Lost (spoilers)

[SiliasRuby]

Was it me, or did teen Miles look like Rufio?

What if Miles is Ruffio.

[modage]

i wrote a little blog about LOST...

I had a few thoughts recently about why this season of LOST is not quite doing it for me and I think it boils down to this:

It's more interesting to present a mystery than it is to solve one.

The closer we come to the end of the series, the less mystery that remains.  The absolute best episodes of the show are the ones with the highest WTF factor.  The episodes you never could've seen coming, expand the scope of the show and keep you engaged.  The most unsatisfying episodes are the ones that answer a lot of those questions, threading the gaps can be revelatory but can also confirm what you may already have figured out.  Which is my worry that with a little over a season to go, the show may be little more than tying up the loose ends.

What is the statue?  What is the island?  Why is Locke's destiny to lead the Others?  I'm not sure there are satisfying answers to any of these questions.  Now that the show has fully ventured into the supernatural, we know there are not going to be logical explanations for these questions.  Fans of the show have long demanded answers but what they don't realize is getting them wont make them feel satisfied!  I recently rewatched Twin Peaks which is the prime example of resolving the mystery killing the show creatively.  And to borrow a Star Wars reference reference from LOST:

LOST was Star Wars original Trilogy, and now it's the prequel Trilogy.

We're back in time and we're getting answers to questions we didn't neccesarily ask.  (I'm not sure I needed an extensive look at what life was like for Dharma workers.)  The biggest misstep in my opinion is: young Ben Linus.  Ben was so much more effective as a sociopath whose motivations were mysterious and origins unknown.  Once we've seen Ben's childhood, and made him sympathetic he's no longer a great villain (just like Darth Vader!).  They could've taken a page from Chris Nolan's Joker and hinted at but never fully explained why Ben is this way.

I'm just hoping that there are more mysteries left and that some questions remain unanswered.  Sometimes less is more.


http://modage.tumblr.com/post/96934704/the-trouble-with-lost

[SiliasRuby]

I agree with you when it comes to ben mod, but I am still heavily enjoying myself.

[bonanzataz]

i think that what you're saying is mostly true, mod, but i don't agree with your reasoning. you say that learning the answers to all of lost's questions isn't very satisfying, which is true, but not because we are learning the answers, just because of the way the answers are being presented. for me, one of the best moments of the series was finding out that the hatch, the major thrust of that season, was responsible for the plane crash. all that time had been building and building over the season when we were asking, what happens when you don't push the button, and then when we found out, i don't know about you, but that's probably the biggest wtf moment for me. the answers are satisfying when the answers are as big as the questions.

this season has been constantly answering questions that, like you said, maybe need not have been answered, and if they DID need to be answered, they are being answered in very unspectacular and all too tidy ways. the biggest gaffe so far has been little ben, especially in that incredibly convenient line of dialogue explaining that by being saved, ben will just become evil and won't remember any of the losties. they ARE pulling a lucas by going back in time and reinventing things so that it fits in with this season's major plot points instead of tailoring what could be considered minor plot points (for this season, that is) to fit with earlier seasons. another big example of this is whidmore and his relationship with his daughter penny. so now they're trying to tell me that for what must have been the first 10-15 years of his daughter's life, whidmore was going back and forth from the island to the mainland without penny's knowledge? keep in mind, the submarine only comes once a month, so this would mean a month on the island, a month off the island. whidmore would be absent for half of her childhood, yet penny and her father seem fairly close - so close, in fact, that desmond feels it necessary to ask whidmore permission for penny's hand in marriage then actually doesn't go through with the proposal when whidmore says "no." it's ridiculous. let's also not forget that the reason whidmore was kicked off the island was for having a life on the mainland. so for 10-15 years, nobody on the island realized that he was leaving for long stretches of time? the sneaky "others" or whatever they're calling themselves now never spied on him to find out about his family? i won't even get heavily into money issues or how whidmore became wealthy on the mainland while being incommunicado half of the year, but needless to say, it's preposterous. the only reason they had whidmore stay on the island for longer than he feasibly should have is because it heightened the dramatic tension between whidmore and ben... going back in time to create scenarios that don't make sense in earlier seasons but make sense dramatically in this season... it's sloppy writing. say what you will about the dialogue being ham-handed, but the lost writers have always been very good at plotting, pacing, and consistency, it's just not been that apparent this season.

let's take a look at, of all things, larry david. what makes seinfeld, curb your enthusiasm, and, albeit to a lesser extent, sour grapes so memorable is the way they are plotted. you have storyline A and storyline B (and sometimes more) and they all seem unconnected until the final act when all storylines collide with one another resulting in an explosion of hilarity. at the best of times, this is what lost does (especially in using the flashbacks and what is happening on the island to further character development). what's different is that there are storylines that run through entire seasons, so tying them up is a bit harder. what they're doing, though, is not even bothering to follow us through to the punchline. they're just kind of dropping answers for the sake of dropping answers. what i HATE about this season is the constant use of giving us little reveals and pretending like they're big reveals. how many times this season did they not show a character's face until the end of a scene and then most of the time you didn't even know who the fuck that person was until they said "i'm little ben"? it's infuriating! so no, mod, i don't think learning the answers is a bad thing for the show, i think that sloppy writing is a bad thing for the show.


i will only talk about twin peaks for the rest of this post.


it's ridiculous to say that twin peaks failed because it answered questions. watch that show again, the only real questiony questions that were asked in that series were in the pilot. the rest of the show is about finding answers which lead to bigger questions, much like lost. twin peaks reached its zenith in the answer followed by a question pattern when laura palmer's killer was revealed and the mysteries of BOB were brought to light. when the killer was revealed and then in turn killed, those were two of the hardest hitting episodes of that show that i had ever seen. those were VERY satisfying answers, and even if wanting to know more about BOB wasn't AS intriguing as knowing who physically killed laura palmer, i was still anxious to know more about the mysteries of the woods and the white and black lodges. the writers and directors from season 2 didn't know how to handle it though. look at season 1 of twin peaks. its quirkiness and melodrama are definitely a major part if its appeal, but both characteristics are always restrained juuust before the breaking point. the show never really enters into the realm of flat out silly. season 2 takes brilliant and lovable characters and pushes their quirkiness beyond the breaking point. nadine enters high school with super strength. the humorous subtext of the melodrama is gone, and replaced with simple cliche when james finds himself in the company of evelyn. a lot of this was due to the high episode order after the highly successful 7 season mid-season replacement run. they needed to bring on new writers and directors to pump out new episodes FAST, and these writers lacked the finesse of frost and lynch, plus they were scrambling for new ideas after many season 1 questions were answered. what they did to solve this was to pull situations from out of thin air rather than building them off of previous answers and building mysteries organically. and so, we get ben horne thinking he's a civil war general. twin peaks failed because of sloppy writing, not because it answered questions. if lost keeps doing what it's been doing, it's bound to piss off many a fan.


congratulations if you read this whole post. rereading it i actually feel it should be longer and more fleshed out b/c i gloss over a lot of points that i think could be tied up better, but nobody wants to read that much anyway so...

[jtm]

how they end it is the only way we'll ever find out if this was truly a great show or not.

they've set us up for it being great, and they've kept me entertained since, so i'm standing by them with faith that they'll end it right.

[modage]

i don't disagree that the writing is to blame for a lot of this.  but on the whole i still think that all my favorite episodes are the ones that jump forward.  season 3 finale, season 1 finale, every finale.  the premieres are always disappointing because a dude in the hatch is not as cool as "whats in the hatch?"  its like the Prestige when christian bale shows rebecca hall how he catches the bullet and she thinks much less of the trick.  its like THAT.  i'm not saying LOST shouldn't resolve its mysteries, i just think that the more they solve them, the less interesting it becomes.  i hope they're saving the big ones for the final episodes because we don't need to see what happens afterwards.

[Kal]

PEOPLE WE HAVE TO KEEP OUR COMPOSURE!!!!!

Everytime there is a strange episode like that one we go crazy and start trying to justify why we continue to watch this. Yeah this has gotten way too crazy. I still love it. I was watching it last night and my brother was in the room with his computer. He's never watched the show before so he was just listening in the background and he kept asking me stupid questions like "wtf they have cars in that island? where do they get fuel?", "why can he talk with dead people?", "1977???"... and I realized that it would be impossible to explain anything to someone new at this point. Before, up until the end of Season 3 or even Season 4, you could easily sum up what the show was about. Now its just complete insanity.

Last nights episode did not do much for me because of some of the reasons mod explained, but I guess it also makes us upset that we know the show is closer to the end than the beginning. I still think they will manage to surprise us and give us plenty of "WTF moments" in the next 25 episodes, but it is definitely heading towards the end in every aspect.

Hurley was the best part of last nights episode. The whole Kate/Roger pissed me off, including the conversation with Jack/Roger. Miles is just not an interesting character for me, but he is alright. Him being the son of Chang we all saw coming since the season opener. It was great to see Faraday back. Two fucking weeks? Damnit.

[JG]

i'm just reserving judgement. i was never so down on the show after what was easily the shittiest moment ever last week - the smoke monster judging ben. when i read the article above that explained the episode, it sounded way cooler than it actually was. and i think thats the story of the season. conceptually its pretty brave and exciting, but the writing and production have been way below par. lindelof/cuse penned episodes use to mean guaranteed quality, but this season thats not the case.

but its like this every lost season. during season 3, there were points where i thought the show was gone and never coming back, but now i think season 3 is my favorite season. it certainly contains some of my favorite episodes (the brig, the finale). you just have to get through the shitty moments in order to get some of the best moments on television. and there have been some this season. i thought sayid shooting lil' ben was one of the them. last night's was a solid episode, and i think its heading toward a pretty cool finale.

i never got into star wars. this is my star wars. and my hopes are high.

[polkablues]

Vintage Dharma Initiative magazine ads.  These are seriously amazing.

[Sleepless]

The writing has been way weak this season. There have been some good episodes, and it will all hang together a lot better rewatching in big chunks on DVD. But there have been so many wasted opportunities (Jeremy Bentham) and crappy scenes (WOW - reveal - it's little Ben... WOW - reveal - it's little Sayid... WOW - reveal - it's little Miles... etc) A big part of the blame is how the writers put the script together. Have you ever read one. They're full of those kinda lame reveal twists. Just cos you put "HOLY FUCK - it's JACK!" in the screenplay may make it jump of the page, but on screen it doesn't work as well. It's basically that they're trying to make something a huge moment without putting any work in to make it so.

The middle of this season has been the equivalent of vamping to cover the gap between BIG SEASON OPENER and BIG SEASON FINALE. Worse than the half a season where we were stuck with Jack, Kate and Sawyer in the cages. Finally, though, it seems things are starting to crank back up to get us towards the finale.

I can't explain it all yet (can anyone) but it seems to me we're going to be meeting this new group "What lies in the shadow of the statute" who are actually the island's original inhabitants - the natives - who were exiled somehow after Whitmore and co./The Hostiles/Others took over the jungle. I'm thinking Richard is one of those, and that the others we've met so far - Ilana, the guys who kidnapped Miles - are similarly ageless and that "what lies in the shadow of the statue" might actually be eternal life or some such thing. Anyway, it finally seems we're finally going to find out about the four-toes statue (maybe Richard and those all only have four toes - I mean, have you ever seen him wear sandals?). Finally. I'd still like to see someone take a trip to prehistoric times and encounter the natives back when. But that's what it's all building towards: a new group who can reveal the real truth about the island, and that will be what makes up the final season, so hopefully a lot more questions and answers, rather than just an extended filling-the-gaps exercise like this season's treading water has been.

Oh, and I almost forgot:
[Obligatory plea to the heavens that we find out something about Rose and Bernard yada yada yada...]

[diggler]

it seems richard is the only hostile that doesn't seem to age. i'm thinking the "shadow of the statue" people had some sort of civil war that richard was on the winning end of.... which would explain the statue being destroyed and the statue people being "exiled".

this show used to be better at revealing mysteries, but perhaps as viewers we're just getting better at catching onto how the show works.  the fact that many of these mysteries were held back for so long (what really happened with rousseau, the reasons behind ben and widmore falling out) makes them feel anticlimactic when we finally get the answers.  it's not so much that the answers are tossed out in an obligatory manner, but that the manner in which they're resolved means they were likely never all that important in the grand scheme of things.  i think the writers spent so much of the first few seasons introducing mysteries (do you think we'll ever see henry gale again?) that they never realized they would be stuck with answering all these questions in such a short amount of time.... and at the same time fit in the larger story they always meant to tell. this probably explains why it's so easy for them to kill off characters, because it won't affect their endgame.

rose and bernard have become the elephant in the room. i'm really hoping the show delivers something interesting as far as that's concerned. i think they realized the only way to make rose and bernard interesting was to have them disappear (like in season 3)

[Fernando]

It's about time Faraday's back.  But another two week wait???  Fuck that.

It was great to see Faraday back. Two fucking weeks? Damnit.

yeah, great to have him back.

so I checked the abc schedule and there's an episode of lost airing tomorrow, but..it's a special of the story of the oceanic six or something, wtf, otoh, the finale will be a two hour episode if imdb is right.

congratulations if you read this whole post.

i did and agree with pretty much everything you say including twin peaks.  

lost isn't by no means heading down, like kal said we've seen this before and so far the final 3 or 4 episodes are amazing, and this season has had at least three episodes that touch greatness and many others that are pretty good, the ben meeting the monster was poorly executed and maybe it showed too much but it was an interesting episode.

[MacGuffin]

Lost's 'Desmond' is sued by former ABC employee

Lost star Henry Ian Cusick is being sued by a former ABC employee who alleges sexual battery and harassment against the actor, Entertainment Weekly reported.

According to the suit, filed last week in Los Angeles court, Cusick allegedly squeezed and placed his face on the plaintiff's breasts, kissed her on the mouth and caressed the back of her body while making moaning sounds.

The plaintiff claims the incident occurred on the set of the hit series on or about Oct. 16, 2007, and that she was fired 12 days later, in retaliation for reporting Cusick's behavior.

ABC spokespersons, the plaintiff's attorney, and employees of Grass Skirt Productions didn't comment on the suit to EW.com.

[ElPandaRoyal]

 

All that time traveling really fucked him up good.

[Gamblour.]

I'm just imagining Desmond's face on someone's chest going