Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

xpost- would have made more sense than "an h-bomb created heaven" unless we're saying that the bomb didn't do anything, in which case seasons 5 *and* 6 were pointless?

― dmr, Monday, May 24, 2010 7:04 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's exactly it imo

I dunno, them saying the alt was "the place you all made," I thought it was because of the bomb. who knows

so much of the stuff they actually did show seemed anticlimactic. seriously, that was the smokemonster's death scene? deserved more tbh. (and yeah, to someone's point upthread I think when they turned off the light of the island it turned off his smokey-powers so he was just mortal again and kate could shoot him)

i took that in a "heaven is what you make it to be in your mind" kinda thing. why would "the place you all made" be a reference to a small handful of the people present did?

a reference to a THING that a small handful etc.

took that in a "heaven is what you make it to be in your mind" kinda thing

yeah you're probably right. pretty lame.

and in their mind, the island is underwater

Harold Perrineau and his son don't deserve heaven.

The debate about whether this ending or Battlestars is truly the biggest piece of shit begins now (I say this).

I don't know that this was the best ending this show could've had, but within the context of this season, I think this episode was pretty good and entertaining. Maybe because I was watching it with a bunch of other people, but I laughed quite a bit and teared up nearly every time the sideways characters had an island flash (esp. Sawyer and Juliet). Felt like a satisfying way to send it out -- not because it answered unresolved mysteries or even really made coherent sense, but it reminded me of what I've liked about the show over the last six years.

(I don't mean that what I liked about the show was the character relationships rather than the mysteries/mythology, just that the episode had a nice elegiac feel that made me feel fondly about the show in general.)

i09 nails it, I think. The ending means that nothing at all mattered, ever, and it never had a story, it was all just stuff that happened.

http://io9.com/5545911/lost-was-the-ultimate-long-con

this bullshit refrain of "you don't DESERVE answers, if you thought you were going to get any answers you were watching the WRONG SHOW"

The thing is, the questions that people are raising, at least in this thread, aren't about demanding answers to the island's mysteries. They are about pointing out GIANT PLOT HOLES that any professional writer of fictional entertainment should be able to plug. Or in the case of the Lost writers, not create in the first place. The island being underwater; Lapidus et al flying out without the bearings; if the alt time line happened after the island events, what was up with all of the bleed-over; the a-bomb did what exactly... The Lost writers created a universe with rules and then when they couldn't write themselves out of their narrative dead ends (not even by introducing a bunch of new characters) they just acted like these inconsistencies were MYSTERIES and that any fans who questioned what was going on with the show weren't enjoying the MYSTERIES.

I watched this in a movie theater last night. Kind of hard to even judge it because the music was so overpowering and the whole audience was weeping.

Glad that the one supposed spoiler I saw turned out to be fake: something about it ending with Jack going off island and touching people like Jacob did.

What has pissed me off about the whole last season, however, was the decision to introduce and kill off a bunch of new characters and spend all this time in the fucking heaven/purgatory time line instead of giving the existing characters reasonably satisfying endings to their stories. Widmore getting shot without much fanfare is a good example. Or Sayid going from badass but good-hearted to dead to back from the dead to zombie back to badass but good hearted without there being any examination of exactly why this happened. I guess that technically falls into the "mystery" category of questions I'm not supposed to want to ask, but I know there's a middle ground between full exposition and completely ignoring the fate/motivations of a long-running and much beloved character. There would have been lots of time to really get into what happened to the people we cared about within the frame of the story that we've been enjoying for the past five years if it weren't for the writers deciding to make up an alt-time line that had nothing to do with anything and spending time with Dogen and John Lennon and Tina Fey, etc. etc.

I kind of wanted to see Walt again, but the fact that he didn't show up in the deadverse probably means he moved on with his life and forget about all those suckers he used to play backgammon with and stuff. He probably became a professional bird-flinger and owned a nice car.

forgot

Lapidus et al flying out without the bearings;

I wondered about this, too, but thought maybe it only applied to boats? Did the helicopter carrying the Oceanic 6 use the bearings before it ran out of fuel?

And that's especially galling in light of the writers' (I can't call them "Darlton" and I can never remember how to spell the Lindwhateverwhatever guy's last name) constant insistance that it has never been about the MYSTERIES. It has always been about the CHARACTERS. I suspect it's been about these two dudes falling victim to the Peter Principle and getting in way over their heads.

Okay. I'm done ranting. I had really low expectations, too, and in some ways I agree with John that the finale felt appropriately elegiac and that was fine. But from a story-telling point of view, mysteries or no mysteries, the whole last season was just a bunch of hooey.

(xpost Otherwise, I pretty much agree with you 100% about Season 6 as a whole.)

hopefully there'll be a couple TV-movie sequels where the Harlem Globetrotters resolve everything

LOL

Didn't Kimmel make a joke about the Harlem Globetrotters last night?

I think about 8 million people have made about 8 billion Gilligan's Island jokes over the past 6 years.

Oh, I didn't know that was specific to Gilligan's Island.

OK everybody knows Walt got kicked off the island for going through puberty, but did Claire go "crazy" because she got fat?

i really wish they'd had jacob actually explain why the MIB leaving the island was such a bad thing. that's one "mystery" that felt like total bull. then when MIB unplugs the island he becomes human and pathetically has to run to his boat and get to the plane as fast as he can...and then what? how did he know the pilot would even be there to take him off the island? and what happens when he leaves? does he become a serial killer? so stupid.

they should have had the island sink. and the losties have to catch and kill MIB in the real world. THAT would have been an awesome finale. (for a minute i actually thought desmond was getting everyone in one place so that they could magically defeat the MIB cuz desmond knew he was coming. and that once they killed him the alt/sideways universe becomes the real universe and everyone lives happily ever after.)

that's pretty much what I thought (hoped?) would happen too. Smokey succeeds in the "real" world so Desmond the failsafe has to wind things back in the alt.

maybe the island did sink, I assume it eventually did while hurley was in charge. it would have been nice to have seen this though. saving it for the comic books I suppose.

yeah i'm guessing hurley and ben figured out a way to sink it so that hurley could go home and get some more chicken.

cuz if its underwater they would't have to worry about anyone finding the light.

Didn't Kimmel make a joke about the Harlem Globetrotters last night?

I know a guy who was on the college humor magazine with me has been a producer-writer for Kimmel, so there ya go. The onerous late '70s references foisted on youth.

jimmy kimmel is a gen-x 40-something guy. i'm sure harlem globetrotter jokes come easily to him.

the stoned theory my GF and I arrived at last night: entire show is dying fantasy of immediately post-plane-crash Jack, who's such a high-strung type-A bro that he needs to invent some crazy story spanning multiple dimensions and dozens of characters (starring himself as THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD!!!) before he can 'let go' of life

Sam: [enters a room where Nick is up late watching TV] What's this?
Nick: I'm not sure.
Sam: What's it about?
Nick: I don't know.
Sam: Who's that?
Nick: I think the guy in the hat did something terrible.
Sam Weber: Like what?
Nick: You're so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art... flow... over you.

here's what sums this show up to me: when jack gave hurley the magic water to drink, ben spontaneously produced a plastic bottle. Out of nowhere. Like he'd been waiting to give him one. And that's dumb. It doesn't follow any internal logic that he'd have a plastic bottle lying around. But whatever.
Then Jack bends down to a puddle to get magic water to make him the IMMORTAL ISLAND GUARDIAN. Which is dumb and just showed up and makes no sense within the context of the show.
So Jack fills up the magic bottle with magic puddle water. And the puddle is, unsurprisingly, brackish brown and muddy as hell. And Jack comes up with a bottle of PURE CLEAR WATER for Hurley to drink. Why? Because we don't want the audience to be uncomfortable with him drinking brackish water. And that's the only reason.
They were writing this nonsense while paying no attention whatsoever to narrative or tying up threads rationally and okay that sucks but I can deal with that. But what I can't deal with is that they were routinely lying, in small ways and big, about what we had just seen happening. That's what folks in the trade call "bad writing".

i love how the creators and writers will blame the audience somehow for not embracing their finale

they should have had the island sink. and the losties have to catch and kill MIB in the real world. THAT would have been an awesome finale. (for a minute i actually thought desmond was getting everyone in one place so that they could magically defeat the MIB cuz desmond knew he was coming. and that once they killed him the alt/sideways universe becomes the real universe and everyone lives happily ever after.)

― scott seward, Monday, May 24, 2010 10:03 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this would have been so rad--some jurassic park 3 type shit

my hope was that they would go TRUE meta and have Jack's dad explain that he was on a television show and that all the people on the island with him were actors and they had to go to the wrap party.

Not the wrap party, the Kimmel show. Have the final scene just seamlessly live edit into that.

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/13242/2010/05/500x_picture_7_05.jpg

there is SOOOOOOOOO much they could have done!

The entire six years was just a plot for everyone to at last get to appear on a late night show for their big break.

the stoned theory my GF and I arrived at last night: entire show is dying fantasy of immediately post-plane-crash Jack, who's such a high-strung type-A bro that he needs to invent some crazy story spanning multiple dimensions and dozens of characters (starring himself as THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD!!!) before he can 'let go' of life

It seems a better explanation of all the random elements that were thrown in along the way that were never explained. I like it.

Not going to lie, though -- the Juliet and Sawyer reunion made me tear up.

desmond could have woken everyone up and when they look around they see that the man in black has laid waste to half the planet! and that the man in black has clouded their minds and made them live in a dream world/universe. but now they are ready to get revenge! so sad...heaven is just so sad.

I liked this a lot, but I wasn't interested in getting literal answers to specific questions. (Not something D&C conned me into during the finale last night...a position I reached gradually, mostly during the break between the 5th & 6th seasons.)

BUT...the generally poor writing and acting in S6 did take a lot of the shine off the series as a whole.

It doesn't follow any internal logic that he'd have a plastic bottle lying around. But whatever.

People who travel by foot around an island in the middle of nowhere don't throw away a plastic bottle when it's empty?

So Jack fills up the magic bottle with magic puddle water. And the puddle is, unsurprisingly, brackish brown and muddy as hell. And Jack comes up with a bottle of PURE CLEAR WATER for Hurley to drink. Why?

Because Jack's magic turned it into clear water?

That was basically like the "Seinfeld" finale, but mawkish. Hey, let's bring everyone back then stick them in a room! The difference is that "Seinfeld" had no arch, per se, and embraced anarchy. "Lost" had some semblance of order, which makes the finale feel more like a bait and switch. And also, courtesy Slate, a big riff on C.S.Lewis.

Also, where the fuck do the Sleestak fit in all of this?

I like the LA Times Watership Down comparison. Although the precision with which they recreated Jack's famous waking up scene in the final shot reminded me most of the end of Gilmore Girls.