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- Thread starter BenjaminBirdie
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No problem, you're not the first one.Shorty said:
Sure I am. I'm just trying to do this properly and be thorough. There's a lot to criticize and, with the amount of obfuscation the writers tried to hide their complete lack of care and foresight behind, a lot to explain.
Beyond that, I will readily admit I think those writers deserve to get shat on, yes. Because of the above, how they've mocked and lied to their audience for years, how vain they're being when comparing themselves to other writers (lately, the "feud" with George R. R. Martin is eye-roll inducing (*)), and some of the shit they've pulled in order to try and deflect criticism (that thing with Rebecca Mader probably being one of the most obvious and telling examples).
Considering the amount of undeserved praise they're getting here and there, it's not even that bad!
I already explained that a bunch of times, but I had a lot of fun watching Lost, and I like debating plots.
I'm not too fond of those writers or of people who'd sooner throw personal attacks at the critic than address the criticism though.
(*)
I'm not all that familiar with the guy's work, but he seems to have his heart in the right place:
That ties in nicely with an analogy I used a while ago, and I sure hope he won't take a page from Lindelof/Cuse's book and completely change his tune toward the end...George R. R. Martin said:
Well, there's a topic?Aristion said:
You make it sound like I was horribly disenchanted by the finale or something... ^^;
Great! I sure hope for you you don't spend any significant amount of time on, say, video games or other ultimately pointless stuff like that. Don't be like me, man!
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
The sad part is I have no problem accepting this clip as 100% canon.Tpthrlldragster said:
It drops all pretense, showing these two characters for the clowns that they really are. Fuck these buffoons.
tycoonheart
Member
Tpthrlldragster said:
This would've made for a better final scene. At least it would've been funny.
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
Man, FUCK Barry.Erigu said:
works for me!
Stick it at the end of Across the Sea. Episode redeemed.tycoonheart said:
It's just that they don't have answers to give.Xrenity said:
See the article linked earlier, for example: when asked what was up with the outrigger shootout, rather than simply give the answer they claimed to have, they replied that "it wouldn't be fair" to do so, and that's just... I mean, really? People actually buy that?
VistraNorrez
Member
I was really happy with the show overall. As an experience I was fully satisfied. They could have answered more questions, but the more I think about the show I'm glad they didn't. I thought the little epilogue, The New Man in Charge, was poorly done.
Same here (though I only enjoyed it a tad bit). I used to watch previous seasons just for shits and giggles (Ive watched season 1 about 3 or 4 times) but now I just cant.Xrenity said:
Its like walking on a trail where you know the end is just a giant pool of vomit. Makes the journey less appealing. Sad really. I used to defend the hell outta this show too.
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
I actually thought they answered plenty of the important mysteries to a satisfactory degree. Meaning, there's nothing else in the show that I'm dying to learn more about anymore.
It's mostly because the linchpins of the overarching mythology turned out to be underwhelming, nonsensical garbage. "All the misery" that the Losties were put through was totally not worth it.
It's mostly because the linchpins of the overarching mythology turned out to be underwhelming, nonsensical garbage. "All the misery" that the Losties were put through was totally not worth it.
The last two season ( mostly 6) were way too sloppy. The worst mistake I made was rewatching everything before season 6 started. They used to be so good at introducing concepts and slowly explaining them. Relatively small scale stuff like the hatch and Ben's group of others turned out to be so much more interesting than the epic battle for the Island at the end..GqueB. said:
Just some examples:MikeTyson said:
Why does the heart of the island need to be protected if it can't be found by normal means?
Why are we shown (and told in interviews) that the protectors of the island mass murdering overly curious humans is "a cycle" when said protectors are apparently so powerful they decide who shows up on the island and how (by giving pens and candy bars months, years in advance)?
What was up with all the Egyptian imagery? How does it relate to Jacob and the DHARMA Initiative? How come there apparently was an entire civilization on the island at some point?
Why didn't Jacob simply pick his replacement off-island (like he did for Dôgen)?
Why was Barry so proud of his "loophole" when it was the exact same one he tried to exploit 100+ years earlier already? And why did it take him so long to pull that one again, considering all his abilities (convincing Richard sure wasn't a problem)?
Why didn't Jacob defend himself against Ben like he did against Richard?
What was up with those "rules", anyway? Both the supernatural ones that somehow allowed Jack to play with dynamite and Barry's submarine plan to work, the ones that led to Widmore getting kicked out, and the ones that apparently prevented Widmore and Ben from killing each other until they just didn't anymore?
How did Hawking know so much? How did she know where Desmond would want to buy a ring for Penny, or how the man with the red shoes would die?
Was there any kind of rule governing those time jumps? And what kind of genial specialist insists again and again that the past can't be changed you moron shut up but then flip-flops because "hey, I just realized something: we're variables! we could just change stuff around!"?
What was the deal with the wandering cabin? Or with Locke's prophetic dream that led him there when Barry, not Jacob, was waiting?
What was the deal with those magical ashes, and how did they ever constitute a good protection against Barry (who apparently knew that combining a wheel, some water and magical light would give him a telepod, but a fucking broom? now that's just crazy science fiction shit, man!)?
Why were the Others so Hostile anyway? And what was up with those lists?
Why would Walt appear to Shannon and tell her not to press the button (backwards, too)?
Etc.
Drealmcc0y
Banned
big ander said:
Well of course im satasfied. I have 99% answers.
Video was really funny.
Just read Erigus list.
All of which I have answered many times, but yet repeats the same questions....
The onyl one that doesnt make sense is how did hawking know that the red shoe guy would die. She knows what she knows because of Faradays journal has a shit ton of information but I dont see why she would know about the red shoe guy dying, Plot hole probably.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Drealmcc0y said:
It was probably because at that point Hawking was a very differently conceived character.
This, of course, makes LOST unwatchable and its finale bereft of weight and emotion.
Hahahahahjk.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Erigu said:
You can explain every inconsistency in the same way. It's blatantly obvious that plans and plans for characters changed, sometimes drastically. Such is the nature of the serial narrative, whether it be comics, literature, or television.
It's a silly argument that holds little water because it is so easily explainable.
"Yes. They changed their mind. Next?"
You either buy it or you don't. Your lifetime commitment to pointing out each instance will sway no one who has already come to grips with that reality.
Difference being that good writers manage not to make it show and still have a coherent narrative in the end.BenjaminBirdie said:
Can't believe we're still there, but for the nth time: the problem isn't so much that they improvised, it's that they did so very poorly (and would sooner blame others than admit to having improvised and fucked up, too, which is such a class move).
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Erigu said:
If this was true or accurate, than no one would have stuck with it, much less someone of proven and notable intelligence such as myself. Just, please, for once, face it. It is not objective. It is subjective.
Let go.
That's, naturally, completely ridiculous. I could just as well say that if the show's plot really were any good, no one would have lambasted it like that. It doesn't mean nor prove anything. Just a waste of bytes.BenjaminBirdie said:
You really like this convenient cop-out, don't you? "It's all subjective, you guys! There's no good nor bad! It's all... mediocre, I guess!"
Plot holes aren't subjective. There's a whole lot of them, and quite a few concern elements the plot hinges on.
Just to pick an example from my list above: "Why were the Others so Hostile anyway?" It's a short question, but oh boy does it matter, considering how much time the show spent on that.
Lindelof and Cuse should hurry with their new projects and expand their fans' vocabulary and ideas, quick quick.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Erigu said:
It's not mediocre, though, no matter how badly you want me to think that. I loved the show. You hated it. That's what subjectivity means. It doesn't mean everything is some middle ground.
Serious question, how did you ever come to the conclusion that "subjective" means what you think it does?
Drealmcc0y
Banned
By the way, I read a theory the other day that explained why MiB turned into smokey and nobody else did. It was much better than my theory I think.
It was this:
As the cork and the manmade structures in the source didnt exist until after Across the Sea, MiB went straight into the malevolent part of the source and becoming the evil.
Noobody else did because the whole manmade strucutre down there prevented them from going straight into the evil, they stayed in the light, goodness part of the source.
Thought I would share
It was this:
As the cork and the manmade structures in the source didnt exist until after Across the Sea, MiB went straight into the malevolent part of the source and becoming the evil.
Noobody else did because the whole manmade strucutre down there prevented them from going straight into the evil, they stayed in the light, goodness part of the source.
Thought I would share
I wasn't saying the plot was mediocre (it isn't: it's bad). I was commenting on the fact you always end up appealing to subjectivity, even when talking about the coherence of the plot (WTF). If that's subjective, what isn't? No plot could ever be said to be more coherent than the other? Logic is all subjective? That's what you're arguing?BenjaminBirdie said:
It's a cop-out, plain and simple.
I just thought it was ridiculous.
That, yes. You could say that.
The show never bothered to tell us one way or another, but let's say...Drealmcc0y said:
The show never said anything about a "malevolent part of the source" either (we just have Jacob's vague speech about the island being a cork and keeping "evil" bottled, whatever that means, which doesn't quite jibe with Mother's description of the light in Across the Sea: "the warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt"), but here again, let's say....
So Mother wasn't a smoke monster after all? It seemed Lindelof and Cuse were heavily hinting at that...
Or the Evil Smoke Energy went back to the heart of the island upon her death, off-screen? But Jack went there after Barry's death...
Or Barry conveniently drained the last bit of Evil Smoke Energy left?
Guess they couldn't come up with anything better or clearer than that: they only had 100+ episodes, after all.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Erigu said:
I didn't say that.
That pretty skeevy, dude.
Angry Fork
Member
I don't know if these are 100% the correct answers but i'll give my opinion on them.
Because people like whidmore know how to find it by other means.
I don't get this question, are you asking why the protectors are doing that cycle to begin with? If that's the case I don't know, valid question.
I don't remember what Dogen was for to be honest. Was he a replacement? The entire temple part of S6 is pretty pointless imo but I don't recall Dogen being someone that important. He was the leader of those people but I don't know if he protected the entire island at one point. Also i'm not sure what you mean by pick off-island. Technically Jack, Kate etc. everyone are from off the island as well.
Doesn't matter to me personally. It's established that she knows somehow and that's all you need to know imo, just the fact that she's some weird shaman type character. Just say she's psychic or something and that'll be enough, but I wouldn't' want them to say that because then it puts things into too far of a supernatural territory.
Don't remember this. I do remember Daniel's logic being weird though. As for the time jumps I thought they were explained that it was just random? There were no rules.
Just one of those things where the writers were making shit up as they went along and later on probably realized 'damn, I don't know how to connect this with that' etc. and just left it alone.
Half of the things you listed imo seem like nitpicking and things that aren't necessary for the overall narrative. They're just things you would've liked answered, but not ones that needed to be.
At the end of the day the writers made up a bunch of shit as they went along and it couldn't hold it's own weight at times. But for me, that's okay. I'm fine with that because Lost has soooo many OMFG HOLY SHIT NO WAY WTF moments that they just supersede questions regarding Walt or whatever other random thing that doesn't make sense. The thing I was personally disappointed with was 'across the sea' explanation with the cork in the light thing etc. that stuff was stupid as shit but whatever. It's hard to think of something that connects years worth of tacked-on shit one after another.
If they had a grand scheme from the beginning where they thought of 6 seasons of stuff then they could have pulled something better off in terms of writing and consistency, but it would NOT be Lost. It would be something like Fringe. Fringe is cool and it seems like they know where they're going ahead of time, but Fringe has nowhere NEAR the amount of cliff hanger crazy shit Lost had, and Fringe will never be Lost because of that. The fact that Lost just kept adding more stuff made me love it even more. It constantly kept me hooked, and even if the end explanation disappointed that didn't ruin the show for me.
Because people like whidmore know how to find it by other means.
I don't get this question, are you asking why the protectors are doing that cycle to begin with? If that's the case I don't know, valid question.
I don't think this needs to be explained. It's just a cool wink that stuff like this happened in the past hundreds or thousands of years ago. It doesn't need to directly relate with anything going on in the present day because it's just not important enough. The statue's and the foot etc. are just cool things from the past that you wonder about. It would be nice to see all of it answered (and shown who the egyptians were, what they did, etc.) but it's ultimately pointless imo. However I do remember these symbols on the temple walls in S6 and was wondering why they were there, how they connected to all of this etc. so you do have a point that it's like they were teasing us.
I don't remember what Dogen was for to be honest. Was he a replacement? The entire temple part of S6 is pretty pointless imo but I don't recall Dogen being someone that important. He was the leader of those people but I don't know if he protected the entire island at one point. Also i'm not sure what you mean by pick off-island. Technically Jack, Kate etc. everyone are from off the island as well.
Was the 100+ years earlier one the one where he impersonated Richard's wife? I'm not sure which one you're referring to. This feels like a weak complaint though, this isn't something the writers should actively give you an answer for when there are way more important things to think about. It's not even a real 'mystery'/mythology question it's more a character motivation thing.
Have no clue, but again this isn't something that people should list when saying "Lost sucks because it didnt answer this." It's stupid but it's not that big of a deal.
I forgot about this but I do think it should've been answered. I remember this and something else being one of those overshadowing concepts that was just talked about but never explained. I'm assuming they couldn't think of a good enough answer that would connect with everything else.
Doesn't matter to me personally. It's established that she knows somehow and that's all you need to know imo, just the fact that she's some weird shaman type character. Just say she's psychic or something and that'll be enough, but I wouldn't' want them to say that because then it puts things into too far of a supernatural territory.
Don't remember this. I do remember Daniel's logic being weird though. As for the time jumps I thought they were explained that it was just random? There were no rules.
Just one of those things where the writers were making shit up as they went along and later on probably realized 'damn, I don't know how to connect this with that' etc. and just left it alone.
The lack of wheel explanation is the one thing that really bothered me. Saying "because i'm special" was a huge cop out. The ashes are dumb but it doesn't bother me.
I was assuming the lists were because they wanted to 'help' whoever was there and were good people. However then it was implied that they have contact with Jacob and Jacob told them to make lists of people or something. I don't know which one it was at this point. I'm of the belief that some of the others didn't want foreigners who were good people to die, so they looked up info on them with their super duper computers to find out if they were good people and then let them blend into their society or whatever.
This is obviously the big one. Walt stuff was not answered and that's definitely a valid complaint but I don't think Walt's stuff matters in the broad spectrum of things.
Half of the things you listed imo seem like nitpicking and things that aren't necessary for the overall narrative. They're just things you would've liked answered, but not ones that needed to be.
At the end of the day the writers made up a bunch of shit as they went along and it couldn't hold it's own weight at times. But for me, that's okay. I'm fine with that because Lost has soooo many OMFG HOLY SHIT NO WAY WTF moments that they just supersede questions regarding Walt or whatever other random thing that doesn't make sense. The thing I was personally disappointed with was 'across the sea' explanation with the cork in the light thing etc. that stuff was stupid as shit but whatever. It's hard to think of something that connects years worth of tacked-on shit one after another.
If they had a grand scheme from the beginning where they thought of 6 seasons of stuff then they could have pulled something better off in terms of writing and consistency, but it would NOT be Lost. It would be something like Fringe. Fringe is cool and it seems like they know where they're going ahead of time, but Fringe has nowhere NEAR the amount of cliff hanger crazy shit Lost had, and Fringe will never be Lost because of that. The fact that Lost just kept adding more stuff made me love it even more. It constantly kept me hooked, and even if the end explanation disappointed that didn't ruin the show for me.
Thanks. Should be more interesting than BenjaminBirdie amusingly sidestepping the whole thing (even when I narrow it down to one question? dude, come on!) and coming up with the good old "appeal to subjectivity" cop-out just so the post wouldn't appear completely empty...Angry Fork said:
Yeah? That thing Zoe wanted to confirm with Jin? Maybe.
But those would be scientific means. That's recent, and something that could be avoided by not inviting a whole bunch of scientists to stay on your magical island (and then slaughtering them all because they got too curious, shockingly enough for scientists).
Well, I don't know that they're aware they're perpetuating a cycle (and I'm only calling that a cycle because the writers did), but their motivations for inviting (apparently?) all those people and murdering them once they get too curious are a bit of a mystery to me, considering how powerful those protectors seem to be. Surely, there would be other ways.
I guess you could argue Mother was just a psychotic bitch, alright (even if the "he/she did that because he/she's crrrrazy" motivation is a tad overused on this show), but the DHARMA thing...
Well, like I said earlier, it's still really odd how the island apparently once hosted an entire civilization that could build huge structures like the statue or the temple. How does that happen? Which protector let that happen and why (and what of the cork? how/why was it built?)?
If it was before Jacob, what's up with those depictions of a smoke monster, under the temple?
If it was Jacob, what was Barry doing? Did he use them to complete his wheel? Did he really need an entire civilization for that? Next time we see him, he's apparently slaughtering people (whom he now sees as "corrupters" or whatever, for reasons that were never elucidated) as soon as they set foot on the island (and then, not so much, but let's say that's because he (finally) realized he could use them to kill his brother), so what gives? What happened?
Speaking of which, how would hiring Richard help the next guests of Jacob against the monster anyway? They both seemed to agree it was this great idea, but I'm not seeing it: the best Richard could do was to warn the possible survivors against the smoke monster so they wouldn't be manipulated (and yet he apparently forgot to tell Ben, whoops! advisor is a hard job).
I guess there could be the magical ash (whatever that's supposed to be), but damn, that's unpractical, kinda silly (again: broom? no?) and somewhat underused anyway, it seems (we haven't seen any circle of ash apart from the one around the cabin and the one that's hurriedly set up around the temple in season 6, I believe? Locke didn't fail to notice it when he first visited the cabin, but there was no such scene when he left the Others' camp...).
Well, in the end, yeah...
It was never really made clear. His death apparently rendered the temple vulnerable... so... er... he was powering the magical ash? *shrug*
We don't really know what he was to the Others either... He knew more than Ben about Barry and had actually met Jacob (unlike Widmore and Ben when they were leaders)... but then again, it doesn't look like his existence was this huge secret kept from the leaders either (Ben knew about the temple, Cindy, of all people, was there)... Heh...
Same thing about Ilana and her group, incidentally...
He presented him that deal off-island.
That sounds somewhat less silly than picking a bunch of "lost" individuals, arranging (somehow) for them all to take the same flight that crashes on the island, and wait three years of drama and death before coming out of the bushes and explaining what that was all about, what he wants from them "and please hurry, 'cause I let myself get killed for no reason, and the end of the world is near, now!"
Yes.
(and let's not wonder how he managed to impersonate her when her body wasn't on the island)
I'd argue those matter, too. A lot, in fact.
Well, let's say "Lost sucks because it's stupid", then. ^^
And I'd argue Jacob's death was a pretty big deal, actually. All the season 6 drama stems from it, after all, so it would have been nice to have some kind of justification for it.
Same here. In the end, those were just convenient plot contrivances.
That's... pretty weak.
Okay, but what, then? ^_^;
I don't think they explained anything on the show. If they were just random, they were quite convenient though...
Outside of the show:
("who knows?", huh?)
And for what it's worth:
A joke, sure, but the "bubble" thing might really be how they explain why some characters time traveled and others didn't. Guess that bubble conveniently extended to Jin and but not quite to Richard and the Others despite them being right next to Locke.
I believe the Lost Encyclopedia stated that Ilana took Jacob's ashes for protection, which would, I guess, make some sense (Barry can't do anything to Jacob because of the rules, and that extends to his dead body, hence his ashes act as a barrier), but what of the ash from before Jacob's death? Did we miss some funny bit where Jacob patiently burned his hair and fingernails for a hundred years while Richard was desperately trying to outrun Barry through the jungle? And again, what does that have to do with Dôgen?
According to Ben in the season 5 finale, the lists (or some of them, anyway... it's such a mess) came from Jacob (and I don't believe the guy had any reason to lie at that point, right?).
Why the selection, Jacob? You brought them all here in the first place, didn't you?
Those would be other lists, then... And one has to wonder what their criteria were for letting some people at the mercy of the smoke monster...
(I forget: weren't you supposed to help with that, Richard? Now that you have this conveniently monster-proof fence, you could actually do something about it, so... Ah, well.)
I don't think Walt is "obviously the big one", actually... It's an obvious loose end, but he got phased out relatively early on, and I'd have a more of a problem with the motivations of Ben, Widmore, the Others, Jacob, Barry... Most of the drama and conflict stemmed from those, up till the end. Kinda important.
But speaking of Walt and how he got phased out (puberty, you so unexpected), funny how they apparently figured they could bring him back, what with the idea of having a 3-year time skip ("let's remind people of Walter with a webisode! he's relevant after all! he has some freaky powers, y'all!"), but in the end... "Hey, fuck that shit. We don't know what to do with him, and it was hard enough to get him off the island / the show the first time around. Let's say he meets Locke after school, tells him something ominous [no payoff there, naturally], and that's it."
Well, I disagree, as explained above. :þ
So we at least agree that they were lying when they kept pretending they always knew what was up with their mysteries as they were introducing them?
(... well, I say "they were", but it's not like they stopped)
I like moments like that as well, but I'd rather they made some sense. It doesn't take much skill to come up with "OMFG WTF" moments when you don't care about them making some kind of sense in the end. That's the Donald Kaufman school of writing, and it certainly isn't worthy of praise.
Well, yeah. But who put the tacked-on shit there in the first place (while repeatedly denying it was tacked-on shit, naturally)?
It's that lack of care and foresight I have a problem with.
(Not that they stopped at simply being poor writers: they also had to be pretentious, lying assholes about it, apparently.)
DR3AM
Dreams of a world where inflated review scores save studios
This critic talked about that relatively recently, actually: the music felt tacky and annoyingly intrusive to me.theJwac said:
I wouldn't blame Giacchino for that though: had the show been better written, there wouldn't have been those "yeah, music, I know this is supposed to be epic, but it just looks like another trek through the island to me, and those characters and plotlines still make no fucking sense: I'm not with you" or "here comes the crescendo announcing cryptic line #58 that will already be forgotten after the commercials" moments...
The show relied too much on its music. But then again, something was desperately needed to help viewers swallow the plot.
All that talk about "letting go", you guys... It would almost be cute if it weren't so headache-inducing.
And since when is it "amazing" for a TV show to be discussed a while after it ended, anyway? Especially considering what it is we're discussing, here... Not exactly something the showrunners should be proud of...
Drealmcc0y
Banned
Erigu said:
Why would we bother?
I could easily answer every single question you posed except the hawking/red shoes part, but why bother?
I cant think of a good reason to type all that shit out.
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