Ok, I've just said it.
I loooove Lost, is still a great experience. But I've got a feeling the enormous pressure has stressed the writers, whose work is far from the one we've witnessed in the previous seasons (say 1 to 3/4 up to the beginnng of S5).
I know this has been discussed, but I want to make my point clear by checking the last episode: Lighthouse (S6E5).

After Dogen has told Jack his sister has been infected .. what do we expect jack to do? Well, we know his family-issues, so he would get in a rescue mood to find claire and eventually save her, so he'd previously have to question dogen about what happened to her - also considering the fact that claire was known to be dead so the news of her being in fact alive, should have been a strong push for jack to go and search for her.
Instead what? That event had no consequences at all. Jack was quietly hanging around the asylum in the temple watching his friends playing the X/O game.
And when he meets Kate in the jungle: why doesn't he tell her what dogen knows about claire? Jack knows Kate's purpose is to bring Claire back to her mother.. why omitting such crucial information to his friend kate? Also, by doing so, Jack exposes Kate to a potentially lethal encounter with Claire!

Next Sayid. 'You know dude, that japanese douche over there wanted you to inject this poisonous pill and probably die like a frigging rat'. 'Oh, I see, thank you very much, Jack'. 'My duty. See ya' . 'Cheers, mate'.
Really?? So Sayid just listens and.. does nothing??

Going back to Jack. So while the news about Claire seemed to have no effect on him, he immediately gets to trust Hurley just because he's pretending to get orders from a ghost. And he follows him, too.
This is even too much for a show like Lost where ghosts are 'real' characters, though it can be explained by Jack's long time experience with his dad's 'ghost', that brought him to believe in the supernatural. But again: why listening to Hurley when there is Claire to help?

Now Jin. He has the chance to help Claire (and himself) by telling her the truth: Aron is safe, a puffy blond healthy baby living in sunny California.. and to convince her that Kate took him only for the good of the baby. Instead silly Jin makes it sooo complicated and goes lying to a crazy-mother-teen-with-guns (who to me is far worst than lying to a samurai).

A few weeks ago many fans have commented Claire's hardly-believable behaviour of waiting for the bus (being pregnant!) after having been robbed and threaded with a gun.. by the same person she eventually later accepted to go on a car ride with!
Oh, and how trusty was the man that helped kate (an unknown girl with handcuffs and a gun) to break her handcuffs?.. 'Please madame, you can change in the backroom, there's a desk where you can leave the gun while you are dressing up. But hey, don't forget your gun uh?'

Also I wonder: didn't the writers came up with too many characters in the last seasons? Too many regulars? I mean putting together the number of seconds when miles, lapidus and illana have said/done something in the last 5 episodes, you get even less time than the Medusa Spider in S3. So why not having the Spider has a regular? It's a shame to have great actors wasting time around like that.
And I'm still wondering what the hell was Cesar's purpouse on the show: he did nothing and then died! Did Darlton changed idea about him and killed him off? Can you still change your mind as late as in S5?

And what about Widmore then? Are we to consider his story done - as well as the Dharma's one, too? I think the Dharma story is done, but I hope we'll get to know more about the Widmore-Hawking-Desmond stuff. It all seemed to be so damn important.

--
My point is this: i love Lost and i'm ready to trust Darlton on any crazy-path (time-travel, parallel-universes etc) they choose, but my payoff are the characters: they have to respond properly - like anyone - to what happens around. Not being just objects to move for the good of the plot.
Is it a joke that the only character that seems to be logical is a former-mental-institutionalized-dude-who-talks-with-dead-semigods?
Plot-convenience is the real sickness.

Well said; and I agree with your general observations about character development breakdown.

What I am deriving from recent episodes is that, instead of time travel and multiple universes, we are seeing key characters being transitioned into their mirror-image~opposite "selves."

On the more epic scale, the characters are experiencing the stresses acting upon the Island itself. The Island, if nothing else, is uniquely sterile in the biosphere. The importing of people is a proxy for missing fertility. The lack of natural reproduction has resulted in Island populations not having any true sense of nuclear family relationships.

Even the Island mythology is steeped in what has been imported in the far distant past.

The Island instinctively seeks homeostasis. Homeostasis by counterbalancing traumas is being imposed upon the Lost players.

Locke-Sawyer want to go home. I suggest "home" is a natural state of balance, with natural functions, reproduction and robust fertility being restored to normalcy.

Jacob wants the status quo, control by blind faith. An enlightened Dogen is the bridge between the repressed Others and outsiders who may come to the Island [or who are already there].

I see Claire, not as a nut-job post-teen single mother, but as a rebellious, strong and dedicated woman who has cast off victimization to fight for her sense of self. The price of the mirror image passage seems to be amnesia, while in transition to the opposite extreme.

This distillation, if nothing else, helps me filter out the dramatic alt reality "noise" being thrown at us so I can concentrate on the Lost drama as originally presented to us.

I see Jack's reaction to Claire as sort of a "I still don't believe she's my sister. I hope I never see her again, or I'll have to remind myself my father was having an affair in Australia, and God forbid I have to explain to her I'm her brother!"

Claire's a dolt naturally, so who cares what she does?

Sayid is pretty mysterious right now. If he's infected, he probabaly knows more than he's letting on.

My point is this: i love Lost and i'm ready to trust Darlton on any crazy-path (time-travel, parallel-universes etc) they choose, but my payoff are the characters: they have to respond properly - like anyone - to what happens around. Not being just objects to move for the good of the plot.

Is it a joke that the only character that seems to be logical is a 500-pound-former-mental-institutionalized-dude-who-talks-with-dead-semigods?
Plot-convenience is the real sickness.

See, what I got out of your post is that the characters are not responding they way normal people would respond. I agree with you 100%.

I think that is one of the major complaints about the show. That's in a file next to "The Times That Characters Do Not Share Information With Each Other" file. And that's a pretty fat file. In fact, it takes up an entire file drawer.

As far as that "dude" you described, you say that as if it's a bad thing. And please, his weight has nothing to do with his psychic abilities.

P. S. And as far as Claire being a "rebellious, strong and dedicated woman who has cast off victimization to fight for her sense of self." (LSHMCOOMN*) I believe most of the well known psychiatric journals would diagnose her as "just plain nuts." Quick! Someone book her on Oprah, The View and Larry King.

*Laughed so hard milk came out of my nose.

P. S. And as far as Claire being a "rebellious, strong and dedicated woman who has cast off victimization to fight for her sense of self." (LSHMCOOMN*) I believe most of the well known psychiatric journals would diagnose her as "just plain nuts." Quick! Someone book her on Oprah, The View and Larry King.

Wellllllll, that is your reaction.

I would counter that people ready to air their personal traumatic discombobulations on Oprah, Larry King [and, you forgot Dr. Phi], are the ones who have really severe problems, which they then cross the tabloid threshold to make even worse.

Lost in Season 6 is almost literally about smoke & mirrors. Claire, whom I've seen referred to here as a ditz and a a dolt has also garnered significant post bandwith on her presumed rise to "power," seateth at the left hand of Christian in he Cabin.

Claire, now a few years older [and somehow initiated] has passed from her vague, bewildered, mindless victim self into the mirror image of determined commando vengeful mother determined to protect whatever in this world is left for her to care about.

I sure didn't make those observations in a deliberate intent to have you choking milk through your nose - been there -done that, not good thing in the Martha Stuart Home Economics Bible.

It's not as if I hadn't considered demonic [jinni] possession of Claire's corpus. I have. However, TPTB seem to have started a parade of characters striding from their previous personnas into mirror opposites. "Claire" is not unique here.

[I don't drink milk anymore, having converted to club soda and carbonated diet lemon & lime. Snorting effervescent stuff is extra painful and explosively messy. I try to avoid that].

I think you raise some excellent points. I don't think this season is any worse or any better than the second half of Season 5. It's pretty much on par. The dialogue is sluggish. The characters are acting in ways that make little sense and it's frustrating to watch.

If Jin doesn't want to antagonize Claire, why say "Kate took your baby". That sounds horrible, and is completely out of context. The encounter between Jack and Kate felt pointless. The island is supposed to be huge (since Rose and Bernard were undisturbed by the Others and the Dharma folk) but then people keep bumping into one another by chance?

See, what I got out of your post is that the characters are not responding they way normal people would respond. I agree with you 100%.

I think that is one of the major complaints about the show. That's in a file next to "The Times That Characters Do Not Share Information With Each Other" file. And that's a pretty fat file. In fact, it takes up an entire file drawer.

As far as that "dude" you described, you say that as if it's a bad thing. And please, his weight has nothing to do with his psychic abilities.


Yes, the "TTTCDNSIWEO' (!) thing is well known among fans, but in previous seasons this was balanced by the fact that the events happening to the characters were definitely more 'ordinary' than they are now. A polar bear on a tropical island is a weird thing for sure but 100000 times less weird than time travel or people getting resurrected or possessed!

The weight point was just to bring evidence to the unique properties of Hugo (he's been designed to be different both physically and mentally). Anyway I've erased the line cause I don't want anyone to get hurt. Thanks.


I see Jack's reaction to Claire as sort of a "I still don't believe she's my sister. I hope I never see her again, or I'll have to remind myself my father was having an affair in Australia, and God forbid I have to explain to her I'm her brother!"


The Jack you're depicting, Winged, is definitely out of character. For how much of a believer in the supernatural he's become, I can't see Jack having lost his typical overprotecting nature (he's the one who takes care of people).
But let's say you're right: but even if he doesn't care about Claire, her experience could bring crucial information about Sayid, who is suffering from the same infection! Jack must take information about Claire, at least to learn about Sayid. Or should I believe Jack is not caring about Sayid either?

By the way, I think that whatever Dogen and Jack have said that we still don't know, jack's behaviour with Kate is silly. Let's be logical:
1) Jack has asked Dogen more information, which Dogen has delivered him. Why Jack,when meeting Kate, doesn't give all that information to her? He just hummers something about Claire being different, nonetheless he lets Kate go, knowing that Claire is crazy, dangerous, and willing to kill Kate as her only purpose!
2) Jack doesn't ask furthermore questions to Dogen. In this scenario, when he meets Kate, he should have been more direct to her, addressing the great danger that lies in the 'infected-Claire'. He should have told Kate: 'Go to Dogen, ask him to tell you about Claire, he knows. And if he won't, then don't go searching for Claire.'
Also, how is it possible that Kate learns that 'Claire is different' and doesn't ask any further explaining to Jack? She hardly seems bothered! This is bad writing.


I think you raise some excellent points. I don't think this season is any worse or any better than the second half of Season 5. It's pretty much on par. The dialogue is sluggish. The characters are acting in ways that make little sense and it's frustrating to watch.


Agree. In my thread opener I write that the writing quality has been bad from the second part of S5. It went all along with the supernatural pathway Darlton chose to take.
It's easy to write about time travel; it's waaay more difficult and dangerous to write about the consequences of time travel.
Darlton are often inspired by Star Trek and Star Wars, but here's the great difference: these shows take place in the future, hence the characters are used to deal with unbelievable stuff (time travel, black holes, forces, dematerialization etc). So a writer of Star Trek just has to deal with characters that consider dematerialization just as you and me consider the internet or a mobile phone. They don't get affected or upset by it. But when you deal with ordinary guys from 2004, you have to deal deeply with consequences.

The Jack you're depicting, Winged, is definitely out of character. For how much of a believer in the supernatural he's become, I can't see Jack having lost his typical overprotecting nature (he's the one who takes care of people).
But let's say you're right: but even if he doesn't care about Claire, her experience could bring crucial information about Sayid, who is suffering from the same infection! Jack must take information about Claire, at least to learn about Sayid. Or should I believe Jack is not caring about Sayid either?

Jack, in my eyes, is as bewildered as ever; but in the Lighthouse he had a fire lit under him. Jack [again, just my observations over 5+ seasons has been passive-aggressive at best - a reluctant leader burdened by the baggage laid on him by his father. In the Lighthouse episode, I believe Jack passed through the Looking-Glass.

Check Jin, cringing and lying to Claire about Aaron when the truth would have been the more sensible and rewarding option for all concerned, including Kate.

Sayid, whimpering and in victimized diselief as to how his captors could be so cruelly motivated as to torture him. He has crashed through the looking glass.

Claire has already been profiled to death here as has John Locke. Both have become mirror-images of their former selves.

Ben, always so consescendingly self-assured, devious and pathologically dishonest, is now bwildered by what's going on around him; and even Richard Alpert has raised those mysterious eyebrows of his, now getting shoved around like some "chained" lackey instead of the possible bearer of the Island's deepest, most ancient secrets.

Kate, who did a little pirhouette upon enetring the Temple's cavernous and winding entry ways, getting separated from the other losties for several moments is, for me, the new and current wild card or the other Joker in the deck.

From here on in, I'm just a fan, watching, observing, and enjoying the ride. Part of the fun for me will be finding out how right or wrong my final theory will be.

Theory: Lost is, and always has been, about homeostasis in/on the Island, humanity, civilization as reflected in the recorded mythologies. It's yin and yang out of kilter and in need of adjustment on the grand scale.

The Lampost, its pendulum, the Valenzetti numbers, the need to recreate Flight 815 on the Ajira flight, the Dharma experiments, the Ann Arbor connections and holograms are all MacGuffins symbolizing Mankind's efforts to prove his own free will; control of his own fate and the destiny of Nature at large.

It's about balancing the arrogant forces that know all the answers with the helpless and victimized, who haven't even had a chance to voice their questions.

The real ritual is passing through that looking glass and finding balance [homeostasis].

Joseph Campbell might have said "Follow your bliss." Great idea .... not easy . requires a good deal of self-searching, trial & error and cuts & bruises along the way.

Next time I use a hydrogen bomb to keep the hatch from being built...and accidentally kill a woman I care about after having put so much faith in to something I would have normally scoffed at (you know, that character growth thing), then I'll let you know if Jack is acting out of character.

Jack is shellshocked...so is Sawyer. Jack isnt' reacting anymore because he learned from sawyer and past experience that it got them into nothing but trouble.

Or did you forget the little speech that Sawyer gave Jack back in Season 5?

We are at the point where it's hard for these characters to have any "realistic" motivation because NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON.

It's like someone putting a chess board down in front of you when you don't know the rules and telling you "it's your move." Then completely ignoring you when you ask them to teach you how to play. At this point, everyone we know is just going along for the ride. Now maybe this will change once someone tells them what the hell has been and is going on...but for now, our Losties are about as clueless as we are. In fact it seems that even some of the people who seemed to be in charge have no idea what is REALLY going on.

The only bit of dialog that made me cringe was the "evil incarnate" label. Talk about cliche', but after seeing the end of Sundown, he was right! :)

the last few seasons have been disappointing watching the show's story line drift out of control - however - the writing and acting made for some compelling TV moments. This year - the writing is not as strong. Guess I'm disappointed about lack of closure and the last few years of putting up with BS from TPTB. I have to watch 'till the end because I've invested too much time onto the show but it has been clear for sometime now that they don't know how to make it come together in the end - oh well - more Locke and Linus scenes please.

Creators of 'Lost' say they won't tie up all those loose ends -http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030103497.html?hpid=news-col-blog

the last few seasons have been disappointing watching the show's story line drift out of control - however - the writing and acting made for some compelling TV moments. This year - the writing is not as strong. Guess I'm disappointed about lack of closure and the last few years of putting up with BS from TPTB. I have to watch 'till the end because I've invested too much time onto the show but it has been clear for sometime now that they don't know how to make it come together in the end - oh well - more Locke and Linus scenes please.

Creators of 'Lost' say they won't tie up all those loose ends -http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030103497.html?hpid=news-col-blog

I think knowing who "The Economist" is has no bearing on what is ultimately going on. Fortunately you could probably connect the dots if you tried hard enough. Jeeze, couldn't be Widmore could it?

But seriously, who cares at this point? Is it going to make any difference?

The people whining should try writing a TV series some day if they think they know exactly how to plot a serialized drama that is one continuous story when you have no idea how long the show is going to last.

Read this article and maybe you'll appreciate the work they put into this show and how hard it is to pull off what Lost did. Lost did something that shows RARELY do. The only other example I can think of is Babylon 5.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/200912/jj-abrams-flashforward-lost-star-trek

The people whining should try writing a TV series some day if they think they know exactly how to plot a serialized drama that is one continuous story when you have no idea how long the show is going to last.

That excuse went out the window when they were guaranteed three more seasons. They've had plenty of time to come up with a cohesive end to the show and plenty of time to start wrapping up some of these mysteries. Instead, they keep stringing us along with vague answers and more questions while the characters run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Read this article and maybe you'll appreciate the work they put into this show and how hard it is to pull off what Lost did. Lost did something that shows RARELY do. The only other example I can think of is Babylon 5.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/200912/jj-abrams-flashforward-lost-star-trek

From the article:

GQ: If that ambiguity is what you think makes these shows work, why do you think so many people criticize Lost for not explaining things? Do you get frustrated when people say they're frustrated?

Burk: I can speak for Fringe— if people are getting frustrated, it's because of us, it's not because of them. That's the challenge—to perpetually make it accessible. You don't have to understand anything, or even necessarily participate in the mythology, but you don't want to be frustrated watching the show.

Lindelof: The most slippery slope, the slope you don't want to be on, is when people question your characters. If they say, "I don't understand why so-and-so is doing that, or behaving that way"—you can always get away with the mythology on that level, but when people lose touch with the characters, that's when you're completely hosed.

This is the problem I (and seemingly a lot of others) have with this season. I have lost touch with the characters. They introduce new characters only to kill them off a few episodes later without ever giving me a reason (or a chance) to connect. Meanwhile, all the characters I do know and care about are either acting totally out of character or doing incredibly stupid and pointless things in regard to their situations. This is just plain bad writing.

This is the problem I (and seemingly a lot of others) have with this season. I have lost touch with the characters. They introduce new characters only to kill them off a few episodes later without ever giving me a reason (or a chance) to connect. Meanwhile, all the characters I do know and care about are either acting totally out of character or doing incredibly stupid and pointless things in regard to their situations. This is just plain bad writing.

So would you have them walk into an empty temple, shrug and go

Hurley: "Now what?"
Miles: "Got a deck of cards on you?"

Totally out of character? You mean, they've changed? Why is that bad? That is what keeps this show interesting.

Our characters did a lot of stupid things in earlier seasons too. How are you supposed to act in this totally alien situation? Kate's on a mission. Sawyer is mourning the loss of Juliet (and we remember just how up in arms people got when Claire didn't do that for Charlie). Jack is angry because no matter what he does, nothing ever goes right. Locke is dead. Sayid and Claire are compromised..infected...an infection was talked about way in season 1. Hurley is the only one who seems to have his head on straight, and I think all of this was written this way on purpose.

Now that MIB has killed all the people in the temple, perhaps the next part is about how our Losties rise up once more. There will be casualties, but Im sure there will be some triumphs too..Im waiting for Hurley to yell at everyone, tell them to pull their heads out of their bums and get going.....and I hope we see Claire leaving the Island on a helicopter. :)

I just hope it's not a case of the producers biting off more than they can chew. I can only imagine what one of their working sessions must look like. They have so many balls in the air at once right now, I think it's inevitable that a few get dropped before it's all over.

Like Spatial Ed said, it seems the fundamental story-telling of the show has changed the last few seasons. It could be due to the huge drop in ratings in Season 3. Maybe they reformulated the show to try to get back the viewers who moved on. Only they know the real reasons :confused:

I think there's a few good points in the OP concerning Jack, but for the most part I think we all just need to wait until the season is over. Calling out storylines like Widmore, Desmond, Hawking, etc is premature as we don't know if they do plan on returning to them before the season is done.

But I do agree that some of the behavior we have seen is a little convenient.

I find it hard to criticise Lost, but here is an absolute clunker from Dr. Linus

RICHARD: There's something I need to do.

JACK: To do what?

RICHARD: To die.


Surely somebody somewhere must have looked at this on the page and thought huh? But it made it to the screen.

The level of exposition this season seems to have reached new highs, which is the main problem for me. I know there are other considerations here, but if you took out every line that was there just to remind the audience what went before, the Lost script would be about ten pages long. How can we take these characters seriously when they're being forced to spew these constant summaries of events (they always have, but season 6 has been by far the heaviest)? Take Dr. Linus' opening Ben monologue for instance: it's just one of hundreds of examples.

I must take a moment to say that overall, the writing of the show is still pretty amazing for me. It's just these little things that drive me to distraction.