Lost: The 6th & Final Season Thread (Part 2)-The End*

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by -Alan, Apr 14, 2010.

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  1. zobalob

    zobalob Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland.
    I watched a TV show and stuck with it for all six seasons and found it fascinating and enjoyable from beginning to end.
    The finale worked for me (though the idea of the main characters in the sideways universe being dead had already been prefigured way back when Desmond was first introduced and there was a shot of Flann O'Briens novel "The Third Policeman" on his bedside table....similar premise) as a satisfying conclusion to the main long and rambling storylines.
    It was a TV show and as such it has been one of the best I have seen, if I want profundity or intellectual stimulus I won't turn on the TV to watch an entertainment show (though in that regard "Lost" did at least have pretensions in that regard).
    First rate entertainment regardless of whether one lives in Stockholm (home of the syndrome) or LA or even in Glasgow.
    High Art?.....nah.
     
  2. vince

    vince Stan Ricker's son-in-law

    Considering the MULTITUDE of books they showed in this entire series, you'd think they'd come up with something just a teensy bit better.
     
  3. Aggie87

    Aggie87 Gig 'Em!

    Location:
    Carefree, AZ
    Great post! :thumbsup:
     
  4. levi

    levi Can't Stand Up For Falling Down In Memoriam

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I thought the finale was perfect. It gave us plenty to think about without hitting us over the head or taking anything away from the human component of the series, which has been the most important aspect from Episode 1 onward.

    There certainly are some unanswered questions, but it's really off base to suggest the writers ducked the big issues. Just to cite four examples:

    -- The hatches, the Dharma Initiative, the Others -- all of these Huge Early Questions were explained brilliantly through storylines that brought more characters into the picture, filled in details of the Island and drew mightily from theology, philosophy, math and science.

    -- The numbers, Desmond's mission and the ironic futility of his desperate computer punching -- great twists and turns that made us all slaves to the hatch for an entire season. Who can forget that numerical sequence or the sound of the alarm screeching every 108 minutes? And yet they somehow kept the numbers mysterious, relevant and a huge surprise all the way to Season 6.

    -- Locke's father, the reason behind the deaths of Sawyer's parents, the impact on the Tennessee con man and one of the most brutal examples of vigilante justice ever executed. Brilliant in every detail -- especially Sawyer's letter and the con games he pulled, with different degrees of success in each episode.

    -- What Kate did. In some ways, the most complex character of the entire series. Cold-blooded killer or saintly surrogate mom? Evangeline Lilly might have been the most underrated player of the show.

    That's a ton of stuff for the writers to take on and fulfill. On top of those, I loved the Desmond-Faraday time travel episode, Hurley's fall for Libby, Jin selling his soul to marry Sun and just about every scene involving Benjamin Linus -- the greatest weasel television has ever produced. And that doesn't even touch the inspired mythology of Richard Alpert and the yin-yang twins of Jacob and Man In Black. That's some fairly heavy boob tube material.

    So what big questions didn't get answered? I know everyone has plenty of responses, but let me just mention the biggest.

    What is the Island? I think Lindelof and Cuse answered this in a different way almost every week -- sometimes in parables, sometimes in science, sometimes in a bundle of contradictions, often in a combination of all of the above. To suggest that the writers copped out and ducked the question boggles my mind. It's like saying the writers of the Bible never fully explained the concept of God. The Island is subject to a different interpretation on the part of every member of the show. And those interpretations shifted and evolved dramatically over the course of six years. How in the world could it possibly be wrapped up and explained in one tidy package?

    Throw in beautiful scenery, soaring music, great doses of humor and tragedy, plus Kate in that hot smokin black dress she wore to Faraday's concert, and put it on network television for free.

    Good lord. I'll take all of that I can get. :cool:

    Jeff
     
  5. butch

    butch Senior Member

    Location:
    ny
    Mate, I'm a Lost and BSG fan and BSG's finale was wretched! It was positively putrid and predictable. I will go on record as saying that it's one of the most abysmal endings in the history of television. Moore and Eick's own cleverness caught up to them and the finale was an exercise in the clichéd and the hackneyed!:thumbsdn:

    To be fair, Lost's finale was not that good. The one Island action was fine resulting in Jack's demise ...to a degree. The whole bit about Hurley and Ben...Ben's the new Richard when when he killed Locke and Jacob?! And the fact the plane left the Island with people in tow with no payoff for the characters was bizarre. Darlton should have paid attention to Watchmen where the off island action in the end presented a glimpse into the characters' lives AFTER the big event. What they left out in the Island story could comprise the contents of a film and/or movie! Not that I'm advocating such a move but they unfortunately left a plot holes that were enormous there.In essence, there wasn't an end to the story per se, so the trite title of The End was not apropos.

    The alternate reveal was utter rubbish. They had probably planned to have an alternate universe BUT changed the concept stream midway. Needless to say, they f%^&d up royally. Their ultimate goal was tear jerking in a corny and sentimentally vacuous way.The Alt actually got interesting at one point BUT that reveal in the last 10 minutes was really a cheap curve ball to say the least.
     
  6. paustin

    paustin Member

    Location:
    columbus, oh
    Watched it again tonight, it was a brilliant ending. The only series ever to feature both the finale' and the reunion show in the same episode.
     
  7. I agree. It was the ultimate F you because the writers/producers didn't want to resolve it. They had enough episodes to provide closure and chose not to. Disappointing doesn't begin to describe it.
     
  8. butch

    butch Senior Member

    Location:
    ny

    It was ultimately the case of making it up as they went along. at the NY Times discussion that had thankfully acknowledged the atrocity that was Across The Sea and its chilly reception from the fan base. Not only was the episode poorly executed BUT it was too much too late. Even something which they had dwelled upon like Jacob's Cabin was a mess and a half!I mean what the f^&k was up with Jacob's Cabin.? Jacob was in the Cabin? Smokey definitely was BUT THEN we find out Jacob is really resides in the statue!

    Darlton also used the hokey excuse of the show ultimately being about the characters. They came up with that bunch of bull because they couldn't adequately explain the mythology in six seasons!


    One more thing. as long as the finale was it seemed rushed. It was trying to cram too much into the two and a half hours. Mind you they had 18 hours in the last season to explain most of the mysteries BUT copped out!
     
  9. Better.

    My alternate ending would have been this:

    The alternate reality and the current one on the island continues to grow closer and closer with one threatening to exterminate the other. The island because of its metaphysical properties allows them a choice--they CAN cross over to that alternate reality where the crash never happened but to do so they have to kill Smokey and destroy the island first.

    The plot device used to destroy the island is up to the writers but killing Smokey should have been much more than simply shooting the Lockeless Monster--if he was trapped as Locke perhaps he could use whatever strength he had left to appear as the other characterrs he has appeared as thorughout the seasons and try and confuse Jack in the process.

    Either way, there's no guarantee that destroying the island will free their consciosuness to migrate to the alternate reality or even if it is truly them but because they keep getting a "taste" of that alternate reality they believe that's what is happening.

    So they make the choice to destroy the island in order to live and give up everything they've experienced together. Except that the feeling of deja vu continues for them and they continue to interact because they no matter what the ultimate fate of their flight, they were meant to be "together" in one way or another with their lives interwoven.

    They sacrifice the island itself (and there will be some sort of consequences for those actions that the writers could figure out on their own).

    Their memories of "another life" remain in the background but they assume their new ones in the alternate reality.

    That would have worked for me much better than a finale that suggested that they met again when they were dead and that the "sideways" story was really about them being in their own "group" Heaven.

    That ending was cheap, pathetic and has been used to better effect in numerous novels (it seemed to me it was ripped off from one of Phil Dick's less imaginative ones like UBIK) and films ("Jacob's Ladder").

    While "Battlestar Galatica" had an ending that petered out it did remain true to the goal of the series--they found Earth.

    It seems that L&C went for the emtoional payoff not the dramatic pay off because they realized that they couldn't pull it all together in a climatic two hour finale. They COULD have done so over the course of a half a season of episodes (and did attempt to with a couple) but even these seemed often tossed off and suffered from clumsy writing.

    A very disappointing finale for a series that offered so much. The show became all style and no substance by the end. Using the idea that it was about faith vs. reason and the journey of Jack from one extreme to another may be true but you need to have the dramatic meat something that wasn't offered in the finale.

    It reminded me of the biggest flaw of "BG" --Ronald Moore never had the series completely planned out which allowed them to discover a variety of story arcs and ideas along the way BUT it also meant that the show was as satisfying as popcorn for dinner. "Lost" did the same thing only they dropped the ball after promising NOT to. That's even worse.
     
  10. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    Great post, Jeff, well said. I normally don't do big long quotes, but your post demands to be read again!

    Harry
     
  11. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I stopped reading right there. One must understand that the two "realities" were in totally different times. The flash-sideways reality took place when the original flight landed in L.A. in 2004. The island reality was 2007, three years later.

    How could the two merge? It's not like there were Gorts around to merge two threads...

    Harry
     
  12. butch

    butch Senior Member

    Location:
    ny
    WK, this is the ending I envisaged as well so brilliant minds think alike! and Nosticker's ending was also far preferable to the sentimental cheesiness we were served last night.

    Actually that ending was reminscient of that piece of pap called Titanic!Lost was influenced by Watchmen, Lord Of The Rings, The Stand , pseudo-philosophy and in the end, Titanic?!! I liked the show better when they were shamelessly ripping off M Night Shamylyan for chrissakes.

    In the end, the sizzle triumphed over the proverbial steak in a most banal fashion. Darlton have joined the ranks of the showrunners(David Chase, Moore and Eick) who gave their fans a finale that was far from fitting indeed.
     
  13. cooper16

    cooper16 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Damon and Carlton mentioned on their podcast that Across The Sea was "what an answers episode looks like." Personally I think an "answers" finale would have been the cop out. I'd much rather feel a long term sense of closure and finality than the immediate gratification of some nagging mysteries being revealed. Yes they had a full season to answer questions but I don't think it was laziness or a lack of planning that kept them from doing so. If they were making it up as they went along what was stopping them from making up the answers too? Not providing all the answers was the bolder artistic choice and more consistent with the vision of the entire series, IMO.
     
  14. nosticker

    nosticker Forum Guy

    Location:
    Ringwood, NJ
    With writers/producers as talented as these guys, it wouldn't surprise me if there was room left for some kind of sequel or TV movie or something. I hate to say that, but I find it hard to believe that the team that came up with "The Constant", perhaps my favorite episode of all, came up with such a....pedestrian ending. I'm sure they entertained many, many scenarios and came up with this. I've heard many people say, "Why would they kill such a cash cow?" and I wonder myself. Much like many episodes of LOST implied, I think there are bigger plans. I didn't dislike the ending, but that inspiration and creativity that were the hallmarks of the series seemed not to be in evidence here.



    Dan
     
  15. neo123

    neo123 Senior Member

    Location:
    Northern Kentucky
    Did not read all posts since the finale, so forgive me if this has been asked.

    Towards the end, when Hurley asked Ben if he was coming, Ben said he was staying out (of the church). Does it mean Ben was not allowed to go to Heaven with the rest of them or does it mean Ben himself felt he wasn't ready to go yet, and thus stay for an undetermined extended stay in the sideways reality (Purgatory/Limbo)?

    Or did I just miss an obvious interpretation of what went down regarding Ben at the end?
     
  16. GreenDrazi

    GreenDrazi Truth is beauty

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA
    Very well said Jeff. :righton:
    And yes, Kate’s was smokin hot in that black dress. What really got me was the way she kept looking at Jack in those end scenes. :love: :love:
     

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  17. levi

    levi Can't Stand Up For Falling Down In Memoriam

    Location:
    North Carolina
    Day-um. Are you sure she wasn't looking at me? :love: :D

    Thanks for the kind words!

    Jeff
     
  18. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    Okay, there are vastly different reasons about what happened, here and elsewhere. People can't even agree if it was intentionally ambiguous or not.

    For the most part, I'm of the "Island-happened, sideways=pergatory" interpretation, but there's one problem I have with this. It was a few episodes back when Richard was calling Hurley on his lie that Jacob was there talking to him, by telling Hurley to ask Jacob what the island really is because Jacob had told him once.

    Now, if the island story really happened, then we weren't told what the island really is, or we're to believe that it was just a mysterious island whose mysteries won't be explained. I don't mind red herrings, but I don't want to be being slapped in the face with one, and to raise the question so close to the end of the show is doing just that.

    And that makes me wonder if those of the 'island=purgatory' interpretation are more accurate. And yet, we were promised all along that that wouldn't be the case.


    A different point, not related to that but just something I want to get off my chest: I don't mind unanswered questions if the answers really exist, in the creators' minds, but I don't like questions that are unanswered because they didn't figure it out. If there's a full plan and we get only bits and pieces of it, then I'm more than happy to spend my menergy interpreting it, but I'm not happy being asked to flesh out a series of 'really cool situations' that the writers pieced together without thought. For the first five seasons, I felt the writers knew all these things; I've been much less convinced this past season and am still not convinced one way or the other.

    And I really don't think I should be asked to buy a book or even a DVD set (and I have them all so far) for the answers. Extras are fine and dandy, but prefer tv shows to be self-contained.

    This sounds far more bitter I really feel. I'm being very non-commital here, intentionally. My initial reaction to the finale was a little cold, but I wasn't outraged like some. I also didn't like the finale of Life on Mars until after it had seeped in a bit. (I'm going to qualify that as the *UK* LoM, lest anyone think I like the US finale.) So I"m going to give Lost's finale some time as well.
     
  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Very few questions were answered in that episode. I didn't mind it, but there were tons of things that made absolutely no sense. For example: why did Allison Janney have to kill the birth mother? Why did the Boy in Black not have a name? Why did he choose to leave his adopted mother and brother for 30 years (!), only to later come back and kill the mother? And for that matter, how did the adopted mother and brother manage to avoid ever getting discovered by the village settlers? And why would she bother killing all of them, years later? How did she discover that light at the center of the island? How did she get magic powers that allowed her to live forever (until she gets murdered, that is)? How did Jacob learn the magic spell needed to transfer his power to Jack? It just goes on and on...

    I'm only asking for maybe a Top 10 List of Answers to Nagging Mysteries, not everything. There's about 500 things that aren't explained, but they could've done a helluva lot more than what they did do... which was pretty much nothing.

    I don't agree. Providing some of the answers would have been harder and taken more effort. They went the easier route, which was to be vague and ambiguous. It's a total cop-out.

    I agree completely. I worked for several days on that episode, and the script for that one blew me away. Wonderful show. It raised as many new questions as it answered old ones, but at least it was fast-paced, surprising, and satisfying -- things that the show finale never was.

    We'll only know if they figured it out when the Lost Encyclopedia comes out in mid-August.

    The opportunity to do some exposition in the final show could've been the lengthy scene with Locke/MIB, Desmond, and Jack in the cave, and later, with Jack and Locke/MIB on the cliff. Jack could've asked Locke/MIB some pointed questions and gotten some responses. Even if it was on the order of what happened a week or two ago, where one of the characters asked Locke/MIB, "why don't you just turn into smoke?" and he answered, "sometimes, I just like feeling the earth under my feet," that would've worked for me. Some kind of answer is better than none at all.
     
  20. KevinP

    KevinP Forum introvert

    Location:
    Daejeon
    I know. I just resent the fact that I have to buy merchandise for this purpose. While I'm sure it will flesh out a thing or two, it's a pity they couldn't tell their story within the framework of a six-season tv show without leaking into an official merchandise tie-in. If I knew I had to buy something to get the complete picture, I wouldn't have watched the first series.

    Like I said above, books, DVDs, etc. that add a little depth to the story or the characters, clarify a point here or there or even offer an alternative interpretation are one thing, but one that finishes the story (or one storyline--the Island's--if you prefer) is something else.

    And the option of not buying it and reading all the comments by those who have doesn't change that.
     
  21. Jack White

    Jack White Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    The way I took that situation (and I think this is very open to interpretation) was that Ben either was not dead yet or that he felt he himself was not completely redeemed (suggested by Ben's conversation with Locke - that Locke's forgiveness helps) and that he had more 'work' to do, especially with his relationship with Danielle and her daughter Alexandra in the alternative LA. There's nothing explicit in the show to suggest that, just my imagination working.
     
  22. Jack White

    Jack White Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    I just realized that several pages back I incorrectly referred to Eloise as Eleanor. I'm surprised in this thread I wasn't dumped on all over for that. :)
     
  23. matthew5

    matthew5 Forum Resident

    Location:
    canada
    I think people are very used to seeing the name "Eleanor" on this forum :winkgrin:
     
  24. kozy814

    kozy814 Forum Resident

    They (and us) obviously had a lot of emotion invested in the show. Not to defend the decision to go the soft route, but I can understand why they would elect to end it the way they did. The characters are such a big part of the story, with Jack being the central maternal figure, I thought the idea of bringing everyone back together for Jack's benefit was fitting.

    The notion that the Island reality was the only true reality but that everybody was “already” dead in the flash sideways didn’t make the best sense. It’s OK that they needed to be together to “move on”. The concert, to me, seemed a bit overly melodramatic, if the only reason for it was to get Charlie back with Claire – that could have been done at the hospital with Charlie getting dropped off by Sawyer while Claire (w/Kate) was having a baby delivered by Juliet, with Jack by his ex-wife and sister’s side (on the heels of his surgery w/Locke) etc., or something… I expected Eloise to be more involved in helping them “leave” in much the same way as she had helped them get back to the island. Maybe they could have worked the ancient statue in as some sort of time travel portal that linked “Island time” to the flash sideways to somehow connect Eloise’s lab to the island, I dunno..

    Anyhow, the writing got a bit lazy at the very end, but the writers were also stuck with the quandary of trying to mash it all together into 2 hours when they probably needed 8. Unless they wanted to devote a week-long mini-series to the final, it was going to be hard to answer all the questions and give the characters the sensitivity they deserved at the end.
     
  25. butch

    butch Senior Member

    Location:
    ny
    Coop, I have to disagree respectfully speaking of course. I wasn't looking for an answers finale per se but they had ample time to answer mysteries that they (Darlton) had put into place and were one of the main attractions of the show. I think it wasn't an artistic choice to use the characters cop out BUT rather a way to gloss over their inability to tie up a vast number of loose ends. I'm of the mind that were making it up all this time. Adam and Eve were there for what 20 years according to Jack THEN it's two characters that came that late into the game?!! That was a crock of bull. And as I've stated about Jacob's cabin...what a mess that was. What about Smokey? He can't leave the island yet he visits Jack as Christian on the mainland? And the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the Smoke Monster were drawn when? After Latin speaking Romans came? Historically that makes little sense, so that was another faux pas. If you're going to construct a grand piece of television literature, at the very least Darlton needed to fulfill the teases they had dangled in front of the viewers faces. In essence, Darlton thought that they were as clever as someone like Alan Moore yet in the end "their fearful symmetry"(that's a wink to Moore's Watchmen) didn't add up in the end.
     
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