Lost: What They Died For
What DID they die for?
Provided answer: The trials that have left a cascading series of corpses on the Island catalyzed the candidates into a force to be reckoned with. Only after properly seasoning these lonely souls were they prepared to defend the Light from the Man in Black.
Actual answer: With 714 commercial act breaks needing searingly dramatic cliffhangers over the past six years, you gotta ice some mofos.
Even if nothing else is worked out in a satisfying manner, I’ll always love this show for opening Ben Linus’ mind to the intellectually dizzying truth of an infinitely vast, bifurcated universe by having him get punched repeatedly in the face for the nine thousandth time.
It’s sort of amusing that arranging all the pieces for the grand finale is mostly a matter of letting things start to slide in reverse. Jacob is destroyed by fire, but is resurrected from flames like some mopey phoenix. Ben strangled Locke to death, now his parallel self is kick-starting his potential for being reborn. Desmond absorbed an insane amount of mystical energy, now he’s about to belch out every last angstrom of its destructive potential. There’s not a whole lot to be said here since it’s just rearranging furniture before the house gets sold… but I like watching it.
• I liked to pretend that the Man in Black took Ben up on his offer of lemonade and the show spent 10 excruciating minutes with the characters silently sipping from their glasses, while rocking in pleasure on the porch, as Hutch screamed and screamed and spat and hissed and screamed.
• I’m sure Ben will go all Darth Vader and toss the Monster down a pillar of light like Vader tossed the Emperor down a pillar of light… but it’s still fun to watch him be very wicked. I think the Man in Black enjoys it, too. When Widmore gets shot, Locke seems to marvel at how this plays exactly into his dim view of humanity.
• I like that in this sideways-world, where people have realized their potential for empathy over humanity’s interconnectedness, Ana Lucia is still an insufferable bitch. And in this universe where many people seem to get the things they long for, she obtains a giant sack of cash. Bye-bye, Ana Lucia.
• I’m likely in an extreme minority, but I thought Jacob provided the candidates with precisely the right amount of information. If he’d been directly addressing the television audience, that would be one thing… but tell these characters too much and they won’t be leading anything, they’ll just be in thrall to the desires of some murdered demigod and probably sink back into their old insecurities (i.e., Ben). I spent the whole scene hoping he wouldn’t oversell it and revive the candidate’s tendency towards petulantly eschewing any and all authority (including their own).
• There’s been some missteps this season, but I’ve managed to restrain any overt criticism until I see how the whole thing wraps up. I’m consistently surprised by how few lingering questions I have in my head, considering the rancor I’m seeing in a lot of bloggers/fans. I have a tendency to be very dismissive of random things (I always saw the statue, for instance, as a shorthand symbol for how long people have struggled over the Island, not in any way a mystery to be solved in its own right) and quickly get excruciatingly bored by scenes where characters simply vomit exposition at each other (as a watcher of bad horror movies, it’s one of my least favorite things)… so most of my questions have been answered, cheerfully pieced together by clues, or long-ago discarded for being pointless or boring. As a life-long consumer of pulpy fiction (Stephen King, comic books, The Prisoner, Lovecraft, Chandler, etc.), my brain has never harbored an obsessive-compulsive expectation of smoothly interlocking pieces. If anything, I tend to get a little fascinated by glimpses of randomness and gear-shifting exposed within the composition of a serial narrative. I think that, as long as the characters end their journey is a place that makes logical and emotional sense, I’ll be happy with the show and simply shrug off anything else.
• How about you? How much of your emotional investment in the show is tied into getting answers to specific mysteries? How much is simply the pleasure of watching a shambling engine of cliffhangers-and-twists chug along its well-filmed path? Is there anything that will destroy/redeem the show at this point?
• I do have some burning questions, though. I’ve wondered for a few seasons what the stakes are if the Island isn’t defended (more specifically now, what happens if the smoke monster walks free). I’m assuming they keep punting that answer down the field because we’re actually going to see it happen first-hand.
• If you’re interested in that sort of thing, though, you should watch Fringe. The mythology plays out in a stunningly seamless way.
Comments
There’s been some missteps this season, but I’ve managed to restrain any overt criticism until I see how the whole thing wraps up. I’m consistently surprised by how few lingering questions I have in my head, considering the rancor I’m seeing in a lot of bloggers/fans. I have a tendency to be very dismissive of random things (I always saw the statue, for instance, as a shorthand symbol for how long people have struggled over the Island, not in any way a mystery to be solved in its own right) and quickly get excruciatingly bored by scenes where characters simply vomit exposition at each other (as a watcher of bad horror movies, it’s one of my least favorite things)… so most of my questions have been answered, cheerfully pieced together by clues, or long-ago discarded for being pointless or boring. As a life-long consumer of pulpy fiction (Stephen King, comic books, The Prisoner, Lovecraft, Chandler, etc.), my brain has never harbored an obsessive-compulsive expectation of smoothly interlocking pieces. If anything, I tend to get a little fascinated by glimpses of randomness and gear-shifting exposed within the composition of a serial narrative. I think that, as long as the characters end their journey is a place that makes logical and emotional sense, I’ll be happy with the show and simply shrug off anything else.
This is an awesome and eloquently stated explanation of exactly why Hutch is an idiot.
Justin, you really do a great job with these posts.
You shut up and you die, Bill. My problem with the show isn’t that it isn’t answering mysteries in a way I like or not answering them at all. To be truthful, the only mystery I’d need answered is, simply, what the island is. I don’t need charts or diagrams, just something simple like “it’s God’s house” or “purgatory” or something like that. Just something. Anything, really.
No, my problem with the show is simply the piss poor writing and decision making on the part of the writers. That interview that you or Sue posted, Bill, says it all (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/arts/television/16weblost.html ). One gets the impression, from that interview, that they’ve had little to nothing resembling a plan and they’ve been making this shit up as they go — often realizing, like in the case of the boat shootout scene they mention — that they can’t work in the resolution and simply forget about it.
Justin made the argument to me that that’s the nature of serial storytelling and it should be forgiven, and I can to extent, but when you couple these sorts of short-sighted narrative mistakes with increasingly one-dimensional characters and, frankly, some pretty boring-ass reveals, it lose it. I get mad not because I’m not being given enough, but because I see too many shortcuts and mistakes. I get mad at the writers for sucking.
They can still save it in the finale. I don’t know what they have planned and that’s very exciting to me — not really having an idea where this can go. But so far, I think this season has just been poorly done, through and through. And THAT’S why I’m an idiot.
You’re a grumpy old man who decided to hate this show at some point and can no longer be convinced that it’s good. It’s extremely easy to find things to complain about in any film or show or book if you’re trying to validate your preconceived notion of dislike, and you can’t tell us that you watch the episodes now expecting anything except that you’ll hate them.
First things first, I enjoyed this episode and I’m looking forward to the finale, and I’ve been waiting patiently all day for Justin’s recap.
That said, my frustration with this show, and it is one that I thought was in line with Hutch, is that having been an avid fan since day one, I feel like I was bait and switched. The show I was all excited about 6 seasons ago was less ambiguous existential metaphor and more “holy fuck, there are polar bears/monsters/dead people/brainwashing rooms/pirate ships/explosions/hatches/etc. on this island!”
With that in mind, I’ll sort of echo Hutch’s sentiments but instead of calling the writing “bad”, I’ll call it disappointing. The show ended up being about something different than what I thought it would, and that just sucks.
Banned Bill said:You’re a grumpy old man who decided to hate this show at some point and can no longer be convinced that it’s good. It’s extremely easy to find things to complain about in any film or show or book if you’re trying to validate your preconceived notion of dislike, and you can’t tell us that you watch the episodes now expecting anything except that you’ll hate them.
Totally untrue and my post history proves it. I was getting super pumped until the show started going downhill again with the Jacob episode. Then that interview came out, then this one.
Your post history also proves that you’re a grumpy, irritable, old man.
Oh, well, I could have just told you that.
I agree with Justin and Bill both on the show and John.
Even seeing a few lists posted of things that have never been answered and being reminded just how many of them there are, I’m still o.k. with it.
“Yo, Pot!”
-Kettle.
O.K. let me clarify “I agree with Just and Bill both on the show, and on John’s opinion of the show.”
On a completely separate note, I just read that Ben in real life is married to Arlene from True Blood in real life. I realize they are both actors but since I only know both of them from these particular roles this is one of the stranger pieces of showbiz trivia I’ve stumbled across.
Jay, I second your thoughts.
I was just thinking about the love I had for the HBO show “Carnivale” and how similar it was to my initial love affair with “LOST.”
I liked having tangible nemeses like polar bears, the Others, and even if the smoke monster was just a smoke monster (like the weird death balloon in “The Prisoner”). And on “Carnivale” I enjoyed watching the lives of carnie folks and one guy’s special powers. But when it went to the struggle between good vs. evil; light vs. dark, I lost interest.
Just out of curiosity to John, Jay, and Heidi who say they lost interest when it ended up not being about what they thought it was about: What did you think it would be and what earlier on gave you that impression? I mean I remember as early as the first season people saying/asking “Is this purgatory or hell or heaven” and also noting the fact that moral ambiguity and good vs. evil was the manner in which each character was being presented. And with obviously some more details that’s more or less where we’ve ended up.
John said:“Yo, Pot!”
-Kettle.
hutch, it’s “Hey Pot! You’re black!” Love Kettle.
…or something.
I haven’t lost interest and and I never complained about it being about something other than what I hoped it would be about. I’m sure whatever Cuse and Lindelof have in their heads is awesome. I just think they’ve told the story incredibly poorly and made some really cheap, lazy decisions in regards to character and plot development. Frankly, the show just got stupid. Like the Matrix sequels, it wasn’t the overall plot and direction that makes it so bad. It’s all the little decisions they took to get there.
But that said, I am still interested or I wouldn’t still be watching. I complain about the negatives of the show and the bad episodes because I’m emotionally invested in it. And the good episodes? They’re fantastic! The finale could still save the show. I’m just ever more doubtful after a series of bad episodes and that horrible interview.
christina said:John said:“Yo, Pot!”
-Kettle.
hutch, it’s “Hey Pot! You’re black!” Love Kettle.
…or something.
SHUT UP.
Seiously, Kev, did you read that interview? These guys are insane. It sounds, too, like they’ve been drinking way too much of their own kool-aid. They way they talk about doing infuriating things like they’re doing us a favor is, well, infuriating!
For example, they come right out and admit they sort of just named people after philosophers and threw in book references and whatever and none of it really meant anything. They quite literally came right out and said, in so many words, “oh, we just wanted the audience to know that we know about these guys.” If that isn’t pretentious bullshit, than I truly don’t know what is.
my dad said, in the last episode, EVERYBODY but jack dies and jack is just left to stay on the island and deal with time jumps for all eternity.
John said:Seiously, Kev, did you read that interview? These guys are insane. It sounds, too, like they’ve been drinking way too much of their own kool-aid. They way they talk about doing infuriating things like they’re doing us a favor is, well, infuriating!
For example, they come right out and admit they sort of just named people after philosophers and threw in book references and whatever and none of it really meant anything. They quite literally came right out and said, in so many words, “oh, we just wanted the audience to know that we know about these guys.” If that isn’t pretentious bullshit, than I truly don’t know what is.
I think you just read the interview through Hutch-colored glasses. I didn’t get those impressions at all. Obviously Sue didn’t either.
John, with you I’m mostly thinking of the fact that the first couple of seasons you basically came right out and said many times over you didn’t care at all about the back stories and the character arcs/development or any of that, and that you pretty much wanted more of the mumbo jumbo and more of the explanations and all of that. Which was the complete opposite of why I stuck with this show and why I liked it and still like it. I always viewed it as an exploration of human character and existential action/reaction type stuff in the most general sense. Yeah, I liked the other stuff and thought it was cool but at it’s core I liked it philosophically.
I never thought the names and references actually had any specific significance beyond "Oh this is a show about philosphy/time travel/good vs. evil, and here are these references peppered throughout. I never though any of those actually meant anything substantial or integral to the plot.
Bottom line: This show was a great drama and a mediocre science fiction show. Which is fine by me. Your issues I’m convinced all stem from the fact that you wanted it to be a great science fiction show first and foremost. And you’ve stuck with it this long because you thought it was going to get more science fiction and I’ve stuck with it despite that.
Banned Bill said:John said:Seiously, Kev, did you read that interview? These guys are insane. It sounds, too, like they’ve been drinking way too much of their own kool-aid. They way they talk about doing infuriating things like they’re doing us a favor is, well, infuriating!
For example, they come right out and admit they sort of just named people after philosophers and threw in book references and whatever and none of it really meant anything. They quite literally came right out and said, in so many words, “oh, we just wanted the audience to know that we know about these guys.” If that isn’t pretentious bullshit, than I truly don’t know what is.
I think you just read the interview through Hutch-colored glasses. I didn’t get those impressions at all. Obviously Sue didn’t either.
They said those things pretty much verbatim.
Kev, I definitely can’t argue with you there. I would have much rather the show gone hard science fiction. And I am disappointed, now that I really think about it, that it didn’t go more in that direction. This all feels rather dumbed down. And maybe a lot of that is getting my ire up and I’m taking it out on other things.
But, for what it’s worth, I have stuck with the show and gone on to expect less than stellar sci-fi and largely been disappointed with what they have chosen to focus on: the characters. They just aren’t well written for all the reasons we’ve talked about. Another case in point: the Kwons. THEY HAVE A DAUGHTER. Jinn hasn’t even seen her! So they make sure they write in a bullshit little line about her staying with her grandma and Jinn decides to die with Sun rather than meet and raise his daughter. It’s bad writing because I just don’t think it fits with the character or reality. It was more them playing with their audience saying “WE’LL KILL ANYBODY!” than trying to right good, believable people.
You should be watching Fringe. Seriously. That show is mining the same type of parallel universe/harder sci fi deal than anything else really on tv and it’s stellar and gotten better.
That so few people even of the sci-fi persuasion are sleeping on this show is a tragedy.
hahahahhaha, Justin and I had a similar IM conversation today with him also telling me I need to be watching Fringe.
ALRIGHT, ALREADY. I’LL WATCH FRINGE! Sheesh.
John said:hahahahhaha, Justin and I had a similar IM conversation today with him also telling me I need to be watching Fringe.
ALRIGHT, ALREADY. I’LL WATCH FRINGE! Sheesh.
i need to watch Fringe, too. Mister Nimoy is in it (for now)!
Seriously. It’s only 2 seasons in so you should be able to catch up. 90% of the episodes stand on their own without any of the mythology or back story, but there’s just enough of that to keep things compelling and for the most part it’s a simple enough back story and mythology that you don’t need to have a doctorate to keep up with it. The characters are compelling and funny but their individual demons or personalities rarely overwhelm the episodes.
John said:christina said:John said:“Yo, Pot!”
-Kettle.
hutch, it’s “Hey Pot! You’re black!” Love Kettle.
…or something.
SHUT UP.
That’s funny but I figured since Hutch used “Yo” that he was insinuating blackness instead of going with “Hey” or “Hello”.
Oh and overall, Lost was way more fun when it was mysterious.
I wish I had a donkey wheel to turn. I’d bring the the DVRed finale back to (just around) Season Two Paris.
Sure it’s been a great journey and all, but being given answers is totally unexciting. Maybe the Lost writers shouldn’t have told us that this was the last season.
Kevin said:Just out of curiosity to John, Jay, and Heidi who say they lost interest when it ended up not being about what they thought it was about: What did you think it would be and what earlier on gave you that impression? I mean I remember as early as the first season people saying/asking “Is this purgatory or hell or heaven” and also noting the fact that moral ambiguity and good vs. evil was the manner in which each character was being presented. And with obviously some more details that’s more or less where we’ve ended up.
I personally was looking forward to a much deeper exploration of the origins and motives of the Dharma Initiative. I was definitely hoping for a more hardline sci-fi tilt to the show.
From what I remember, John’s criticisms have always centered on a lack of answers and any drift away from a harder sci-fi angle… he’s never said much of anything about characterization, beyond having a couple characters he hates (and we all have a couple characters we hate). Pop culture tastes are a funny thing, so if you don’t like it you don’t like it… but Lost has never presented itself as having anything other than a mild glossy patina of pop-sci-fi.
Saying Lost is a science-fiction show is like saying that “Watchmen” is a story about pirate comics.
I’ve liked the show, from the start, for being a kitchen sink epic. Everything that seems even mildly interesting to the creators gets tossed together and worked over. There were some science-fiction elements, but they were sitting there alongside a truckload of comic book, biblical, action movie, fantasy elements. When I got bored with one element of it, I could always focus on something else interesting playing out on the sidelines. Editing, color choices, cliffhanger twists, things exploding, etc. This kitchen sink approach always made the character names and literary references more of a loving pastiche than… well… whatever it is that John thinks it is.
But you should seriously check out Fringe.
The early going of the show was a bit clunky and witless, with an awful lead performance, but it quickly managed to embrace its goofier “mad science” sci-fi trappings and unspool its mythology pretty expertly. This last batch of season two episodes (especially “Peter”), have been some of the greatest TV adventure work I’ve ever seen. It’s like reading a juicy stack of Chris Claremont X-men comics. They’ve already explained about 80% of the mysteries and never really tend to leave spare bits of mythology laying about for very long.
A lot of this hangs on John Noble’s tremendously sympathetic performance… but even the lead actress stepped up her game and transformed into a terrifically bad-ass butt-kicking female heroine.
This is from someone who tends to get sleepy when things go too science-fiction.
John, all the big bads are named for David Bowie references. You’d like it.
Plus, I’ve always been kinda stunned by its R-rating level of gore and movie-level CGI work.
What Justin said about Fringe. 100% The way they’ve unspooled the mythology without getting bogged down in it, and actually answering such a high percentage of the questions anyone would have is just so great.
And yes X10 on the surpise amount of gore and high quality effects. The rapport among the 3 leads is top notch. And yes, the weak link lead actress has totally emerged as a pretty credible action lead, I think primarily because they took the weight off of her shoulders and instead of carrying the show she just has to have her niche and just play off of the other 2 leads.
And I think it’s been great how the season where Lost introduces the parallel universe theory (in a different way), Fringe does the same thing without the clumsiness or the high degree of overwrought melodrama.
Olivia improved when they figured out she could be the female version of the grim, hardcase bad-ass and shaved away that tendency to give female characters fluffy filler (romance! a broad social life!). She has no friends, she’s an utter loner, and her only interest beyond pursuit of a Batman-level of justice is a nice glass of Maker’s Mark at the end of the day. I really like that they don’t try to soften her much.
I can’t say enough about how amazing John Noble can be in that role. He makes the show. Capable of swinging between a goofy, cartoonish freak-out in the middle of a grocery store… and then completely devastates you emotionally by simply quivering his hands a tiny bit and widening his eyes.
The Fringe mythology reveals aren’t melodramatic, but I think the key difference with Lost is that they’re explicitly tied into the small number of characters we’ve come to know. The central twist of the background tale is surprisingly humane.
Clearly, I’m excited for tonight’s finale.
Also, I like saying “Walternate.”
As a side note, Walter’s tendency towards stonerism is one of the best minor details of that show.
That reminds me, what’s up with Walt and Aaron?
Do they really not have a greater reason other than being the children that made Michael and Kate not alone anymore. Walt and Aaron are just reasons that Michael and Kate got crossed off the cave wall?
I think they’re just another example of the writers just not planning well and the primary reason why I actually get mad at the show instead of just not liking it. But that’s also why I’m excited about the finale: I’m hoping to be wrong.
I think everyone, even the most staunch defenders of the show have at least 1 thing that sticks with them that they say “I wonder if that actually meant anything?!?!”
For me, it was after Ben kidnapped Sawyer, Kate, and Jack and had Kate down to the beach for a meal and said “The next few days are going to be very unpleasant for you.” What happened after that? I think at the time everyone said it had something to do with him trying to impregnate her or whatever, but that was never followed through on and other than her going back to the cage and looking uncomfortable she never really had this vengeance against Ben that one would assume would come from him forcing himself on her.