lost

[anart]

The concluding 10 or so minutes affected me very emotionally, much more than most TV, although I couldn't say exactly why -- I had an emotional hangover from it even when I got up this morning.

Could be due to whatever they were beaming into your mind within the picture/sound of the 'program' ... ;)

 

[un chien anadolu]

Hmmm, they way I understood it was that the Island was real, they went through all of that. But they were meeting up in this 'sideways reality', so that they could 'go to the light' together.

Yes, the plain crash and the island was real. The flash sideways reality was a transition place before going into 5D. But it was depicted mainly from the mainstream religions point of view IMO. So the sideway reality was purgatory, I think.

Jack's father's name (the guy who guided them to 5D) was "Christian Shephard".

There was also a scene at the end with the symbols of six religions on the church window.

 

[Beau]

I thoughts it was a satisfying ending to a show that, at its heart, was about character struggle and development. The mysteries of the island were, IMO, just Macguffins which allowed the writers to explore many of the individual's weaknesses and still retain its sci-fi elements. If you are someone who needs to know the answer to every mystery the writers created, most likely you were not satisfied, but if you were willing to let that slide then I think the resolution of the various character arcs was extremely well done. The writers never spelled out what they meant by many things and I appreciated that from a viewer standpoint, they were willing to let us decide what things meant. I've always liked ambiguous storytelling that doesn't beat you over the head with their philosophy, and in Lost they provide the chance to let the viewer put their own interpretation onto the events that were occurring. That kind of storytelling can be very frustrating to a lot of people. But this wasn't a show that was about beating you over the head with their religious and philosophical beliefs. It was about personal redemption through learned lessons and the struggle to overcome their past to become something more than the broken people they were when they crashed onto the Island. It was, IMO, a powerful allegory to what we can possibly do in our time in this world. The tropes of good vs. evil and free will vs. destiny were representations of this possibility. And that, I think, is the brilliance of the show.

 

[shijing]

The concluding 10 or so minutes affected me very emotionally, much more than most TV, although I couldn't say exactly why -- I had an emotional hangover from it even when I got up this morning.

Could be due to whatever they were beaming into your mind within the picture/sound of the 'program' ... ;)

That's entirely possible, and I won't rule it out; I think there may be more to it (although I could be wrong). "Hangover" was probably the wrong word to use because of the associations it has, since I primarily felt profoundly impacted in a bittersweet, emotional way.

I'm a bit of a softie anyway, both watching TV and movies as well as in real life, and I think the biggest thing that impacted me was the way in which there was a contrast drawn between the "island" reality, and the "sideways" or "purgatory" reality. In the first reality, the characters began with broken lives and endured much hardship and suffering, often learning to love only to see their loved ones die, and most of it apparently being for nothing (the one exception being Jack, the main protagonist, who gave his life in the end for the rest of his friends) right up until the end. In the second reality, the characters saw this life from a post-death perspective, and were (I think) able to understand that all of the suffering had actually been meaningful because of what they had learned and how they had redeemed themselves, but they first needed to die to be able to see this. It was kind of summarized by what Jack's father said at the end, that "the most important years of your life were spent with these people," even though all of the characters during their time on the island thought it was extremely unpleasant and spent their effort, for the most part, just trying to leave and return to "normal" lives.

I thoughts it was a satisfying ending to a show that, at its heart, was about character struggle and development. The mysteries of the island were, IMO, just Macguffins which allowed the writers to explore many of the individual's weaknesses and still retain its sci-fi elements. If you are someone who needs to know the answer to every mystery the writers created, most likely you were not satisfied, but if you were willing to let that slide then I think the resolution of the various character arcs was extremely well done. The writers never spelled out what they meant by many things and I appreciated that from a viewer standpoint, they were willing to let us decide what things meant. I've always liked ambiguous storytelling that doesn't beat you over the head with their philosophy, and in Lost they provide the chance to let the viewer put their own interpretation onto the events that were occurring. That kind of storytelling can be very frustrating to a lot of people. But this wasn't a show that was about beating you over the head with their religious and philosophical beliefs. It was about personal redemption through learned lessons and the struggle to overcome their past to become something more than the broken people they were when they crashed onto the Island. It was, IMO, a powerful allegory to what we can possibly do in our time in this world. The tropes of good vs. evil and free will vs. destiny were representations of this possibility. And that, I think, is the brilliance of the show.

I think this is really true. I can totally understand people being discouraged by not learning in the end where the island "came from", why it could do what it did, and so on. I just made my own personal assumption that it was an Atlantean-era technological relic and was happy with that :D I think what Heimdallr describes as it being "a powerful allegory to what we can possibly do in our time in this world" is pretty correct, and I think that is partly what made me feel so strongly at the end -- particularly since the end result of so much of what we do Work-wise and otherwise in this life may never be completely clear to us until we have a 5D perspective and can truly see what we gained through our suffering here during our finite life in 3D.

 

[knowledge_of_self]

Personally, I hated the ending of Lost.

I was a big fan of the show and watched it very closely and couldn’t wait to the end- but unlike you guys, I thought the ending was very bad and left me feeling extremely unsatisfied.


**Spoiler Alert**

The ending made the show seemed as if the writers brought way too many ideas into one show and couldn’t finish it because they didn’t know how. So they ended it with sideways reality being purgatory.

The ending of the show didn’t explain anything- from, what was up with the time traveling to what was that random lizard statue on the island, to what was the light house- where Jacob watched all of their lives (that jack smashed), to why that women killed Jacob and Smokey dude’s mom, or how she gave Jacob something to drink, chanting something- which made him “the protector", to Jack giving Hurley some muddy water without chanting anything and randomly making him the new Jacob, to how did the original Jacob manage to bring people to the island- using what power? And on and on...

Pretty much everything was left unsaid and a few characters including Michael (who is presumed to be a whispering ghost till the end of time on the island) and Walt never made it to the “church”. Not much about the Dharma projects were explained either…
I thought it was too simple of an ending for such a complex show and it was very disappointing.

 

[henry]

I agree with Heimdallr. I thought the ending was touching, fitting, and emphasized what was important about the show: the characters and their growth. The idea of the characters creating that specific realm, which some people are calling purgatory, was beautiful. They each had to earn their place, redeem themselves, the selfish things they had done. And then they head off to who knows where to do who knows what...together. Perfect!

And those moments when they groked what had happened to them! Wow!

 

[rrraven]

Quote from: anart on May 26, 2010, 04:34:32 AM
Quote from: Shijing on May 25, 2010, 01:54:32 PM
The concluding 10 or so minutes affected me very emotionally, much more than most TV, although I couldn't say exactly why -- I had an emotional hangover from it even when I got up this morning.

Could be due to whatever they were beaming into your mind within the picture/sound of the 'program' ... Wink

I made a point of watching it on analog (all the other parts of the last lost season were only on the new digital channel!!) during the last minute or so of the show the picture went funny...lines running across the picture horizontally like the old analog tv could not transmit the extra signal

 

[aragorn]

Me and my wife watched the final episode today. Just prior to watching it, while our son was at sleep, I did the whole EE program which put me in a very 'emotionally receptive ' state. Needless to say, I was very moved by the final scenes. I think the writers did a terrific job, as someone said in this thread earlier, in concentrating on 'the big picture' and not on the many unsolved details. I think it's our predator's mind that always want to tell us how this and this mystery didn't get solved, and try to 'shoot down' a good story (similar to the people who like to point out 'flaws' in Laura's writings). I was happy to notice that I didn't feel that need to get all the answers this time, like I usually do.

I felt a knot in my stomach and tears building up for every time the characters did re-membering, it felt remotely familiar somehow! I was all in all very satisfied with the end, even surprised how 'right' the ending was. And at the same time I'm sad to have to say goodbye(yeah, I know it's pathetic). :(

The final gathering in the church got me thinking of our gang here at the forum and the FOTCM; maybe we will see each other in 4D. Hope so...

 

[Al Today]

Seeing this thread makes me put up a side note:
A fellow on the radio said he was watching the President Obama speech the other day about the B.P. Gulf/Oil fiasco and felt like he was watching the last episode of lost. Lots of B.S. and no real answers...


or

???


edit: I'm gonna putting "edit" in my posts cause it's always my typing...

 

[Nook]

Personally, I hated the ending of Lost.

I was a big fan of the show and watched it very closely and couldn’t wait to the end- but unlike you guys, I thought the ending was very bad and left me feeling extremely unsatisfied.


**Spoiler Alert**

The ending made the show seemed as if the writers brought way too many ideas into one show and couldn’t finish it because they didn’t know how. So they ended it with sideways reality being purgatory.

The ending of the show didn’t explain anything- from, what was up with the time traveling to what was that random lizard statue on the island, to what was the light house- where Jacob watched all of their lives (that jack smashed), to why that women killed Jacob and Smokey dude’s mom, or how she gave Jacob something to drink, chanting something- which made him “the protector", to Jack giving Hurley some muddy water without chanting anything and randomly making him the new Jacob, to how did the original Jacob manage to bring people to the island- using what power? And on and on...

Pretty much everything was left unsaid and a few characters including Michael (who is presumed to be a whispering ghost till the end of time on the island) and Walt never made it to the “church”. Not much about the Dharma projects were explained either…
I thought it was too simple of an ending for such a complex show and it was very disappointing.

I agree. It was a simple ending to a complex show, maybe the writers used it because it was going to be unexpected. I personally liked the ending, even though it was conventionally Christian but there was room for other religious interpretations too.

All in all, I liked the show and since TV's just getting worse and worse, I think this was the last thrilling show on tv.

 

[JGeropoulas]

Personally, I hated the ending of Lost.

I was a big fan of the show and watched it very closely and couldn’t wait to the end- but unlike you guys, I thought the ending was very bad and left me feeling extremely unsatisfied.


**Spoiler Alert**

The ending made the show seemed as if the writers brought way too many ideas into one show and couldn’t finish it because they didn’t know how. So they ended it with sideways reality being purgatory.

The ending of the show didn’t explain anything- from, what was up with the time traveling to what was that random lizard statue on the island, to what was the light house- where Jacob watched all of their lives (that jack smashed), to why that women killed Jacob and Smokey dude’s mom, or how she gave Jacob something to drink, chanting something- which made him “the protector", to Jack giving Hurley some muddy water without chanting anything and randomly making him the new Jacob, to how did the original Jacob manage to bring people to the island- using what power? And on and on...

Pretty much everything was left unsaid and a few characters including Michael (who is presumed to be a whispering ghost till the end of time on the island) and Walt never made it to the “church”. Not much about the Dharma projects were explained either…
I thought it was too simple of an ending for such a complex show and it was very disappointing.

Because I don't have cable, I always had to wait a season for the videos of Lost to come out, which put me a season behind. So I just came out of my own little "time warp" and finished watching the last episode.

I must say, I was very satisfied with the ending, and I had enormous emotional reactions to the characters' heroism and "entering into rest" from their labors. In fact, Lost usually evoked deep emotions and tears about once per season, triggered by the deep bonds that developed between the characters as they struggled to survive physically and mentally--against the external challenges of the island as well as the internal vacillations of their strengths, vulnerabilities and flaws.

A lot of the issues about the ending were discussed by the writers in the Special Features segments and I was impressed with their thinking. As for answering all the questions, they said they felt obliged to fill in the background stories of many key characters before concluding, thus the sense of packing so much in at the last minute. But on the other hand, they said they couldn't explain everything because "every answer would only lead to two more questions" (quoting what Jacob's adoptive mother told his biological mother when she began asking questions about the island, etc.).

As for the "sideways" reality, the writers actually referred to this as a "flash-sideways." The actors summed it up saying, at first we did a bunch of "flashbacks," then we began "flash-forwards," followed by "flash-sideways." If you recall, Jack returned to the island and lead the effort to explode the hydrogen bomb that, in conjunction with the unusual electromagnetic field of the island, was supposed to propel them all back onto the time-line of a "no crash" scenario. They were ambivalent because the cost would be they would be as if they'd never met each other.

Eventually, they find the hydrogen bomb and detonate it, but all that seems to result is a disaster which kills Juliet. As she's dying in Sawyer's arms at the bottom of that pit where she'd detonated the bomb, she whispers, "It worked." Well it doesn't appear to have worked at all because they are all stuck on the island and the last season (or two) proceed from there to the finale.

As for them having real jobs, etc. remember at the end, when Jack said he had to hurry and pick up his son, and a fully-awakened Lock gently says, "Jack, you don't have a son." And remember, earlier that "son" was acting uncharacteristically angelic, wise and supportive of Jack. And Jack's "ex-wife," was being uncharacteristically cooperative and kind when they were negotiating about Jack and their son going to some event. Jack's ex-wife was none other than (blonde) Juliette, to whom he was deeply attracted in his parallel post-crash island life (which had interrupted his pre-crash life, where he was tortured with regrets about neglecting and losing his (blonde) wife).

Apparently, the hydrogen bomb strategy caused an additional branch in their realities--not a corrective, replacement one. This "flash sideways" represented parallel versions of each life, which they consolidated into one consciousness at the end by "remembering" themselves and "seeing" fully.

In the last couple of episodes, Desmond has orchestrated getting all the members of the "soul group" together at that party. When Mrs. Widmore demands to know what he's up to, his reply is, "It's time. I'm waking them up!"

 

[knowledge_of_self]

Found an interesting article today about Lost. As I thought, the writers basically didn't have a set plan for the show and just threw a whole bunch of ideas together - so many in fact that they couldn't really end the show in any specific way. So they just went ahead and did that ending to please everyone.

I was one of those people that wanted a "big binder" but the writers didn't have that. They wrote the show to please viewers episode by episode.

"Lost" writer gives detailed account of show

Damon Lindelof only wanted a gig writing for "Alias" when he agreed to meet with J.J. Abrams about "Lost" -- and the pair threw in lots of wild elements just because they never expected it to get on the air.

One of the main calling cards of the show -- the flashbacks to characters' lives before they crash landed on the island -- was simply a way to cut away from the same old tropical locale. And the out-of-sync storytelling was inspired by Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."

If it seemed like the writers were making things up as they went along, by the way, they often were. And also? Lindelof tried to quit the show, again and again.

These were just a few of the admissions Lindelof shared about one of television's most beloved shows Thursday on the seventh anniversary of its first airing on ABC.

He spoke during a keynote address at the New York Television Festival, a gathering where independent writers and producers try to meet with executives and find homes for their pilots.

Lindelof was an established TV writer himself, working on NBC's "Crossing Jordan," when he first met Abrams. He told interviewer Andrew Jenks, host of MTV's "World of Jenks," that he had been "stalking" an ABC executive friend for years to get a job on Abrams' spy series "Alias."

Eventually the executive, Heather Kadin, called him in January 2004 saying he could meet Abrams about a project.

"The bad news is," he recalled her saying, "it's this ridiculous show idea about a plane that crashes on an island and everyone here doesn't think anything is ever going to happen with it. But Lloyd Braun who was the president of ABC at the time, just thought he had lightning in a bottle: He wanted to do a drama version of 'Survivor.'"

Braun had told Abrams he had a script for an island drama but wanted him to "work your magic on it," Lindelof said. He said Abrams told Braun he was too busy, but would supervise another writer.

"So Heather told me, you meet with J.J., this pilot goes nowhere, but then you get a job on 'Alias'!"

But the pilot went somewhere. Lindelof came in with plenty of ideas, including nonlinear storytelling and flashbacks.

"The biggest issue with a desert island show was the audience is going to get very frustrated that the characters were not getting off the island," he said. "My solution was, hey, let's get off the island every week. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to do these flashbacks. We'll do one character at a time and there's going to be like 70 characters on the show, so we'll go really, really slow, and each one will basically say, here's who they were before the crash and it'll dramatize something that's happening on the island and it will also make the show very character-centric."

Abrams liked the idea, and also had another: "'There should be a hatch on this island! They spend the entire season trying to get it open. And there should be these other people on the island,'" Lindelof recalled Abrams saying. "And I'm like, ''We can call them The Others.' And he's like, 'They should hear this noise out there in the jungle.' And I'm like, 'What's the noise?' And he's like, 'I don't...know. They're never going to

pick this thing up anyway.'"

Lindelof said the idea to tell the story out of chronological order came in part from "Pulp Fiction," in which John Travolta's character is killed about halfway through -- and viewers learn only at the end that he had failed to heed Samuel Jackson's speech in the diner about the path of the righteous man.

"That sort of flipped the switch in me, and was something that I really wanted to do as a storyteller and 'Lost' was really the perfect opportunity to do it," Lindelof said.

Abrams and Lindelof quickly wrote an outline, and within days, Braun picked up their pilot. (He was soon fired after greenlighting not only "Lost" but "Desperate Housewives," and famously vindicated when both shows became huge hits. "Lost" ensured he would always be a part of the show by making his the voice that said, at the start of each episode, "Previously, on 'Lost.'")

Lindelof said he almost immediately felt overwhelmed by the responsibilities of running the show -- and repeatedly decided or tried to quit. By its eleventh episode, he convinced Carlton Cuse, who had been his boss on CBS's "Nash Bridges," to come in and help him lead the show.

"I was living, breathing, sleeping the show, it was all I thought about, and I would wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, thinking about Jin," he said.

He said he agreed with critics who said the show could never last more than a season.

"If we put it on the air and we're like, there's a polar bear in the jungle, somebody better know where the (expletive) that polar bear came from," he said. "That pressure was enormously debilitating."

Abrams, meanwhile, had "plausible deniability" because he had left the show in Lindelof's hands to focus on movies, Lindelof said: "When the torch-wielding mob shows up at his house, and they're like, 'Where does the polar bear come from?' he could say, I'm working on 'Mission Impossible,' go to Damon."

He said he resolved to quit after 13 episodes, then after the first season. Eventually the show went six seasons with him and Cuse in charge.

Lindelof eventually recognized unintentional parallels between himself and Jack, the show's lead character. He said it didn't occur to him at first that both he and Jack, played by Matthew Fox, were reluctant leaders mourning the recent deaths of their fathers.

Eventually he was given his out from the show that was making him "miserable," he said. In its third season, ABC agreed it would go six seasons in all.

A turning point came at the end of the third season when he watched dailies of Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) dying. He cried over not only the character, but the impending end of "Lost."

He also said the show might not have lasted more than three seasons without the Internet, because it allowed fans and the show's creators to spur each other on. He noted that 23 million people tuned in for the first episode, and only 13 million for the finale -- a sign that the show lost many people as it went on. But those that stayed with it did so in part because the Internet gave them somewhere to vent, he said.

"What got them through those periods of doubt and 'Are you going to break my heart?' was their feeling that they were communicating with us," he said.

But trying to please fans was a Catch-22.

"There were these two things happening on the show from the minute it began. The first thing was that the audience really wanted to feel like they had an impact on the show," he said. "And the other thing was, you didn't want us to be making it up as we went along. You wanted us to have a plan, you wanted us to have a big binder with the entire show and you didn't want us to deviate from it. And the audience didn't realize that there's a huge contradiction between these two ideas. If you want to have a say, then there can't be a binder. And if there is a binder, then we're basically going to be like, 'we don't care what you guys have to say. We're just turning to page 365 and we're doing Lupitas.'"

He added: "The show had to become sort of an exercise in, 'Here's what it's going to be, guys: We're going to come out and we're going to play our set, and once the set is over you guys can shout out what songs you want to hear and we'll do those for the encore.' And that was the way that we modulated it, and maybe it worked and maybe it didn't.

"But the interaction of the Internet and our genuine desire to hear what the fans were saying and make ourselves accessible to the fans was absolutely essential to the show's success. I am absolutely convinced that we probably would not have made it to season three or season four at the most if the Internet didn't exist."

As for that job on "Alias"? It never panned out. The show wrapped after five seasons in 2006, four years before "Lost."

Now if anyone is interested in a GREAT series - full of emotions and things that connect from beginning to the end, watch Babylon 5. I take my hat off to that show.

 

[Etevarran]

Thanks for the article, Deedlet. If I had known... I, too, was one of those who expected the writers of LOST to have a grand plan that would explain everything by the end. But obviously adding stuff up along the way amounted to nothing, and only left fans like me with a million questions they never intended to answer. Too bad. At least the run was enjoyable right until the end. :)