Monday, May 24, 2010

Lost Finale: Suck

[Edit: as time goes on, I'm starting to warm up to the ending some.]

If I want supernatural mumbo jumbo I'll go to church. Egads. It went from good science fiction to CS Lewis at the speed of suction. But at least they had what is likely a progenitor to chess in the third-to-last episode. That was cool.

Haiku summary of the entire series:
Plane crashed, all are dead.
Some go to heaven, some don't.
What a waste of time.

17 Comments:

Blogger tanch said...

That's because I knew Lost was making sh!t up by the 3rd season and it was impossible to explain everything so it lost me as a follower. It's not surprising they went for a simplified ending because they realised the predicament they're in.

PS: If you need to go the website, read the news, hints etc. etc. to catch up on things you missed when you watch the series, you're an ever worse dork than I thot.

A good storyteller knows how to tie things together (on screen - not off) eg. Babylon 5.

5/24/2010 02:25:00 AM  
Blogger Signalman said...

I have never seen an episode of Lost so cannot comment on it.
However, even the broadsheets are in on the act. see here...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7758309/Lost-the-final-episode-review.html

5/24/2010 03:49:00 AM  
Blogger Soapstone said...

I agree with tanc's assessment, but I was stupid enough to hang with it through my doubts. I went all in and LOST 120 hours of my life I can't get back. 'Cuz, you know a bunch of hugging ghosts in the end solves everything. Was it all a dream in Jack's mind? Did ghostly Jack operate on ghostly Locke and fix his ghostly spine? Was there ever any danger to the world from the Man In Black? How was it logical for him to try to kill the candidates and then later switch to the plan of having Desmond pull the night light out of the socket? Sayid was always doing stuff including killing out of his love for Nadia and now that he's reunited with Shannon, it's all good. What a mishmash of illogic. My favorite line in the 2.5 hour finale was Miles' "I don't believe in a lot of things, but I DO believe in duct tape."

5/24/2010 04:52:00 PM  
Blogger Blue Devil Knight said...

Yes, that quote from Miles was the highlite. :)

5/24/2010 06:49:00 PM  
Blogger #6 said...

The surviving LOST writers are (as usual in Hackywood) fans of Star Wars. Thus we have Hollywood mysticism and morality a la Darth Vader, killer of millions or billions, and follower of a strictly buddhist dualistic religion (Jedi/Sith) getting a free pass by saying "I'm sorry" and then getting a judaeo-christian happy ending.

As Vader goes, so goes the nation of LOST.

5/24/2010 09:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've watched every episode since the beginning and was extremely satisfied with how everything ended. I've only heard negative from 3 people now(one of them being this review) It seems that the other two whom disliked it were "answer watchers" those that were looking for some sort of materialistic explanation for everything in this fantasy show...I always found that odd. The characters came together well and all in all felt great to be a fan of this show.

There are some question I had from previous seasons but they were not really pertinent to where the show ended up going...

5/25/2010 01:47:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

by the way are you retired of chess?

5/25/2010 10:38:00 AM  
Blogger Soapstone said...

I slightly resent being called an answer-watcher. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for strange plots or completely illogical characters, but not both. My biggest beefs came when the characters did complete 180s. Like trying to get off the island and then going back to it. Like Sayid loving Nadia 90% of the time and then going back to Shannon or switching back and forth between hero and goat about 10 times. Like Widmore and Jack and Locke converging on Desmond being the answer to all their plans out of some faith in the science of electromagnetic immunity. If Desmond was so special, why was Jack able to stumble into the bamboo forest? The writers made up rules and broke them all the time. Value judgments on the characters are also all over the map: Jacob's mass-murdering stepmother, Ben arguably being more of a mass murderer than the smoke monster, killing to protect an island that is somehow vulnerable. Is killing an evil smoke monster who has possessed Locke's body a sin? One gushing reviewer at EW.com said that Jack needed to pay for killing the smoke formerly known as Locke. I can grant Lost its magical/mystical plot. I was just fatigued with this character-based and rule-based whiplash and no longer bought into them as fictitious characters to care about. If "coming together well" means that everybody just hugs at the end, then brilliant endings are just a church lovefest away. Last word: incoherent.

5/25/2010 12:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I enjoyed watching LOST all these years. But I just went along for the ride, like a soap opera. Does everything really have to make sense?

5/25/2010 08:28:00 PM  
Blogger ChargingKing said...

As Nietzsche used to say "Only a fool fails to contradict himself at least three times a day".

Which really leads to the idea of truly human characters, how many of you have said one thing than did another? Is it not sensible that characters in a confusing state of being would second guess themselves at times and do odd things?

Looking at the comments from this blog I can see some liked the Lost finale and some did not. It appears to me that the ratio was close to 50/50.

Although I'm used to artists leaving questions (even big ones) for the reader or viewer to figure out, I'm even more likely to go along with it when its a TV show.

One thing that struck me is the fact that many of the questions people feel are left unanswered are actually considered answered.

Soapstone- it wasn't Jack's dream this was pretty explicit from the show, but if you don't believe me the producers verify this.

I would have liked to have more a resolution for things from earlier seasons like the Walt story line but the kid grew up and it became impossible for him to look the right age.

To each his own, but much of what I'm hearing as being unanswered or contradictory doesn't appear so to me...

It might be my optimism showing but my only problem in the series were some odd story lines in season 3 after that I felt that Lost came back strong and I was quite happy with it. A good friend of mine didn't like it but I also noticed that he was pessimistic before the finale had aired.

Maybe our conceptions of how things should be effect our feelings of the outcome? I'm not sure, but the fact that there is now deep divides and emotion involved in discussing TV makes me think its a good thing!

5/26/2010 02:37:00 AM  
Blogger CMoB said...

I hate to have to admitt it, but sure enough LOST was never the same after the 2nd season. Maybe it was because Javier Grillo-Marxuach left the writers team. Or maybe it was because of the writers strike that followed. What i do know is that i wouldn't mind going out like that.

I'll be missing the show though...

5/27/2010 02:07:00 AM  
Blogger Blue Devil Knight said...

As time goes on I'm starting to warm up to the ending more.

See this video, a hilarious description of the unanswered questions in Lost.

I agree some unanswered questions are fine, but come on!

5/27/2010 09:31:00 AM  
Anonymous Liquid Egg Product said...

If I want supernatural mumbo jumbo I'll watch MonsterQuest on the History Channel.

5/27/2010 10:32:00 AM  
Anonymous XY said...

I like Lost, though not enough to make my top 25 tv show list.

It's a wild show with lots of crazy ideas, although as many point out they kept adding new things all the time and you sort of knew they would never be able to tie it all together in a satisfying way.

Not sure what I think about the ending yet, but I liked the sixth season. More focused than most of the others (i.e. they didn't keep adding new weird stuff in every episode...), and they did at least try to answer things.

5/27/2010 09:24:00 PM  
Blogger transformation said...

truly pining for your Zuke em book review... come here just to check on 'it'. please, may we see it soon? i am all ears now! warmly, dk

5/29/2010 03:25:00 AM  
Anonymous king_crimson said...

First of all they didn't die in the crash, and i dont see how having an afterlife is 'jumping the shark' if you will or mumbo jumbo, especially since its always had huge references and themes of spirituality and religion and the fact the island has some sort of connection to it (spirits being trapped their).
Theres no where near as many unanswered questions as some people think there are, the monster,whispers,dharma,jacob,adam and eve,the sickness,the statue,pregnancy issue,food drops,the island,the black rock,the numbers,the others were all answered and are all the important aspects of the show.
And it is a sci fi/fantasy so it was always obvious there would be mystical or magical answers to some things.
I think alot of the hatred is by people who either didnt understand what had happened, weren't aware that some things had already been answered along time ago (polar bears),expected a scientific analysis for everything that happened, were expecting a reveal at the end like 'the island was a space ship' or it was all a virtual reality programmed by aliens.
It was far from perfect and season 6 as a whole could of been better then it was but i still was satisfied with it. Also this wont be the end of lost, they'll be books,comics,games and probably movies and more series/spin offs which can go into the islands mythology/history more ( which is really the only thing they left unanswered that mattered)

12/15/2010 12:14:00 PM  
Blogger Blue Devil Knight said...

king_crimson I largely agree with you, my attitude has changed since I wrote this post. And clearly they did survive the crash origionally, the purg timeline was only season 6.

12/15/2010 08:49:00 PM  

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