Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

they had built up enough mysteries by the time they announced an end date, but instead of boringly paying off all the set-ups, they just gave us new ones, not all of which (in purgatory-type place the island is sunk) made sense

I can forgive stuff like never explaining "the sickness" or building things up like "Walt is special" but never going anywhere with it

it's introducing brand new shit in s6 and never explaining it that's like .... why. so annoying!

I mean luckily I realized sometime around s3 or 4 that all the coincidences built into the show were just stuff for obsessive fans to notice and would never add up to anything. but at the beginning it seemed like the show was going to be both -- that it would make sense as an emotional / character-driven story for the casual viewer but that there was a second layer of crazy obsessive puzzles that made at least a little bit of sense and were logically consistent (key concept) when you picked em apart. At some point they pretty much jettisoned that and just told the characters' not-very-coherent story, and the puzzle aspect was just a bunch of random references to old episodes thrown around with no rhyme or reason plus a bunch of new shit that made no sense.

OK I can deal with the suckiness of the ending now if someone can clue me into some decent genre TV to draw my attnetion to now.

nothing about the vintage WWII pins worn by the Oceanic staff

I have no memory of this whatsoever!

nothing about Cindy or the kids

I assumed they all got massacred by the Smoke Monster during the "come with me or I'll kill you all" thing at the temple?

they voluntarily left with smokey so he had no reason to smite them.

killed in widmore's mortar attack i guess

the implication is that they got blown up by Widmore's missile. but they probably survived and helped bathe Hurley for the next 40 years.

Christian's speech at the end kept reminding me of something, and then I realized it was this Deep Thought by Jack Handey:

It's funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating.

at least he didn't say "after all, no man is an island"

what's with people calling the ending "quasi-religious"...

there was no "quasi" about it

a guy named christian shepherd led them all to heaven. jack died jesus-style and was reborn.

the last scene is in a church.

it was STRAIGHT-UP religious.

yeah but there was a yin-yang symbol in the window

they didn't go to heaven, or at least charlie, boone, and libby didn't.

In their defense I don't think anyone could have plotted their way out of the mess they set up. Is David Lynch superior for never having tried?

I think I've said this before about the post-Twin Peaks spate of multi-season TV dramas - Lynch (and to a similar extent, David Chase) seemed to grasp that they were essentially hamstrung by network economics and politics, that the only way to win the game was not to play, so to speak. The reason these kinds of shows have such problems with resolutions is that the series are not conceived as finite story arcs, and this is because they live from season to season. No network (well, maybe HBO?) is going to invest in a show that has to be over at a certain point - they want the opportunity to financially milk a successful show for all its worth, and as long as possible. Similarly, if a show fails in the first season, they aren't going to want to be on the hook to continue with subsequent seasons that would be required to wrap up the show's story arcs. So the writers of these shows are in a horrible predicament - they can set up all the interesting multi-season arcs they want, but they are constantly under the threat of being cancelled/not being give a clear end-date. So they go from season to season, kinda making it up as they go along. They are not really allowed to plot something carefully from beginning to end, because there's no financial incentive for this kind of approach, and they're constantly moving the goalposts as far as when a show will end. So they have to pad things, develop and abandon tangents, etc. These shows are not conceived like a movie, with a definite beginning, middle and end. They have a definite beginning, the middle is kind of unpredictable, and the end is usually unsatisfying. But it's the nature of seasonal television. It isn't really fair to expect better of writers, they don't have the financial security/freedom to really deliver what the audiences would most like to see.

Jack sacrificed himself so that others could live

his side was pierced with a sword ffs

xposts

yeah tbh this was even more religious than BSG. that was apparently kinda mormon but i don't know anything about mormons so *waves hand over forehead, makes whooshing sound*

xposts

david lynch sux

he was denied sex by Kate three times

they are constantly under the threat of being cancelled/not being give a clear end-date

yeah it's too bad the Lost writers never had a clear end-date

oh wait, they had one for three seasons

she looks like an olson twin in that pic

Better than looking like BOTH Olsen twins, amirite? Eh? Eh?

But seriously folks, she looked like a pregnant woman, whereas earlier in the series she looked like she was wearing a big round thing that straps around your shoulders to make you look pregnant. If you look straight down and the skin on your neck wrinkles a bit, that does not mean that you're a big tub of oleo.

he was black

he was denied sex by Kate three times

And then the cock crowed?

yeah it's too bad the Lost writers never had a clear end-date

oh wait, they had one for three seasons

1) this is extremely rare (maybe even unique?)
2) even so, they didn't have an end date from the beginning, and I imagine a lot of stuff was set up in the first 3 seasons, no? (but what do I know I've never watched this show lolz) They may have mishandled seasons 3-6, in which case yeah blame away. but having an end-date from the middle of the show is not the same as having an end-date from the beginning

tbh this is the kind of thing that makes me fear subsequent seasons of Mad Men

mad men is p linear

i can see it getting less good (if they sacked wiener or he fell off or whatever)

but i don't think there are any big questions we need answered/things to explain

Mad Men has an end-date, no?

yeah that's true there's no real mystery in Mad Men the way there was with Lost or BSG (or Twin Peaks)

xp

weiner has said it won't go into the 70s iirc, and it'll be six seasons, iirc

"OK I can deal with the suckiness of the ending now if someone can clue me into some decent genre TV to draw my attnetion to now."

this show is awesome! way better than lost. okay, i've only seen one episode but it was wildly entertaining. plus, hot babes.

http://moderateinthemiddle.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/legend-of-the-seeker-poster1.jpg

already been cancelled. you won't find resolution there.

Don't trust Scott! He was the one who said we should all watch that LOST show, and look how that turned out.

weiner has said it won't go into the 70s iirc, and it'll be six seasons, iirc

news to me - I mean, I assumed the logical endpoint would be the end of the 60s, but I didn't know about the six seasons thing

im looking forward to this thing w. miranda richardson on amc, looks suspense-y

These shows are not conceived like a movie, with a definite beginning, middle and end. They have a definite beginning, the middle is kind of unpredictable, and the end is usually unsatisfying. But it's the nature of seasonal television.

I take your point, but this show was different. I think a lot of the objection to its story arc -- or at least my objection to it -- is that after the definite beginning, everything was up for grabs. There was no part of the narrative that the writers couldn't one week say, "Well, that's not true anymore." Or just drop and never mention again, more likely. People talk about how LOST had all these "Rules". Fuck no, it didn't have ANY rules. And that's the problem. You cannot in a hundred years convince me that this lack of structure was intentional, or that the last episode made it all glow like God's nads. At the very best, they created a self-justifying bullshit argument for their own inability to make their ends meet. And that's unforgivable.

MM six season thing: http://theweeklyblend.com/wordpress/?p=441

news to me - I mean, I assumed the logical endpoint would be the end of the 60s, but I didn't know about the six seasons thing

― Here is a tasty coconut. Sorry for my earlier harshness. (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 25, 2010 1:50 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark

thing is if they bring in time travel, they can keep it in the '60s as long as they want

It was a game of Calvinball.

mad men ends when don finally jumps out of the window.

Dies of cancer. But that's for another thread.

"Don't trust Scott! He was the one who said we should all watch that LOST show, and look how that turned out."

so true. i do apologize.

'People talk about how LOST had all these "Rules". Fuck no, it didn't have ANY rules.'
There is an actual rulebook and one continuity guy whose job it is to keep everything coherent. I might be confusing this guy with the Lucas counterpart, but apparently he uses some fancy custom database software to manage it.

lost.jaymc.xls

that's sad about legend of the seeker. will have to get the first season box to watch. i liked its style:

http://cdn2.ioffer.com/img/item/144/203/403/knuFFdohp5gIg9m.jpg

is this series canadian? it just feels very canadian for some reason, despite the cool goggle-eyed dude from mad max showing up.

legend of the seeker looks like a really interesting show i will check it out thanks scott

Would try out Fringe but stupid Hulu only has season 2.

i think they film seeker in new zealand.

The Tribune Company has decided not to renew the series as of March 4, 2010. The show's owner, ABC, has announced that while Tribune has decided to drop Seeker, this is not the deciding factor on whether it is cancelled completely.[3][4][5] On April 26th Ausiello Files reported that Legend of the Seeker had been cancelled and would not return for a third season.[6] Fans of the series have responded by launching a renewal campaign titled "Save Our Seeker".[7][8][9][10] Terry Goodkind has expressed his support for the campaign.[11][12][13]

Has anyone EVER managed a long form narrative like this which does all make sense in the end, without dropped threads or inconsistencies or unrealistic character motivations? I mean, I've not read War and Peace or anything, but maybe that's not even on the same scale anyway. LOST was pretty much the first (and may prove to be the last) time anyone's really had a chance to make this kind of thing work on tv, because yeah, they had the fixed end date to work towards. That's what makes it so disappointng to see them fail, but hey, maybe expecting them (or anyone else) to manage it in the first place was unrealistic.

Cuselof will never admit that they fudged this huh (and before people post 'fudged? more like shat on with bombs from space' i am not as outraged by what they've done as most ppl k)

I really liked this Canadian TV show that I thought was firefly for a while.
http://sharetv.org/images/starhunter_ca-show.jpg

It had a "WALT! WHERE'S MY BOY" story arc. I think they found him and he was a messiah or something, then the universe blew up and people shifted through time.

There is an actual rulebook and one continuity guy whose job it is to keep everything coherent. I might be confusing this guy with the Lucas counterpart, but apparently he uses some fancy custom database software to manage it.

Yeah, Gregg Nations has a lot to answer for.

Has anyone EVER managed a long form narrative like this which does all make sense in the end, without dropped threads or inconsistencies or unrealistic character motivations?

Sopranos. The Wire too, from what I can tell (I didn't watch the last season)