Lost

[Koray Savas 2,251]

That whole scene is just top-notch writing.

[Datameister 2,044]

Anything involving Locke and Ben together is automatically amazing. We've talked about it before, but still.

[crocodile 8,020]

I'd say that season was the best as far as the character writing goes. Maybe the latter episodes moved things at better pace, but some of that genuine character magic was gone.

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I disagree. Jack breaking down after hearing the 3 gunshots on the radio was great stuff.

Damn it doesn't have the best part.

"I'm going to get my people off this island. EVERY ONE of them. Then I'm gonna find you, and I'm gonna kill ya."

[crocodile 8,020]

By "latter episodes" I mean seasons 4-6.

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Well then you should have said latter seasons

Of course those are less character-centric. They even said that they were done with it, hence no more flashbacks. We knew them inside and out, so it was time to focus on the story and mythology.

[crocodile 8,020]

But then again Lost was at its best back then. But when they quite literally explain and spell out their story arcs in the last episodes it seems a bit tired already. The thing is the whole show and its essence is pretty much contained in the first 5 episodes. There is a ton of mythological stuff after that, yes. But I can't really say we learned much new after that point. The crucial information is in there, in these first episodes. Albeit in this non-verbal and non-direct fashion. The final season confirmed that to me.

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Imagine the uproar if they ended it after Season 5, which IMO would be a pretty decent ending to it all (some changes would need to be made; more closure obviously). They kinda spelled out all the answers because that's what a majority of the fanbase wanted. I remember when the show first started out, I'd talk about it in school, and friends would say they don't like it. I asked why, and they said because "they never answer anything."

[crocodile 8,020]

The one thing I really liked about the show is how it approached the answers in this auto-ironic way. You want the answers and you get most of them, but then again... it never says much. Like Sawyer said in the finale "Doesn't sound like he said anything about anything". Brilliant quote! And other thing is how it always turns out the answers you want are always irrelevant to the whole or how you ask the wrong questions.

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Finally got around with continuing to the series. Probably around the middle-end of Season 4, and man is it good. Each episode feels like finale caliber. Something Nice Back Home and Cabin Fever are brilliant, and I just picked up on a great moment:

When Richard visits Locke as a child in foster care, I finally understand what he meant when he said "No John, which one of these belong to you, already." Him meaning the compass that time traveling Locke gave to him in Season 5. Fun stuff.

EDIT-

Just finished Season 4. Damn, I forgot how short it was. What really bugged me though is that I couldn't watch the last 4 minutes of Cabin Fever. The second Locke walks into the cabin, it starts to skip and freeze, and then it just goes to the main menu. I had the same problem last night (along with my receiver blowing out, but I got that fixed) and thought it'd be fine today. No marks on the disc whatsoever. It's also weird in that when I put it in the PS3, it takes a good 30 seconds before it shows up in the XMB.

[Jacob 0]

Continuing my watch-through and just finished The Brig.

Question: How does anyone but Sawyer know he killed Frank Duckett?

There were no witnesses and he was never arrested for it.

Did I miss something or is this one of those unresolved issues?

[Datameister 2,044]

The Others were just creepy like that.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I'm nearing the end of my rewatch. Last episode I watched was "Everybody Loves Hugo." Season 6 is soooo goood. This is the first time I'm watching it since it aired, same went with Season 5.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Well, I finished the series today.

"The End" is truly the best episode of the series. It's a culmination of everything that makes this show the best. And I'll be damned if it isn't the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing I've ever seen. Too many moments to name that just had tears swelling to no end.

I watched most of the Season 6 special features, and even some of those behind-the-scenes moments are sad. They had footage of Jorge Garcia reading the script for the finale for the first time, and he was in tears because of it. I also never knew that they wrote the music into the script. Awesome.

I also never realized that the music Daniel and Drive Shaft play at the concert is the bonus track on the Last Episodes release.

[Datameister 2,044]

"The End" is truly the best episode of the series.

Maybe if you skip the...well, end.

[crocodile 8,020]

I think many people were disappointed with the finale mainly because very little happened in it, plot-wise, and it pretty much abandons the mythology. It's all about the characters. And yes, once you watch the very first episodes of the series, you realize the finale ties directly to those.

Karol

[Datameister 2,044]

The fact that it focuses on the characters and abandons the mythology actually works quite well, in my opinion. I mean, I always loved the mythology side of the show - actually, that's probably what got me interested enough to watch long enough to care about the characters - but they focused on what really mattered for the finale, and that's fine. I can't speak for anyone else, but that didn't bother me. I only started raising my eyebrows when they turned the interesting flash-sideways into a nonsensical, illogical, unsatisfying, unjust quasi-afterlife. Who knows, maybe I could have accepted that sort of ending if it made all the flash-sideways stuff suddenly make sense, but it was just totally inconsistent with everything they'd already showed.

[crocodile 8,020]

Inconsistent? You mean with other episodes of the season? Or with the show as a whole?

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

It's mildly inconsistent. But I mean, it's like time travel in general with shows and movies. It's hard to piece together and make sense of it. The second time around, the sideways world made a lot more sense to me. I don't know if it will have the same affect on you. It's clear that's what they intended it to be from the premiere.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

I also never knew that they wrote the music into the script. Awesome.

It's in the season three liner notes, actually.

You'll also find a direct reference on page 58 of this script. Funny enough, that moment actually plays without music in the final episode.

[Datameister 2,044]

I mean inconsistent with all the previous flash-sideways stuff that was shown throughout S6, crocodile.

Koray, I don't doubt that they had the twist ending in mind throughout the season - and probably before that, too - but they invested a lot of energy into deceiving us into thinking it was a parallel timeline, an alternate universe in which the Island had been gone since the 70s. That was a concept that I found very, very interesting, and if you ignore everything after Jack enters the church, every single thing in the whole season points toward that explanation. Then Christian comes along and turns the whole thing on its head, and it ceases to make any sense. It actually made less and less sense to me as I thought about the season more and more, for reasons I detailed back in the day. That execution has no emotional resonance or logic or anything. It's just a twist for twistiness's sake, and an excuse for allowing the characters to all be reunited in a happy ending. The latter is a goal I don't mind at all! But it needed to tie things together into an "AHA!" moment, as far as the sideways was concerned. Instead, I'm still scratching my head a year later - and lamenting the fact that these people had to go through the same traumas (quadriplegia, divorce, cancer, parental abuse, etc.) all over again after they died.

Ugh, now I'm getting all annoyed. I should stop thinking about this before it convinces me to stop my re-watching of the series.

[crocodile 8,020]

I never saw it as a blatant religious-afterlife motif. Church thing is just one way to present it. It may as well function like a Donnie Darko like pocket universe that is collapsing at the end. It doesn't matter, because it plays as a symbol/metaphor for me. And it that sense it doesn't have to make much sense.

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I also never knew that they wrote the music into the script. Awesome.

It's in the season three liner notes, actually.

You'll also find a direct reference on page 58 of this script. Funny enough, that moment actually plays without music in the final episode.

For the better. I mentioned earlier in my rewatch how fucking amazing that scene was. I think you commented on it as well.

I mean inconsistent with all the previous flash-sideways stuff that was shown throughout S6, crocodile.

Koray, I don't doubt that they had the twist ending in mind throughout the season - and probably before that, too - but they invested a lot of energy into deceiving us into thinking it was a parallel timeline, an alternate universe in which the Island had been gone since the 70s. That was a concept that I found very, very interesting, and if you ignore everything after Jack enters the church, every single thing in the whole season points toward that explanation. Then Christian comes along and turns the whole thing on its head, and it ceases to make any sense. It actually made less and less sense to me as I thought about the season more and more, for reasons I detailed back in the day. That execution has no emotional resonance or logic or anything. It's just a twist for twistiness's sake, and an excuse for allowing the characters to all be reunited in a happy ending. The latter is a goal I don't mind at all! But it needed to tie things together into an "AHA!" moment, as far as the sideways was concerned. Instead, I'm still scratching my head a year later - and lamenting the fact that these people had to go through the same traumas (quadriplegia, divorce, cancer, parental abuse, etc.) all over again after they died.

Once you get the character flashes though, it makes sense. Christian's explanation didn't turn it on its head for me. I like Jimmy Kimmel's theory that Jack dies when 815 hits the turbulence and Rose proceeds to tell him he can let go. Desmond died when Widmore put him in the electromagnetic field, and he got a glimpse of that place. He tells Jack about it before they go down into the heart of the island. So when he dies, Charlie experiences the flashes first, and Desmond is awoken in result, and the rest is just him waking everyone else so they can all move on together.

[Datameister 2,044]

I never saw it as a blatant religious-afterlife motif. Church thing is just one way to present it.

Call it what you will, but they're having an experience after death, and one that was deliberately constructed by its real-world creators to deceive us into thinking it's something else.

It doesn't matter, because it plays as a symbol/metaphor for me. And it that sense it doesn't have to make much sense.

A metaphor that doesn't make sense isn't very useful metaphor!

Once you get the character flashes though, it makes sense.

Those would have worked perfectly well as the characters beginning to "remember" events in the "correct" timeline, too, though. And the presence of one detail that fits the afterlife scenario doesn't change the countless details that do not.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

The afterlife is their way of representing that no matter what, these people were meant to be together. It still shows what their lives would have been like had they never crashed, and like you said, it's still painful and full of hardship because they weren't together. Faraday acknowledges that they're probably dead fairly early in the season.

[crocodile 8,020]

I never saw it as a blatant religious-afterlife motif. Church thing is just one way to present it.

Call it what you will, but they're having an experience after death, and one that was deliberately constructed by its real-world creators to deceive us into thinking it's something else.

You should have seen that coming. It's Lost! It is always something else than what they show us.

Karol

[Datameister 2,044]

The afterlife is their way of representing that no matter what, these people were meant to be together.

Which is something I could get behind if they hadn't wasted most of the season establishing what seemed like a completely different scenario.

It still shows what their lives would have been like had they never crashed...

We have no idea what their lives would have been like...maybe it would have been just like that, maybe it would have been totally different. We have no way of knowing.

...and like you said, it's still painful and full of hardship because they weren't together.

But they were "together" before they died. Yes, circumstances forced them to go their separate ways, but they banded together as best they could to make things better. They realized what mattered - namely, each other - and so they'd already had that realization or epiphany or what have you. Then they die and are forced to forget it so they can...learn it all over again? That's pointless and depressing! And I don't think Rose had to get cancer again just because they weren't "together"...I mean, while she was alive, she and Bernard had it all figured out before anyone else. They explicitly said that dead or alive, all that mattered was that they were together. Why should she have to endure a lot of pain and suffering just to re-learn what she already knew? (The real reason is because they wanted to convince us that this was an alternate timeline, and it makes sense that Rose would have gotten cancer in that timeline, too.)

Faraday acknowledges that they're probably dead fairly early in the season.

I remember him mentioning it as a possible theory rather late in the season - you make it sound like he was advocating it strongly from the first few episodes, which he wasn't. And Faraday had been wrong before, so it's not like we had to take his word for it. Especially because he didn't even know physics in the sideways.

You should have seen that coming. It's Lost! It is always something else than what they show us.

It's hard to describe exactly why it was so unpleasant this time around. I was expecting a twist, certainly - a major one. But one that would still ultimately make sense and be satisfying in some way. The majority of the twists in LOST were like that. This time, they spent a whole season weaving an elaborate rug just so they could pull it out from under our feet. If they wanted to do an afterlife thing, they could have set it up in a way that was still mysterious without selling a more plausible explanation in the process.

Anyway, I should probably give it a rest. We're just going to go around in circles until I pop something, haha. And I really am happy for you guys that you enjoyed the final twist more than I did.

[Brónach 1,302]

I don't like the afterlife thing.

For me, it betrays the pure emotion of all the previous stuff, when you see what these characters go through. Scenes like Charlie's death are now meaningless. Why should I care about these characters at the end, if they are just there in an afterlife, having no problems whatsoever?

This together with many stuff in the last two season pisses me off. It's not like they were bad, I mean you take a random episode and it's ususally awesome in itself. But the whole ended quite far of what could have been.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Charlie's death wasn't meaningless. Characters sacrificed themselves for the greater good of their friends. All of them still had problems in the afterlife, and Charlie was the first one that knew it. He wanted to die, just so he could discover that bliss of loving Claire. They were the same people that made different choices.

[Datameister 2,044]

I thought season 5 was fantastic - probably the most consistently amazing of the bunch. Don't get me wrong, there are some truly amazing moments in the other seasons, but there are also things that bother me about the other seasons. S5 pretty much just had me giddy every week. It was just when season six rolled around that things started feeling slow and dull, and the most interesting stuff was all in the alternate timeline that turned out to be not an alternate timeline.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

They never said it was an alternate timeline. In fact I think they specifically said that it wasn't.

[Brónach 1,302]

I thought season 5 was fantastic - probably the most consistently amazing of the bunch. Don't get me wrong, there are some truly amazing moments in the other seasons, but there are also things that bother me about the other seasons. S5 pretty much just had me giddy every week. It was just when season six rolled around that things started feeling slow and dull, and the most interesting stuff was all in the alternate timeline that turned out to be not an alternate timeline.

Agreed, the moving island-time travel-dharma stuff was always my favourite stuff in the show.

Unofrtunately the writers didn't seem to care about these that much.

[Datameister 2,044]

Darlton did say something about them not referring to it internally as an alternate timeline, Koray, but they said that was because they didn't want to make it seem any less valid than the original timeline. But that's a moot point, anyhow - anything its creators say in interviews is simply additional information that a devoted subset of the fanbase might end up being interested in. What matters is the show itself. And in this case, everything up till the final scenes leaves very little doubt that it's an alternate timeline, or whatever term you want to use for a timeline that exists parallel to another timeline, but differs in how the events play out.

They were the same people that made different choices.

That statement is a bigger contradiction than any in the show! If you could theoretically subject a person repeatedly to the exact same situation - we're talking 100% identical, down to the position of every atom - that person would make the same choice every time. You'd have to be a different person to make a different choice!

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Not really. In Sawyer's case, he was still a con man hunting for the man that murdered his parents, who chose a different side of the law. Jack still had a divorce, but had a son as well. John was still a bitter man in a wheelchair, but made different choices regarding his father.

[Datameister 2,044]

And why did they make different choices? Something was different. Either the environment or the person, or both. You can't have the same environment and the same person and get a different outcome. (Again, I'm talking about the sort of precise identical-ness that's only possible with alternate timelines.)

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Well the environment was different. The island was at the bottom of the ocean.

[Datameister 2,044]

Correct.

And it was there because it was a great way to make it seem like an alternate timeline instead of the afterlife...

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

And why did they make different choices? Something was different.

Correct. There was no Jacob manipulating them all.

[Datameister 2,044]

In retrospect, I'm actually not sure where I was going with that argument, so forget I brought it up.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Um, the bomb is what created the sideways world. Juliet's "it worked" and Christian blatantly saying they created this world.

[Datameister 2,044]

IMO, that would be a flaw of season 6, not of season 5, BloodBoal.

[Ollie 1,059]

I also never realized that the music Daniel and Drive Shaft play at the concert is the bonus track on the Last Episodes release.

Seriously?

Even though it says: 24. Parting Words (Drive Shaft) (3:32)

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I also never realized that the music Daniel and Drive Shaft play at the concert is the bonus track on the Last Episodes release.

Seriously?

Even though it says: 24. Parting Words (Drive Shaft) (3:32)

I knew that! I thought it was just a fun little thing they did for the soundtrack, because in the episode they never play the actual theme, you only hear the piano stuff.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Datameister 2,044]

[Jacob 0]

Watching The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham right now...

So, after meeting Locke on the island in the 50s, Widmore found him and sent him on the walkabout in 2004.

I can't remember if I picked that up the first time, but it's making my brain hurt.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Really, look Season 5 again, knowing that all they are going to do to detonate the bomb will be useless, and tell me : what was the point of that (apart from "Going Back To The Future") ?

It's an event that was pivotal in eventually crashing Oceanic 815. The Losties created their own destiny, if you will and created a circle of events. There are a lot of circles like that in Lost. Jacob and the Man in Black's eternal struggle, Locke and Widmore's relationship across the years and, in its most physical manifestation, the compass Locke gives to Richard, who gives it to Locke, who gives it to Richard, etc. etc. This idea was even in the Room 22 video ("we are the cause of our own suffering").

The whole point of Lost then, is to break these circles. Much like we do in real life, these characters tend to make similar mistakes over and over. Both in life on the island and in death in the season 6 limboworld, they struggle with breaking these circles: changing and growing as characters. It's all the more important in the afterlife, where the final reward is peace after they "let go" of their circular ways.

So really, detonating Jughead is just one of many occurances of a theme that is central to the entire series of Lost.

[Koray Savas 2,251]