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I am glad that someone compiled a list of all of the unanswered questions that the Lost producers/writers left when the show ended.
I don’t really care about the answers to most of these but watching it irritates me that they jerked us around with the Dharma/Others/Walt/4-toed statue crap when it didn’t matter at all. Oh, and the fucking numbers and the whole ARG thing. “All of this matters”, Jack? Uh, no.
I get giddy around big television events. The Lost finale this weekend certainly qualifies and a big question is, “Will fans of the show be satisfied with how it ends?” From Seinfeld to the Sopranos (for different reasons), series finales have a history of being disappointing. In this way, it’s almost easier when a show is canceled because then we get to blame the network as opposed to the writers. That said, I want to be satisfied Sunday. LOTS of other people are talking about Lost this week. Here’s what some of them are saying:
I’m ready for the final chapter, ready to see how it sums up the season and brings the series to a close. I’m ready to watch meaning (which, to be clear, is different than answers)… But will the meaning leave us in despair, or take us into happily ever after?
What makes Lost so special is that it never spelled things out for us the way a normal TV show does. It defies formula in a medium that regularly rewards it. Lost asked us to get lost within the show and to be satisfied with being lost for most of its run. TV almost never operates that way.
The show had one good season, its first. It was very, very good …but none of the seasons since have approached that level, and the current sixth season, rushed, muddled and dull, has been the weakest.
To me, some of the trick of Lost has been that some things are important and some things aren’t…And that doesn’t bother me at all, because that’s part of constructing a convincing universe.
I’m not saying there aren’t major mysteries of Lost that I don’t want solved…But I’ve accepted at this point that the running tally of questions I’ve had about the show will likely never be answered…I don’t want them to be. Why? Because the answers would probably suck.
3 Lost Links: Lost Re-Enacted By Cats and I’ll Never Be Lost Again, a hip hop homage, and this from the National Post.
Or perhaps the message will be that we should all find meaning in one another, instead of in some mystical riddle. (A swipe at religion? An affirmation of personal agency? A meta-critique of fans who take the show waaaay too seriously?)
It’s all going to come down to this: is this a story about fate or choice? All along, many clues left us thinking it was a matter of fate: the numbers, the crazy mainland connections, Jacob’s touch…
The show really had a lot of ground to cover this season in order to satisfy its loyal fans, but I think we all knew deep down that we’d never really know everything. Still, we were thrown several bones of juicy Island lure…
If you think of Lost as being one big novel…then the stuff that happened in Chapter Five ought to be meaningful in the final chapter. There ought to be a sense that everything was leading towards this ending…
Nothing that was key in the early seasons…is even in play. Even the ambiguities of “Across the Sea” now seem like attempts to shade the battle between mustache-twirling, murderous Smokey and his limp, Jesus-y antagonist.
And now we see that the writers have saved the explanation of the sideways universe for the finale. Even with all that extra time to play with, that seems like an awful lot to squeeze into the finale…I still find myself oddly trusting that they know what they’re doing with this finale.
Inevitably, any answers we get from this point on will satisfy some people and not others.
Did their deaths have meaning or were they just more victims of the seemingly endless battle between the Man in Black/Smockey and Jacob? This episode started the process of claiming that their deaths did indeed have meaning…
For a drama that traffics in philosophy, religious allegory, physics, and literary references from Jane Austen to Kurt Vonnegut, “Lost” has a decidedly B-movie feel. After the remarkably cinematic 2004 pilot episode, set immediately after the Oceanic 815 plane crash, the adventure has been pretty schlocky.
With only two and a half hours to go, there’s simply no way for the show to answer every lingering mystery still up for discussion. I’m not entirely sure that’s a bug as a much as a feature.
If we give the writers a little grace and extend some patience, the suspense leading up to the finale of this television show could teach us something about faith in general.
We propped up the show with our eyeballs, our blog posts, our participation in those agonizing summertime internet Easter egg hunts. They created the whole thing, out of nothing…Let them end it their way.
For years series were canceled and disappeared without ceremony, but nowadays…it is more usual to aim for some sort of closure. (Just as it’s become more common, in life, to think we need it.)
If we were to do a poll on which of the three retiring shows will have the longest and strongest afterlife, I’d bet the winner would be “Lost.” Of course, the poll would be conducted on the Internet, which is sagging under the load of commentary…
What They Died For Better Not Be That Stupid Light
Now I’m just holding on for whatever may come. As long as it isn’t a snow globe in an autistic child’s hand, I’ll be okay.
Fates will be decided, questions will be answered, and one of TV’s greatest series…will come to its conclusion. Not since The Fugitive, one suspects, has a series finale been greeted with such anticipation, and such dread.
This is the best thing I’ve seen this week.
Plus, posting it gives me an opportunity to link to one of my favorite photographs of all time. Big Baby Davis is by far my favorite basketball player.
(via @grahamenglish)
With Lost ending its 6 season run this week, George Lucas sent a congratulatory letter to executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
When ‘Star Wars’ first came out, I didn’t know where it was going either. The trick is to pretend you’ve planned the whole thing out in advance.
For your Lost party tonight: dozens and dozens of Dharma Initiative food labels that you can print out and affix to bottles and jars.
Includes steak sauce, cake mix, tuna, sake, and guacamole dip.
I couldn’t find the entire first hour of the season six premiere of Lost that was supposed to have leaked online, but this contains the first two minutes (plus two minutes from last season):
Update: I’ve gotten some angry emails saying that I have spoiled the Lost season premiere for people by embedding this video showing the still frame of Jack on an airplane. To rebut:
1. Lost is unspoilable. What you think is happening either didn’t happen, won’t happen, will happen again, and has nothing to do with with happened previously or afterwards.
2. Seeing the first two minutes of a TV show doesn’t spoil the TV show…that’s just watching the show.
3. At the end of last season, if you picked the most obvious scenario for season six to open with, it would have been that the bomb reset the timeline and then seeing everyone on Flight 815 headed safely for Los Angeles, oblivious of all that we’ve witnessed in the past five years. You can’t spoil the obvious.
Update: Ok, here’s the first hour of the season premiere (starts at around 1:35:20). It’s a poor recording with even worse sound, but it’s watchable if you have to know RIGHT NOW. (thx, jeffrey)
All 101 episodes of Lost are available on Hulu right now (US only). The season premiere is in 5 days…plenty of time to catch up on all ~73 hours of plane-crashing, hippie-communing, smoke-monstering, eye makeup-wearing, nicknaming, time-jumping weirdness.
We’re about a week away so this synchronized view of the crash of Flight 815 in realtime is a good amuse bouche for the season six premiere of Lost.
A Bolivian TV station was duped into airing screencaps showing a plane crash from Lost thinking that it was the crash of Air France Flight 447 somehow photographed in widescreen from inside the plane.
In their rush to air exclusive photos of Flight 447’s destruction, no one in this newsroom stopped to ask the logical questions, such as: 1) How did the camera survive? and 2) Why are the photos in wide-screen format?
The answers, of course, are: 1) Because the footage is from Lost. And, 2) because the footage is from Lost.
Sweet Marvin Candle! How come no one told me that Hurley from Lost has a blog?
Plot-wise, Little Dorrit is just as ridiculous as Lost, frozen donkey wheel and all. Discuss.
Someone scanned and uploaded some old Dharma Initiative ads from 70s magazines like National Geographic. Wow, that’s a long-running ARG.
BTW, the island on Lost has to be the largest MacGuffin in the history of moving pictures, right?
Your Lost prep for the evening: The Time Loop Theory. Spoilers.
All of the “werid” things that we see happen in seasons 1 & 2 of LOST are a result of the Losties now existing in the year 1996 on the island. This is why Locke can walk, and why Rose is Healed — their bodies are now existing in a time prior to them contracting their illnesses. This is also why some characters, such as Walt, have extraordinary perception — because they’re technically from the future.
This is Lost as Primer (note the Primer timeline map).
Lost is five episodes into the new season and I’ve just now discovered the Lost drinking game. Dammit!
Take a sip whenever: Juliet makes her default wide-eyed, perma-smirk face.
After catching up with seasons 1-4 of the series over the past few months, this is the first episode of Lost that I will be seeing live. Exciting! To commemorate, I’ll be liveblogging the first episode of season five, set to begin here in about 10 minutes. Don’t worry, spoilers will be minimal. Check back frequently for updates.
11:55 pm Ah, there we go. Just under an hour.
11:06 pm Come on Wikipedia…it’s six minutes after the show ended and you haven’t updated the pages for the new episodes yet.
10:56 pm Yes, by all means, don’t show her face. Christ.
10:55 pm Wait, was that the Tardis?
10:54 pm Hurley can always eat.
10:53 pm Sayid is a vampire. Didn’t see that one coming. Cheap attempt to capitalize on Twilight, True Blood, and Let the Right One In vampire maina.
10:50 pm “You’ve got more issues that Life magazine.” TV is so bad.
10:47 pm I made a mistake earlier. Locke is not a Cylon, he’s a replicant.
10:44 pm Well, Hurley, when you put it like that, it all just seems really absurd.
10:43 pm “If the news thinks you’ve done something, then everyone does.”
10:40 pm Dharma, Dharma, Dharma, Dharma, Dharma, Dharma, Dharma.
10:32 pm Ooh, Time Elves! They were riding the Smoke Monster!
10:28 pm I was just thinking…someone needs to kill Neil. Then someone did! And that fire to fire thing just after the water to water transition? Nice. Now do earth and wind.
10:23 pm Wait, was that Lt. Daniels?
10:22 pm Get your own I Love My Shih Tzu t-shirt. It *is* all about shirts. (Here’s another one!)
10:15 pm Caviar sandwich!
10:13 pm Hurley is in the background of every shot. Spot him if you can.
10:10 pm Water to water cut scene? Brilliance reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And now it’s Weekend At Sayid’s!
10:08 pm Wait, who the hell is Neil?! (No, seriously.)
10:06 pm Intense shampoo? Fuck you.
10:02 pm Boooo! Not her. Boo. No more advice from dead people.
10:00 pm I’m really tired of these initial shots of headless people. Pan up, for God’s sake.
9:58 pm SFJ: “9:54 PM: This is impossible to spoil. We are going in circles.” You got that right. (For those of you unfamiliar with TV lingo, that’s called a crossover, folks.)
9:50 pm She’s dead, right?
9:49 pm Why is Sawyer so angry all the time?
9:45 pm Weird Capital One commercial totally rips off Nintendo. Lawsuit.
9:44 pm I liked this series the first time I saw it…when it was called Star Trek: The Next Generation.
9:43 pm Oh right, it’s not supposed to make sense. Look, there’s someone who we know is dead! (Or do we? (Yes, we do. (Or do we? (Etc.))))
9:42 pm How does he still have the compass? Why doesn’t he just give Richard a big hug and drag him along?
9:40 pm Compasses point north.
9:38 pm Tune in next week for “Name! That! Time!” (I can name that time in 2 scenes, Bob.)
9:31 pm Watch out for the knives!!! Oops, too late.
9:26 pm God, I hope this means we get to see Nikki and Paolo again!
9:24 pm Wait, I have to do this for *two hours*?
9:21 pm SFJ is also liveblogging. He says, “IT IS ON.”
9:19 pm Locke is a Cylon.
9:12 pm First commercial is 12 minutes in (Frost/Nixon trailer). Only 12 minutes? Also, I love the Lost titles…short and to the point.
9:09 pm “I guess we’ll never know.” You got that right, pal. You never even explained about the polar bear!
9:07 pm Jack and Ben in a hotel room together? Is Lost doing its own slash fiction now?
8:53 pm This clip show is a bummer. The show’s producers are way too conscious of how the audience perceives the show.
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