Radiation: Geek, annoyed
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I had heard that they'd had the finale firmly in mind when they wrote the initial episodes - my theory is that mid series they went on a few diversions.
That still doesn't explain the polar bear. (In fact - and I freely admit I gave up halfway through season three out of boredom - does *anything* explain the polar bear?)
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I liked it. Not without reservation, but I liked it.
>If the island and everything that happened on it were real, what was the point of the flash sideways?
-Resolving the character issues, rather than the plot issues.>And if flash sideways was just a staging post for heaven, why were there characters in the church who were still alive on the island?
-It was outside of time, some died earlier some died later. Basically, anything said on the show in the past few weeks should probably be taken at face value.> What about Miles and Lapidus?
-Not part of the core story of Jack and the Island. The show begin with Jack opening his eyes, finished with him closing them.>But in the end, it all began to look like a thinly-veiled religious metaphor
- Thickly unveiled, prehaps.> what about Walt?
-Strange mystical island sucks in strange mystical boy, the 2 are not compatible so the boy is sent away. No longer relevant to the Island.>but what about all those pregnant women?
-The ones living near a leaking nuclear bomb having trouble with pregnancies you mean? Clair was on another part of the Island.>what about Mr Eko?
-didn't like living in hawaii so was written out early rather than the planned 4 season story.
-had a pay dispute about returning for the final.
-or, if you prefer, was not actually a candidate and the smoke monster had decided he couldn't use him so killed him.>what about Eloise?
-Got her son's journal, so had partial foreknowledge until the point in time where Daniel went to the Island (hence her later "For the first time in a long time, I have no idea what happens next")
-In the afterlife was in a similar position to Desmond, and now Ben, of being aware of what is going on and trying to sort things out with her son>what's with Jack's son
- an illusion so he can work through his issues with his father.>finally died/accepted they had all died in the crash.
No they didn't, the dialog has been quite emphatic about that. They crashed into a magic island, which some died on, a few escaped from, and a few retired on.> polar bears
-introduced by the Dharma initiative, for reasons not known to the present inhabitants -
The polar bears were escapees of Dharma experiments, I thought. Explained by the the big cages and fish biscuits on hydra island. One showed up fossilised in Tunisia to be found by Charlotte - this is the exit point for people who mess with the Orchid station and move the island - Locke and Ben both went there.
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@recordari: thanks!
Mmmmmm Supernatural... -
So when are we expected to see Ashes to Ashes back on our screens anytime soon?
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didn't like living in hawaii so was written out early
lolnui
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The polar bears were escapees of Dharma experiments, I thought. Explained by the the big cages and fish biscuits on hydra island. One showed up fossilised in Tunisia to be found by Charlotte - this is the exit point for people who mess with the Orchid station and move the island - Locke and Ben both went there.
Yeah, I mean, I got as far as the cages - but that still doesn't explain WHY POLAR BEARS. Except insomuch as the writers thought "Polar bears! Polar bears would be cool!" and did not follow through beyond that, which...explains everything, really.
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Classic example of what I am talking about is the bad guy (help me out here with his name) who first appeared in season two.
He was only meant to be in a few episodes but the writers felt that his character was such a good one that they kept him on.
That's fine in a soap opera as pointed out where its all about characters, but when you are telling a complex story where all the parts should eventually fall into place and make sense then it becomes somewhat farcical IMHO.
Fair enough if people enjoyed the characters and interplay between them and the general escapism of it all but I don't think a series like that should have played out in such a random, haphazard, make it up as you go along way, it wasn't a Warriors game!!!!
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Patchy though it was, I think Lost can still claim to be the big speculative fiction series of the 00s in the same way that The X Files was the big speculative series of the 90s.
and maybe Twin Peaks before that albeit a shorter run with two seasons from 1990-1991.
Who remembers all those "I killed Laura Palmer" t-shirts?
Go on, admit it. Who owned one?
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Please no one claim that Twin Peaks "made sense" - magnificent entertainment though, eh
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I still remember the billboards and the fuss they caused.
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Please no one claim that Twin Peaks "made sense" - magnificent entertainment though, eh
I have absolutely no doubt that it was carefully mapped in advance. And it made just as much sense as it needed to - much like, say, Lost Highway. I haven't seen so much as one minute of Lost so I can't compare.
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I missed one:
> Was Desmond just some sort of crossing guard, there to point everyone in the right direction?
-Flash afterlife Desmond was the first to become fully conscious of his state, and so was prodding the others as he wanted to move on.
-Island Desmond, have had lethal amounts of electromagnetism run through him had a vision of the afterlife, and misinterpreted it. I would speculate that Desmond's lifetime experience might have made it easier to become fully conscious in the afterlife.>that still doesn't explain WHY POLAR BEARS
- "STATED GOAL, REPATRIATION ACCELERATED DE-TERRITORIALIZATION OF URSUS MARITIMUS THROUGH GENE THERAPY AND EXTREME CLIMATE CHANGE"If there is one thing the show was not about, it was answering ultimate questions of origin. If you treat the show as the story of Jack's experience with the Island, (mostly) everything is explained one or two steps away from the core narrative, but beyond that has ceased to be relevant.
>bad guy (help me out here with his name) who first appeared in season two.
Ben/ Linus/ 'Henry Gale'/ 'Dean Moriarty'/ and a whole bunch of other aliases.In a many year show you can't actually plot it super-tight, unless you resort to the soap opera dodge of swapping actors as the production circumstances changed. Babylon 5 faced similar issues, and was another one where characters could be dropped in or out (such as Eko- from what I gather they were initially thinking of a threeway tension between Science (Jack), Religion (Eko), and Mysticism (Locke).
I retrospect, I think the past couple of seasons was fairly tightly plotted- What confused people was the setting off the bomb, but looking back on it Miles had observed "What if setting off the bomb caused the incident?" but had been ignored. Juliet's "It worked" can now be seen to be her becoming aware of the afterlife as she died, but misconstruing what she was seeing.
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Yamis, I think there's a reasonable argument that Lost was about the characters more than the whole polar bear/time travel thing. Otherwise why would you spend half of every episode for the first three seasons explaining what the characters were up to in their personal lives before they landed on the island? Admittedly when you set out to do both character development and plot, you should do both well. But I'd rather see Sawyer and Juliet's reunion done well (and it was lovely) than have the Dharma stuff satisfyingly wrapped up.
What bad guy from season 2? Ben? He seemed integral to the story - if he was grafted on at the last minute I didn't see the seams.
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I have absolutely no doubt that it was carefully mapped in advance.
Everything I've ever read about Twin Peaks disagrees with you there. David Lynch and Mark Frost never intended to reveal the killer, it was the network who forced their hand.
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Yes, fair point. But interference aside, they knew that they wanted to show, didn't they?
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Interesting interview between Stephen King and Lost writers here. They're mutual fans, and there are lots of allusions in Lost to King's work.
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All, I'm saying is, I'd have been happy if it turned out Sidewaysland had been an alternative bolt-hole timeline for the whole gang that Jack had been able to create from the moment of the explosion, by virtue of a temporal influence he didn't actually acquire until later, on becoming the guardian of The Island.
That would have been fine.
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While on his way to kill Laura Palmer, JR was kidnapped by the Three Musketeers, and taken to the Island Elba in the Mediterranean, where he is imprisoned for being a Ham, later to be saved by "The Mad Priest", who helps him escape to Sidewaysland, only to be eaten by polar bears.
And I had no idea how that would finish when I started. No, really.
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I have absolutely no doubt that it was carefully mapped in advance.
It wasn't actually. Both David Lynch and Mark Frost have said they never wanted to solve the mystery of Laura Palmer's death -- the point of the show was how this shocking event, and the gradual revelation of Laura's secret life, affected everyone left behind. I've also got a theory that the whole Killer Bob stuff was brought into play because the man who set Blue Velvet loose on the world couldn't quite bring himself to accept that a man would sexually abuse, torture then murder his own daughter.
But in the end, it all began to look like a thinly-veiled religious metaphor
Only if Oprah is your deity. OK, I know that sounds bitchy but if I'm going to credit any show this millennium with a genuinely sophisticated take on the hazy borders between faith, religion and murderous fanaticism I'd have to give it to Battlestar Galactica.
In the end, Lost just looked like an elaborate working out of Larkin's 'This Be The Verse'. They really do fuck you up, your Mum and Dad. And everyone else in the vicinity.
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Although I do wish they had exposed a little more detail into the workings of the energy/core/light [it wouldn't have been too tricky] I LOVE the idea that an afterlife/limbo would exist outside of time. I actually thought the writers did a sublime job at explaining this. It's odd that so many people believe that everyone died in the first crash, it was made pretty clear by the weathered shoe and the getaway plane soaring overhead ...
He was only meant to be in a few episodes but the writers felt that his character was such a good one that they kept him on
...they kept him and merged his character [quite successfully] into another who was part of the big plan...not really a game changer.
and yes, season two was poor. but they realised this and over the next three seasons created some of the most humanistic sci-fi short stories I have ever consumed.
oh yeah, I'm a sucker for symmetry. nicely documented here: hell of a book...
(also with good screencap art from the new Dr Who...) -
In a many year show you can't actually plot it super-tight, unless you resort to the soap opera dodge of swapping actors as the production circumstances changed.
Not only that, but you find me a show where some stuff just doesn't work. A plot line that had everyone in the writers' room and front office jizzing their panties goes down with viewers like the proverbial bucket of cold sick. (Nikki and Paulo, anyone?) You cast someone who hasn't had a decent take since his audition, or can't leave their extra-curricula bullshit at home. You get picked up for another season, but the sting in the tale is a lot less money that forces you to cut your overheads any way you can.
Although I do wish they had exposed a little more detail into the workings of the energy/core/light [it wouldn't have been too tricky]
I don't know if I really wanted to know any more about the Mood-Lit Hot Tub of The Gods. Much more fun, IMO of course, that we eventually come to realise that Jacob and SOB (Smoky Old Bastard) aren't these all-knowing God-like figures after all. Just clueless children trapped in their twisted Oedipal sibling rivalry. (And Alison Janney as an Earth (Fake) Mother, ready for her close up on the Jerry Springer Show? FTW!)
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For anyone still looking for answers this forum post from a Bad Robot intern (Bad Robot is Lost's production company) claims inside knowledge, and lays out a pretty convincing case for how it all fit together.
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Classic example of what I am talking about is the bad guy (help me out here with his name) ... He was only meant to be in a few episodes but the writers felt that his character was such a good one that they kept him on.
Omar Little?
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3410,
For anyone still looking for answers this forum post from a Bad Robot intern (Bad Robot is Lost's production company) claims inside knowledge, and lays out a pretty convincing case for how it all fit together.
Does it strike you as something of a failure that even after the show has aired, it takes someone from the production co. to explain what happened?
Someone upthread suggested that looking for explanations misses the point. I don't think so. It depends on the genre. I certainly don't mind dealing with metaphor or whathaveyou, but if I'm watching Hercule Poirot I expect to find out whodunit. Lost set up a situation that invited an over-arching explanation for all the weird goings-on, but the payoff was non-existant.
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