Lost

[TwistedMind]

I just noticed, that we don't have a thread on the TV show "Lost". So, here it is!
Lost is one of my favorite shows, because I love the mystical atmosphere, also, it has some of the best-written characters on television, so good, that they really started to feel like real people to me.
Of course, the show has its flaws and inconsistencies in its storyline and the ending was disappointing for many.

What do you think about the show? Do you have any theories on the ending? What MBTI types would fit to the characters?

 

[Jennywocky]

The ending itself seems pretty clear.
There were some loose ends that were never tied up, though.

It was a show with great potential, some of which was realized and some of which Lindelof and others dropped the ball on. Season 1 had a LOT of great "backstory" segments, but for me the series started to take off with the introduction of The Hatch/Swan, and then with the introduction of Henry Gale. Unfortunately, it seemed to veer off course around season 5 and some stuff in season 6 was disappointing. (For example, the mystery of the Man in Black and Jacob was far more interesting than the realization.)

However, I still have a lot of fondness for many of the characters, even if there were others I thought were stupid. They also had one of the greatest "character removal" things I've seen on TV when they introduced Niki and Paulo in Season 3, expecting to move them up to the main cast, and the fans hated them, so... they took care of that.

 

[TwistedMind]

The ending itself seems pretty clear.
There were some loose ends that were never tied up, though.

That's what I think, too.

I watched the show belated, not when it came out, so Niki and Paulos existence just didn't make sense to me, it just felt like a filler. But I really like, how they included ideas and suggestions from fans in the show.

 

[Jennywocky]

That's what I think, too.

I was kind of surprised at how there was confusion about the ending, although I think the three shots of the beach added by executives after the last scene ran were a little confusion in the moment. If you look at the pictures carefully, you actually do see footprints so it clearly establishes everything in the show happened... but I guess if people were distracted or couldn't process quickly enough, it might confuse them.

Spoiler

I mean, basically the "sideways" dimension of Season 6 was set sometime in the far future, after the events of the show had all actually taken place just as described, where the last survivors -- the people who made it off the island, etc. -- all died of old age. And that's the Limbo they jointly created in some metaphysical way to "find each other" again before moving on to Whatever Comes Next in the afterlife, since they were important to each other. Pretty straight-forward.

I actually guessed the last minute of the show way back in Season 2-3, I figured they would funnel out and end the series just as it began, with Jack dying and his eye closing. But it was done really well -- they even had the old tennis shoe hanging there + the dog. It was a mark of perfection to see it come full circle like that.

I watched the show belated, not when it came out, so Niki and Paulos existence just didn't make sense to me, it just felt like a filler. But I really like, how they included ideas and suggestions from fans in the show.

It was hilarious, I remember laughing when that happened. So awful.

There were always some interesting subplots like that. Like that teacher who screwed around with the dynamite in Season 1 (Ardnt? I don't recall.) I think he shows up in Season 6 in some of the sideways stuff.

Some threads like the polar bear were tossed in and then never went anywhere. But you could see them "seeding" the plot with various possibilities, some of which did become more fleshed out. Some got fleshed out too much, some not enough. But it was an interesting show especially exploring the art of writing on the fly, where you want to create some impetus but also leave things open so you can maneuver whenever other threads come into play. TV shows have that element, due to the seasonal approach; books are different, because you can finish writing the whole book before releasing it.

Still miss the characters, and I'll rewatch parts of the series and/or parts of the finale (since amid some fluff there are also some great scenes, like when Jack and Kate meet after the concert, or when Hurley finds Charlie, or Claire delivers Adam). They also just had some really solid actors in the show, even though most might not find the same level of success again as they found in Lost.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I enjoyed it, especially the first to third seasons. One of a few series that I bothered to complete. The background and character play were believable, richly detailed and the more negative or undecided characters added a lot of value to the show. The design was both classic and very well done, each character had a few details defining them as a person and I found each inseparable from the plot. Especially the lack of antagonists, but rather everyone pursuing their agenda through different means sometimes being at odds with the rest, due to differing perspectives (Locke, Sawyer). Sun and Jin arc was a masterpiece in how unpretentious the romance seemed to develop.

It would be fun to present in a puzzle format. Where every decision point is a branching tree of a puzzle, what if they didn't open the hatch but instead attempt to capture one of the others alive, or maybe if they found another complex earlier in the story, what would they think knowing different pieces and what other decisions would each of them make. Instead of one ending it could have 20 end states, or more.

 

[Jennywocky]

Oh definitely. That show had a TON of "crux points" so to speak, not just in the season finales but scattered throughout. Even the whole deal with Michael in Season 2 (he could have made different choies).. all those choices would have rippled throughout the rest of the plot.

I really liked Sun and Jin. They seemed like two people that did love each other, but typical "life stuff" kept getting in the way and threatening to end their relationship... even just basic stressors. The end of that arc was bittersweet; I think it was the right ending, but whoa...

I wasn't really fond of the Sayid/Shannon thing, though, at the end; Shannon was such a flake and it didn't make sense. You would have thought that would have been a Nadia moment.

 

[TwistedMind]

I think the same way about the ending.

There were always some interesting subplots like that. Like that teacher who screwed around with the dynamite in Season 1 (Ardnt? I don't recall.) I think he shows up in Season 6 in some of the sideways stuff.

His name was Lesley Arzt, which is pretty funny as a german, because the german word "Arzt" means doctor, what makes Hurley not being able to pronounce his name pretty hilarious in the german dub. Man, I hope that was a real sentence. xD

Some threads like the polar bear were tossed in and then never went anywhere.

I think the polar bear was a leftover of the DHARMA Initiative experimenting with animals, what would explain the animal cages.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I wasn't really fond of the Sayid/Shannon thing, though, at the end; Shannon was such a flake and it didn't make sense. You would have thought that would have been a Nadia moment.

Yeah, I didn't even mention Shannon, just sort of forgot she was there. I'm definitely colouring certain things with selective memory now .

 

[Jennywocky]

His name was Lesley Arzt, which is pretty funny as a german, because the german word "Arzt" means doctor, what makes Hurley not being able to pronounce his name pretty hilarious in the german dub. Man, I hope that was a real sentence. xD

HA! Thanks for the background.

I think the polar bear was a leftover of the DHARMA Initiative experimenting with animals, what would explain the animal cages.

Yeah, it just was played up as if it had more significance (I think it was tied into Walt's comic book in Season 1), but apparently it had no real significance other than a minor detail.

 

[TwistedMind]

What do you think, which MBTI Types the characters are? I would consider John Locke being INTP, also because the real John Locke is often considered as INTP. But I'm not that good in estimating MBTI types.

 

[Jennywocky]

meh... I see Locke as pretty typical INFP, but I have little interesting in arguing Lost character types (or any show types) for the umpteenth time... it's usually a pointless discussion.

I find it more interesting to talk about the plot as well as the characters as people, not MBTI types.

There's also already a forum for that:
http://www.intpforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65
This forum is for talking about plot, character, i.e., the show.

 

[TwistedMind]

Oh, ok.
The problem is, I can't remember the plot in all it's details anymore. Maybe I should rewatch the show - the fifth time.

 

[TwistedMind]

Oh, another question: With which character could you identify the most?
For me, it is a weird mix between Hurley and John Locke, with the difference, that I don't believe in god, or fate.

 

[Jennywocky]

A little bit of Kate and Juliet (in demeanor and standoffish-ness).
A little bit more of Ben (in how much he thought through things).

A pretty decent amount of Daniel Faraday + John Locke. My demeanor is more like Farady's IRL, at my best. John was a little too lost in his own private passions for me, and I'm more skeptical, and he tended to wallow too much; but I really connected with his approach and adaptability and big-picture perspective. Few others had a sense of larger vision for what was happening, and also the broad sense of community / we're all in this together, differences and all. Faraday had some of that but not quite as large as John... but Daniel was also a little more stable.

Jack is the kind of person who would strongly irritate me IRL and who I'd come to odds with, but I also think he was a great character and really liked him.

I also had a lot of differences with Michael, but unlike my begrudged respect for Jack, I found Michael's decisions despicable and self-absorbed/made out of weakness/fear. I wasn't much like Claire or Shannon either, they were both irritating.

 

[TwistedMind]

I forgot Ben, in fact, I can identify with him pretty good
Sawyor is the kind of person, who I like to watch what he does and says, because it is very entertaining, but wouldn't know what to say and how to deal with him.
Hurley is just very symphatic to me. I can agree with you about Claire and Shannon, they are both irritating and Shannon is quite annoying.

 

[Jennywocky]

I like Hurley. I had a friend a ways back who was like him. Very sweet guy.

Found this list. More interesting since it lists all the characters, and makes fun of some of them. (Not very detailed in terms of describing them, though... so kind of disappointing there.)

http://jezebel.com/every-single-person-on-lost-ranked-from-most-to-least-1546174780

 

[TwistedMind]

"I still have nightmares about this perfect evil mouse-man." So good!
I don't know why, but everytime I see Ethans face, I have this urge to tell my monitor to fuck himself.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

Yeah, it just was played up as if it had more significance (I think it was tied into Walt's comic book in Season 1), but apparently it had no real significance other than a minor detail.

The season 1 bear that Sawyer shot was just them laying the ground for weird stuff to go down, I think. Like "Hey, we need this island to be weird. You know what's a weird thing to see on a tropical island? Polar bears, motherfucker."

The next bear (iirc) is the one that attacks Walt after he storms off. The implication is that he called it to him after reading the comic book (Hurley's spanish comic book with the giant polar bear that Michael burns). This was more to demonstrate Walt's special-ness, I think, than to play up the bears, seeing as we also had the flashback where he was reading the book about birds and that same exact bird killed itself on his door. The bears were just convenient because it was already established that bears were on the island and they're also dangerous enough to create reasonable conflict which Michael and Locke could use to bond.

The next (and final?) bear in the series is the one that drags Eko off to its den. I genuinely don't know what the point of this was. A lot of the Eko stuff around this time doesn't make much sense and it feels like they were setting up all kinds of cool shit and then said "fuck it" and killed him. And the whole Locke sweat lodge Boone-y "clean up your mess" hallucination doesn't really cut it for me, seeing as it's Locke's fault that Eko nearly blew himself off to Arzt-land in the hatch but it isn't really Locke's fault that a marauding polar bear decided to drag him off (Also what was the deal with the toy truck in the bear's den? Did that ever get explained?).

The cages were there probably since the writers needed to explain how the polar bears got to the island and they'd already introduced the Dharma Initiative as this mysterious cabal of utopian science experimenters and the Others needed somewhere to lock Kate and Sawyer up so hey, maybe one of their stations was an animal testing facility and the Others have taken that over. Cool, we can do like a marine bio thing and lock Jack in the dolphin/shark room and he can accidentally flood everything and Ben can run away and leave Juliet to die and also speaking of Ben maybe his buddy that rabbit with the number is a Dharma rabbit.

Everything else is just references to their existence, like in Season 5 when Pierre Chang threatens to send Hurley to Hydra Island to shovel bear shit or when Danielle says "If we're lucky it's just one of the bears."

So yeah, I think the bears were more just a vessel for other elements of the show than they were an actual mystery in and of themselves. Like a way of saying "hey everyone, look how crazy and weird this island is!" or "look how special Walt is!"

Found this list. More interesting since it lists all the characters, and makes fun of some of them. (Not very detailed in terms of describing them, though... so kind of disappointing there.)

http://jezebel.com/every-single-person-on-lost-ranked-from-most-to-least-1546174780

this is pretty funny. I appreciate the list-maker's appreciation of the Scott/Steve gag.


EDIT: I probably know way too much about this show. Like, is it sad that I can pull up pretty much every instance of polar bears off the top of my head?

 

[TwistedMind]

EDIT: I probably know way too much about this show. Like, is it sad that I can pull up pretty much every instance of polar bears off the top of my head?

No, that is amazing.

 

[Jennywocky]

The season 1 bear that Sawyer shot was just them laying the ground for weird stuff to go down, I think. Like "Hey, we need this island to be weird. You know what's a weird thing to see on a tropical island? Polar bears, motherfucker."

The next bear (iirc) is the one that attacks Walt after he storms off. The implication is that he called it to him after reading the comic book (Hurley's spanish comic book with the giant polar bear that Michael burns). This was more to demonstrate Walt's special-ness, I think, than to play up the bears, seeing as we also had the flashback where he was reading the book about birds and that same exact bird killed itself on his door. The bears were just convenient because it was already established that bears were on the island and they're also dangerous enough to create reasonable conflict which Michael and Locke could use to bond.

The next (and final?) bear in the series is the one that drags Eko off to its den. I genuinely don't know what the point of this was. A lot of the Eko stuff around this time doesn't make much sense and it feels like they were setting up all kinds of cool shit and then said "fuck it" and killed him. And the whole Locke sweat lodge Boone-y "clean up your mess" hallucination doesn't really cut it for me, seeing as it's Locke's fault that Eko nearly blew himself off to Arzt-land in the hatch but it isn't really Locke's fault that a marauding polar bear decided to drag him off (Also what was the deal with the toy truck in the bear's den? Did that ever get explained?).

The cages were there probably since the writers needed to explain how the polar bears got to the island and they'd already introduced the Dharma Initiative as this mysterious cabal of utopian science experimenters and the Others needed somewhere to lock Kate and Sawyer up so hey, maybe one of their stations was an animal testing facility and the Others have taken that over. Cool, we can do like a marine bio thing and lock Jack in the dolphin/shark room and he can accidentally flood everything and Ben can run away and leave Juliet to die and also speaking of Ben maybe his buddy that rabbit with the number is a Dharma rabbit.

Everything else is just references to their existence, like in Season 5 when Pierre Chang threatens to send Hurley to Hydra Island to shovel bear shit or when Danielle says "If we're lucky it's just one of the bears."

So yeah, I think the bears were more just a vessel for other elements of the show than they were an actual mystery in and of themselves. Like a way of saying "hey everyone, look how crazy and weird this island is!" or "look how special Walt is!"

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. But note how you aren't discussing it as having much relevance INSIDE the story, you've had to explain it just as i have had to explain it: As part of the writer's creative process of laying out potential threads and making broad sweeping suggestions to the audience, and then later kind of just dropping those threads because the story went elsewhere. There were more coherent ways of suggesting the island was 'weird' (like we couldn't figure that out from a bunch of plot-relevant stuff that happened?) and to be honest you could excise all of the polar bear stuff with no detrimental effect to the story and maybe even a positive effect.

Typically when you have the luxury of finishing the story first (rather than an ongoing series), you can tighten things up so that these kinds of useless storylines can be excised.

I really liked Eko. It's too bad the actor had to quit the show for personal reasons, so then they had to conclude his storyline in a way that didn't quite work.

 

[Lot]

I really liked the first 2 seasons.
The third started to lose my interest.
The fourth and I lost all interest and pretty much stopped watching.
I then saw random episodes here and there. Which only confirmed that I made the right choice by stopping. When the final episode came out I did watch that. Seemed like a cop out. They built it up too much, and even though they said they had had the ending planned out from the beginning, I really don't believe that.

The dialogue was fantastic and I the acting was mostly good. I loved the back stories. Locke was my favorite.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

Typically when you have the luxury of finishing the story first (rather than an ongoing series), you can tighten things up so that these kinds of useless storylines can be excised.

I see what you're saying, but in this case I kind of liked the fact that some mysteries/unresolved questions were left as minor details that got left by the wayside. It's like in a video game where you choose to go through one door and not another. Even though we didn't go through some of the other doors and figure out exactly what the deal with <thing> was, the fact that there was a deal with that thing made the universe seem a little bigger and more full of things. And the Lost universe could use some enlargement, seeing as everyone is related to everyone else and keeps running into each other and going on escapades with everyone else's friends (fucking Cassidy, man).

I really liked the first 2 seasons.
The third started to lose my interest.
The fourth and I lost all interest and pretty much stopped watching.
I then saw random episodes here and there. Which only confirmed that I made the right choice by stopping. When the final episode came out I did watch that. Seemed like a cop out. They built it up too much, and even though they said they had had the ending planned out from the beginning, I really don't believe that.

They definitely didn't have it all planned out. The reason they said that is because the network (before the pilot was even made) needed them to justify the fact that their proposed pilot was going to cost more than some movies (planes are expensive) so they were just like "Yeah, man. This all totally goes somewhere, trust me."

 

[Jennywocky]

They were actually going to have Jack played by someone else and killed off in the pilot.
Lots of stuff changes over time.

Jacob (as well as the reality behind Christian Shepherd) were two other ideas that kept evolving over the course of the show, although they didn't really reconcile well the Shack event with the end concept of Jacob and I didn't really buy the explanation of the appearances of Jack's dad.

Sorry, I've got mixed feelings about Lindelof, who is great at tossing in ideas but not so hot at times with making sure something more than spaghetti comes out the other end. I'm actually very open to not having everything resolve, but there's still a prioritization of threads in terms of what needs to get resolved versus what is non-essential, and also having the resolutions remain plausible and coherent. He contributed in part to the fuckup that was Prometheus too (although most of that movie's problems I blame on psycho over-editing -- clear case of too much trimming, and in the process introducing inconsistencies and incoherence).

 

[FlorisV]

Lost: great show overall and one of my all time favorites.

Ending was a cop out but also a break of promise by the creators, they insisted early on that the characters were not in any form of purgatory.

Lost is still great to think about. I fantasize sometimes being on the island. What role would I have in the group? Socially (position) and functionally (work). I would probably write a computer program so that a certain button does not have to be pushed manually every 45 minutes or so...

I liked the fanservice the show provided, removing less liked characters and trying out new ones.

And I liked Juliette over Kate, by miles. But I did like how muscular Kate was, great contours on her arms, while not to bulked up.

Oh and Ben...best character. The actor was just using the Hannibal stare, never blinking, but the character worked so well, just awesome.

 

[Jennywocky]

Lost: great show overall and one of my all time favorites.

Ending was a cop out but also a break of promise by the creators, they insisted early on that the characters were not in any form of purgatory.

Sigh.
They were not in purgatory.
Everything in the show actually happened.

Only the "sideways" part of Season 6 happened in a future limbo, and it happened long after all the events of the regular part of the plot had occurred, long after the old-age deaths of the six people who survived to escape the island in the finale. So it was actually a "future" sequence in the afterlife. Everything else occurred, including Season 1.

 

[FlorisV]

That makes me rethink why the last episode was hated so much by other fans!

Thoughts?

 

[Jennywocky]

It didn't help that the producers slapped on those three pics of wreckage at the end. I think it confused the audience, who was still shocked at the show being over; they didn't have enough time to process. If you look at the marks on the beach, you realize that it's the state the characters left it in versus it just being the sign of an accident where everyone dies... but there's not a lot of time to process that or recall the exact state of the beach.

So good intentions by the executives kind of muddled the ending, unfortunately. It still should have been clear, from Christian Shepherd's speech (he explains it) + how things funnel out in the very last minute; but people still got confused.

Lost is still great to think about. I fantasize sometimes being on the island. What role would I have in the group? Socially (position) and functionally (work). I would probably write a computer program so that a certain button does not have to be pushed manually every 45 minutes or so...

What model computer were they using anyway?

It is rather amusing that in a random pool they can acquire an obstetrician, a surgeon, a hit man, and some other high-end professions... but no programmers?

 

[Lapis Lazuli]

Thoughts?

I’m not trying to derail the thread, but I wanted to comment on your moniker FlorisV.

I have read enough P.K. Dick and I am hesitant to say that I think he is an important writer, but why do you suggest that he is “literally” a dick head?

And, yes, I was a Lost fan, but I have slept since then.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

It is rather amusing that in a random pool they can acquire an obstetrician, a surgeon, a hit man, and some other high-end professions... but no programmers?

Eh, I feel like if they'd really needed one the would've handed that skill off to Sayid. Like "Hey, Sayid's good at tech stuff. I guess he can program now."

Also the obstetrician doesn't really count in that random pool of yours. Juliet was brought to the island specifically because of her baby-doctor skills.

But I guess you could argue that everyone was brought to the island specifically.

 

[FlorisV]

I have read enough P.K. Dick and I am hesitant to say that I think he is an important writer, but why do you suggest that he is “literally” a dick head?

He is an important writer to me, hence I am a (Philip K) D!ck head, not he, I think that was the intent of the picture anyway. Confusing I guess...if taken too seriously.

Refreshing at least that PKD is well known here. I had a hard time picking an avatar because I normally don't do that, I just use my own photo but nobody here does...it just feels unfair if everybody knows what you look like you don't know how anybody looks like.

I could swap it with that picture of "Hans" Solo wearing an Austrian lederhosen outfit and carrying a big pint of beer but then I could be offending Harrison Ford's work ;-).

 

[FlorisV]

I wasn't really fond of the Sayid/Shannon thing, though, at the end; Shannon was such a flake and it didn't make sense. You would have thought that would have been a Nadia moment.

It's not uncommon to form a strong connection during very stressful events such as the aftermath of a plane crash. Though with Nadia there was that kind of connection as well.

Here it says that in the real life he did choose Nadia but in the afterlife he chose Shannon, who died in real life, being shot by Ana Lucia who didn't trust her.

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sayid's_relationships

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

Here it says that in the real life he did choose Nadia but in the afterlife he chose Shannon, who died in real life, being shot by Ana Lucia who didn't trust her.

Nadia died in real life, too. (Technically, based on the end, everyone died in real life but that's tangential to my point.)

When you compare the two relationships it's kind of absurd (to me) that afterlife-Sayid is with Shannon, as his experiences with Nadia were far more meaningful I think.

Sayid knew Nadia since his childhood, imprisoned and tortured her, shot himself for her, spent years of his life trying to track her down, and basically talked his friend into killing himself because it gave him a shot at finding her.

Also, from a creative standpoint, it feels a little cheap for him to end up with the girl who he knew for <2 seasons as opposed to the girl who is a huge focal point for his backstory. Hell, in a lot of the episodes where his and Shannon's relationship was explored, it mostly served as a way either to highlight his past with Nadia or her past with Boone.

Not saying it was wrong to make it Shannon, since she was on the plane, and the whole afterlife sequence is dedicated to those who were on the plane (also Ben and Desmond). It just feels a little cheap/meaningless.

 

[Jennywocky]

Nadia died in real life, too. (Technically, based on the end, everyone died in real life but that's tangential to my point.)

When you compare the two relationships it's kind of absurd (to me) that afterlife-Sayid is with Shannon, as his experiences with Nadia were far more meaningful I think.

Sayid knew Nadia since his childhood, imprisoned and tortured her, shot himself for her, spent years of his life trying to track her down, and basically talked his friend into killing himself because it gave him a shot at finding her.

Also, from a creative standpoint, it feels a little cheap for him to end up with the girl who he knew for <2 seasons as opposed to the girl who is a huge focal point for his backstory. Hell, in a lot of the episodes where his and Shannon's relationship was explored, it mostly served as a way either to highlight his past with Nadia or her past with Boone.

Not saying it was wrong to make it Shannon, since she was on the plane, and the whole afterlife sequence is dedicated to those who were on the plane (also Ben and Desmond). It just feels a little cheap/meaningless.

All that. The convention of the show is that "relationships on the island were more meaningful" and for many of the characters, we were shown over the years how this was true; but they never earned the right to say that Sayid's connection to Shannon was more meaningful than his connection to Nadia. It seemed like fluff in comparison and thus rang very false to see them together at the end.