Debbie:
I’ve been anxious to get a really good debate going between us, Bob, and so far we agree on most points we’ve written about. We’ve all read your glorification of the series Lost for years now on CliqueClack — it’s time to find out what really bugged you about it. What was the most annoying thing about Lost‘s final season?
For me (not a Lost fan), probably the most annoying thing was the fact that Keith ran the live chats and I had to endure watching Lost live when I could have been enjoying anything queued up on my DVR, or, you know, Glee.
If I were to actually look at the show, I’d have to say that it was most annoying that all of the characters were so unlikable that it made it difficult to invest in the show. I like it when characters are flawed, that wasn’t the problem, it’s just that I found it so difficult to muster up any sympathy for them that I didn’t care what happened to them in the end. Tough to build up a suspenseful finale when they could have nuked them all and I would have been fine with it.
I’m probably the only person who actually liked the episode “Across the Sea,” because I was just so thrilled to get a break from Jack and Kate whining and all of the other characters standing around looking threatening or mouth-breathing. I found Cain and Abel’s mother to be fascinatingly maligned, and I can’t say that I found any other character fascinating in this last season of Lost.
So how about it, Bob — what annoyed you most about Lost‘s final season?
Bob:
You woke the dragon.
I have a philosophical issue with this whole question. It’s not that there wasn’t anything that I found annoying about the final season of Lost. In fact, in retrospect I think it was a highly flawed season. The real issue that I take with this is two fold. Firstly, it seems like it has become incredibly “trendy” to shit on Lost. You weren’t happy with the ending? Fine, I get it. A lot was unanswered, I can appreciate the annoyance. What I cannot appreciate, however, is all the people who were watching the show solely for the final episode. All those people yelling about how six years of their lives were wasted drive me nuts. Come on, really?!? Regardless of the ending, if you enjoyed watching the show through the first years, why would one episode ruin that for you? That’s just revisionist history. And, frankly, if you were watching the show just to see how it ended and you really didn’t enjoy any of it? Well, that makes you a fool, and you deserve all the wasted time that you put into the show.
Secondly, this is a little bit of an unfair question because you don’t like the show. When you decide not to like something, you’re going to be looking at that thing through an entirely different frame of reference. Of course every little thing is going to look more annoying, of course every little character flaw is going to grate on you — you don’t like the show!!!
The characters were unlikable? Aside from Kate and Jack, I’m not really sure I can agree with you. There wasn’t a single thing unlikable about Hurley, Desmond, Sun, Jin, Miles, Lapidus, or Richard. Sawyer had some flaws, but he was fun enough to be likable. Ben was likable in his pitiful villainy. Whether you liked them or not, the characters were some of the most three dimensional and fully realized characters on television.
So there.
What did I find annoying? Most of the things that annoyed me I discussed in my reviews. The ending didn’t (and therefore the sideways world from the final season) connect enough with the real world and most of the action on the island for my taste. I am nowhere near as annoyed as a lot of viewers about the lack of answers to some of the questions on the show, but I do consider some of the loose ends to be failures in storytelling on the part of the writers. There’s really no other way around it.
I think you all think I’m much more of a super fan than I am.
Deb:
Far be it from me to be considered trendy. I only poop on Lost because I didn’t care for the show, not because it’s “in” (though all the cool kids are doing it….). I had no problem with the ending, but I just didn’t like the ride. I found it manipulative, akin to what a movie like My Dog Skip or Marley and Me does to dog-lovers, but the target audience were the poor saps thinking the ride was going to take them somewhere (most of the viewers). If you didn’t like the ride, then why were you watching, people?
Back to the topic at hand — I guess unlikable wasn’t the right word for the characters … let me revise that to unrelatable. There was something about the way the characters were written that left me incredibly unsympathetic toward them. Sure, Hurley was the funny fat guy, but I didn’t care if he lived, died, fried, drowned, blew up with the hatch, you get the point.
Now, you want to talk about 3D characters, nothing can compare to the way the characters in Supernatural are written. They have grown organically based on their experiences and the writers were able to show us all of their flaws, but it is still very easy to be sympathetic toward them because the writers know how to write to the hearts of the viewers (and not in a manipulative way, see above). In Lost, there was something unreachable and unbelievable about all of the characters, something so fictional and distant and unrelatable that it was impossible to feel empathy. They just didn’t feel “real” to me.
It’s funny that the sideways world was part of your annoyance because that’s one of the things I liked best about Lost‘s final season. It was fun to see how the characters were interconnected and I’m waiting for the Sawyer / Miles buddy cop show spinoff!
Bob:
Your view of Lost is completely and utterly baffling. I’ve never seen Supernatural, so I can’t really comment, but it seems like you just like the show better. All the comments you make about the Lost characters just don’t seem true. Maybe it’s just a more subjective thing than either of us realize, but I still say that the characters were wonderfully three dimensional and very relatable. Maybe you’re the distant one, not the characters? I don’t know what it says about you that you can more easily relate to a character fighting the supernatural forces of evil than to a character longing to find themselves and meaning in their life.
In any case, it wasn’t the sideways stories that aggravated me. For the most part they were really good. What annoyed me is that in the end they didn’t really tie into to the bigger story on the island that we had been watching unfold for six seasons. So much time was spent in the last season with Jacob and Smokey and it turns out that the sideways stories had virtually nothing to do with them. You can make an argument for it, that the characters saved the “light” on the island, which is what they all became a part of in the end, but I wanted a more substantial connection to tie everything together.
Debbie:
Well everything’s subjective, Bob, or there wouldn’t be fans mailing peanuts to the network when a show no one watched got canceled.
Well of course I like Supernatural better; the character development is awesome and grows out of what happens to the characters, which is what shapes people in, you know, real life. I suppose I could give you the fact that there are people in real life who whine about everything and don’t take personal responsibility, but I try not to associate myself with these people because they just bring me down … kind of like watching Lost. I just felt so distant from the Lost characters.
We’ve got to wrap this one up — any last words?
Bob:
My only point is that what you are saying about the character development [in Supernatural] is how I feel about the character development on Lost. Perhaps you’re just not paying enough attention, because … well, you know … YOU DON’T LIKE THE SHOW!!!
OK, Lost fans and haters and everyone in-between — weigh in and tell me if I didn’t pay enough attention or if Bob is more of a fanboy then he thinks he is….
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Jul 07, 2010 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
See Deb. It’s you, not the writers who are at fault.
This was painful to read. I really can’t stand when somebody attacks Deb like that for saying what she thinks.
Also I find it very funny that you manage to put all critics into one large category which you divide up into two sub-categories. One large where you say people bitch because they want to bitch. Then you divide it up into “You just came back to see the finale” and the “You watched it all the way but didn’t like it, so you didn’t like it anyway”. The former are the ones who wised up and dropped the show because it got more and more convoluted, the latter were the ones who stuck with it because they invested so much.
You sound to me like someone who talks to people who were part of a ponzy scheme, telling those people they should’ve known better and arguing about it makes them look dumb.
I don’t even want to mention stuff I liked about “Lost” now. Reading this made me angry. Not so much about “Lost” but more about the way you chose to defend it. So let me make a throwaway gesture and be off.
Apparently deb is allowed to have an opinion, but I am not?
All I was really saying is that people should try to have a little perspective. If you enjoyed seasons 1-5, don’t let your disappointment in the final season ruin those first five years! If the journey was great, the destination really shouldn’t matter.
I’ll never understand the people who hated the show but stuck it out. If the storytelling had stopped working for you, why would you believe that ending would suddenly reverse the trend? My belief is that a lot of those folks wanted to see a horrible ending so they could just shout: I told you so!
Your ponzy scheme analogy makes no sense to me.
Deb scratched that. There was A LOT of sugary Eye-Candy and all the while the hint, the promise of something great. In the end it was all a smoke-screen.
It was like eating at McD for six years. That you don’t get the ponzy scheme analogy irritates me. Maybe the Nigerian Prince. Promise someone 10 Million for only 10k. Then 5k more because of this problem. Then another 5. In the end the victims lose 100k because there was always something new. Like Libby. Or Me. Eko. Or the mouth-breathers. And always the numbers. You know, those numbers a French Woman aired on a Radio station that in the end corresponded to markings in a lighthouse for watching People who live far away, numbers that were hinted at were part of this equation that was hinted at and in the end didn’t mean a frakking thing.
Or let me give you another example: it was like 6 Years of World of Warcraft. Every Five minutes you got something new. For Years upon years. New items. New Dungeons. Easter Eggs. At some point People leave because they notice the scheme…
the treadmill. Others stick with it and then the producers say it needed to end. And then it ends and you find out that it was all for nothing. That there are no answers to crucial questions.
And you argue that we should’ve known better. That we should’ve stopped eating that fast food. Defy our nature of seeking for the Instant gratification, the quick high, the easter eggs, the eye-candy. And to the other extend: the Final answer. Sticking with it out of trust, hope and belief that what you are told is honest. That there IS light at the end of the Tunnel. That it will all make sense.
The diabetics in the end stood there without their fix. No more sugar. The believers stood there without the Final answer.
And you – you stand there fooling yourself into believing that you didn’t waste you time. That that heap of Sugar was nurishing. That you got your answers. That it was all great.
Like a 500 pound diabetic saying he likes his body.
Fine by me. But don’t attack me for, upon bringing up the topic, calling you fat.
All I can do is not mention it. Do yourself the same favor
Sebastian, I just think you’re misinterpreting the point I’m trying to make. What I don’t understand (and that’s all it is, I just don’t get it) is the people who are forgetting that the 6 year ride was a fun ride even if the ending was unsatisfying. Walkabout was a great hour of TV, the season three finale was still amazing, the constant was one of my favorite episodes of any TV show (and I know you never liked the Desmond eps, but I did :o) ). My point is this, I will try to make it as clear a I can: Regardless of the end of Lost, there was still a lot to like about it. Remember the good times.
Here is how I will describe the show if somone who has never seen it asks me about it in 10-20 years: “It was a great show. The end didn’t tie everything together like it should have, but it was a fun ride and you should check it out.”
Don’t know why this gets sorted down here but whatever…
One thing I wanted to add is that I understand the way you like “Lost”. It’s like the way I like “Superman Returns”. It’s alright. Never mind the funny observations Kevin Smith made here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_EkvOCjc9A
You have to undestand that there are people who kind of watched “The Dark Knight” and about halfway through they noticed that they were actually watching “Batman & Robin”, the only movie I EVER (!) walked out of. The most utter piece of movie garbage imaginable. WIth George Clooney. With the Governator. Beautiful people. Shitty movie. And you simply can’t defend that.
The other thing is “Flashes Before your Eyes”. I keep mentioning that episode, I know, but when I read that the finale of Season 3 was awesome I have to mention “Flashes” because that was the first time I saw parallels with “Donnie Darko” but in the end the show completely and utterly failed at SciFi/Fantasy. In the end, “Lost” became “Desperate Housewives” on an island with polar bears and time travel. All the lore and the laws don’t make ANY sense. There are no answers to the technological and scientific aspects. There are only ever hints at those and that way you lose ALL the SciFi nerds. With the way Skate resolved, you lost all the Desperate Housewives fans.
In the end, I am absolutely with Deb. That Cop show would be awesome. Without Polar Bears.
I know, maybe I am unfairly reacting to what you said in the post because you might be right – their are people out there who didn’t follow through and now bitch about the show. They didn’t stick with it, they didn’t watch it all the way to the end. The problem is, if you DID stick with the show you also have an answer for those people: they should’ve known better. That’s just obnoxious when you are so much into the show because you think there’s something behind it. You listen to the Podcasts, you watch the Comicon videos and all the while you are told over and over again that it will all make sense in the end, like you’re talking to Moses and the guy has those two tablets he’s not going to show you right until the end and you believe him because you want to and then in the end he shows you two Pizza Hut boxes and tells you that the big man in the sky said that it’s all going to be fine (yes that was an “Invention of Lying” reference).
And I fracking hate people who tell me that if I don’t like something I should quit. Why should I quit something I like so much but that is so extremely flawed in aspects I simply can’t disregard, namely the laws and lore aspects? The rules that are disregarded, retconning the an extend that it hurts and all the while getting told you should just sit back and enjoy it for what it is.
Well then. If that’s the case then it was simply sugar with no worth. It left me unsatisfied, fat, wanting more and with holes in my teeth from all the sweet people.
So let’s just stop talking about this (expletive deleted) show called “Lost” and maybe wait and see what “Hawaii 5-0″ will bring us.
Heck even “The Unusuals” in the end was better than “Lost” because it simply ended leaving you wanting more Harold Perinneau. “Lost” left me with a real bad aftertaste.
In the end, I’m cured. No more mystery for me on TV. Maybe in movie form but never ever TV. “X-Files” and “Lost” cured me.
In my defense, I was done talking about Lost! Deb’s the one who brought it up!
;0)
Oh yes… right. Err. What now? Dinner? Be right there :-)
I would watch a Sawyer & Miles buddy cop show!
Who thought this would be a good idea? I mean, I’ve folded those 6 seasons into a neat bundle, tied it with silk and stored it away in a steamer trunk (although that trunk is in the boot of an old car at the bottom of a lake) but I know a lot of people that still have an open wound over this stuff. To them, those scabs are still weeping, man….
Too soon.
And yeah, Deb, going only by what I read: fanboy.
I hate lost!!!, and yes, i’m a fool for waiting so many years for it to make sense, and thinking that they would answer something… just to think about it makes me VERY mad (just like Bones with their stupid plots).
the last thing i have to say is SUPERNATURAL RULES!!! :)
Let me high five you for that comment :-)
(even though I am at peace with “Bones” because I now enjoy it as a sugar bomb, completely shutting off my brain. It’s like “Ben & Jerry’s” for me now :-))
Well that didn’t exactly come across in Debs post.
I know what you mean but in the end, “Lost” is like “Avatar”. Loads and loads of eye-candy, easily enjoyable but in the end, in every aspect, sub-par.
Watch Donnie Darko, then Southland Tales. Lost is Southland Tales.
And the Main Problem, you are right at that, is the audience. They thought that answers would equal “make sense”. In the end the anwers were horrible. A fade to White right after the penultimate Episode would’ve been better.
In 10 Years you will say Lost was Great with an un-satisfying Ending (maybe Not Even that will Pass your lips :-) ) while many viewers will remember a Show that pretened to be some sort of evangelism and in the end was “101 legal tax evasion Tricks”