BenjaminBirdie said:
I think this is my core disagreement with Erigu and most people in general when it comes to Lost. I think anyone expecting 6 seasons of consistency was just asking to live a life of spite and anger.
Well, I think you need to watch/read/whatever better fiction...
It was particularly inconsistent.
Are there holes inconsistencies? Gigantic ones (the smoke alarm). Did they come about because the creators didn't give a shit about their audience? Quite the opposite I believe.
There's fumbling here and there over years of improvisation, and there's being completely careless. The
Lost guys didn't give a rat's ass: they were obviously introducing new mystery after new mystery without pausing to wonder how they could possibly resolve them down the road (dem numbers...).
And to add insult to injury, they kept pretending that they
did have a plan, that they knew where they were going, that they always knew the answers to the questions they were introducing. Bullshit. It was one long scam. And a successful one, sadly enough.
I think episode to episode, season to season, they wanted to put cool shit on television. All that cool shit didn't add up perfectly at the end
(that's quite the euphemism)
but it was still cool shit.
"Wouldn't it be cool if we added a giant monster?! And mysteriously recurring numbers! And ghostly apparitions! And a freaky illness! And hieroglyphs! And an invisible man! And time travel! And...!"
Pretty much
anybody could do that. What makes
Lost feel so "unique" is that competent writers realize it would be hell to tie all this "cool shit" together into one consistent story and know better than to try: they moderate themselves.
Sorry, but I really don't feel like celebrating Darlton's unbelievable chutzpah for
going ahead with that anyway ("as long as our viewers think we know what we're doing, it will be all right: let's
constantly assure them that's the case via interviews, podcasts, etc! let's try and convince them that it will all make sense in the end! empty promises, sure, but who cares? "in the end", it will be too late anyway!").
As far as I'm concerned: fuck those hacks. They're not writers, they're charlatans. They clearly spent far more time trying to sell their show than they did actually working on it. And I really wouldn't mind (on the contrary: poorly written shows can be hilarious) if it didn't work. But it did, and
that's what pisses me off: they really don't deserve the spotlight. And it annoys the hell out of me when I think of the consequences of their success for SF/fantasy on Western television: they set quite an unfortunate precedent, with that stunt of theirs. Now, we've got a bunch of hacks trying to come up with "the next
Lost".
oatmeal said:
Erigu, perhaps you can refresh my memory...
Did MIB ever say "I am going to destroy EARTH"?
Or was it only characters like Eloise, Widmore, etc. that were making such claims?
All that I remember hearing from MIB was that he 'wanted to go home'.
As far as I remember, I don't think the Man in Black ever said anything about exterminating mankind, indeed.
So yeah,
like I said earlier, I guess you
could argue that Hawking, Widmore, Ilana, Dôgen, etc were actually all mistaken (maybe not
lying, huh? I think that would be pushing it a bit too far, anyway)... but
what were the stakes, then? Why should we care about the Man in Black trying to escape? If you can't tell, that's poor storytelling.
Speaking of which, I love this scene:
ILANA: Jacob said Richard will know what to do. And Richard said to blow up the plane, correct?
RICHARD: Yes.
HURLEY: Well, Jacob never said anything about it to me. I mean... what if Richard's wrong?
ILANA: Hugo, I'm looking out for your best interests! All of you! Nothing is more important than this! That thing is evil! And God help us if it ever leaves this island! Because if it--
Oh man oh man, that's the closest we've ever gotten to an
actual explanation as to what would happen if the Man in Black were to escape and why they have to stop him!
Finally...!
[Ilana drops her bag and the dynamite explodes, killing her. The blasts knocks everyone else off their feet.]
EXPLICATIO INTERRUPTA!
Once again, we have a character who knows the answer to a lingering question
and is willing to share...
but bad luck strikes!
"Ah, well, I'm sure it would have been a great answer that would have made perfect sense! Good enough for me! Besides, maybe they'll tell us later!" [
no, they won't]
Man, it's just laughably transparent...