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Lost season 6 FINAL CHAPTER

The island plot was never irrelevant it just wasn't the main focus of the show, and as such it didn't need useless answers for questions the majority of the audience didn't care about.

I do not get this sudden downplaying of the shows mythology. Before the finale, the majority of chatter about Lost was devoted to developing elaborate theories to explain the shows unanswered mysteries. Now that the finale has aired it turns out no one ever really cared about the mysteries or their answers and apparently spent the last 6 years talking about which characters were going to get together.
 
BUT WE DID GET ANSWERS. We got answers to the mysteries that were important to the plot of the main characters. We know what the island is, we know who Jacob is, we know what the smoke monster is, we know what the Black Rock was, we know a lot of things. The only stuff that was NOT answered is stuff that really doesn't matter when you're looking at what the story was. These are questions that do not need answers as doing so is bad storytelling.


Seriously, when you were a child did you get grumpy and cry screaming "BUT WHY WERE THERE A GINGERBREAD HOUSE??? WHO BUILT IT??? WHAT DID HANSEL AND GRETAL DO AFTERWARDS??????? THIS IS TERRIBLE WRITING!!!!!"?
 
BUT WE DID GET ANSWERS. We got answers to the mysteries that were important to the plot of the main characters. We know what the island is, we know who Jacob is, we know what the smoke monster is, we know what the Black Rock was, we know a lot of things. The only stuff that was NOT answered is stuff that really doesn't matter when you're looking at what the story was. These are questions that do not need answers as doing so is bad storytelling.


Seriously, when you were a child did you get grumpy and cry screaming "BUT WHY WERE THERE A GINGERBREAD HOUSE??? WHO BUILT IT??? WHAT DID HANSEL AND GRETAL DO AFTERWARDS??????? THIS IS TERRIBLE WRITING!!!!!"?

But that's not quite it. Nobody cares about the gingerbread house because it's there as part of the story and you accept it. The reason people care about the unanswered mysteries is that you can't just turn around after seasons of teasing the audience with "all of this matters" and "we know what we're doing" and just hand waving away the unexplained mysteries as "stuff that didn't matter (even though they spent episodes and episodes focusing them them)" and defining the mysteries that got answered as "the ones that mattered." It's not wishing for bad storytelling to wonder why they spent an entire season running around screaming "THEY TOOK MY SON!", or why the numbers kept showing up, or any other number of issues.

Way early on, the Lost writers asked the audience to trust them - they had a plan and it would all come together. It didn't, not really. Along the way, the show may have transformed from great sci-fi mystery to great story - but it wasn't a great mystery anymore, and that disappoints those who were in it for the mystery.
 
Well if they were in it for the mystery then they were in it for something that was very cleary not the focus of the show from the start and it's their own fault!
 
SOMEONE MAKE AN EXTENSIVE LIST OF THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS CUZ I DON'T REMEMBER MOST OF THEM :rwmad:
 
First off I'd like to say that I have been really disappointed at not being a weekly contributor to this thread. I LOST my weekly schedule with the show about 3 episodes in to season 6 and have been playing catchup ever since. Well, I'm caught up I guess.

I am just a few minutes removed from the ending of the show and I have mixed emotions about it. I guess I was hoping for a bit of a bigger reveal at the end but to be honest I was welling up by the time the final Lost logo flashed on screen to signal the end of the series and I am for the most part a cold hearted automaton and was slightly surprised with myself at how much emotional resonance the show has left me with. For that reason alone (there are many other reasons) I can't hate on the finale or the show for not going more in-depth in to WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON for most of the series.

I am certain that I will be thinking and rethinking this finale and the entire show in general for a long time to come and so how can it not be a success?


There is so much to say about this show and I think whatever your opinions of it if they achieved anything it is that it's going to be discussed for years to come. Something that is really, really difficult to do with any media.

I am not going to run amok and try to say everything in this one post because I could write forever on it. But there are some things that I'd like to say.


  • The acting was fucking phenomenal from EVERYONE.


  • I finally warmed to Kate which at points I would have thought impossible. And it had nothing to do with how sublime she looks either (SHE DOES)


  • There were tons of great moments and scenes and it has been quite an emotional drain these past few episodes. It's been pretty harrowing stuff for a while to be honest and they didn't let up a beat at the end. EMOTIONS!


  • Lapidus was bad ass flying that plane out of there.


  • I ALWAYS LIKED JACK. :)


  • The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences better get to work in making a whole truckload of Emmy's because just about everyone in the show deserves one.


  • Yes, I do understand why some people would be annoyed with the ending. They absolutely nailed the shit out of the HUMAN ADVENTURE (yes, I said it) of the show but maybe just maybe there is a case to be had that while leaving some stuff ambiguous was always going to be the case --and I doubt many of us thought that there would be this incredible Keyser Soze moment at the end that makes everything suddenly make sense-- that they probably should have explained some things a bit more clearly. They've been teasing us like a broke guy in a strip club for a long ass time.


  • SMALLVILLE IS SHIT.


Lost wasn't perfect but it had balls. They produced a highly successful and entertaining show without dumbing it down for the majority of inbreds that watch TV. This really has to be applauded. You needed to be on your game to follow the show and it was one hell of a fun ride if you were able to stick with it. With that in mind let me just say THANK GOD FOR LOSTPEDIA.


Arrrrgghhh... it's over. I'm going to miss it. :(


Now I get to go back and re-read this thread from the point of my self imposed exile. :)


OH YEAH AND HURLEY IS COOL, DUDE.
 
I thought about Wacky's vending machine theory when that happened. Obviously Darlton reads the MF OR HE'S A SECRET MFER!

If one of the Lost creators posted here he'd almost certainly give us some clue to his identity like a polar bear in his avatar or something...
 
BUT WE DID GET ANSWERS. We got answers to the mysteries that were important to the plot of the main characters. We know what the island is, we know who Jacob is, we know what the smoke monster is, we know what the Black Rock was, we know a lot of things. The only stuff that was NOT answered is stuff that really doesn't matter when you're looking at what the story was. These are questions that do not need answers as doing so is bad storytelling.


Seriously, when you were a child did you get grumpy and cry screaming "BUT WHY WERE THERE A GINGERBREAD HOUSE??? WHO BUILT IT??? WHAT DID HANSEL AND GRETAL DO AFTERWARDS??????? THIS IS TERRIBLE WRITING!!!!!"?

I did not read the version of Hansel and Gretal where Dharma and the U.S. Military set up camp and spent years doing intensive research and testing onto the nature and origins of the Gingerbread House and after all that time figured out absolutely nothing. And if that story had 121.5 hours of material supposedly dedicated to the characters then yes I think I would like to know a little about what they ended up doing after the story.

And we do not know what the island is. All we learned was that apparently it is a cork to contain some generic evil force. Or actually the cork is really a cork and the island is the container? We have no idea what the light is, what it does, or why it needs protecting. Apparently it either turns you into the Smoke Monster, or gives you a really bad migraine. Also it is somehow related to the powerful electromagnetic energy emanating from the island which can alternatively cure cancer, crash planes, kill pregnant mothers, make your conciseness jump through time, prevent people from killing themselves, and do whatever else the plot demands. Why the fuck would anyone want to protect that? What, the magic energy is a way for the island to protect itself? What batshit insane person/entity came up with this? If I have something valuable that needs to be protected I'll put it in a fucking vault, not dose people near it with LSD and hope they are too confused to find shit. Maybe if the eeeeeeeeeeevil was kept in with something a little more secure than a rock in a hole all that other crap would not have been necessary.

This reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Burns and Smithers go through an elaborate web of security to get down to the room with the OFF SWITCH for their power plant and when they arrive they find the rusty screen back-door to the room already wide open with a cat hanging out inside. It was pretty funny then but now I can enjoy it on a whole other level.

So none of this matters because the characters were too stupid to ask reasonable questions? Jacob crashed a plane full of hundreds of people, half of which probably died on impact, another quarter of which died at the hands of the others or the smoke monster, all so he could after years of additional suffering eventually ask whoever was left to "raise your hand" if you want to protect the island.

Hey Jacob question. If you really wanted to protect the island, why do you put up with the hordes of crazy pissed off people roaming around shooting everything that blinks? It's a test to see if people are corruptible or not? WTF does that have to do with protecting the island and I would think you'd have your answer by now. Oh you're really just trying to protect a cave of light from the Smoke Monster...so all this talk about good and evil was really you and Smokey jerking off? Fine dude whatever, cave of light, we got shit loads of C4 here show me where it is and we'll blow up the entrance then Smokey can dig through rocks...I can't do that? Do you really think that this all powerful magical energy is going to be affe...forget it. What can I do oh right you don't know. Hey! Smokey needs Desmond to complete his evil plans for whatever reason...why don't you let him off the island or just kill him since you certainly never seemed to have any qualms about killing many others for far lesser reasons....what I have to kill Smokey too? Fine, I guess I'll just figure something out but if I am going to put my life on the line and spend the rest of eternity on this fucked up rock, can you at least tell me what the light is? ...You seriously don't know? Were you even curious? Did you even bother to revisit the place and check things out after you threw your brother in? Can you tell me anything? A hint? A metaphor? Maybe just a riddle? Nothing? So if you don't know shit about it why do you think it needs protection.......THE WORLD WILL END DUDE!!! That's pretty fucking important why didn't you tell us this years ago we could have helped. Well I guess we should go to the cave then....You want me to dirty pond water? Why? What the hell are you mumbling? Hey why do you think the world is going to en...Oh Shit! Too late, his ashes have burnt out! I didn't even know ashes could burn out man wtf. No wonder your mom liked Smokey better.

Well...I guess we know why we're here, and I guess the purpose of the island is to uhm...keep evil trapped in a cave of light? But don't you think that the mind warping elerctromagnetic magic emenating from the light is just a bit overkill for the task? I mean...the only reason anyone is here in the first place is to figure out a way to exploit this energy. Shit for awhile we had to press a button every 108 minutes or else the entire island would get vaporized or something, hell of a way to protect the place. So much of what we have been through has been because of the islands power but I always thought there must be a good reason or purpose for it and eerrrrrrrrr waaaitttt....I'M GETTING A MESSAGE FROM THE ISLAND! IT'S TELLING ME TO STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND COMPLAINING, THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THAT EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED BUILT CHARACTER!! .....woah, so...what I'm hearing...is that this island is like one of those reality shows where the producers constantly make the contenstants do weird shit just to create drama and get amusing reactions? YES BASICALLY, NOW DO AS YOU'RE TOLD OR RISK ELIMINATION.

Wow, so...are you guys okay with this? *Sawyer and Jack exchange looks* Jack: Well, we both got to bang Kate, it's all good.

I see...well I guess, I mean I think.....aggghhhhhh FUCK IT MAN THAT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME, IF ONLY I WAS THINKING IN THOSE TERMS FROM THE BEGINNING, CHARACTER FTW...NOW LETS GET 'ER DONE.
 
Let's all just admit that this whole show was about Richard.

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Well here's the thing MOOGOO, all the stuff you are nitpicking angrily about didn't stop the show from being really fun and interesting to watch all along. Sometimes there were shit episodes, and sometimes we got a little frustrated with some of the mysterious stuff, but over all most of us really loved the show. It was fun to wonder what Dharma was really up to, and it was fun to wonder what the island really was.. but the show is over now, they were never going to be able to answer every question satisfactorily. I agree that some of the mysterious shit seems to have been pointless, especially some of season 6 with Dogan and the hippie others.
 
That's the most important thing for me. I really enjoyed the show for the majority of the time. As I said before it was far from perfect but there was far more to praise about the show than there was to bitch about. And I enjoyed the finale as well even though I can't deny being disappointed with how much was left unanswered.
 
ZOMG CASSIE stop being reasonable. We never learned why the Smoke Monster sounds like a 19th century passenger train so the entire show and several other shows that aired around it suck.


Really all I'm trying to do is refute this ridicules new connotation that the island mysteries were never that important and didn't really warrant answers.
 
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT EVERY MOMENT.

Yeah there were some things that would have been nice to know WTF it was. I honestly have forgotten most of them because sometimes they'd have big mysterious things for a season and then the next season they'd move on to some other big mysterious thing. I remember at one point I was reading up on the Casimir effect because I was sure it had something to do with what Dharma was researching. Maybe they were afraid to get too science-y because they didn't want to lose the audience.
 
Fact is, it was advertised as mystery show from the outset, so it's disingenuous to claim now it's over that it was all about the characters and that none of those questions were important. Of course they were. And while I'm very satisfied with the conclusions that the characters got, the writers clearly chickened out of answering a lot of questions that they themselves made a main focus of the show, so criticism over that is entirely justified.
 
And it still is a mystery show.

If you want a mystery that gets solved every week I recommend Scooby Doo.
 
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT EVERY MOMENT.

Yeah there were some things that would have been nice to know WTF it was. I honestly have forgotten most of them because sometimes they'd have big mysterious things for a season and then the next season they'd move on to some other big mysterious thing. I remember at one point I was reading up on the Casimir effect because I was sure it had something to do with what Dharma was researching. Maybe they were afraid to get too science-y because they didn't want to lose the audience.


In the beginning the islands powers were explained as being related to electromagnetism which is a sciency explanation even if it made no sense. During the re-air of the first episode the night before the finale one of the info tickers at the bottom stated quite literally that Locke's paralysis was cured by the islands electromagnetic powers. If only this were true we'd have hospitals around the country powered by giant electromagnets and the area inside the LHC's accelerator ring would be an oasis of health and rejuvenation (as well as crashed planes and time travel, and people were worried about tiny black holes).

Only at the very end were the islands powers shifted from electromagnetism to magical glowing light. If it were this way from the beginning expectations might have been different.

But the problem was never about the name attached to the powers or the lack of a technobabble explanation on its inner-workings, it was the fact the powers were portrayed inconsistently and applied arbitrarily from episode to episode. This is far more inline with Trek's spatial anomaly of the week which so many have railed against.
 
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