Lost

It's been about 2 years since Lost ended, but it's still frequently discussed around here and does not have its own thread. Here you go.

Here's some topics to help start the conversation.

Walt. The kid from the first season with the powers? Anyone?

The Others should have given him some growth hormones.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8670609/alan-sepinwall-origins-lost

Huh. Interesting.

Explains a lot about the show.

edited 31st Jan '13 6:41:29 PM by thewordlover

Why is this dead?

This commercial is surreal as all hell.

I'm stuck on Season 2.

When the Button isn't pressed, and that system activated, what happened when Eko, Locke, Charlie, and Desmond were all trapped inside? Charlie just walked back to the beach like it didn't matter, like he didn't know that Eko and Locke were inside. Locke woke up missing his voice. Desmond time-traveled stark naked, and Eko was... injured for some reason.

That is the best of the Lost commercials, do not even lie. poor dead-eyed Kate makes my heart hurt, tho.

...And you need to watch the next few episodes. I think.

edited 5th Sep '13 8:35:39 PM by Maridee

When the Button isn't pressed, and that system activated, what happened when Eko, Locke, Charlie, and Desmond were all trapped inside? Charlie just walked back to the beach like it didn't matter, like he didn't know that Eko and Locke were inside. Locke woke up missing his voice. Desmond time-traveled stark naked, and Eko was... injured for some reason.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this show, not for the last time, has a huge problem with, um, teleporting people around the place with no explanation. Seriously. It'll happen a few more times.....

I love Lost a lot (it's my number two favorite series for a reason), but I have to say, there's a bit of a downhill turn around season 2/3. Season 3 is a little sluggish, though it gets awesome by the end of it, and it ends up leading to my favorite part of the show (the latter half, seasons 4/5/6). But right now you're slipping into the lesser parts of the series.

The only thing I have to say is, hold on, it gets better. Really.

...for me, I could have had the show stop after season 4 and just been absolutely fine with it. I feel like most of the major character development happened then. After that it feels like a long slow plot-twist-blam creep until the end.

I didn't really like season 6, though, so that colors me.

Actually, at the time of posting, I was up to about Season 5, and now I'm on Season 6.

I liked Season 2 the most so far. The conflict over The Hatch between Locke and Jack was tense and the conclusion satisfying, if not marred by Charlie's abrupt exit and apparent memory loss. I would have liked Season 4 because of the flash-forwards, but Daniel Faraday's rambling cost that season points.

I actually like Season 6. They've allowed for an Alternate Universe where we get to see a bunch of characters develop without the Early-Installment Weirdness so to speak.

edited 2nd Oct '13 6:07:54 PM by FOFD

For me it's the ending, mostly.

Season 6 is a frustrating experience, and doesn't really build to a very pyrotechnic/epic climax. Kinda bugs me. I wanted stunts, fights, big explosions, special effects. A Claire flashback episode. So it was quite frustrating to be denied all that, and dealt a bland shakeycam punch-up instead.

The flashsideways were pretty uniformly useless all the way through, I never cared for them.

Regardless of which seasons were better, this scene is my favorite, and the very episode that got me to

keep watching LOST.

I'm not sure who goes through more crap on the show - Jack, Locke, or Sawyer, but Locke has some of the most gripping scenes out of the whole cast.

edited 3rd Oct '13 6:38:07 PM by FOFD

I made the mistake of being overinvested in Kate. the things that weren't done with her story still irritate me. LOST just irritates me on a feminist level, to be frank. but seeing them do the triangle run around was even more frustrating. and then occasionally awesome moments? but they never really made up for the triangle.

...on the other hand I'm a feminist now partly because of LOST, so that's great.

The flashsideways really didn't have any point, tho. and that's sad.

that scene. auuuuugh.

It's a great scene, if you ignore the terrible Australian accent. It's a shame that two of David Fury's scripts suffer from the same problem (the sequence where Hurley confronts the woman in the outback in Numbers suffers from a similar problem).

I don't remember liking a lot of Season 6, but I'm not sure I ever watched it properly — I definitely missed more than a couple of episodes in the middle, as I know I've never seen the Hurley episode all the way through, amongst others. Probably should one day.

I do remember really liking Ab Aeterno, Beyond The Sea and the Sayid episode though — though the latter was for its forward movement on the island. Beyond The Sea always seems to get a lot of flack, but I liked it a lot. It's an awful pun though, making the show's big mythology episode a literal mythology piece (and one that takes its cues from The Jungle Book to boot!)

what do you think was the best reveal?

I JUST finished watching that episode. Glad that Richard finally got a backstory, but he went from being kind of badass to yet another pity case on the show really. I'd read that certain LOST fans saw him as this Bad Ass leader-type, and watching him walk into the DHARMA camp all alone, I could see why. But, knowing that he's immortal now, and seeing how many times people just waltz into his camp, the Bad Ass image of him quickly diminished. Nonetheless, Ab Aesterno, was another sad and revealing episode.

One thing Season 6 has is a return of all the old actors, even in cameos. I really like that. Charlie's brother even makes a cameo. I don't think he's been seen since Season 1.

'auuugh at the Locke scene.'

Bah, I only went auuugh when the Mi B gave his view on John Locke.

The best reveal for me was either the first flash-forward with Jack on the plane, or Henry Gail revealing his master stroke.

edited 5th Oct '13 7:13:53 PM by FOFD

I really liked the flashforward reveal. rewatching the episode, they made it exceptionally boring on purpose.

I haven't really cared for the flashforwards until the second time watching the series. When you know what the "flash-forwards" actually are is what makes them interesting to me.

@Maridee : it's interesting what you said some ten posts up above, because for me the latter half of the series is kind of the whole payoff of the character development of the first couple of seasons. It's like, we've seen what these characters are, now we see them interact, knowing where they come from, and seeing what happens to them. It's the whole beauty of the series, in my opinion. Not counting the fact that they made all the callbacks to the earlier seasons, I kind of see now the first seasons as the "buildup". Not that the earlier seasons are bad by any means, and I can understand when some say that the mystery is kind of over for them when they know who all these people are, but from season 4 onward is where the true brilliance of the show shines for me.

About Kate though, I was always a bit disappointed that she never really got past her character traits of season 1, in a way. I think she's an interesting character, but I have to say I probably prefer any other female character in the show than her (safe for Nikki, perhaps). And I know they could've done better because Juliet's character arc is much superior (as in there's an actual arc to speak of), while Kate is almost unwavering in that regard. Although there's something to be said for Jack's transition from being all intense and dedicated to being almost completely the opposite, as he's mostly going through the motions for a good chunk of the latter half of the series. It's an interesting change but it's almost weird at times.

edited 15th Oct '13 8:56:31 AM by Akalabth

I think I mostly felt let-down because the mythology wasn't as grand in scope as I was expecting/hoping, and because that last season was torturous to watch while airing. And because I put a lot of investment into things that weren't going to happen, idk.

...I think Kate was kinda screwed from the get-go, to be honest. I've done all of one rewatch, and something really stuck out to me. Her first centric episode? It revealed her secret at the beginning. It gave you no time to get attached to her nice girl-ness, because you knew she was hiding a criminal the entire time. I don't even have to spoiler any of this because none of this will be a surprise.

She was supposed to be innocent and guilty at the same time, but then she got choked by the triangle. And because she kept getting written as incompetent in areas where she was supposed to excel, re: Hunting Party. And then Aaron/motherhood was her salvation or something. probably more her salvation was telling her mother "no don't talk to me ever again", but digression. At the same time, it's hard to figure out how she went from fugitive to mother, because that decision is made on the boat and seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment thing. but Kate's trial is just an exercise in inaccuracy to begin with.

...The first time she ever really interacted with Jin was in season 6. And I find that sad.

Jack...if they could've kept him the villain I would've liked him better, I think.

Imagine Sayid as the Losties' leader.

Actually the mythology is very expansive in some ways, but you have to get invested in the side material (the AR Gs, the theories, etc) to see that more clearly. It doesn't really come through in the show, other than small details here and there. I wouldn't have been really satisfied if you saw everything in the show though, to me it would've dragged down the story more than anything. All the backstory on Alvar Hanso for example is interesting and fleshes out the background nicely, but it really did not need to be integrated to the series proper. I think they did choose well what to put and what not to put in the show, but ymmv I guess...

About Kate's secret, what's even more grating is that not only her secret is revealed right away, but the second reveal (the fact that the guy she killed actually is her father) being in the same episode kind of renders all her other flashback episodes after that completely useless. I still think they're entertaining (the one where she gets married, the one with her childhood sweetheart, etc) but at that point you already know she's on the run and nothing about her story is really that surprising anymore.

As for the decision of being Aaron's mother being impromptu, it seems to me like it's more something that's been imposed on her by circumstance than a conscious decision. I find hard to believe that motherhood is supposed to be some kind of redemption for her, since it's more out of happenstance than anything, and the whole world seems to tell her at some point that she's not supposed to raise Aaron anyway. That's a bit strange too, even Jack gets a redemption of sorts (albeit very late) by sacrificing himself, while Kate just goes off onto different adventures off the island that we don't see anyway, so it's just more non-resolution. They surely could've done things differently, but in any case Kate and Jack aren't really the main reasons why I love the show anyway, even though they're supposed to be the "lead couple".

I would've loved Sayid as the leader too, but I still like the way he joins Un Locke and still gets to go out heroically anyway at the end.

edited 16th Oct '13 2:54:51 AM by Akalabth

What Kate Did is, I remember, a pretty damn good episode of television. I've always liked Craig Wright's work. The metonymic animal episodes were always quite good, for some benighted reason.

That said, it's ridiculously hard to tell who wrote what after the first season. Either seasons 2-5 were written by committee, with the names randomly slapped on at regular intervals, or one writer was given the present day narrative and the other the flashback material — but again, it's not clear who wrote what exactly.

What I'm saying is that I seriously doubt that writers were randomly paired up for episodes.

Finished Season 6, but I didn't know there was an "Epilogue" episode until a few minutes ago.

@Maridee, what do you mean the flash-sideways didn't have any point? At first it seems like that, yeah, but they definitely matter when you draw closer to the end. I was happy just see the "what-if" side of things, and they took that away and made a plot point out of it.