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

What is bugging me slightly is the WAY that some of these answers are being presented: we spend five seasons - five YEARS - wondering what those whispers were about only for Michael's ghost to show up and casually confirm that, yeah, they're the voices of "trapped spirits" and then we move on.

I realise that this sounds picky - first I complain that I don't get answers then I complain about the way I do get them - but it just seems to indicate that after all that time much of those early mysteries just weren't important and that I wasted my time giving them much thought.

Granted there are bigger fish to fry but the producers have known the end date for quite a while and had plenty of time to plot more engaging reveals.

I guess I just feel that a bunch of things I invested a lot of time and energy into are being trampled over in the big rush for the final resolve.

 

I love "Lost" and contemplating what it means, but it's just entertainment. I suggest investing time and energy into real life, not TV shows.

 

why the break, i thought it was supposed to be a continuous run because of the late start date.

 

Thanks for your sage words of wisdom; I really must get a life.

Of course it's just entertainment. But its also something I've dedicated time to over six years. I don't spend hours musing over this stuff but it's been a topic of conversation between friends (yes, I do have real ones from the actual real world) and work colleagues, and I just feel like we're being short-changed a tad. S'all.

 

I suspect whatever answers and resolution the series provides will disappoint a great number of people.

 

No, I wouldn't say it's picky, although I'm basing that entirely on the fact that I feel the same way. We know there are some things we probably just won't get answers to, and those that we have gotten have definitely been delivered from a sense of duty.

 

This is a TV show and not a story based on a novel(s). You’ve got to recognize that the writers wrote a lot of stuff on the fly - especially at the start. What may have once been written to cause affect in the early stories often has little meaning today. I’m surprised they are even answering some of the questions like the whispers, as it has little meaning today.

And with any Abrams story/production, it’s best to just go along for the ride and dwell on what may happen as opposed to what hasn’t been answered.

 

JJ Abrams hasn't really been involved at all since mid-way through the first season, but since you brought him up ... Alias was an awesome show, with an outlandish but believable premise, and an intricate mythology that actually made sense, for about 3 years. Problem is, the show was on for FIVE years. Compared to how most mythology/conspiracy/mystery shows (X-Files, Twin Peaks) fall apart, LOST has held it together pretty damn well. I won't mind being disappointed with the answers (or lack of answers) at the end, as long as they end it with integrity and intelligence.

As Homer Simpson once wisely said, "They've given you hundreds of hours of entertainment for free, and THEY owe YOU?"

 

I was saying the same thing to my brother.
You are absolutely right.
It reminds me of 2010 where they just explain everything vs the mystery of 2001

 

Yeah it's a bit like they are mechanically ticking off things on a resolution checklist that they set up to be mysteries earlier. Maybe that's it - too many questions were created in the first place, and now it seems too contrived if you think about this stuff. It has lost some of its elegance. They've abandoned character studies in favor of this rush of resolutions. Anybody notice how Kate, Sawyer, and Jack are sort of treading water and not saying much of interest? They used to seem like main characters, but now not so much, not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, it has certainly been entertaining overall.

 

I'd rather they keep things vague and open ended. Even the 'big' answers. Leave the ending open to interpretation.

 

I do appreciate that a) its a TV show and b) much of it was created without any real idea of what they were going to do with it but, in the end, the product has to be judged on its merits not on the circumstances surrounding it. Even if the writers were writing on the fly they've had plenty of time to make sure that they addressed these issues more elegantly (as someone upthread perfectly put it). Hell, they've had, what, 20 hours THIS season...

 

Fixed that for ya a bit

A buddy of mine thinks they will leave plenty of questions unanswered for the possibility of a movie. I really can't see there being a "Lost" movie personally. What do you guys think?

 

The producers have sworn repeatedly that THEY are done with lost when the show ends -- that they intend to provide all the answers they feel need answering in the LOST story. They feel it would be disrespectful to the audience to say, "Hey, did you love watching LOST on TV for six years? Well, go watch the movie to find out how it REALLY ends!"

That said, they have conceded several times that ABC owns the rights to LOST, and if they decided to do, say, "LOST: The DHARMA Years" there is nothing they could do about it. But THIS group -- the creators, the writers, the actors -- are DONE with LOST as of May 23rd.

 

+1. I was like "That's it?"

Sean Murdock will disagree with me again but I think there's a lot of this kind of stuff from the first season that's residue from story ideas they abandoned, and now they have to explain it away somehow.

 

i have found "lost" to become tedious (for lack of another word).

introducing new characters in final stage of a 6 year old show is stupid (again for lack of another word).

answer the questions and end the thing, if i didn't already have 6 years invested i would definitely not be watching this debacle of a final season.

 

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a debacle, but I do think they've second-guessed themselves into a black hole regarding how to go out. Previously (on Lost) their problem was how to keep a series that had no end date going; now they've struggled with how to go out in a way that lives up to expectation.

Maybe they still will.

I agree with Squealy that they're having to explain away abandoned ideas but:

1. they've had long enough to do it.
2. it can't be that hard when your parameters involve suspending disbelief in time travel, immortality, supernatural beings and the ability to move landmasses.

Surely, in amongst all that they could have found better ways (over at least 24 hours of showtime) to tie these loose ends up.

 

I feel like there were enough threads to resolve and questions to answer without introducing the whole "sideways world" concept, which hasn't always been that exciting. That said, the last couple of episodes have seemed to suggest it is going somewhere interesting.

 

Have we disagreed over LOST stuff before? I don't recall... Anyway, I don't think there's too much that got abandoned from Season One -- Walt and everything about him being the biggest thing. I'm willing to forgive any awkwardness in making Season One tie in with the Season Six resolutions, because their mission was much different in Season One. They were just trying to make the best Pilot, and later the best 12 episodes, that they could possibly make. Monster in the jungle? Cool. Mysterious whispering? Cool. What does it all mean? Who cares -- there may never be a Season Two!

Where I hold the show's producers and writers accountable is basically everything that happened on the show from mid-Season Three (when they worked out the end date with ABC) to the end. As much as people complained about spinning wheels and redundant flashbacks in Seasons Two and Three, I actually love the storytelling from those seasons MORE than much of what has come since. I think that the compressed seasons and more urgent plot development has taken a toll on the individual episodes, leading to some continuity problems and some credulity leaps that didn't happen in the first 3 seasons.

All that said, I'm enjoying the ride, and crossing my fingers that it all ends in a satisfying way.

 

I really can't wait for this series to wrap up...I've had enough.

 

Re-watched the "Richard" episode last night, an excellent one to rerun.
Why exactly did they show a re-run last night?

 

My parents are not tv watchers but they were both looking over my shoulder while I was watching this episode. They both could not believe Richard was the same guy speaking spanish.

 

Because they want to keep us waiting until May, 23rd to see the end...

 

Sweeps period starts for the networks next week...that why they hold back new episodes.

 

If there's anything I want to know, it's how they can reconcile this season's apparent presentation of Jacob as "good" to the smoke monster's "evil", with all the evil deeds we've seen Ben and the Others do in Jacob's name in the previous seasons -- murder, kidnapping, general creepiness. If Jack et al. are the candidates to replace him, why were they greeted on the island with such hostility?