Spoiler Alert Finally watching Lost, just a few years late to the party

[CuseCPT]

So, Lost was in it's prime back when I was in the Army, and while I thought it looked cool, I wanted to be able to watch it all at once, rather than try to jump in in the middle.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I am now halfway through season 2, and I can see what all the hype was about. Such a great show. Initially I was a big fan of John Locke, but as he gets weirder I am liking him less. Mr. Ecko owns though. I keep hearing the season 3 finale is one of the best television shows ever aired, can't wait to get to it.

Initially, I was going to ask for no spoilers, but realized probably nobody would have anything to say, and probably stuff would get spoiled anyways. So I guess I'll just leave this thread alone until I'm done watching it, and then discuss stuff most of you have probably forgotten or stopped caring about long ago.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

When you're ready to talk, I was actually a semi-prominent Lost blogger for a while (was quoted in Entertainment Weekly once).

 

[KingOtis]

Prepare yourself to be disappointed. The show is great where you are now and that will continue for a little while. There will come a time when the show, despite it's moments, will become monotonous. And in all likelihood you won't be satisfied with the final season.

Also, don't believe Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse when they say they always had the show mapped out. Clearly they were making it up as they went along.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Prepare yourself to be disappointed. The show is great where you are now and that will continue for a little while. There will come a time when the show, despite it's moments, will become monotonous. And in all likelihood you won't be satisfied with the final season.

Also, don't believe Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse when they say they always had the show mapped out. Clearly they were making it up as they went along.

The problem is, because of how the show ended people forget how groundbreaking the narrative was and how engaging the show managed to be for so long. It had a chance to be the greatest TV series of all time.

 

[armory]

I may end up being murdered for this but ...

I didn't think the final season was bad. Just cheesy.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I may end up being murdered for this but ...

I didn't think the final season was bad. Just cheesy.

Without ruining Cuse's upcoming viewing, the problem with the final season (and really, seasons 5 and 6) is that they were so misaligned with what things had initially been building towards.

 

[jekelish]

The pilot episode of Lost is maybe the best pilot ever produced. So much action, character, plot, and mystery stuffed into two hours. It was incredible.

The problem with Lost is that from the start the creators said that no, they weren't all dead, and we SWEAR everything we do is grounded in actual science, and we know exactly where we are going with this. All three of those things proved false.

 

[Marsh01]

I stopped watching it with 6 episodes left because it just became ridiculously stupid. I wasted a few years of my life watching that show. That is why I stick to sports most of the time

 

[OttoinGrotto]

All three of those things proved false.

Can't say that I'll ever watch another Cuse/Lindelof show to be honest.

 

[thebigeast44]

It's one of those shows whose ending makes you feel in some respects like you wasted time watching the show in the first place. After being so cool in many ways and showing imagination, the ending was a major disappointment. It showed no imagination and was entirely cliche and something we've see a million times. I agree that it would be tough to watch another series from the creators after that.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

It's one of those shows whose ending makes you feel in some respects like you wasted time watching the show in the first place. After being so cool in many ways and showing imagination, the ending was a major disappointment. It showed no imagination and was entirely cliche and something we've see a million times. I agree that it would be tough to watch another series from the creators after that.

I think that's a good description of things. I feel like in a lot of ways they punted.

 

[KingOtis]

It's one of those shows whose ending makes you feel in some respects like you wasted time watching the show in the first place. After being so cool in many ways and showing imagination, the ending was a major disappointment.

Believe it or not, I feel the same way about "The Sopranos."

 

[OrangeXtreme]

Soylent Green is made of people.

 

[jekelish]

Believe it or not, I feel the same way about "The Sopranos."

Which is why The Wire is, was, and always will be the greatest show in the history of television. No show has ever been as consistently good with regard to acting, directing, and writing.

Sorry, can't ever resist a chance to laud The Wire.

 

[4evaOrange]

I watched the first few seasons but never finished the entire show...Still got a lot of questions that need to be answered...I cant say what those questions are without ruining this for OP.

 

[KingOtis]

I watched the first few seasons but never finished the entire show...Still got a lot of questions that need to be answered...I cant say what those questions are without ruining this for OP.

Without knowing what your questions are, I guarantee they were never answered.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Without knowing what your questions are, I guarantee they were never answered.

It's funny because it's true.

 

[4evaOrange]

http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/again...jpg

 

[BlackKnight76]

I am an unabashed defender of LOST. Loved it the whole time, even after it sorta fell off a cliff down the stretch. If you watch it more for the characters, you're better off.

 

[KingOtis]

I am an unabashed defender of LOST. Loved it the whole time, even after it sorta fell off a cliff down the stretch. If you watch it more for the characters, you're better off.

And yet the producers fired the original writer because he wanted the show to be about the characters.

 

[themole]

Man I loved this show. Total "Lost" nerd, have a couple T-Shirts, posted on message boards about it, read the EW columns on it religiously, etc. I was like many offput by the final season, but had almost no issues with much of anything that came before it (other than the brief slowdown in parts of Season 3).

I was satisfied emotionally by how the ended it, but SOOOO not satisfied mentally. They just left so much unexplained and wrote it off as "well we wanted the final season to be about the characters not the mythology." WELL YOU SPENT FIVE YEARS BUILDING BOTH CHARACTERS *AND* MYTHOLOGY DAMMIT! And the most frustrating thing about it is that it wasn't that they couldn't answer the many questions. They just chose not to. (For whatever reason, and this should be vague enough so that the OP won't know what I mean, the unresolved second-half of the Outrigger Canoe sequence late in season 5 always pissed me off the most. Dunno why. I and many figured they'd show the "other half" of that incident in Season 6, but they didn't.

If it had been up to me, I would have not even bothered with, how to be vague about this, the narrative conceit of the final season. And just focused on the end game on the island. And had flash-way-backs regarding the island's history. We got a taste of that with the two flashback episodes but they could have shown a lot more and involved the show's characters in the flash-way-backs (due to events that occurred in Season 5). There also was a way to tie the plane crash and other Island Characters directly to what they wound up showing us in the "Across the Sea" episode, something they kinda started to hint at in Season 5, but they never did it.

Overall I loved the show, but the last season was real flawed and that took away from the overall experience somewhat. They could have done a lot more to tie things together, and simply didn't. Again not because they couldn't -- they just chose not to. Harumph.

 

[KingOtis]

Overall I loved the show, but the last season was real flawed and that took away from the overall experience somewhat. They could have done a lot more to tie things together, and simply didn't. Again not because they couldn't -- they just chose not to. Harumph.

I would argue that they chose not to because they couldn't (as in, they were unable to come up with anything halfway decent).

 

[CuseCPT]

I scrolled down to the bottom super fast to avoid spoilers for now. I just finished Season 3. I read that many viewers didn't like the first half of season 3 but I enjoyed every minute of it. I did have the benefit of watching it over the span of 1 week and the biggest criticism seemed to be slow-pacing, so I admit I'm not in a good position to judge how it would have been strung out over a whole year. My friend told me the Season 3 finale was the best 2 hours of television they ever saw. Maybe as a result it couldn't really live up to my expectations but it was fantastic. I was hoping that it was an "alternate" future reality, like Desmond's visions kind of, but I'm told that isn't that case.

I do need to be more careful though. I was just on youtube looking for Juliet's introduction and when I typed "LOST juliet" the automatic suggestions included "death scene".

 

[CuseCPT]

As an aside, I couldn't be happier that Abrams is going to be doing Star Wars. I loved Cloverfield and his Star Trek reboot. Guess it's really no surprise that I am loving Lost so much.

 

[DoubleDee]

If this thread teaches anything, it's that no matter the subject, some love, some hate.

For me, it was my favorite 6 yrs of television. Ever.

I've never been so engaged. So excited fo the next days water cooler chat. So intrigued at all the "possible" meanings of just about everything they did. So happy that Charlie from part of five got another gig.

Not afraid to admit that Jin and Suns "moment" and the final scene in the final episode made me cry like somebody died. And to be truthful, I think it was more so because I knew it was the last time I'd ever watch Lost.

One thing we can all agree on...
Go. Orange.