The flash-sideways were a RED-HERRING and a FILLER - Lost (2004) Discussion

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

Correct. And it wasn't the only red herring/filler! The temple was that as well, and so was Charles Widmore's building of that device and his attempt to do...whatever it was he was trying to do. They could have just made a wrapup TV movie in place of the whole season when you think about it.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

Correct. And it wasn't the only red herring/filler! The temple was that as well, and so was Charles Widmore's building of that device and his attempt to do...whatever it was he was trying to do.

I tend to agree about the Temple. It came out of nowhere in the story and disappeared later without further relevance. The only part about the Temple which connects to the rest of the story is the use of the pool to revive Ben and Sayid, a process which corrupted them and made them the tool of the MIB/Smoke Monster. (Ben and Sayid are appropriately linked in this manner, since Sayid was the one who shot and tried to kill the boy Ben Linus.) So there is a point to the Temple but it is a bit overdone.

OTOH, if viewed properly, The Sideways directly links to previous parts of the show and seques smoothly into the ending. The Sideways starts with Flight 815 not crashing. This is exactly what Daniel Faraday says would happen if they detonated the bomb. The Sideways explores what the Losties' lives would have been like if there hadn't been an Island and no Jacob interfering with their lives. Then the Sideways leads to The Church and the revelation of the afterlife aspect of the show. Furthermore, the Flash Sideways completes the trio which had been started with Flash Backs and the Flash Forward. Hardly just "filler".

Of course in Season 6 we ALSO see an Island timeline and an exploration of what happens if the bomb doesn't detonate. Some people think ONLY the Island matters and that what happens on the Island is the only "reality" and the rest is somehow just imaginary, fake or "filler".

But the Sideways lasts far too long and is far to detailed to be dismissed with the wave of a hand. The Sideways helps the audience to see the writers' full intentions about the show. The main storyline isn't all that matters. They took the trouble to write, act out and film Flashbacks, Flash Forward, Flash Sideways, dreams, time travel, alternate realities etc. It ALL matters equally in Lost and it is all needed to fully understand the writers' intentions.

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[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

The Sideways explores what the Losties' lives would have been like if there hadn't been an Island and no Jacob interfering with their lives.

That's what it appeared to be all season, but in the end we found out it was not that at all--so, as the OP says, it was a red herring.

The main storyline isn't all that matters. They took the trouble to write, act out and film Flashbacks, Flash Forward, Flash Sideways, dreams, time travel, alternate realities etc.

They "took the trouble" because they had a season to fill up and not enough "main storyline" to do it. Hence, once again: "filler", just as the OP described it.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

I've seen a number of Scorsese movies, but not that one--so I can't really say. I do know that is not often hailed as one of his best though.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] secondscout 8 years ago

^Let's see that post, you fascist admins.

Shut up talking spaceship! I'm trying to watch my favorite sci-fi show.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

The Sideways explores what the Losties' lives would have been like if there hadn't been an Island and no Jacob interfering with their lives.
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That's what it appeared to be all season, but in the end we found out it was not that at all--so, as the OP says, it was a red herring.

Many people think this. It isn't true. It is the result of misunderstanding Christian Shephard's words in the Church and the writers words later on.

At the beginning of Season 6, Lindelof and Cuse told us the Sideways is an alternative, parallel timeline to what we see on the Island.

Later, after the show was over, they said the Sideways was an afterlife realm. Did they lie earlier? No.

There is nothing in Christian Shephard's words or the writer interviews that say the Sideways can't be BOTH an alternative timeline AND the afterlife.

In the Sideways, people are walking around in the afterlife, talking and thinking they are riding planes to Los Angeles and driving cars around the city and going to work and giving birth and eating and pooping and even dying.

If you can do all that in the afterlife, why can't the afterlife serve as an alternative timeline to what happened during life? Why can't the afterlife have more than one level (as it clearly does in Lost -see "Whispers".)

The main storyline isn't all that matters. They took the trouble to write, act out and film Flashbacks, Flash Forward, Flash Sideways, dreams, time travel, alternate realities etc.
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They "took the trouble" because they had a season to fill up and not enough "main storyline" to do it. Hence, once again: "filler", just as the OP described it.

Then why didn't they add aliens? Zombies? Vampires? People love that stuff.

They ended the show with the afterlife because that's what the show had been about from the beginning. The clues are all right there to see in the first season. Damon Lindelof says it in this interview:
http://www.onstory.tv/watch/306-lost-a-conversation-with-damon-lindelof/#

They ended with the afterlife instead of zombies BECAUSE they were trying to be true to their artistic visions and NOT because they wanted to make more money.

There would have been zombies if their only goal was to be trendy and make more money. Walking Dead proved that. They went with the more unpopular choice. Why? Because they could.

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[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

And Jack and Juliet's son? What was he?

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[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] secondscout 7 years ago

^MORE FASCISTM!

Shut up talking spaceship! I'm trying to watch my favorite sci-fi show.

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[–] king_of_bob 9 years ago

or in their last pre-death moments of consciousness, as Juliet’s dying words might indicate

Juliet didn't SAY anything. She was already dead. Miles was "hearing" her side of the conversation between Sawyer and Juliet at the vending machine. She was already dead.

their various stories and alternative realities—Jack as a dad, Ben as a teacher, &c.—read as a way of working through their problems and correcting the mistakes of their past.

Yes and no. More like their Sideways lives were reflections of the lessons they learned in life.

But I, at least, had spent five years thinking of the Island as a place where the characters tried to achieve redemption and correct the mistakes of their past. And Jacob re-iterated that this season: They needed the Island as much as it needed them.

And it was. The Sideways isn't about redemption. It's about remembering the lessons they learned in life before moving on to the next phase of existence. The Sideways closest fits the Buddhist idea of the afterlife.

Redemption, yes. But the past is the past. There's no correcting it. There's only accepting your part in it.

So then what was the purpose of experiencing a post-life in which they worked through the same redemption issues? If the Island was for redemption, why have a Sideways way station, for, I don’t know, re-redemption?

They didn't work through those same issues. Their "awakening" brings them to catharsis. A releasing of the things that held them back in life and recovery of lesson learned which will be carried into their next life.

The Sideways isn't about redemption or making up for sins. It's about catharsis.

None of your options are correct. The real reason for the Sideways was to give our characters closure. The Sideways is an epilogue that happened to play along side the main story in the last season.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] king_of_bob 9 years ago

This. This is why I changed my mind on the dead the whole time issue. If all you can do is say they were dead the whole time you miss out on these kinds of wonderful observations.

Absolutely. If it was all just happening in the afterlife or Jack's mind as he died, the real beauty of the show is lost.

Martin Scorsese: You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is *beep* and you know it.

Absolutely.

What they did on the Island wasn't even really making up for their sins. Most of the Losties never righted any wrongs from their pasts. Mostly they just learned to accept the wrongs they had committed in the past and move past it.

The new home of Welcome to Planet Bob: http://kingofbob.blogspot.ca/

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

Juliet didn't SAY anything. She was already dead. Miles was "hearing" her side of the conversation between Sawyer and Juliet at the vending machine. She was already dead.

This is ignoring the spirit of Miles' power, which allows him to hear the "words" of people soon after they die, and always with reference to the last things that were on their mind before they died.

You are forgetting that in the Sideways, Juliet had been married and divorced from Jack Shephard and she had birthed and raised an 11-12 year old son also before she ever met James (Sawyer) Ford. You can't ignore all that history and pretend it didn't happen. What she said at the vending machine was merely an echo of her dying/dead last words, "It worked". That's what Miles heard, not her words at the vending machine, 12 years later.

In the original timeline Juliet says to Sawyer before she died, "It didn't work". Thus when she utters the words "It worked" it is obviously meant in the same context to the same person. She is talking about the detonation of the atomic bomb. She had hoped it would work to prevent the crash of Flight 815 and allow her to have a life with Sawyer/James without the interference of Kate. In the Island timeline it didn't work. But in the Sideways timeline it did work.

Yes and no. More like their Sideways lives were reflections of the lessons they learned in life.

How does that work for Charlie? On the Island he kicked his drug habit. In the Sideways he remains happily addicted. Other similar problems exist for other characters in the Sideways: "life's lessons learned" theory. You have to cherry pick a few characters and ignore others to make it work.

None of your options are correct. The real reason for the Sideways was to give our characters closure. The Sideways is an epilogue that happened to play along side the main story in the last season.

This is not a bad analysis.

The only part I'd question is calling it an "epilogue". The finale flips back and forth between the Island timeline and the Sideways/Church timeline (though there is no "time/now" in the Church). Sometimes it switches rapidly back and forth as with Jack's surgery on Locke and in the final scene as Jack dies.

When the show actually does end, it is not in the Sideways. It is on the Island. Jack's eye closing is the epilogue.

(I don't count New Man In Charge. I see that as the writers having a bit of fun on the DVD. I don't think they consider it the real end of the show either)

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

Looks like (c) for me.
The parallel reality would have been an interesting element for saying something about the characters, had it been planned from the beginning. But the way they introduced it, they just replaced a different element, which had become obsolete, with something able to fill the gap and looking alike.
Essentially this made the show a different show and killed how the show started, without telling the audience until it was too late.

Lost could have been a lot better, had they had a more precise idea what they wanted to tell right from the start.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

Lost could have been a lot better, had they had a more precise idea what they wanted to tell right from the start.

They did. They just didn't spoonfeed it to you. In fact they even openly denied it in podcasts and interviews. So as not to give away the ending, I suppose.

But in this interview, Damon Lindelof makes it clear that the afterlife was in the DNA of the show from the word go. http://www.onstory.tv/watch/306-lost-a-conversation-with-damon-lindelof/#

There are innumerable clues in the show regarding this. From the emphasis on backgammon (a game with its roots as entertainment for the deceased) to Jack Shephard being thrown clear of the airplane crash and landing almost unharmed, even though they very specifically showed him putting his seat belt on and talking about it to Rose.

The supernatural was in play from the beginning.

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

There are innumerable clues in the show regarding this.

There are innumerable clues for everything one can imagine, because they wanted to create a mystery. The afterlife/enlightenment vibe was just one of them.
Lindelof himself has stated that they had no idea how to solve it until some point around season 3. Everything introduced after that points perfectly at the solution, the things before are random hit and miss. And while they did a pretty good job in not letting things go entirely, it is clear from the way they introduced some things they picked up later, that they had no idea where to go with them. So the evidence is not the in the established things they use at the end, but those which they don't use or use under different circumstances. Had they known and still introduced them that way, they would just be bloody beginners, leaving opportunities left and right and resorting in throwing out red herrings for a great part of the first two seasons.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

And this idea was simply not detailled enough to tie the last three or four seasons to the beginning. Which I think is the whole problem. Without the beginning it would have been an amazing show. With a different solution it would have been an amazing show. But the beginning as it is with the ending as it is just does not match the quality of either.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

In this case it bothers me more that someone gave a valid example for a technical flaw of the show and some fanboy did not accept it and instead denied the obvious change in style and content.
I am perfectly fine with someone accepting a flaw (which at some point almost every show has) and still enjoying the result. In the end I watched the show to its ending myself. Had I thought it was too flawed to continue watching, I simply would have stopped (which btw. I would have done, has the redundant flashbacks not changed into the flash forwards and the show continued to add new elements without giving any answer, further moving into a dramaturgic deadend).

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[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

Except that there *are* rules in screenwriting. And while it is not necessarily a flaw to break those rules, in case you want to generate the effect resulting from that decision, it is a flaw when the effect coming into existence is one diminishing the dramaturgical quality of the result and just accepted as it is the lesser of two evils.
Which in this case* clearly happened - beyond a matter of taste or perception, as it is part of the craft and not of the art. Not everything is relative. What is relative is merely how easily one accepts this flaw.

(*the difference between beginning and ending; when it comes to the flash-sideways this is much more a creative choice, which depending on one's acceptance of different religious mumbo-jumbo might even make sense and might as well have been fully intended in the annoying way it happens, which indeed makes it much more a matter of perception or maybe even just taste.)

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

Who enforced language? If I just use a different word than what describes what I mean and nobody understands it, does the language police come and take me away? And even more important: is using a different word necessarily wrong? For example when creating a metaphor, I do exactly that. And there is the problem: if I create a metaphor but don't mean to, I *beep* up. If I chose a different word without having a reason and without utlizing the difference between the word I should have used and the word I used, it is from an entirely neutral point of view the wrong word.

The rules don't divide in right and wrong, they divide into not causing an effect and causing an effect. This effect can for example be featuring a discovery in a way which hints at what part of the discovery will be of importance later in the story, rather than the discovery itself.

And as I said before, those rules don't govern whether you like the show, they just show how many flaws you forgive when loving the show.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

what didn't cause an effect for you, that's fine. it did with me.

But it is not about the emotional effect - that is more or less subjective. The effect is on the technical side of communication. The effect is based on the grammar of screenwriting. The effect is the logical consequence.

By chosing point of views and giving information, an information is given what is important. If the show now continues to use the information shown, but ignores what itself marked as important, it is flawed.

Compare: No good filmmaker will cut into a close-up, when the item in the close-up is of no interest (unless of course the lack of interest should be emphasized, in which case the item becomes an item of interest). If a car enters the picture and the director decides to film a tire in close-up, one expects something to happen with the tire. If nothing happens with the tire, this shot is purposeless misleading. Even if it also introduces the car and the car stays important.
This *is* a flaw. For *everyone*.

Whether the movie still "works" as a whole is decided on a different level, which is a lot more sujective. This can depend on different factors, for example a different amount of attention invested in the faulty shot, or a difference in the nonsense threshold, as for example when watching videos made by highschoolers. But: the flaw will always stay a flaw and the result would be better to read if it was not there.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

A flaw, i think, would be something in the picture that the artist doesn't want to be in the picture.

Exactly. That is the point.

So in order to point out a flaw you'd have to first know, for certain, the artist's intent.

That is where the actual ending comes into play. It gives that information. The question becomes a technical one, not an artistic one. Just like we know nobody wants to have double shadows when creating a sense of sunlight or jump across the axis when when giving a sense of flow.

Confidence is a good thing until it becomes obnoxious self deception.

Yes, and in great confidence you try to tell me, that an author, who misspells words and constructs sentences which do not carry meaning does a flawless job.

He does not.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

at least until you can actually refer to something, one actual thing specifically that's in the picture that the artist didn't intend to be in the picture

The polar bear and the way it is established. It gets a meaning at the end which contradicts the way it gets introduced by the show. The ending clearly did not intend to put him there, at the same time it tried to explain its existence. The circumstances however are purely a red herring.

You just disagree with the artist's intention.

Nope. I compare the artist's intention as expressed by his work at one point with the artist intentions as expressed by his work at a different point. This way I can point out an inconsistency which has nothing to do with liking the artist's intentions or whether I agree to them at either stage. Art does not mean that nothing matters. Using art as an excuse is cheap. Art itself can still be flawed.

I don't know maybe your definition of flaw is "anything I don't like."

Well, I think your capability of understanding the craft of screenwriting is rather limited and you simply have no insight into it other than looking at the finished product. Else you should be able to understand the point I have explained several times already. In fact the one who constantly comes along with rules about how "things work" is you. There is no ultimate way to make things work. There is however an effect you create by doing something. But you refused to understand that the last two times I wrote it, so I won't bother to repeat it.

The comparison to language I made before went right over your head as well. Instead you critisize points I have never made, ignoring basic logic and failing to follow even the most simple conclusions.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

Stop right there, until you can realize that is a subjective evaluation, the conversation is done.

Okay, everything is relative, nothing we see matters and there is no such thing as good screenwriting because everything is art. I get it.

I don't see how looking at anything other than the finished product as being very useful,

Well, you are a consumer. That is okay and enough if you just want to discuss emotion and taste.
But when discussing the technic behind those things, you have to bring along some insight in how things are set in scene and how the creator uses the devices to communicate with the audience. When you ignore that those devices exist or claim that they would be irrelevant since they are purely relative, there is no point in trying to discuss about them.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

Except that there *are* rules in screenwriting. And while it is not necessarily a flaw to break those rules, in case you want to generate the effect resulting from that decision, it is a flaw when the effect coming into existence is one diminishing the dramaturgical quality of the result and just accepted as it is the lesser of two evils.

And one of the primary, most inviolable rules is the Chekhov's Gun law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun

The Lost writers' hands were tied. They could not insert dozens of clues hinting at death and the afterlife for six seasons and not end with that as a primary element of the show.

If they had inserted dozens of clues about aliens or zombies or vampires they would have been forced to make the ending about those things. But they didn't. It was about death and the afterlife all along.

A lot of their stylistic choices in how to arrive at that destination were shaped by a new force that few previous screenwriters had to deal with: The internet. As mentioned by Lindelof in the posted interview, the audience had a new method of interconnecting and they caught on too quickly.

So the cat and mouse game developed. A game which remained tantalizingly unwinnable for the audience even until The End. The writers would toss out a juicy clue (like Flight 815 being found at the ocean's bottom) then yank it back. Toss another clue out (like Richard saying they were all dead) then yank it back again.

The only way you could know for sure what the Lost writers were really getting at with the ending is to do the spiritual thing they had always hoped you would do: take a leap of faith. If you are willing to do that and not rely on logical, scientific "evidence gathering" most people use to solve problems, then the underlying principles of Lost become clear. Piecing the jigsaw pieces together one by one will not serve. You have to step back and intuitively view the bigger picture.

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

Chekhov's Gun law

Good point. And yet they inserted dozens of events which get technically explained by the ending but lead nowhere in itself.
We have a mutated polar bear, we have a boy with book featuring that polar bear, then the boy gets lost and the polar bear suddenly is just a normal one which escaped from the cages. The polar bear gets perfectly explained that way, but the manner in which it is introduced not at all.

If they had inserted dozens of clues about aliens or zombies or vampires they would have been forced to make the ending about those things. But they didn't. It was about death and the afterlife all along.

But was it about specific candidates chosen to guard the island? Not before we saw how they met Jacob.

The only way you could know for sure what the Lost writers were really getting at with the ending...

But we discuss about the beginning. The ending perfectly fits to the last three or four seasons. Everything they introduce then makes logical sense in the light of the ending(in some intuitive way when accepting the nonsensical pseudoreligious mumbo-jumbo, but that is kind of the fantasy element), but everything before was stabbing in the dark.
The beginning could have been explained with a purely poetic idea, but after adding fantsy/science fiction elements, they had to go into an entirely different direction. The others are not the mysterious group anymore but get talked to on casual level, everything which was part of the mystery suddenly becomes just meaningless backdrop for the true mystery as invented after season 2.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

There are innumerable clues for everything one can imagine,

Not true.

No clues regarding aliens. Or vampires. Or zombies. No major guilt reversals. Or incest and molestation. Or other plot twists or mysteries commonly found in fiction.

The clues we got in the first season referred to death, dreams, brotherly conflict and dark vs. light. All of which figured prominently in the finale.

If you are looking for something the Lost writers didn't hint at in the first season which was inserted in the middle to occupy some time, the answer is obvious: time travel.

But death, dreams and dark vs. light brothers were there from the beginning.

Lindelof himself has stated that they had no idea how to solve it until some point around season 3.

What Lindelof and Cuse received during Season 3 was a definite end point for the show. Once they knew they had six seasons to work with, the rest started to fall in place. But the death/afterlife reveal in Season 6 had been in the cards since Season 1. People may not have liked it, but, given the beginning, how else COULD the show have ended?

Everyone lives happily ever after? Hah.

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

No clues regarding aliens. Or vampires. Or zombies.

And if the polar bear later would be explained as being abducted by aliens or having zombie DNA, the same people who now claim that it was planned from the beginning (contradicting the the actual creators) would be convinced they planned that as well.

Of course the beginning revolved about a near death experience. Because they just crashed in a plane. But there is absolutely no indication that there are six chosen ones. There is no indication who of the ensemble could be among those. There is no indication that they had a plan who the others were. There is no indication what could be in the bunker. All of that is made up on the fly, and until that point in the middle points nowhere specific.

People may not have liked it, but, given the beginning, how else COULD the show have ended?

How could the show not have ended? The first two seasons give 0 answers. They could simply have been saved. They could have decided to give up. They you have discovered a military super weapon which the others were sworn to protect.... the options are endless. And each of them would look exactly as planned as the one they chose.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

And if the polar bear later would be explained as being abducted by aliens or having zombie DNA, the same people who now claim that it was planned from the beginning (contradicting the the actual creators) would be convinced they planned that as well.

The polar bears were seen in a comic book on the plane before the crash. All the "scientific experiment" explanations were red herrings. The polar bears served the same purpose as the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: to illustrate, from the beginning, that what we are seeing is a dream. Likewise for the "black smoke monster" which sounds like the plane crashing, with the same clicks and sounds of metal bending.

Do you have another explanation for the multiple references to Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz and other single character dream/death fiction? Despite the multiple central characters, beneath the surface, Oz is not an "ensemble piece". It is the exploration of the imagination, teen angst and wanderlust of one person- Dorothy Gale. Likewise for Lost.

Of course the beginning revolved about a near death experience. Because they just crashed in a plane. But there is absolutely no indication that there are six chosen ones.

You have been misled and misdirected. There are not really "six chosen ones". That is part of the fantasy. There is one and only one central character about whom all the rest of the show revolves around, fulfilling the needs which remained unfulfilled during his life.

But was it about specific candidates chosen to guard the island?

This is not what the show was about. This was a later invention to provide a sense of metaphoric accomplishment to the main character (and of course to provide action and drama for the audience). But the show doesn't end with the defeat of the MIB. The show ends addressing the issues the show is REALLY about.

Watch Jack's fight with the MIB. Notice how the scene cuts rapidly back and forth between the fight and Jack performing spinal surgery, his raison d'etre. Notice it is his "dark twin" (John and Jack are essentially the same name) that Jack is fighting/saving in this scene. What are the writers trying to say with that metaphor?

The beginning could have been explained with a purely poetic idea, but after adding fantsy/science fiction elements, they had to go into an entirely different direction. The others are not the mysterious group anymore but get talked to on casual level, everything which was part of the mystery suddenly becomes just meaningless backdrop for the true mystery as invented after season 2

That's how dreams work. There are sudden shifts and illogical changes which wouldn't happen in the real world. The ghost of your father ends up being a hideous monster, but later he ends up being your spiritual guide. Your "dark twin" starts as your friend, becomes your mortal enemy and later your patient. You are mistaken regarding what the "true mystery" of the show is. Most of the audience is, of course. But interpreted in this way, the Lost ending becomes as logical and pre-planned as Wizard of Oz. The answer is not found in the final minutes of the show. It is found in the final seconds (and the very first seconds of the Pilot).

How could the show not have ended? The first two seasons give 0 answers. They could simply have been saved.

No.

They could have decided to give up.

No.

They you have discovered a military super weapon which the others were sworn to protect....

No.

the options are endless.

No.

As you observe, the show started with a "near-death" experience. The main character is near death. All that we see after that is this character trying to find meaning in his passing life and accept his own death with dignity, resolution and peace. Yes, that requires a conversation with his ghostly father, which had been hinted at in the first season but is something we don't actually get until the final minutes. Check out the actual ending of the show. Lost does not end in the afterlife. It ends with Jack's death and that is the only way it could possibly end.

Lost was quite explicitly explained by the writers as inspired by the 60's British TV show The Prisoner. They knew few people would be familiar with that reference. I urge you to look into it. That show offered the same disguised single-character-centric perspective that Lost ultimately gives us.

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

That show offered the same disguised single-character-centric perspective that Lost ultimately gives us.

Which it did not start with and which was not part of the experience in the first two seasons. Which proves my point.

Everyhting else is up to interpretation, which is okay.

And the idea that everything is a dream and so everything can happen and every red herring is allowed is the cheapest cop out known in film history. I refuse to believe that this show would have sunk so low to rely on some wishy-washy idea to hide its flaws. For that the creators are way too smart.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

That show offered the same disguised single-character-centric perspective that Lost ultimately gives us.
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Which it did not start with and which was not part of the experience in the first two seasons. Which proves my point.

I disagree. The underlying premise of Lost was set in the first four minutes. We don't see any character except Jack (and Vincent). That's not the way to introduce a show which is essentially an ensemble piece.

Take a look at the opening scene of Friends, for example. A group of friends in a coffee shop. That's how an ensemble show starts.

Contrast with Breaking Bad or the Sopranos. They start with scenes of Walter White and Tony Soprano, respectively. And both shows end when that character dies. Just like Lost.

Everyhting else is up to interpretation, which is okay.

Well, that's true.

And it is also true that you can only see what YOU can see. No punk-ass from the internet like me is going to force you to see more in Lost than you can see for yourself.

Still there are some choices involved. If you are only able to view Lost as a rollicking good island adventure story then, yes, the writing sucks, especially the ending. The Church and the Sideways have no business in an island adventure tale.

If you are able to see the spiritual nature of the show from the beginning, then the ending starts to make more sense. It isn't totally consistent but we can accept that when a group of people die together in an airplane crash and their souls commune for a while, some of them might want to move on to the next level together. The writing is pretty good.

But if you can make the leap to understanding Lost from a psychological (and even autobiographical) level, deeper insight may be gleaned. Not that the island adventure and spiritual levels of the show should be ignored. But when understood as a creation of the mind of a single character (a character who serves as autobiographical avatar for one of the writers) the writing moves from pretty good to brilliant.

It may boil down to ego. It is probably enjoyable to think one has better screenwriting skills than the writers of Lost and it is enjoyable to find holes to poke at. Not so enjoyable is to admit the Lost writers are really bright. Brighter than we are and always a few steps ahead of us.

Personally, I don't claim to be a super-genius. I picked up on a lot of things while watching Lost but I missed a lot also. I don't mind admitting that, because I enjoy the process of learning and catching up after the fact of watching. Other prefer to feel they always totally understood everything in the show, they caught every clue, there is nothing new they can learn and they remain intellectually superior to other audience members and the Lost writers to this day.

People are different that way.

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[–] tb-sch 9 years ago

And it is also true that you can only see what YOU can see. No punk-ass from the internet like me is going to force you to see more in Lost than you can see for yourself.

Here is the thing: I am absolutely happy when someone can give explanations for things I missed or just not brought together to a conclusion. In that way the show is perfect for the internet, as there are collections of informations which allow comparing details which never appear in the show so close together.
It becomes a problem, when the only explanation someone can give is: this is just dream/the afterlife/some metaphysical thing which never happened, so nothing you see is of any relevance, there is no point in connecting the dots because everything can happen and therefore nobody gives a crap about the information given.

I think the creators are better than that. That is why I am sure that, had they that end in mind, they would *not* have started to run in a completely different direction concerning the dramaturgy. They would not have used the polar bear as a diffuse dreamy experience of no importance, instead it would have become a specific part. They would not have shown three times basically the same backstory for Sawyer to show how he is a brilliant con-man, but instead given more information which would be valid for what happens in the last four seasons. Jacob would have appeared in the flashbacks much earlier, not by name but in a way to show that this element is important and that it connects some of the survivors and at least more important than some random polar bear appearance. They would have tried to get the flashbacks in line with the flashsideways.

The quality of the writers is more evidence than anything else for the lack of an actual plan in the first seasons.

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[–] bsharporflat 9 years ago

It becomes a problem, when the only explanation someone can give is: this is just dream/the afterlife/some metaphysical thing which never happened, so nothing you see is of any relevance, there is no point in connecting the dots because everything can happen and therefore nobody gives a crap about the information given. I think the creators are better than that

You are just being argumentative.

By your logic, Alice In Wonderland, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, Wizard of Oz (movie), Last Year at Marienbad, all of Ingemar Bergman's films, Groundhog Day, Jacob's Ladder, Naked Lunch, most of David Lynch's work, Inception, The Matrix etc. etc. are all crap.

Completely worthless because, hey, stuff in those stories never happened. Apparently you are arguing that only fiction that pretends to be real is worth watching? That seems ludicrous to me. But if you really believe that then, you are right. Lost is complete crapola.

But if you secretly, behind your desire to win an online argument, can appreciate a psychological story in which what we see onscreen serves to illuminate the inner workings of a character's mind rather than depict supposedly "real" fictional events, then there might be hope for you to appreciate Lost. (You don't have to admit that online by the way. Your presence here already betrays you as a Lost fan. But I won't tell anyone your secret. Keep up the crapola accusations  Most will believe you.).

Let's take the movie Wizard Of Oz. What happens? A farm girl falls in a pig sty and gets her dog taken away. She gets hit on the head by a storm shutter then wakes up. That's all that happens.

Do you have an explanation for why such a dull, eventless, pointless story remains an all-time classic? Aren't we maybe, just maybe a bit fascinated by what a young girl's imagination can come up with?

Then there is Lost, featuring the imagination of a character a lot more intelligent, worldly, complex and troubled than Dorothy Gale. His imagination carries across six TV seasons rather than a two hour movie. Perhaps you don't care about what this Jack Shephard guy thinks and consider his thoughts about his life and the world (and afterlife) completely worthless because nothing he imagines actually happens.

If so, you have wasted far too much of your life on Lost. Best to move on to real action movies, with real bullets, real bombs, real blood and real people. I mean that stuff is real. It isn't like somebody just imagined it happening and wrote it down. Right?

(I think if you think a little more deeply you will realize the truth, as explained by Dumbledore to Harry Potter at the end of their last book/movie. That truth being that within fiction, a dream is just as real as everything else in the fictional story. Does it matter that a fictional dream only occurs within a person's mind? No, because the truth is that in fiction, EVERYTHING is occurring only within someone's mind [yours]. Lost takes square aim at that truth. Perceive it or not).

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] granitodiaz 8 years ago

bump from page 17

The stupid have one thing in common.They alter the facts to fit their views not the other way

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[–] 7 years ago

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[–] Truthtalker (1870) 3 years ago

bump

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