Lost

[murlough23]

For an episode called What They Died For, I sure didn't learn a whole hell of a lot about what they died for. I know why they were killed. But with a title like that, I expected some reason why they were a necessary sacrifice.

Great episode other than that - loved the surprise appearances of sideways Rousseau and Ana-Lucia, and Desmond's diabolical plan to round up as many of the 815ers as possible and make believers out of them.

Also, is Desmond Jesus? lol.

If so, that's the most effed-up Jesus I've ever seen.

Though there is this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377992/

[enemy anemone]

just leaving this here:

[murlough23]

Hurley is a minority. Just sayin'.

[Silvah]

For an episode called What They Died For, I sure didn't learn a whole hell of a lot about what they died for. I know why they were killed. But with a title like that, I expected some reason why they were a necessary sacrifice.

Very true, but I've come not to expect much out of any mythical/mystical explanations. When they stick to crazy sci-fi stuff, LOST is usually stronger, IMO. Saying they died for this light in a cave is kind of lame no matter how you try to make it deep.

If so, that's the most effed-up Jesus I've ever seen.

Yeah, I just think he's gonna be the dude to save everybody in the end. Gah, I'm so anticipating the finale...

[murlough23]

Saying they died for this light in a cave is kind of lame no matter how you try to make it deep.

Yeah, but it's even lamer if the light in the cave could have been protected without them dying.

The solution to this would probably have been not calling an episode "What They Died For." "What They're Here For" would have worked instead, because really, that's what Jacob explained.

[spacebrat311]

welp.

[murlough23]

Josh and I both made predictions on Facebook that turned out to be right. I'll wait to discuss them here until I'm sure folks are caught up.

[Silvah]

I said to a friend, if you watched LOST for the relationships and community between the characters, you probably would enjoy the finale. If, however, you watch LOST for answers to these mind-blowing sci-fi storylines and the numbers and crazy egyptian allusions, you're probably going, "WTF?"

[spacebrat311]

The longer I think about the finale, the more of a misstep I think it was. It feels like everything that was wrong with the BSG finale, but with none of what that finale got right. I'm tired of hearing that it's because "the show was about the characters" too, because a story is a story of characters and vice versa, so I think the notion that you could satisfyingly conclude one and not the other is absurd. Doesn't mean that a satisfying story could have been told without answering a lot of the mysteries, but it's not the lack of answers I'm concerned with, so much as the lack of a coherent story.

[murlough23]

Season 6 felt coherent to me as a story unto itself. There were things that I wish they hadn't spent so much time on given that the series was supposed to be wrapping up - mostly the Temple storyline and the ever-shifting factions of people in the island that kept shuttling individuals back and forth all year. But I think the eventual explanations of what the alt timeline really was and why these folks were on the island made a lot more sense than anything I had concocted when attempting to make sense of it. it rendered a lot of my nitpicks about coincidences and stuff that didn't seem to line up between the two stories null and void.

They could have done better, but I do agree that the characters needed some emotional closure and that this was more important than parcelling out bits of mythology. I think the mythology could have been nailed down more concretely a little earlier on so that a character-based conclusion would have been more satisfying. That's why I hold that the error was made earlier in the season, but the finale, in and of itself, was pretty satisfying. Nothing about it infuriated me to anywhere near the level of the BSG finale (and even that made more sense to me on second viewing).

[RedcoatJones]

Finally caught the finale last night (thanks work travel!). I thought the finale was very strong and a fitting end to the story that had been told the past six years. Coincidentally, I'm reading a biography of Flannery O'Connor right now, and I think Lost would have been her cup of tea. At it's heart, it's a story of "freaks and folks (a phrase used to describe her work)" who are being dragged toward grace and redemption.

I'm ok with not knowing every little detail of the island. I think Lost is asking the viewers to interpret the island and its mysteries through the prism of the supernatural and spiritual. While they do not promote one faith (and some may accuse them of being unitarian in their approach), the island (to me) represents the center of life and the knowledge of good/evil (a la the Garden of Eden). The struggles on the island are the struggles of fallen, broken people seeking redemption. Some find happiness in this life, but the ending suggests that even the struggle for redemption is worth the reward to come in the next life.

On a completely different note, I hear so many people complain that the writers made it up as they went along, and I've always thought that is a bogus complaint. Many incredible writers throughout history talk about the writing process as being one of discovery. Novelists often talk about the surprise they feel themselves when a character makes certain, bold moves. I would imagine writing a television series is similar. While the general outline is there, the details can only build on what comes before as it is written.

"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful." - Flannery O'Connor

[murlough23]

On a completely different note, I hear so many people complain that the writers made it up as they went along, and I've always thought that is a bogus complaint.

Yeah. You need to leave room for a story to develop spontaneously. I know they didn't plan everything they were gonna do from Day 1 (heck, the commentary for "Walkabout" even admits they didn't know when they wrote the pilot that John Locke had been in a wheelchair), but by the end of Season 1, they had the basic "meaning of it all" planned out and I think they had even told Matthew Fox about that last scene that he would be in, presumably because they felt it important to head off potential contract disputes early and make sure he'd be around until the end.

From what I understand, their standard was that they didn't introduce a mystery without knowing for themselves what it meant. They didn't introduce the hatch, for example, without knowing what was inside it. The question was simply when would be a good time to reveal these answers to the audience. Some of this stuff was executed extremely well - like the Beechcraft foreshadowing Eko's arrival, for example - and some of it was stuff that they later decided to abandon, either because they ran out of time (many of the later season mysteries) or because it wasn't that important and they only introduced it when they didn't know how long the series was gonna last (a lot of Season 2 and 3's flashbacks).

I know some stuff was meant to be left open-ended and interpretive. I also understand that some things had to be aborted or postponed because actors weren't available, there was a writer's strike during Season 4, the network suppressed their sci-fi tendencies during Season 1, etc. What irritates is me is that there's so much stuff they introduced with the seeming intent of wanting us to be curious about, and then they never answered it. They had an answer in mind, but couldn't work the story into a position to give that answer without it being contrived. That's just bad planning. You know when your show's ending, you know how many episodes you've got left, so if you introduce something like our time traveling heroes paddling away in a canoe while some mysterious people in another canoe are shooting at them, and then you later go back and spend an entire season in the time period that those time travelers were clearly in, yet claim at the end that you couldn't get the characters in the right place to show the other end of that, well, that's just bad planning.

I know that some of the greater existential questions like "What is the island?", how the magic light works, whatever, weren't things that they ever wanted us to expect answers to. At some point, certain elements of a show just have to be axiomatic. That's fine. The writers commented a bit toward the end about how "midichlorians" had cheapened Star Wars for them, and they didn't want to do that to us.

[spacebrat311]

http://io9.com/5545911/lost-was-the-ultimate-long-con?skyline=true&s=i

I very much empathize with this review.

[murlough23]

Maybe because it all became more and more abstract, until it just felt like I was watching people play a sport whose rules I wasn't familiar with.

Yes. I get that they weren't gonna have some character sit down and say, "OK, here's a list of 'the rules', but when you don't know what characters can and can't do and magical things are being introduced at an alarming rate right up until the end, it's hard to be engaged, because things will neither play out logically nor will they surprise you by breaking expected rules. It's just "anything goes" at that point.

A lot of folks criticized the time travel stuff in Season 5, but I felt like I could follow it because Daniel Faraday was there to explain some parameters. Sure, the show later reneged on a lot of that stuff by saying they could change the past, but at least during the bulk of the season, the rules were reasonably consistent. I knew expect characters to try to change things, but only succeed under very special circumstances. That made things like Sayid shooting Ben shocking. It was fun.

Season 6, I kind of lost my grip on why everybody needed to do everything, because there's this Temple, with this magical spring, with this dude who apparently keeps the smoke monster out even though I thought the ash was supposed to keep the smoke monster out, and there's this cave with names on a wall, and there's this lighthouse that they magically never discovered with different names on a wheel, and Sayid's been turned, except wait, he can change his mind if he wants to, and Desmond's the only one with enough resistance to electromagnetism to save/destroy the island (except for when Jack is, too), and by the way, the whole series was leading up to a pool of glowing light in the center of the island with a cork in it that WAS RIGHT NEXT TO ONE OF THE FIRST PLACES THE 815 SURVIVORS WOULD HAVE EXPLORED! (I'm sure Nikki and Paulo found it and just didn't tell anybody.) I loved the finale, don't get me wrong. But the on-island story grew increasingly arbitrary.

I don't share this author's complaints about the alt-timeline. I rather like how that all worked out.

[spacebrat311]

For me, the fuzziest part is that the finale leaves me with no clear reason why the island should have been saved at all, or the MiB killed. Take, for instance, the fact that the MiB turns out to be a largely sympathetic character, who is only evil because he isn't allowed to leave. Why do we care about stopping the MiB so much that the characters must die for it? If he was truly going to destroy everything by leaving, why does he basically just turn into a normal human when the island is switched off. Obviously he has become willing to kill anyone for his goals, but he doesn't seem to have always been this way, and given the circumstances required for him to leave at all, Jack's killing of the MiB seems little more than revenge murder. For that matter, the only thing that seems to happen when the island switches off is that it begins to self-desruct and stops being magic... I'm not sure we're presented with any believable reason, in the end, that this is a bad thing, when all of the reasons we've been given in the past seem to be inconsistent or fall apart entirely.

The little impetus we're given for the necessity of any of the characters' actions in the island timeline is that Jacob said so—Jacob who turns out to know little more than the characters, and perhaps less than the audience, about the Island. Why do we trust him at all? He has been given information by a mother who gives him almost nothing to go on except vague impressions, who we are given no reason to trust and every reason not to.

So my core problem with the finale is that it seems to do the characters a disservice by providing little to no meaning to, well "what they died for."

[murlough23]

For that matter, the only thing that seems to happen when the island switches off is that it begins to self-desruct and stops being magic... I'm not sure we're presented with any believable reason, in the end, that this is a bad thing, when all of the reasons we've been given in the past seem to be inconsistent or fall apart entirely.

Yeah. I think we needed to see an example of what the stakes really were so that we'd know to root against that outcome.

The funny thing is, since the island was sunk in the alt timeline, I actually wondered if this wasn't just some sort of a distant future where the universe basically rebooted and everything played out with Jacob, MIB, and the island never having existed. Either that, or it was the aftermath of MIB escaping the island and wiping out the original timeline. I was thinking, "This story looks reasonably good for most of the people involved, but what if this is actually the undesirable outcome?" The more I think about it, the less it makes sense to show the sunken island in that timeline, because nobody involved ever knew about the island (well, other than Ben and his dad and anyone else involved in DHARMA).

The little impetus we're given for the necessity of any of the characters' actions in the island timeline is that Jacob said so—Jacob who turns out to know little more than the characters, and perhaps less than the audience, about the Island. Why do we trust him at all? He has been given information by a mother who gives him almost nothing to go on except vague impressions, who we are given no reason to trust and every reason not to.

Jacob was trying to do the right thing through inefficient methods, I guess. He wasn't a particularly great demigod because he didn't seem to think through the repercussions of his actions. But I understand and accept his need to find a replacement. I'm willing to believe that Hurley and Ben did a better job than Jacob did.

So my core problem with the finale is that it seems to do the characters a disservice by providing little to no meaning to, well "what they died for."

Yeah. The finale should have just been called What? They Died.

[enemy anemone]

MIB I have loved, but Jacob I have hated.

=\

[bloop]

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291

[murlough23]

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291

LOL. "What was the meaning of Jack's tattoos? On second thought... never mind."

[latinchic]

I'm super late to the party, but yeah....the light on the island ending thing was stupid.

See? My reviews are to the point. ;-)

[murlough23]

I love that Weezer is naming their new album Hurley because Rivers Cuomo is such a big fan of the character/actor (no, it is not April 1st!), and yet he hasn't caught up on the show beyond Season 2 and is now asking people not to spoil him on it. Seriously, dude? Get cracking on those DVD sets.

[AldaForPresident]

From the fandom menace thread:

I can understand being pissed off at the finale. But if you enjoyed the show (or at least parts of it) for the rest of that six years, I don't think the finale invalidates everything else you enjoyed.

Having rewatched a few older episodes since the finale, I've found that I still love the characters I love, but I get so irritated at storylines that raise questions they never planned on answering, and that, combined with some of the characters getting, IMO, highly unsatisfactory endings, does invalidate a lot of my love for the show overall. I think that's entirely because of the kind of show Lost was, and how for years and years I drank the Kool-Aid that they knew what they were doing, because with other shows that went off the deep end for me, I still really enjoy watching what came before. (examples- Gilmore Girls, The Office)

[murlough23]

Yes, there were definitely some story threads that got dropped when they had no excuse for dropping them. Planning an end date three years prior means that nothing started or expanded upon from Season 4 onwards has an excuse for getting dropped. Before that, I can grant some leeway. Or even if actor availability became an issue (for example, they wanted to bring Eko back for the finale, but his asking price was too high, and they also had to get a younger actress to finish up Danielle's story, though Mira Furlan did finally agree to come back for a lone Season 6 episode). But there was no excuse for stuff like not explaining the other end of the canoe shootout (apparently the characters they wanted to have on that other boat weren't all alive any more by the time they'd have been able to shoot it?)

For me, those unsatisfying resolutions were mostly mythology issues, not character issues. For the characters I knew and loved for most/all of the 6 years, I thought they wrapped up reasonably well. Rewatching Season 6 was what made me realize this. First time through the finale, I was focused too much on who ended up where, who lived and who died, and it seemed too much like the typical action movie "Shuffle everyone around amidst the chaos" storyline with the ambiguity of not knowing what happened to those who left on the plane on top of that. But once I accepted the extreme stretch of my suspension of disbelief that the explanation for the alternate timeline required, that side of things actually hit me like a ton of bricks when I watched it again, in terms of people finally being able to accomplish stuff during that process of "letting go" that they hadn't been able to do in real life, like Jin protecting Sun and her baby from the baddies, or Sayid wanting a better life for Nadia tan what he was able to give (even if making Shannon his ultimate soulmate didn't quite ring true), or the business with Hurley and Libby and the date.

What surprises me most is that I spent so much of the series being pissed that my time was getting wasted on Jack's daddy issues, yet Jack's moment of realization at the very end, when he finally got the validation he wanted from his father, just absolutely devastated me. Also him getting that final bit of peace when he realized all the people he had tried to save (including all the cases from Boone onward up through Sayid, Jin, and Sun where he failed) really struck me. Maybe that was too mushy or convenient for some, to give the characters absolution in the afterlife, but I can't think of a main character whose flash-sideways story didn't wrap up in a satisfying way for me, even if their mortal fate (we know they all died, but we don't know when or how in most cases, so presumably some lived to be old and grey) was left unrevealed.

I'd have liked to see what the sideways world was like for Richard (who presumably would have experienced it in a much earlier time period), or even for Jacob, knowing that the people whose lives he wrecked by dragging them all to the island got a happy ending. But that probably would have been to much of a side detour when they really need to end the series on the 815ers.

Regarding those other series that have "gone off the deep end" - I didn't realize The Office had done this. I wasn't able to get into the show's earlier seasons and only started watching consistently at the beginning of Season 6. I went through and watched the tail end of Season 3 and all of Season 4 thanks to late-night reruns on Fox that have been piling up on my DVR, and enjoyed it, but I can see how the tone of the series has shifted, even if I don't think it's radically different. I find myself missing a few of the newer characters (or characters who got more development later on) when I watch the earlier episodes.

[AldaForPresident]

Yes, there were definitely some story threads that got dropped when they had no excuse for dropping them. Planning an end date three years prior means that nothing started or expanded upon from Season 4 onwards has an excuse for getting dropped.

Exactly- my refrain for weeks after the finale was "If you don't want us to expect answers, don't present the questions." The overall attitude of condescension about the whole thing that emerged in interviews and blogs and such is probably part of the reason I resent the finale so much. The gist of one of Entertainment Weekly's fifty thousand articles about it (which they're still writing, btw- Christian Shepherd needs to tell them to let go) was "If you don't like the finale- you didn't get the show," which made me far more angry than the actual finale did. And Damon and Carlton basically had the same attitude in the EW interview they did last year, so even if it's unfair for me to take that out on the show, I do, I suppose. I kind of resent hearing over and over that they had a master plan when they clearly did not. I honestly, really believe that they pulled the Sideways ending out of their asses. The actual final shot with Jack's eye closing- that I can believe they had in mind all along, but not the rest of it, not at all. As a result of the Lost debacle I have so much more respect for showrunners like Matthew Weiner who fully own that they don't always know where the story's going from season to season. (And that's not even taking into account that Matt Weiner is about 500 million times better at showrunning and writing than Damon and Carlton.)

But once I accepted the extreme stretch of my suspension of disbelief that the explanation for the alternate timeline required, that side of things actually hit me like a ton of bricks when I watched it again

I got the DVD, of course, but have yet to rewatch "The End" since May, although I probably watched it four times then. I can't muster any enthusiasm to rewatch any of season six at the moment, but perhaps when I do- and I will, I'm sure- I'll have similar reaction. I've felt like I must be a monster because most people had this emotional response to the church scenes, but my only thought was "What the fuck was that?" I guess I need to try and watch it now that I understand it as much as I ever will, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stomach stuff like

making Shannon his ultimate soulmate

because seriously, that was ridiculous.

To an extent, I know that part of what I disliked about it could not and could never be helped by anyone, and that was that for the last three seasons or so, my favorite characters weren't the 815 survivors at all, and by season six I really didn't care very much about any of the original characters. That's my issue and I didn't expect the final ep to take the people I cared the most about- Ben, Richard, Desmond- and make it all about them, but I still didn't like the way they were handled, especially Ben, except for his scene with Locke outside the church, which, yeah, totally made me sob. I liked Richard's storyline in "The End," but as far as season six overall went, they totally blew it with him as far as I'm concerned. That's a whole other discussion, but "Ab Aeterno" is rivaled only by "The End" in terms of being a colossal let-down for me. But all that's my own limitations about the characters I liked and didn't like- my main issue with "The End" is the Sideways ending.

I've often wondered what people who didn't watch the show as it aired, but watch the DVDs now that most of the hoopla is over, will feel about the ending. Many X-Files fans hate its series finale, "The Truth", but I adore it and kind of consider it a gold standard for series finales. But I watched all nine seasons for the first time on DVD in about seven months in 2008. It wasn't this nearly ten year build-up that people who watched it "live" had. I'm curious if those who watch Lost in a much shorter time than we did, without all the "we have a master plan!" talk, will have a whole different reaction to the questions "The End" doesn't answer, and the mindfuck of the Sideways universe.

Regarding those other series that have "gone off the deep end" - I didn't realize The Office had done this. I wasn't able to get into the show's earlier seasons and only started watching consistently at the beginning of Season 6. I went through and watched the tail end of Season 3 and all of Season 4 thanks to late-night reruns on Fox that have been piling up on my DVR, and enjoyed it, but I can see how the tone of the series has shifted, even if I don't think it's radically different. I find myself missing a few of the newer characters (or characters who got more development later on) when I watch the earlier episodes.

I just meant for me, it went bad. They did an outright character assassination on Pam, starting in season four, and that was the thing that alienated me the most.

[enemy anemone]

I find that I'm more bitter now about the way Lost wrapped up than I was at the time. I don't begrudge the years, and I find myself missing the good times, but I don't even want to think about rewatching the stuff I had liked before. at this point, I'm okay with never rewatching any of the episodes again--I fear that if I try, all the past enjoyment will turn to a roiling black smoke of hatred. (stupid Jacob! poor Man in Black!) okay I'm going to shut up now.

[murlough23]

Exactly- my refrain for weeks after the finale was "If you don't want us to expect answers, don't present the questions."

I agree with this statement. I might offer the caveat that some overall themes are OK if left to interpretation, but nitty-gritty stuff that was made to seem important (who did X, who was shooting at X, whatever happened to X) should have been answered. Stuff that wasn't that important but we assumed it was because we as an audience were taught to devour all the most insignificant details... I can let some of that slide.

The overall attitude of condescension about the whole thing that emerged in interviews and blogs and such is probably part of the reason I resent the finale so much. The gist of one of Entertainment Weekly's fifty thousand articles about it (which they're still writing, btw- Christian Shepherd needs to tell them to let go) was "If you don't like the finale- you didn't get the show," which made me far more angry than the actual finale did. And Damon and Carlton basically had the same attitude in the EW interview they did last year, so even if it's unfair for me to take that out on the show, I do, I suppose.

There were so many different things to like about the show. The finale, and Season 6 in general, did not actually focus on my favorite aspects of the show. As a show that changed its tone significantly from year to year, I don't think they should be so surprised that the fanbase fluctuated the way it did, or that some folks who really loved Season 1 hated Season 6, etc. I actually think it was good for them to end the show the way they felt they should and stick to their guns, even if it wasn't the ending early fans of the show would have dreamed up. (A good example of fan wishes totally derailing a show to the point where nobody really likes it any more is Heroes.)

I kind of resent hearing over and over that they had a master plan when they clearly did not. I honestly, really believe that they pulled the Sideways ending out of their asses. The actual final shot with Jack's eye closing- that I can believe they had in mind all along, but not the rest of it, not at all.

I don't know that the truth about that can ever be known. I saw seeds of the time travel story planted pretty far back (they wanted to hint at it in Season 1, even, but the network wouldn't let 'em), and that lent itself quite naturally to questions of whether you can change the past, which set up what we thought was the parallel timeline quite nicely. Plus, people were speculating back in Season 1 that the island was purgatory, so if the writers were gonna get the idea to play around with that notion and make the story that takes place off the island actually turn out to be purgatory, that'd have been a great time to first get the idea.

For the most part, I think the major story arcs for the rest of the series were planned from the end of Season 3 at the latest. Other stuff, they had to be flexible for a few different reasons, some of them forgivable, some of them not so much.

As a result of the Lost debacle I have so much more respect for showrunners like Matthew Weiner who fully own that they don't always know where the story's going from season to season. (And that's not even taking into account that Matt Weiner is about 500 million times better at showrunning and writing than Damon and Carlton.)

I also respect showrunners who don't tell outright blatant lies to the fans, but Damon & Carlton were generally cagey about the details more so than just outright lying. Keep in mind that while they claimed to have a master plan, that doesn't equate to having everything planned. Their best explanation of it was a slalom course - you know you're gonna have to pass between the poles in certain places, but your route in between those points can vary.

I got the DVD, of course, but have yet to rewatch "The End" since May, although I probably watched it four times then. I can't muster any enthusiasm to rewatch any of season six at the moment, but perhaps when I do- and I will, I'm sure- I'll have similar reaction. I've felt like I must be a monster because most people had this emotional response to the church scenes, but my only thought was "What the fuck was that?" I guess I need to try and watch it now that I understand it as much as I ever will, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stomach stuff like "making Shannon his ultimate soulmate" because seriously, that was ridiculous.

You've given it more than a fair chance to make a second impression. I think we can leave it be at this point.

That's my issue and I didn't expect the final ep to take the people I cared the most about- Ben, Richard, Desmond- and make it all about them, but I still didn't like the way they were handled, especially Ben, except for his scene with Locke outside the church, which, yeah, totally made me sob.

They could have done more with the non-815ers that hung around for that long. Desmond in particular felt like more of an object to be used by both the good and bad sides than a character in his own right toward the end - though I liked that he was such a big part of unlocking the mystery for everyone else. His "specialness" felt cheap once Jack was able to go in and do the same thing Desmond did - why did they ever need Desmond? At least he got to be there in the church with the others at the end, unlike the science team from the freighter - Daniel and Miles had become some of my favorites by the end of the series, and it really felt like Daniel belonged there with Charlotte, and Miles deserved to have the epiphany along with his cop buddy Sawyer.

Ben got a better epilogue in The Man in Charge. They were a bit lazy about his on-island story in the finale (especially that bit with putting him in peril under the fallen tree, only for him to emerge fine and dandy without so much as an explanation after the commercial break), but I liked that he got the validation from Hurley that he never got from Jacob - to me that mirrored Jack finally resolving his daddy issues.

As for Richard, I loved Ab Aeterno and thought it was one of the series' most fascinating episodes, but they sort of dropped the ball on Richard after that. We deserved more time in the finale to deal with his response to the fact that he'd finally get to finish out his life as a mortal man.

I'm curious if those who watch Lost in a much shorter time than we did, without all the "we have a master plan!" talk, will have a whole different reaction to the questions "The End" doesn't answer, and the mindfuck of the Sideways universe.

You get less impatient just barreling through something like that on DVD, but you also don't get the time in between for speculation about what the hell's going on to reach a fever pitch. You can just pop in one episode after the next and there's less incentive to figure stuff out on your own (out of what could be figured out on your own - some of this show's twists, there's really no way to see 'em coming). From my experience, when I've loaned DVDs of any show to people that I watched when it first aired, they forget the details of episodes because they don't have to take 'em one at a time and then spend a week talking about 'em with friends or at the water cooler. So they'll probably be less aware of questions that went unanswered, but they also won't have quite the same bond with the characters since they didn't spend as long getting to know 'em. (A few months to LOST's characters were a few years to us, and yet mere days for the DVD audience.)

I just meant for me, it went bad. They did an outright character assassination on Pam, starting in season four, and that was the thing that alienated me the most.

I can't recall what Pam did in Season 4 that was so terrible; I'd think Jim would have gotten the brunt of the hate for so suddenly ditching Karen to return to Scranton after finally making up his mind about pam, but I don't really know what all came before that with Pam's other fiance and so forth. Probably a discussion for another thread.

[AldaForPresident]

(stupid Jacob! poor Man in Black!)

Seriously!

I agree with this statement. I might offer the caveat that some overall themes are OK if left to interpretation, but nitty-gritty stuff that was made to seem important (who did X, who was shooting at X, whatever happened to X) should have been answered. Stuff that wasn't that important but we assumed it was because we as an audience were taught to devour all the most insignificant details... I can let some of that slide.

Yeah, I wasn't one to go hunting for the small things on my own; I read a lot of message boards and blogs and recaps that pointed out things to me, but mostly if it wasn't a big thing I didn't really think about it so much. The things that bother me the most still are usually character-related- one of my big ones is they went to such trouble to point out that Ben was obsessed with Juliet, and then never bothered to have the payoff of him finding out when she died. It's not integral to the mythology, but it concerned characters I was attached to and it bothers me.

There were so many different things to like about the show. The finale, and Season 6 in general, did not actually focus on my favorite aspects of the show. As a show that changed its tone significantly from year to year, I don't think they should be so surprised that the fanbase fluctuated the way it did, or that some folks who really loved Season 1 hated Season 6, etc.

The irony is that I was so with them during season six up until the end, because I love alternate universe plots, generally speaking- The X-Files is my favorite show, after all. As much as I cherish season one of Lost for nostalgic reasons and appreciate how amazing it is, my favorite season is probably five, because of the time traveling and the emphasis on some of my favorite characters. I enjoyed season six almost totally until "The End," because I felt like the things that I judged as nonsense would turn out to be something worthwhile in the end- but then, they didn't.

(A good example of fan wishes totally derailing a show to the point where nobody really likes it any more is Heroes.)

I quit watching that one right about the time Mohinder turned into a fly or spider or whatever it was.

I also respect showrunners who don't tell outright blatant lies to the fans, but Damon & Carlton were generally cagey about the details more so than just outright lying. Keep in mind that while they claimed to have a master plan, that doesn't equate to having everything planned. Their best explanation of it was a slalom course - you know you're gonna have to pass between the poles in certain places, but your route in between those points can vary.

Didn't they say that the purgatory thing wouldn't come into play? Or just that the island wasn't purgatory? I suppose that if it was the latter then it wasn't really a lie, but anyway, I guess what bugs me is that they went out of their way to set an end date and say over and over that there was a plan when they didn't have to. I understand they couldn't plan every minute of every episode out, but with something as significant as the finale, I kind of expected them to try a little bit harder. Their "it's the characters and not the mythology" retconning annoys the shit out of me too, because they put plenty of emphasis on the mythology for the first five seasons (not as much as on the characters, but to act like it doesn't matter and people who are bothered by unresolved questions are being silly or nitpicky- ugh).

His "specialness" felt cheap once Jack was able to go in and do the same thing Desmond did - why did they ever need Desmond?

YES. Desmond got some great scenes in season six overall, but the finale was a complete waste as far as his story went.

As for Richard, I loved Ab Aeterno and thought it was one of the series' most fascinating episodes, but they sort of dropped the ball on Richard after that. We deserved more time in the finale to deal with his response to the fact that he'd finally get to finish out his life as a mortal man.

(I've just copied what I wrote in a Xanga entry about "Ab Aeterno" last summer, because my feelings haven't changed.) Personally, what I always imagined and wanted out of the Richard ep was the scenario where we got his backstory of coming to the island and becoming immortal, but instead of spending twenty minutes with him trapped in the Black Rock and wasting time on Jacob's lame cork metaphor, we got a more thorough view of things from Richard's point of view, with him meeting and working with various Others. "Ab Aeterno" demystified Richard to a point where he wasn't nearly as compelling as he was before. I still absolutely loved him, and still do, but what I loved about him to begin with was his air of calm, collected mystique and authority. Of course I wanted answers about who he was and how he became immortal, but I feel like they spent way too much time breaking down his origins and as a result made me seem kind of hapless in his own destiny, especially with his becoming immortal stemming from a rash "Well I don't want to die" statement and then Jacob just patting him on the back and it being done. Richard was a total badass up until "Ab Aeterno" (and he was still one afterward when he told the candidates to suck it because he was blowing up an airplane). I wanted a scene of him making a firm, informed choice to become immortal, not just him being manipulated by Jacob's bullshit like everybody else. I also wanted to see what his role in the genesis of and opinion of the Purge was, given that he often put up an opposition to such violence, but seemed resigned to it when it seemed necessary. Obviously I never loved him any less and it's not like his episode ruined his character or anything, but Richard was so much more awesome when he was more enigmatic, is my point.

From my experience, when I've loaned DVDs of any show to people that I watched when it first aired, they forget the details of episodes because they don't have to take 'em one at a time and then spend a week talking about 'em with friends or at the water cooler. So they'll probably be less aware of questions that went unanswered, but they also won't have quite the same bond with the characters since they didn't spend as long getting to know 'em.

Both watching on DVD and "live" have their pros and cons, for sure. When I watch a bunch of episodes of anything on DVD I always get them jumbled up and confused in my mind. I can pretty much remember the plot of a Lost or Mad Men episode after hearing the title of it, but for something like BSG that I watched mostly on DVD, I have no clue except for a couple that are my favorites.

I can't recall what Pam did in Season 4 that was so terrible; I'd think Jim would have gotten the brunt of the hate for so suddenly ditching Karen to return to Scranton after finally making up his mind about pam, but I don't really know what all came before that with Pam's other fiance and so forth. Probably a discussion for another thread.

Just to clarify- it's not that Pam did anything really despicable after season three, for me- it's just that she wasn't the Pam I had love, love, loved anymore. I haven't watched any post season three episodes of the show in so long I'd be hard pressed to give specific examples, but there was a fundamental difference.