GeekiN Extra #6 – The Lost Finale
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
This is an extremely spoiler filled talk concerning our thoughts on the finale of Lost. We encourage everyone to leave comments on your own thoughts. But take care not to post spoilers at the beginning on your comments. Also, enter this post at your own risk. There will be spoiler-filled discussions.
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Book of the Month
Y The Last Man Vol. 5In this final Deluxe Edition hardcover collecting Y #49-60, Yorick and Agent 355 prepare for their ultimate quest to reunite the last man with his lost love, while the person, people or thing behind the disaster that wiped out half of humanity is revealed. Then, Yorick Brown's long journey through an Earth populated only by women comes to its dramatic, unexpected conclusion.
Spoilers! Jack turns out to be a robot “in disguise”. ;)
Just starting the podcast…I’ll post actual comments on the Lost finale when done with the podcast.
I have to say that I am glad that I missed the Lost finale on live TV. I was in the middle of a session of Red Dead Redemption and forgot it was even on. Seeing it on Hulu later was better because of the insane number of commercial breaks.
To me, this last season of Lost pulled a switcheroo in sort of focusing only on the characters and leaving the mysteries of the island in the dust. The show has always paid close attention to the characters, but it was only one pillar of the show. You had this great ensemble cast of characters as one pillar, and you had the island and its mysteries as another pillar. The balance between the two would shift a little as the show went on, but each were treated equally, until this season.
Before this season, they at least tried to give answers to some of the mysteries, even if it led to more questions. This season gave up on that and didn’t even bother to answer any questions that mattered. There are tons of major questions and mysteries from the entire show’s run that were just ignored. I never expected the show to answer every little question, but I also expected it to at least TRY to answer some of the big ones.
Why was Walt so important early on? What are the numbers? Why is it bad if smokey escapes the island? What the hell was up with that statue thing and how did it get there? What was the Dharma Initiative doing there? Why was pregnancy on the island such a big deal? Why was Desmond so important? What is up with Libby? What did the Others do all day? Why are there so many temples on the island? Etc, etc, etc.
It is so annoying that the finale basically said “Answers are meaningless and shame on you for even wanting them!” Okay, stupid Lost creators. Have you even paid attention to the cultural impact of your own show? Everyone talks about the MYSTERIES!! Yes, we all have favorite characters. Yes, we wanted to know what happens to them. But we also wanted to know what the hell is up with the island. We want answers, good or bad. We wanted you to actually TRY to explain them. We wanted some sort of payoff, and you gave us nothing! Whether you had everything planned from the beginning of the show or not, you needed to at least attempt to explain things. I would have taken even one answer! Just one!
It’s like we had this big box full of puzzle pieces that we were told fit together to make this large and beautiful picture. Along the way, a few pictures started forming and we had lots of puzzle chunks lying there and started to think things were coming together. And then nothing else fits together and we’re left with a few small pictures that make sense but don’t really fit together, not to mention all the individual pieces left in the pile.
Unlike Scott, I will probably watch the show again, but not for a while. However, I will not be watching the last season, with the possible exception of watching it with my wife (who hasn’t watched the show). The Lost finale was pretty depressing.
Luckily Monday night’s finales kicked ass. 24 was as intense as it has ever been, and Chuck was epic and game changing. Both were a blast. Both gave plenty of answers. Both wrapped up things pretty nicely while leaving things open for future episodes (or a possible movie in 24’s case).
Neither one of them were preoccupied with giving their characters a happy ending. In fact, both Chuck and 24 had really major and crappy things happen to their characters. This led to great drama and made the finales feel like the stakes were very high. Lost didn’t any of these things, and it makes me sad for a show that deserved a better ending than that.
Slight spoilers for the Dark Tower book series here, but I was personally hoping for Lost to have a literal circular ending like those books had. The DT books end with the main character in the exact same place that he started out in the first book, except with one difference that means the story might play out differently the next time. As much as I liked the visual image of Jack’s eye being a bookend to the series, I think I would have liked the castaways crashing on the island again in the same place as where they started the series, but with a few slight differences that we could speculate on how it would change things another time through. It’s not the greatest of ideas, but I think it is better than what we actually got.
Wow. That post was a lot longer than I thought it was.
Wall-of-text alert!!
Here we go! Thanks to College Humor, we have a video chronicling Unanswered Lost Questions!
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
A few mentioned in the video are humorous, but most are legitimate questions that shall remain unanswered.
What that says to me? Either they didn’t have answers, didn’t want to share answers, or they were messing with us the whole time. Either way, it doesn’t make me happy.
I did see this: http://lostmediamentions.blogspot.com/2010/05/someone-from-bad-robots-take-on-finale.html
Not sure about the legitimacy of it, but some of the answers do a little bit to please me. Not nearly enough though.
Just started listening, but before I finish and comment further :) I just wanted to say that I kind of liked the finale at first but the more I think about it, the less I like it.
The wreckage in the credits was ABC’s doing, not the Lost writers. ABC fucked up bigtime IMO for doing that, so much confusion. The island was real.
A few days ago, I would be really mad at you Scott (okay, not really), but as more time has gone on, the more I hate this finale and the more I agree with you. I do, like Randy, like some parts of the episode, but as a whole, I now kind of hate it.
Not sure why Richard wasn’t in purgatory (bad planning), but Christian was because he died. :)
What about Sayid & Shannon? Wasn’t Sayid’s obsession and the whole point of his deal with Flocke (selling his soul), to get with his love Nadia? But he was with Shannon at the end, WTF?
Ben’s redemption kind of came, at least him sacrificing not going to a heaven or whatever, but I see what you mean. The writing of Ben was sloppy throughout the series and with a lesser actor, would’ve been terrible, IMO.
Quantum physics (mechanics) is fascinating and very scientific and could’ve explained so much, and in a cool way (time travel, etc) but they went the spiritual and in the end, it pissed me off.
I don’t know the creators’ beliefs but I don’t see them as really religious, which is why I was so shocked at the ending. I really do how much JJ had to do with this.
I will say I don’t think it ruins the series for me. I loved so many episodes, especially in season 1 and 2. I might just forget about season 6 and create my own answers :)
Funny, the season finale of Fringe was so much better, and if Fringe goes on long enough, could definitely be much better than Lost.
Apologies for abusing the reply button, but the Sopranos joke ending was pretty clever and was scene for scene, dead on. In the Sopranos they used “Don’s Stop Believing” by Journey (it wasn’t Glee that made this song popular again).
But the rest were lame.
It doesn’t ruin the series for me either. I still love the series. But I’ll never watch it again, unless I find some answers that I am happy with.
But in any case, Don’t Stop Believin’ never really stopped being popular, just because it’s used so often. But the Glee appearance actually ranked higher than the original version did. So it’s a tough comparison.
My problem with the alternate endings is A> I was bitter about the original ending being kind of lame, and B> They did everything they could to hype them as real endings. After having been spat on in the face, that’s the last thing I wanted to happen again.
No, The Sopranos really did put Journey (along with Rock Band) back on the map. Sure they still had fans, but they were old like me. :) Glee, though, I agree, put them even higher, back on the map (love that version).
Agree with the alt endings as a whole though (bad, especially, and I’m actually a Survivor fan, the Survivor one). And they did advertise them as being legit, goddamn them.
It’s a HORRIBLE joke to compare Lost to Survivor, so lazy. I hope Kimmel (am a fan) had nothing to do with that.
All right. Just listened to the show and haven’t seen everyone else’s post but wanted to get some things off my chest as far as my, now, 3 day old thoughts on it.
*Spoiler Warning*
I am not as pissed as I was initially. I’ll admit it right up front. The emotional stuff got me. Cried like a baby over everything. But once the schmaltz was over…
I was still really pissed. I can deal with the lack of answers. I knew it. I knew going in that that stuff wasn’t gonna be dealt with I knew.
What pissed me off the most? The acceptance all the characters had over the fact that fate and destiny ruled their lives and they were all nothing more than pawns to a whiny mama’s boy named Jacob’s effed up game. I loved the end of season 5. I loved that these characters had got together, realized that if they blow this island to kingdom come than the whole world would be better. They took things into their own hands and were gonna make their own destiny. I LOVED THAT. I loved them saying eff you to fate. But, nope, guess what? What happened happened and they were all doomed from the start. WHERE WAS THE POINT OF ANYTHING THESE PEOPLE DID IF IT WAS ALWAYS GONNA END THIS WAY????
Desmond, whom I loved so dearly. My favorite character. Know why? (Other than he’s a damn good looking Scottsman who’s solution to being stuck on a screwed up island was to get piss drunk) He all along had been the ONLY character to say eff you to the island, fate, destiny, etc. He wanted Penny, his life and all that. That was what he was about (”The island’s not done with me?! Well, *I’M* done with the island” is just below “we’re not going to Guam are we?” as best line of the show) AND THAN TO 180 HIM AT THE LAST MOMENT????? BS! TOTAL BS! His grand purpose was to be the island’s IT guy of unplugging the light bulb (seriously, for the budget of that show that was the best set they could do?) and plugging it back in???? And I was pissed he and Whidmore never got closure. (I was so desperate for his episode to have a second of Whidmore telling him he was sorry and he was grateful he beat the snot out of Ben over trying to kill Penny. And that he realized he was a total ass for keeping the two apart. And talk about unanswered questions- I was hoping there was a genuine island-y reason for why Whidmore was doing that. Like, he knew Des was a big player in the island and wanted him separated from Penny to protect her. Gah….)
Also, so, apparently everyone who died thinking they were doing so in self-sacrifice didn’t. Juliet’s death was worthless, Charlie’s was. Eloise killed her own son and it wasn’t even for a grander purpose and she didn’t even get to do a thing about it because Jughead didn’t work.
And… why the hell wasn’t Frank in the flash sideways AT ALL. I kept waiting for his big reveal all season. I thought it was so purposeful and that he would have some big reveal otherwise why not have killed him off so long ago… but all he was there to do was pilot the plane at the end and say awesome one liners? And what about Miles? Where was his conclusion?
I felt kind of burned by the ending of BSG so I was hesitant to take up this series until it had completed.
Now, I know, to stay away.
It’s unfortunate, because I think that the series as a whole is one of the best of all time. But knowing that you never get answers is enough to stop me from recommending it in the future.
Say what you want about the BSG finale. Like it or hate it, at least it mostly made sense and tried to wrap the series up and answer some questions at the same time. The only “iffy” part of the BSG finale for me was the short epilogue/coda thing with Baltar and Six. I loved everything else about it.
I have watched Lost week to week since the very first episode. There have been a few disappointing episodes along the way, but as a whole, the show has been great year in and year out. This final season was a huge downturn, and the show deserved a much better final chapter than what we got. They could have even kept the same themes and same general idea, but just executed it better. To me, this season felt like a half-hearted attempt that wasn’t completely thought through. The writers and producers simply said “That’s pretty good, we’ll go with that, I guess” instead of “That’s not quite there yet, let’s make sure it’s the best we can make it”. This season reeked of settling for merely okay instead of striving to make something great.
There’s no guarantee that they would have been able to achieve greatness with the ending to the show, but to me it doesn’t feel like they even tried to get there. More than anything, I think that’s what really has me disappointed with the ending to Lost. Saying “I know we can’t do it, so let’s not even try” will never get you anywhere.
It also bothers me greatly that they keep saying those grand mysteries don’t matter. (That lame, “it’s like life. You never have everything figured out” reason has been tossed around A LOT. Guess what? It’s not life, it’s a story.) If they didn’t matter why bring them up at all? Why have mystery for the sake of mystery?
T the end of the day they didn’t even conclude the characters that well either beyond making them super happy in the afterlife. So Kate or Sawyer didn’t do anything else with their lives? Only that small spance of time on the island mattered? Aaron and Claire either? (And why did no one ever tell Claire her mother was alive and awake?) And I don’t find it particularly “happy” to find out that these people didn’t work their issues out when they were alive but had to do so when they were dead.
Interesting link if it’s to be believed, supposedly this is someone who wrote or worked on the show.
http://lostmediamentions.blogspot.com/2010/05/someone-from-bad-robots-take-on-finale.html
It’s a little buried now, but SaberJ posted that link earlier in these comments.
He’s a noob. How embarrassing for him. ;P
For the time ever since listening to the podcast, I have to say that I was sad as I listened to the show. I kinda hate that the episode was so bad that it ruined the Series to some degree for you.
I hope that I don’t come off sounding naive or simple, but I really loved the final episode. I’m sure my opinion is full of holes, but it had everything that I wanted from the end of the show. As it ended my wife and I looked at each other and we had these goofy grins as we were very satisfied by what had happened.
I have no desire to argue or invalidate your points on the show or in the above comments. You are right in your opinions. You make excellent points, but what I wanted was a conclusion for the characters not the island.
When I recommended the show to other people in the past, I always said, “It’s this crazy sci-fi, survival, island show, but that’s not what’s important. You watch the show to see the struggle and the lives of these characters.”
I guess I didn’t need to know the answers to every mystery. I wasn’t even looking forward to it as I watched. I needed to know what was going to happen to these people that have gone through so much and suffered and struggled.
These were characters who had failed in their lives off the island. They had been tested in the real world and they all fell short. Most all of the characters had nothing to live for, but found a purpose on the Island.
@Sunshinyness: WHERE WAS THE POINT OF ANYTHING THESE PEOPLE DID IF IT WAS ALWAYS GONNA END THIS WAY????
~~These people got to live a life worth living. They got to be what they could never be in real life. Many had a redemption in their personal lives that they would have never had otherwise.
Call me a shallow sentimentalist, but I never expected a happy ending. I was worried it would be some crazy sci-fi explanations. But instead, they surprised me and gave us a personal ending where they got to have the happy ending. They got to have love and move on spiritually. I almost cried at the end.
You mentioned Ben never got a redemption as a character, but he did. In “purgatory” he chose his daughter over power. A choice he certainly did not make on the island. We assume at the end that in his purgatory, he will reunite with his daughter and be the father he should have been. It’s very touching.
At the end of the day, I won’t remember what the numbers meant or how Dharma found the Island or whatever….but I will remember that the characters got the happy ending and redemption that they wanted……and I, the minority, am satisfied.
I actually have a friend that feels exactly like you do. However, as I see it, there are two types of people that watched Lost. Those that watched it for the characters, and those that watched it for the convoluted plot. I count myself in the latter. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the people that watched primarily for the characters will feel like you do.
I liked many of the characters. Ben, Hurley, Charlie, Juliet, Desmond, Sayid, Miles, etc. I was glad to see happy endings for the characters. But why does it have to be one or the other? Could we not explain many of the big questions about the Island AND give the characters happy endings?
I disagree with Scott in that I was happy to see them bring the couples back together. A stretch? Sure. But after 6 years of killing off characters without apology, I’m fine with what they did.
And I certainly don’t need to have answers to every question. But some of the questions were so big and dangling that they were either forgotten about, or they just didn’t fit the answers they had.
Why did Claire HAVE to raise Aaron? How was the smoke monster able to get off the Island when we was charading around as Christian Shepard? But then later he was refined to the Island? WTF is up with the 4 toed statue? Where did it come from? What was the deal with Libby before the Island?
The fact is, you just can’t leave all those questions dangling, and expect those of us that were there for the brilliance that was the Lost puzzle to be happy.
Be that as it may, I totally respect the opinion of those that disagree and love the show. I’ve heard all the arguments. The only time I have an issue with that opinion is when it is followed by people claiming that we are “nitpicking” or not appreciating the show for “allowing” us to use our imaginations.
No, totally with you. I continue to stand by my character priority, but you two were exactly right in the podcast. It seems clear that there were mysteries they just had no intention of answering. Or they knew they couldn’t pull an answer out of their butts that we would buy. But I was very satisfied with the character-centric happy ending. It’s just 2 different camps of viewers, I guess.
unacceptably long post……..sorry. But this topic is important to me. I could go on for pages and pages.
I wasnt going to comment, because at the end of the day its all been said in every way shape and form it can be, but what the hell.
I don’t uinderstand anybody being “ripped off” or “waisting 6 years of my life” over the ending……sure it wasnt great, it didnt answere anything, but for me, the other 5 and 1/2 years of great memories getting together with a friend, sipping beer and pizza and following these characters was an expericance im very glad to have.
Lost started the year after I left highschool ,and I can’t really imagine not seeing some of the scenes from that show over that time, some of them made me stand up and practically yell “HOLY SHIT!!!” and some just made me choke up, but you can’t denie the value of some of these scenes (from memory heres afew):
The plane crash, the first time a flashback interwove with another characters, learning Sun could speak english, finding out about the others, finding the hatch, boons death, finding the tailsection, eko and lock saying “hello” in the hatch, eko staring down the smoke monster, micheal’s betrail, charlies death, alex getting shot, finding out lock was crippled, blowing the hatch….POLER BEARS?!?!?!? and just abou8t any time hurley said “dude”.
I do agree with alot of what you guys said, and I was WAY more happy when everything was scientific, and the black smoke was probably nanobots ect. and I actually said to my dad “I think Bernard and Rose should be the replacements” when we met them, though mine came from the fact that the wanted to be there and that it would be a much more ironic use of the “black and white” theme jacob and MIB used.
I was content when jack’s eye closed, I wasnt happy, but I wasnt really expecting answeres, wich I know I probly should be mad about, but I really enjoyed the fact that I got to say goodbye in a propper way to the characters one last time.
Sorry if this is long or rambly, but I was kind of comming up with it as I typed.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t give back the past 6 seasons if I could. But it totally ruins the big picture for me, and makes me not interested at all in re-watching the series. So, yeah, I definitely feel ripped off.
Look at it as if it were a puzzle. 5000 pieces sounds about right. And at the very end of the puzzle, you realize that you are missing 5 pieces. 0.1% of the puzzle is missing in the grand scheme of things. Sure, it still makes a pretty picture. And you definitely had fun putting it together. But wouldn’t you feel a bit ripped off? Would you hang that picture on your wall? I can’t imagine many people would.
That’s how I feel about Lost. In the end, everything worked out. I had a blast working through the show. But my picture isn’t complete. It’s still there with it’s gaping holes. And if you were to ask me to add it to my collection of shows, I’d only do it if I got it for free. If you were to ask me to do it all over again, knowing that I have missing pieces, I’d scoff at you and do something better with my time.
Well, you did get it for free, you do have to remember that ;-p
Also I kight of did it knowing the peices where missing, if I did enjoy making it.
I knew I shouldn’t have made my puzzle pieces analogy in the middle of one of my long posts up there. Nobody saw it there.
So anyway, I said it first! ;)
*ahem*
Okay, I’m fine now. :D
@Polygon: Mine Was better. :P
@prettz: It depends. Those missing pieces were pretty important to knowing what you was looking at in the end.
Just so we can keep this fairly long (for this site anyway) string of comments going, I just wanted to say that I don’t think the last six years were a waste of my time. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Lost and speculating on the mysteries along the way. I’m kind of in both camps in that I watched the show for both the mysteries of the island and the characters.
Like I said before, the mysteries were one pillar of the show, and the characters were the other. The mystery pillar (that should be a band name) got shafted in the end in favor of the characters. There is no good reason why they couldn’t have remained focused on both this year. Without some sort of reason to stand on, all the emotional payoffs for the characters ring hollow. Saying that none of that stuff matters when you’ve spent five previous years relying on the sci-fi and mystical elements to play the characters off of is a slap in the face to anyone that enjoyed the show.
I mean, look at previous years when we had plots revolving around blowing up a nuclear bomb to reset timelines, teleporting the island, failed pregnancies for no apparent reason, immortal characters, teleporting people, an island hidden from the world, a computer that keeps something from exploding by entering strange numbers, etc, etc, etc. All of this could have been really hokey and dumb if done wrong, but the presentation and storytelling made these things work. Watching the characters try to figure these things out made the characters stronger and more sympathetic.
This season had virtually none of that stuff, and what was there wasn’t presented as well through the storytelling. This made the characters feel much more one-dimensional than they had been in the past. It felt like everyone either kept spinning their wheels or running in circles around the jungle. This whole season felt purposeless, and I think that is a direct result from the finale saying that all the mysteries of the island are meaningless and it’s the time these characters had together that is important.
If you’re just going to say that, you might as well have had the characters stay on the beach eating coconuts and swapping ghost stories by the camp fire for six years. If nothing but the characters matters, then it shouldn’t matter if they do nothing. Right? It just doesn’t ring true at all. I actually did like some of the emotional beats in the finale when the characters were “waking up”, but these moments would have been much more powerful if there was something to hang it on other than “well we wanted to see them get together”.
Remember when Sawyer has holding on to Juliet’s hand, trying to keep her from falling into the pit last year and failing? That moment was a billion times more powerful than any of the moments in the series finale. Pick just about any emotional moment from the series before this year, and it will be better than anything from the series finale. You need that story-driven weight behind the character moments to make them mean anything. Otherwise you are just pulling punches, and the characters are robbed of their meaning as well.
So the finale would have us believe that the characters getting together is the most important thing to the entire show. Fine. I don’t think it’s the greatest idea in the world or anything, but there are worse ones out there. However, without any real reasons behind the characters meeting up in the afterlife or whatever, the characters lose their significance and everything feels like it has no meaning.
Additionally, if nothing that happened on the island really mattered, if all those strange events had no meaning, then what made these people being together so important? If they had only crashed on an island, spent a few days on the beach, and then been rescued, these characters would not be meeting in the “spirit world”. There would be no reason to support the idea that they needed to be together. It is all the crazy events that give the meaning behind why these characters bonded and why this time in their lives was important. So trying to say that these events weren’t important is stupid when the direct result of these events is all the connections between the characters. You can’t have one without the other.
Hopefully my rambling here made a little bit of sense. Writing it felt kind of like having something on the tip of your tongue that just won’t come out quite right. Perhaps I need a Brain to Internet translator. :)
I totally agree with all that is said. All it boils down to is that it doesn’t HAVE to be one or the other. It could have been both Story and characters, and then almost everyone would have been happy.
Even if there had been holes, people would have been satisfied. See also the original Star Wars trilogy, RE: Luke and Leia are siblings. As long as it feels that the creators cared about the story as much as we did.
Spoilers! the island on lost turn out to be Hawaii
the who cast finally walk pass the beach and finds out they been in Hawaii all along .
LOL in case you guys didnt get it that in in side joke
living in Hawaii I know the place they are and I been work nice to one of the sets . so i keep think that would be funny
anyways I hope no one get mad I wanted to post this since Scott said to not post spoilers on the top of the topic i would post a fake one .
Unfortunately a lot of these questions that weren’t answered would have had answers that were even worse than no answers. Kind of like Midi-chlorians in Episode 1.
I disagree. Midi-chlorians were bad, but that’s because the question they answered didn’t exist before hand. And even if they were terrible, at least that gives an answer. I’d rather get a bad answer that I can ignore than to have the lack of an answer that I not only ignore, but also feel degraded by.
Here’s another (hopefully not posted) article, a great, angry article.
He really sums up how I felt.
By Adam Quigley from Slashfilm. Warning, it’s LONG.
http://www.alwayswatching.net/features/lost-sucks
That was an interesting article. Here’s my favorite bit about something that really pissed me off when it happened:
“Q: Why did the writers keep Sun & Jin separated for multiple seasons, only to kill them off almost immediately after they were reunited?
A: Because they’re dicks, and they had nothing else for them to do.”
It exceptionally bothered me that Sun didn’t tell Jin to leave and go take care of their daughter that, you know, he’s never even met before.