Lost [FINALE SPOILERS PAGE 25 ONWARDS]

[Rishathra]

He's also been shown to read minds, so he could have lifted the know-how from some demolitions expert guy he ran across.

[Obo]

Also clearly a terrorist!

[tazelbain]

Holy SHIT! I had one of those.

[Merusk]

Me too, but now I'll probably wind up on some terrorist watch list.

Tee hee. Watch list.

[Ozzu]

Sooo...

Jacob strikes me as whiny now.

[Abagadro]

This episode now makes me retroactively hate the entire series that I've been defending for years.

[Teleku]

Err, how so?  I thought it was pretty good.

[Quinton]

huh.

I'm just not sure how useful it was -- it's almost like it simultaneously explained too much (sometimes it's best for things to just be a mystery) and didn't tell us much that we didn't already know.  We met another mysterious person who seems less than truthful behind our existing mysterious less than truthful people. 

I didn't hate it, but it kinda leaves my scratching my head.

[Samwise]

Anyone know if Hulu will let me watch Lost from the UK?

[Ironwood]

Remember we're one behind.  Grab Sky at the right time and you'll see it normally.   

[Vaiti]

One more episode left. I get this feeling it's going to end like BSG did at this point. Leaving me with a case of "wtf, seriously?"

[Vaiti]

I just took a walk after watching the last episode and it dawned on me.
Lost.
I get it now. All this time I thought the title of the show was referring to the people on the island being lost.
It's the writers. They are the ones who are lost. The entire show has been about the writer trying to find the plot.

[Samwise]

Remember we're one behind.  Grab Sky at the right time and you'll see it normally.   

Yeah, I tuned in last night and saw last week's episode.  Again.  If Hulu and abc.com are uncooperative maybe I'll just torrent it.

[HaemishM]

So let me try to explain it. I liked the episode.


I like how they managed to tell a story that could have pissed off the religious without pissing off the religious.

[kaid]

I am more and more convinced that nobody in the show has any real clue what is going on. Every time we see more about people who we think know whats going on we find they don't have any better clue than anybody else.

I was hoping the ending couple episodes would have some answers but frankly I no longer believe there are any answers to be had.

[Hawkbit]

Haemish hit the nail on the head.  I have a different ending in mind, but yeah.

[kaid]

Haemish hit the nail on the head.  I have a different ending in mind, but yeah.

[Soln]

I dunno.  I don't feel we needed to have a material explanation for MIB or Jacob.  What was offered makes me kind of disappointed. 

I don't see how that episode really helped move the narrative forward.  I'm now irked they spent so many episodes and scenes with character bios, since the main characters ultimately have no real connection to the Island.  Or if they do their lives weren't shown to be that connected (other than the one Jacob meeting with each of them).


It's making me feel this is going to have another X-Files and Twin Peaks like ending -- rushed, and with loose ends, but not loose ends that offer speculation, but just plot dead ends.  Stuff that got forgotten or ignored.

For instance, I don't really need to know what makes the Island special -- it just is.  I don't need to know what Jacob is other than he is something special.  I'd rather know why the main characters are special since I've been watching them for SIX YEARS.  Not explaining that sufficiently is going to really bug me.

[Draegan]

Now I know what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

[Quinton]

I dunno.  I don't feel we needed to have a material explanation for MIB or Jacob.  What was offered makes me kind of disappointed. 
...
For instance, I don't really need to know what makes the Island special -- it just is.  I don't need to know what Jacob is other than he is something special.  I'd rather know why the main characters are special since I've been watching them for SIX YEARS.  Not explaining that sufficiently is going to really bug me.

I totally agree with this -- I think they screwed up by explaining "too much" which just resulted in more questions.

I would have been happy with "Jacob and his friend have lived on the island forever subject to mysterious rules and had a wager about the corruptibility of humanity" as the backstory, and then sort out what happens to our castaways in that light.

Explaining that Jacob and his brother got stuck in that role by their crazy (evil? misguided? who knows!) adoptive mother doesn't actually make much difference, but now raises more (unlikely to be answered) questions and takes time away from what does this mean for the main characters.

[croaker69]

Who destroyed the village of MiB's people and how?  I took it as crazy fake mom (CFM?) due to MiB's murdering her for it.  If so can she take the smoke form due to going into the light and just not mentioning it?

How did the ghost of the twin's true mother manifest?  Was it really her or CFM as smoke monster again.  CFM was a weaver as was Jacob after her.  Perhaps she created this whole pattern by manipulating Jacob and his twin.

I think Smokey is still the brother just with a new power.  There's too much of his personality still there in Locke.  He's obsessed with leaving the island, thinks people really suck, and gets things done by lies and manipulation.

[Arthur_Parker]

After wasting so much time watching this, I'll just be happy if they just explain what the whole deal with Starbuck was.

[Rishathra]

I've been pretty patient about this whole thing until this episode.  I mean, I've watched six years worth of shows where EVERY question was answered with two more questions, but it never felt like it was a "yeah, we don't know what's happening either" from the writers.  Until now.  Fuck's sake, guys.  There's what, two more episodes until the end, and you're STILL introducing new, "important" characters who are just as untrustworthy and mysterious in their motives as everyone else.  Enigmatic liars who, when asked direct questions about what's going on, twaddle about and prevaricate like it's still the first season and they want to save it for a big reveal later on.

I also agree with Quinton about how they seem to be answering too much and not enough at the same time.

Another annoyance that's been bothering me for a while is the overall attitude of the Others.  From the very beginning, they have been the world's most amazing assholes who, when given a choice between helping someone in need and being a complete cock to them, invariably choose the latter.  The closest thing to "good" they seem capable of doing, is uttering the phrase, "we're the good guys."  Again, I've been pretty patient over the course of the show, thinking that eventually, it will be revealed why they behave the way they do.  The only answer forthcoming seems to be


Ranting aside, I still love this show.  It's just that some events in the final stretch are frustrating, and I'm still afraid they might pull a variant of The Sopranos or BSG.

[palmer_eldritch]

So let me try to explain it. I liked the episode.


I like how they managed to tell a story that could have pissed off the religious without pissing off the religious.

I think you explained the episode pretty well but it also (the show's story, not your explanation) amounts to nothing much. It's not a show about anything that relates to real people, it's about some invented mythology that there's no reason for any of us to care about.

I'm still interested in characters like Desmond and Hurley and where they end up, as well as alternative reaility Locke if he shows up again, so there's that to look forward to.

[raydeen]

Just watched it so I'll throw my spoiler'd 2 pennies in:

[KallDrexx]

One more episode left. I get this feeling it's going to end like BSG did at this point. Leaving me with a case of "wtf, seriously?"

There are 2 episodes left, with the 2nd episode being 2 and a half hours fyi (according to wikipedia)

[Teleku]

Technically, there are 3 episodes left.  1 next week, and 2 in a row on the Sunday of the following week (just like BSG.  I'm really getting nervous about the parallels between the two series at this point  ).

[Vaiti]

Well that's cool. Makes it slightly better. I was under the impression this was a 16 episode season for whatever reason. Think it started as a 16 episode season when it first aired, they must have expanded it at some point and I just never followed. Makes last episode slightly more forgivable, but not by much. Too many new questions too late in the game.

And the everyone who seems to know something knows nothing syndrome is getting abit much. I loved it in I think it was the 3rd of 4th season when Ben started playing a much larger role and was first leaning towards the side of good, when it seemed he knew alot. Was disappointed when he turned out to know NOTHING. Then following that, everyone else who seemed to know something, knew nothing. And now we've been told Jacob, also knows nothing.

Can't help but feel the writers know nothing as well.

[March]

I agree with raydeen that the compelling part of the show was fundamentally a metaphysical mystery.

Whether HaemishM's or raydeens speculations end up closer to the reveal, I can't really say.

But, I will say categorically that the show will be a complete failure if they do not resolve the mystery one way or another... they can say the answer is Aliens, God, Forgotten Gods, Ancient Tech, Atlanteans or 42; but an answer there must be.  A mystery cannot be answered with a mystery and be considered a good mystery.  A soap-opera can go from mystery to mystery to mystery because there really is no point to a soap-opera.  But Lost has traded on the cache of being something more than a soap-opera.

The previous episode might have worked as the 2nd episode of the final season... effectively setting the table for answering all (many) of the open questions of the island; but to introduce as Vaiti says a whole crew of new Know-nothings in positions of supreme power right before the finale?  bleh, nothing but incompetence.  Whatever they reveal, it is clear to me that it will be purely on an emotional soap-opera level.

Unfortunately, I also agree with Vaiti that the writers are fundamentally soap-opera quality, and not really very good at telling a coherent story.  I blame the internet.

[Mrbloodworth]

I still say, I miss the dharma and hatch days, I found it much more compelling than all this gods stuff.

[HaemishM]

The whole story is a parable about life and religion. You have all these people claiming to know all the answers, but when pushed, they really only know a little part, and what they do know is colored by their perceptions and their aims. There are no white knights, just flawed people put into situations they only half understand and asked to make a choice and live with the consequences.

It's unsatisfying, just like life. 

[March]

The whole story is a parable about life and religion. You have all these people claiming to know all the answers, but when pushed, they really only know a little part, and what they do know is colored by their perceptions and their aims. There are no white knights, just flawed people put into situations they only half understand and asked to make a choice and live with the consequences.

It's unsatisfying, just like life. 

Sure, some sort of post-modern agnosticism could very well be the pay-off... except that story does not really work very well - what with resurrections, smoke monsters, time travel, mysterious wells of life-force, and immortality (or at least extreme longevity)... unless the reveal is Jack waking up from the dream at his Father's funeral.  In which case, it is just a really long jump over the shark.

I'm just sayin' you can't really make a show that hinges on "Dude, we just don't know how much we don't know" when you're eating apples with a Smoke Monster inhabiting the body of your dead friend.

[Furiously]

The show jumped the shark in season three. I'd totally settle for it all being Hurley's dream in the asylum at this point. Because that would be a better ending than what I think we will get. We're going to be left unfulfilled.

The show's title refers to the six years of your life you spent watching it.

[Vaiti]

I've been having the creeping suspicion that the "it's someones dream" ending is going to happen for awhile. Maybe one of the writers at his computer. With an empty bottle of scotch next to his keyboard.

[Draegan]

http://darkufo.blogspot.com/2010/05/things-i-noticed-across-sea-by-vozzek69.html#more

I liked this synopsis.