as-locke, but by ben, because uhhh.

How does Ben killing Jacob rather than Flocke not make sense? If Smokey could kill Jacob himself he had several thousand years to do it in. It would have been a lot worse if Flocke just killed Jacob.

I'm not saying everything on Lost makes perfect sense, but people getting all brain-fizzled over tried-and-true concepts like alternate realities and time-travel is like if every time a cop show had a plot where the FBI and the local police had a dispute over jurisdiction and critics were all, "OMG what is this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo? How are we supposed to follow the inner workings of the justice system?"

― President Keyes, Thursday, February 4, 2010 7:18 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, I think the thing you're overlooking is that Lost is as much a mystery as anything else, and instead of having episodic mysteries or one big mystery, they keep so many different plates spinning at once that I think sometimes it does become overkill and the audience has a right to cry foul. I think the flash forwards were introduced, and then resolved, pretty gracefully, and that great episodes like The Constant really helped people get on board with the time travel stuff. But the alternate reality/flashsideways stuff is a whole new and deliberately disorienting beast, and while I think it's too soon for any critic to say this is too much, it all depends on how they deal with it in the next few episodes, I can still totally see this being the development that turns everyone into Austin Powers going "oh no I've gone cross-eyed."

my mind was not blown but i have faith that the writers won't fuck this up

yeah reading that brief interview with them on EW was re-assuring.

"they keep so many different plates spinning at once that I think sometimes it does become overkill"

well, this is exactly what makes Lost so unique :)
It was like this since the first episode and the writers have been able to resolve effectively many twists and turns. After all, we watch the show mostly to be all-amazed: generally, Lindelhof & Cuse are able to get away with it.

Lindelof, even.

hey guys, it's happened, I am completely disinterested in speculation about the plot now! it only took five seasons.

think u mean uninterested brah

he's completely nonplussed

yeah probably

you guys just don't know about my relationship with the screenwriters

Well, I think the thing you're overlooking is that Lost is as much a mystery as anything else, and instead of having episodic mysteries or one big mystery, they keep so many different plates spinning at once that I think sometimes it does become overkill and the audience has a right to cry foul.

True. But I object to storytelling devices (especially common ones that have been around for centuries) being rejected out-of-hand, before the critic even knows where the writers are going with them, as too complicated for the dumb-ass TV viewership. I mean FFS, there's another network show (Fringe) already using an alternate universe plotline.

I don't think it's the mere existence of an alternative universe plotline so much as it being introduced in addition to the already intricate web of time travel, flashbacks, flash forwards, immortals, walking dead and so on when they've only got one season here to wrap it up. I have faith in the writers too, but I sympathize with people that are clutching their heads a bit after that premiere.

Lost seems to be vaguely organically building these things, at least. I can't think of any major plot questions that haven't rolled into the next thing (why polar bears? Dharma likes animal experiments. why in the desert? frozen donkey wheel explains it, etc.). It's not like the damn X-Files where we have eight explanations for Mulder's sister's whereabouts and no one even cares about the main backstory because it's so contrived. They've been dropping hints about the Temple for a long time, and now it's getting introduced with a mix of old and new characters. Not shabby.

why in the desert? frozen donkey wheel explains it

lol -- not being snide coz im obviously a committed viewer -- but lol

http://cache-08.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/13242/2010/01/800x600_lostway31.jpg

Time travel pretty much has to lead to parallel universe shit by definition, unless you use the "it's impossible to change the future by changing things in the past" loophole, which no one really does.

I think we are seeing a possible universe rather than a parallel one per se. It could actually be a nice pay-off for viewers even if it's just "proving" to us that their destiny was to all come together/to Jacob). Considering what Cuselof said about Heroes and alt futures they can't go down that route so the big mystery now is whether/how the two realities we're seeing will converge or relate.

it would be classic if the stories never converged and half of the show was just following a random bunch of people in LA, short cuts-style. but SOMETHING TELLS ME that isn't going to happen.

would kind of lol if they were showing us "what really happened" after the whole island situation gets cleared up in those asides as opposed to a parallel universe

idk about this 'the bomb went off = Shannon never got on the plane' thing tho

I think we are seeing a possible universe rather than a parallel one per se.

I don't understand the distinction here.

possible = could've happened but hasn't
parallel = is also happening

but i'm taking it back anyway

Comics nerds who are watching Lost may recognize this feeling from reading Grant Morrison. Ultracompression, "pay attention and connect the dots or get the fuck out"

― the end times are coming, but they're just the beginning (WmC), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 8:22 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

I really, really want this show to wrap up in hardcore Morrisonian fashion. Just go next-level bizarro meta on us here, L O S T. I'm down.

― SNEEZED GOING DOWN STEPS, PAIN WHEN PUTTING SOCKS ON (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 10:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh god no... for all its messiness, the lost dudes know how to tell stories about 1000x better than GM

idk about this 'the bomb went off = Shannon never got on the plane' thing tho

― mdskltr (blueski), Thursday, February 4, 2010 3:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i reckon it'll pan out. if the actress wasn't available, they wouldn't have made a thing of it -- could ahve shown stock footage of her on the plane or whatever. they certainly wouldn't have dialogue explaining it, i hope n e way. so far they haven't left the airport but maybe it'll be like the 1985 sections of back to the future 2 out there.

that said, i find it hard to keep all this complicated mythology/backstory stuff in my head, but i enjoy cruisin' along with it anyway and then reading more hardcore fans' takes on it and all the references i missed

possible = could've happened but hasn't
parallel = is also happening

but i'm taking it back anyway

― mdskltr (blueski), Thursday, February 4, 2010 9:50 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

theoretically every possible universe exists as a parallel universe so the distinction seems moot to me

so far they haven't left the airport but maybe it'll be like the 1985 sections of back to the future 2 out there.

― the highest per-vote vag so far (history mayne), Thursday, February 4, 2010 10:52 AM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that would be rad. "ok bye dudes" *jack hops on hoverboard*

i reckon it'll pan out. if the actress wasn't available, they wouldn't have made a thing of it -- could ahve shown stock footage of her on the plane or whatever. they certainly wouldn't have dialogue explaining it, i hope n e way. so far they haven't left the airport but maybe it'll be like the 1985 sections of back to the future 2 out there.

I think they're actually using this to set the stage for Boone's character to go in a totally different direction; most of his time on the island was defined in contrast to his sister and that tension is part of what pushed him into becoming Locke's disciple. How different would that dynamic have been without Shannon's needling?

i would go with the idea of them not being able to leave LAX but it just reminds me of The Terminal rather than The Prisoner so nein danke

Also could we see Locke's Dad again?

idk about this 'the bomb went off = Shannon never got on the plane' thing tho

What about the "the bomb went off = Hurley is the luckiest man alive" thing?

on the Kimmel interview Damon and Carlton said something along the lines of "we hope to have Shannon back on later" -- no idea where they are in the production of the final episodes but maybe they're still trying to get her on and haven't yet?

Apologies if this was posted somewhere upthread, but Newsweek showed some employees who'd never seen the show and solicited commentary. Kind of funny...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/40211#?l=1785302026&t=64735611001

lol at dude who was all "ISLANDS DON'T DISAPPEAR"