Don’t Know It
“I’m a sucker for series that end with a complete repudiation of everything that’s gone before — like the one for St. Elsewhere where everything turned out to be an autistic child’s fantasies of life inside a snow globe. Still, it is kind of cheating to just announce that the characters in this long, complicated series were dead. And that half of Season 6 took place in purgatory. And I do not like the idea of heaven being a church with what looked like uncomfortable seats.” — N.Y. Times columnist Gail Collins riffing on the final episode of Lost.
“half of Season 6 took place in purgatory”
Not So says Maureen Ryan:
So, to reiterate: The events on the island really happened.
Lens darkly, the events on the island really happened, but those in the “sideways” universe, which took up half of season 6, took place in purgatory. I didn’t follow the show since season 1, but that is the consensus I’ve gleamed from the last ep coverage. My impression is that the “it was all purgatory” ending was what they had planned way back in season one, before a) everybody and their pet goldfish figured it out, and b) the show became a massive cash crop. So they just tagged the oringinal ending onto a massive, sprawling narrative they’d been making up on the fly for the last six years.
Hi Tristan, I guess I should have clarified my position a bit.
I was never a fan of the show. I haven’t a single episode. I was merely providing a link to Maureen Ryan’s article for context.
I’m more pissed off at the fact that Deadwood didn’t get a 4th season.
But that’s another discussion.
That should read:
I haven’t seen a single episode.
It’s fairly obvious to anyone watching that “everyone was dead” was not actually the revelation in season six, and is in fact wholly inaccurate. Um… fucking duh?
This ‘Lost unanswered questions’ vid is a lot of fun. My favourite: How dod Jack’s dead dad appear in the ‘real’ world if it was really the smoke monster/man in black, who wasn’t able to leave the island?
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
Jack was an alcoholic and in withdrawal from whatever pills he was popping as well.
I don’t think hallucinating that he was seeing his father in the hospital was much of a stretch.
Man I’m going to miss this show. Regardless of how you responded to the final episode (I liked it), the quality of the writing around the characters throughout the series was first class. Doubt will see another one like this anytime soon.
People who whine “They were dead the whole time” make me want to punch a baby. They were NOT dead the whole time. The Island and everything else was real and happened, just the flash SIDEWAYS in the LAST season were purgatory. Yes, I do in fact realize how insane it makes me sound when I read that back, therfor I will shut up now. Thank you for your time.
The Movieline response to the College Humor video is great: http://www.movieline.com/2010/05/rebutting-losts-questions.php
Most of them were either already answered, or such minor stuff that the viewer can fill in the gaps.
It’s a mystery show, and the way it ended means it can still be debated and discussed after its finale. It was a brilliant finale. Lindelof is a huge Star Wars fan, and clearly learned from the prequels’ unnecessary explanation of the The Force. If they’d have explained the Island’s light/power source/electromagnetism/whatever, it’d have disappointed everyone. Better to leave it a mystery still, and just make sure the audience knows it is The Most Important Thing In The World and Must Be Protected.
It really is astounding how many people – including writers for major publications – have completely whiffed on their interpretation of the finale. Especially because it wasn’t that difficult to understand, and spelled out VERY clearly by Christian.
This L.A. Times review is downright embarrassing.
I’m actually glad that Deadwood ended, because that freed up Timothy Olyphant for Justified. I dig hell outta that show.
I’m finally convinced that David Chase created the greatest finale and final scene ever. He was even channeling Kubrick (some great screen shot comparsions with 2001 can be found below). After reading this interpretation I’m ready to bow to him. I can’t comment on Lost though, I’ve never seen it. The essay below really makes me look forward to his Chase’s first directorial feature.
http://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/the-sopranos-definitive-explanation-of-the-end/
Josh: Adding to the embarrassment is her inability to even correctly name the work she thought it was aping. It’s “An OCCURRENCE at Owl Creek Bridge.” Wikipedia says it’s sometimes known as “An Incident …” but that’s Wikipedia, fer Chrissake.
From the L.A. Times review:
“Instead, it turns out the passengers of Oceanic 815 are all dead, victims, if the end-credit imagery is to believed, of the same tragic plane accident that started the whole thing. ”
Sorry. ABC has already admitted it added that coda, without the participation of the creators. In fact, the Canadian feed didn’t include that image at all.
In my opinion, they didn’t answer all the questions because, to paraphrase a statement that appeared a lot on the show, “Disney and ABC isn’t done with the Island yet.” The creators were allowed to resolve the story of that group of characters, but some mysteries were left for the inevitable video game/comic book/movie, etc.
Kind of like the Sopranos. If, 5 years down the road, they throw $25 million at David Chase to make a movie, they survived. If not, they didn’t.
This ‘Lost unanswered questions’ vid is a lot of fun. My favourite: How dod Jack’s dead dad appear in the ‘real’ world if it was really the smoke monster/man in black, who wasn’t able to leave the island?
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
Fuck the haters.
Out of curiosity…did you ever watch Lost Jeff? I wouldn’t mind knowing what you thought about it as I obsessed over it for six years.
“Adding to the embarrassment is her inability to even correctly name the work she thought it was aping. It’s “An OCCURRENCE at Owl Creek Bridge.” Wikipedia says it’s sometimes known as “An Incident …” but that’s Wikipedia, fer Chrissake.”
Nick, she was right, since Incident at Owl Creek went out in the UK in the sixties supporting The Birds.
Michael Giacchino’s score on Sunday night was absolutely masterful. Surely the greatest score in TV history. Excluding catchy theme tunes, has there ever been a show with such consistently excellent music?
I liked a lot of the finale; I liked Jack’s ordeal being the end of a classic “hero’s journey.” But I take serious issue with the notion that explaining the mechanics of the Island would have alienated audiences. A smart, adept writing team could have easily made all these threads cohere — Bad Robot’s doing a pretty good job of that on FRINGE, right?
If you’re doing a melodrama, and piling plot contrivance upon plot contrivance (Dharma! The Temple! The Statue! Etc.), you owe some measure of explanation to loyal viewers who’ve invested time in theorizing and trying to make sense of those “riddles.” You don’t wholly leave it to the viewer’s own imaginations, or to the DVD. That’s as bad as injecting some deus ex machina into the show to tie everything up — and that’s what the mumbo-jumbo mysticism of the Island eventually amounted to, didn’t it?
Dorothy: As in Hitchcock? I’m not following.
“If you’re doing a melodrama, and piling plot contrivance upon plot contrivance (Dharma! The Temple! The Statue! Etc.), you owe some measure of explanation to loyal viewers who’ve invested time in theorizing and trying to make sense of those “riddles.” You don’t wholly leave it to the viewer’s own imaginations, or to the DVD.”
I think there was enough in there to conclude what’d happened. Taking the three examples you give – The Statue and The Temple had clearly been built centuries ago by one of the many groups that had, over time, either come to island or found themselves on the island, and had tried to harness the power of whatever the light was. The Dharma Initiative was another one of these groups, just one that arrived in the 1970s and not in ancient Egyptian times. Our heroes’ story took place mostly in 2004-2007, with a brief sojourn in the ’70s, but episodes along the way (particularly the Richard Alpert origin episode and the Jacob/MIB episode) did a good job of showing that the island’s story goes back a lot further than the Oceanic era.
The finale reminded me of Shutter Island. Well acted and executed, but the reveal at the end, which took a long speech to explain, was a big letdown proving that much of what we thought were huge plot turns (jughead, etc.) were simply macguffins.
Mark: Wasn’t Jughead resolved pretty clearly though? Its explosion led to “the incident” which in turn led to the hatch, the button, Desmond’s involvement, the infertility, etc.
Eloi — I understand those points, and they contribute to a powerful mythology; it’s why I tracked with the show all these years. But there’s “no there there” unless you provide definition at the center. I appreciate their focus on the characters’ journeys, but even an offhanded explanation of the Light — among other elements — would have been appreciated, after watching them spend so much effort over the years using it as a key Macguffin. It’s just one question on many that should have been dealt with, in my mind.
Eloi, that’s why i hate time traveling as a plot device. it makes my head hurt. so the series started with the character living out the future that they are yet to create in the past?
for some reason, the device made sense in Star Trek. in this case, not so much.
Mark: Yeah, I think that’s how it happened. Our characters were on the Island “before” they arrived, but only because they were sent back in time while on the Island in the present day. Or something. So their use of Jughead in 1970s caused the Incident, which in turn caused the electromagnetic build-up thing that Desmond forgot to release that led to Oceanic 815 crashing… or something.
“But there’s ‘no there there . . . “‘
i said just that halfway through the second season and stopped watching. i dug the first season quite a bit but by episode 5 of season two, i tuned out. it was painfully obvious they had no idea wtf they were doing and were just using these mysteries to lure in viewers. i watched the last 4 episodes of the series and couldn’t help rolling my eyes at each episode. i have little patience for pseudo-profundity and lost had it in spades. also, “answering” the polar bear question by saying they were put there by dharma to “turn the thingies” is circular. it still doesn’t explain who/what dharma was, why the things needed to be turned, etc.
lost was never really a show about characters. it was a mystery show that put characters in bizarro situations and had them act out in hysterical ways. for the writers to declare that the show was “really about these characters all along” just rings false. contrast the show with a movie like zodiac. zodiac is about the zodiac killer but it’s also about how people can become obsessed with Having to Figure Shit Out. even though zodiac doesn’t answer the question, at the end of the movie you realize the movie was really about greysmith and his NEED to believe arthur lee allen was the zodiac.
it’s one thing to attract people to a show by appearing to be about one thing but then turning out to be about something else; done right, that can be one of the most effective forms of storytelling. lost was a series that used mysteries to lure in viewers and to make the show seem more interesting than it really was. if lost was about people’s need to Figure Shit Out and how it’s sometimes an exercise in futility, it could’ve been a fascinating show but it wasn’t about that. in the end it just turned out to be another riff on the Hero’s Journey, zzzzzzzzz.
“for the writers to declare that the show was “really about these characters all along” just rings false.”
Really? I can’t recall another show that spent as much time on the characters’ back stories as Lost did. I think people forget just how much time was spent on the flashbacks for much of the show.
Eloi, there’s no point in arguing with someone attempting to speak authoritatively on something he admits to checking out on while it meandered 4 seasons ago.
The people who think that THE ENTIRE narrative was “purgatory” are the same people who think Members Only Guy shot Tony Soprano.
The major flaw of the finale was that the huge payoff was for something they only introduced this season. Even the stupid cave of light only came to our attention last month. They didn’t have to answer every nuance of the mythology by any means, but should have offered a bigger payoff than the explanation of the heretofore baffling sideways world.
It was a well done, but flawed finale (like most series finales, really).
“”If you’re doing a melodrama, and piling plot contrivance upon plot contrivance (Dharma! The Temple! The Statue! Etc.), you owe some measure of explanation to loyal viewers who’ve invested time in theorizing and trying to make sense of those “riddles.” You don’t wholly leave it to the viewer’s own imaginations, or to the DVD.”"
I said it over at Movieline, I’ll repeat it here.
When writers need to account for everything, the midichlorians win.
The Q is how much of it can honestly be left up to a focus on the characters or a choice to leave things mysterious versus threads the writers were simply unable to resolve.
This video pretty much nails it…
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
DavidF: that video was kicked around at the top of the comments… refer to comment #10 from Eloi, with Movieline’s response to the collegehumor video (and gives the answers to about 96% of the questions):
http://www.movieline.com/2010/05/rebutting-losts-questions.php
“If, 5 years down the road, they throw $25 million at David Chase to make a movie, they survived. If not, they didn’t.”
Exxxactly. While concluding the characters’ arcs, they obviously leave the central mystery of their surroundings as open-ended as possible, because they’re not sure what “use” the Island might prove to be in the future. I think that’s a legitimate source of frustration for some fans — especially after 6 seasons and 120 episodes.
I admittedly tuned out pretty early in the Lost run. I had been burned once before in a similar situation when The X-Files started building up their increasingly mammoth — and ridiculous — mythology (why couldn’t they just have stuck with the idea of a sci-fi anthology with two recurring characters??).
Eventually with that show, I came to the realization that Carter & co. are not going to be able to tie up all the loose ends that they had layered on us season after season. Loose plot threads without a resolution are a bit of an empty endeavor, especially when the show loses one of its two lead characters.
In this respect, movies are actually a lot better suited (and “easier”) to conclude. At the end of the two hours (or, you know, three if you’re an auteur of historical epics and/or comic/geek-property films), you almost always need to complete all your major plot developments, even if it’s a franchise or sequel.*
*Some people will undoubtedly point to pictures like The Dark Knight and say the ending wasn’t entirely resolved, and I suppose that is true in a way…but in that particular case, I think the plot and themes are acceptably self-contained, and it’s more about reaching a cinematically acceptable “stopping point” than anything else.
That’s a pretty interesting post, phantasmata. You expressed a lot of things about the show that turned me off (and the comparison to Zodiac is surprisingly apt) better than even I could.
I will say one thing regarding the conclusion. A lot of you people seem to have written off the idea of the Island as purgatory. I think that’s fair enough as I probably don’t think it was the creators’ intentions (at least not after those fan theories started circulating), but it is an acceptable theory with its own set of Rorschachian proof (check out the spot where Jack “dies” for example…look familiar?).
I don’t think the idea that “everything happened [on the Island] happened” is exactly ironclad, either, given that a) the quote was given by a person who was definitely dead, and received by a person that may or may not have been dead at that exact moment, and b) the circumstances of the moment (father delivering one final message to his son, friends gathered around, heavy Christian/heavenly imagery) could just as easily point to this entire scenario playing out as a dying mental construct in an Owl Creek situation with Jack as the “unreliable narrator.”
Listen, I’m all in favor of leaving a little something for the viewers to ponder at the end of a story, but leaving a thread too open-ended has consequences. One of the biggest ones is not really being able to rule anything out, which has the ability to retroactively destroy any interest in — and especially emotional attachment to — the entire narrative.
I. Loved. The. Series.
The drama. The characters. The crazy “out there” scenarios. The different-ness of the show. Cracked myself up counting how many times Hurley said “Dude” in every episode.
I gladly went along for the ride every week.. Shedding genuine tears when people died, “found” themselves, babies got born, babies got dead, people got “cured”, got smoked, got love. All of it.
La-Huvved Sawyer. Kuz he’s hot! Even IF he can’t act (and no, saying words; nice or crabby, through clenched teeth does not consitute acting..ANY kind of acting. Except BAD acting. But hey, He’s hot!
So there’s that.)
Loved Kate. Cause she’s pretty AND Canadian. Yay us.
Loved Ben (reminded me of one of my old boyfriends who turned out gay. sigh)
Wanted to MARRY John Locke (in my flash sideways life, except he’d have to be able to walk)
Desmond, SOOO adorable (but a little TOO Scottish if you get my drift)
Charlie and Clare, exactly like the children I’ll never have.
Weird Sciencey Guy. (who was in Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale and had a twitch. Well, he always has a twitch. But does it VERY well.)
All of them. I loved…well….
I LIKED Jack. (A tad ernest for my taste. Yah, we get it. Yer feeling lots. Sometimes? I just had to put my head down or look at the wall when all yer acting feelings were coming AT me through the TV machine. In fact, SRI LANKA could feel yer acting feelings…through my TV machine. And they’re Socialists!)
But man? That ending SUCKED AAASSS. It was a total cop out and sorry! Did NOT answer questions Nor did it make any bloody sense. Nuh-Huh!
Fucking hell Louise!
What? Did they get Jesus over the weekend? Suddenly it’s “Lost Christian Island Church”?
Umm. Writers/ producers. Come to camera 3.
Sayid was an Iraqi, who fought on Saddam’s side…I’m goin’ out on a limb here, but I’m guessin’ dude was Muslim. So how does “Lost Christian Island Church” figure in HIS death…he died and went to Christian heaven cause….? that’s the RIGHT one? yeeah. Blow me.
And speaking of. Where were all the OTHER folks NOT at “Lost Christian Island Church” from over all the seasons. Were they VOTED OFF? (Don’t know if I came up with that by myself. Apologies if someone beat me to it)
See, this is where the “stars” were supposed to freak the fuck out and FIX it.
I’ll break it down:
They get the scripts some weeks before shooting. They read them. Then they HUCK them across the room. Then they get on the phone with their agents. Scream for awhile. Then the agents get on the phone with the producers. THEY scream for awhile. Then they threaten. Then the producers/writers get all the stars together.
To explain.
Then the stars throw shit around the ROOM. Then they storm off to their trailers.
Then some time passes …half an hour. Then the producers/writers proceed to suck the stars’ cocks.
And then. DO the rewrites.
ALL is restored in the universe!
But apparently in THIS case the stars were all “busy” n’shit. Or HIGH on crack-HEROIN!
And, yuh, dropped the ball thanks!
And we. We happy few, we band of bruthuhs, are left with DIRTY needles and BROKEN crack pipes!
How do you like THEM APPLES!!
Bastard people.
.
Another thing to consider is that Lost has been one of the first shows to really take advantage of the internet fan community during its initial run. There are people out there who have documented every little throwaway reference in every episode, so some of the “unexplained” answers actually have been explained – just in a way so subtle that the casual fan might not have picked up on it. There was also an online game between seasons 2 and 3 (I think) that contained minor nuggets of information about the DHARMA Initiative.
You can argue that the showrunners shouldn’t rely on this “extra-textual” information to fill in the gaps, and they should put everything on screen. But I feel the extra information helps the hardcore fans build their own narrative to fill in the gaps, and yet it’s not important enough to warrant inclusion in the show itself.
It’s like Star Wars fans knowing about Boba Fett based on little scraps of information in the books after the initial trilogy. Then when Lucas went back and explained he was the crappy little son of some no-mark clone or whatever, it fucked up the mystique.
You have to remember that in season 1, all of the characters were a mystery themselves. Who are these people? Why are they special? Why were they brought to the island? What was their backstory? I feel all these questions were adequately answered, and the characters became so beloved that it caused everyone watching the finale to blub like a baby when it came to be time to say goodbye.
That said, I’m sure we will see spin-off comic books or novels explaining more of the story. And that’s fine. But I think they did an incredible job and that the show works brilliantly as a stand-alone entity.
CMAC: That made me laugh, but didn’t you notice the almost-too-obvious multi-faith stained glass window in the church at the end? They were being very careful not to define the ending as a very Christian heaven (“Christian Shephard” aside).
Eloi Wrath says …
CMAC: That made me laugh, but didn’t you notice the almost-too-obvious multi-faith stained glass window in the church at the end? They were being very careful not to define the ending as a very Christian heaven (“Christian Shephard” aside).
Eloi Wrath! You are correct indeed! But at that point I was screaming very loud and hucking all the many remotes my husbands deems necessary at the TV. I was half expecting Kristen Chenoweth to be flown in through the rafters singing “Home” from The Wiz.
Seriously. I was so utterly disappointed and let down. I realize of course, it’s just a TV show. But I do feel I’ve been ripped off. Not unlike I suspect the many women who’ll sit .through SATC2 .
…oops…was that my outside voice?
Ah well…True Blood starts in a couple weeks.
Eloi: You say the show “adequately answered” your questions, yet it “works brilliantly?”
No offense, but it sounds vaguely like a comment from someone in a certain level of denial vis-a-vis the time you’ve invested in the series vs. what been paid back to you in the intangible pleasure of being told a good story.
CMAC — You are quite excitable! Using all those exclamation points! I was going to hit on you or something, but then you had to go and drop the ol’ “husband” bomb.
Maybe in another life…
On the Island…
Whatever happens “happens”…
God, I’m horny.
I don’t understand why everybody is saying it was worth it for the “characters.” They were flat. pulp. characters. I admit that they were played by likable actors, who themselves brought alot of personality to the table, and you kinda got attached to them after staring at their mugs for SIX YEARS. But the characters were absolutely nothing special, if anything they were less than average.
I watched that shit for the mystery. And I am mightily dissapointed. It was like somebody starts telling you the Aristocrats joke, and you’re getting into it, and you’re wondering, where the hell is THIS going, and then after they tell the damn joke for SIX YEARS they wuss out and say “It doesn’t matter what our act is called! But wasn’t it fun listening to me go on and on!”
Oh, and if they wanted to properly execute “The Aristocrats” they would’ve ended it like this:
http://thedailywh.at/post/634520031/animated-gif-of-the-day-how-lost-should-have-ended
The original Star Wars are better than the prequels and for that shitty storytelling is being praised? I had very low expectations for the last episode, but the end was far worse than I could have ever imagined.
CMAC, Don’t be put off, but they’ll be religioning on True Blood too.
Complaining about Lost is like complaining about Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Did Chaucer spend too much time on the stories (flashbacks) instead of the interaction between the pilgrims (on-island action). What adventures did he have planned for the pilgrims when they reached the cathedral, and who was going to win the contest in the end anyway?!! Too bad Chaucer died before giving his fans ‘closure’. At least Lost got a final episode.
No offense, pb2, but that’s kind of one of the worst analogies I have ever read (unless it’s meant to be humorous, then cheers!).
“The people who think that THE ENTIRE narrative was “purgatory” are the same people who think Members Only Guy shot Tony Soprano.”
Quite the opposite. The island was not purgatory. Any halfway-sensible viewer knows that. Members Only Guy shot Tony. Most sensible people know that.
Yeah, what the fuck? Members Only Guy totally shot Tony. What the hell do you think that blank screen meant? It wasn’t the ending of The Holy Grail for fuck’s sake.
After watching for the characters for so long it would be a bad joke to realize that those characters were actually ‘dead men talking?” huh..!!! I do not remember when it was aired but I recall watching Nicole Kidman in “The Others” the storyline sounds the same to me. The truth is revealed in the end and St. Elsewhere do have the same surprise.
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