dhollmusik
10-02-2010, 11:09 AM
Hi all.
I've only just now got round to watching the final Season. I thought I'd post my concluding thoughts for the record here.
Like all of you I have invested more than 100 hours of viewing and many hours of discussing/reading about Lost. Yet ultimately, the whole point of the series, the one question we all had from the very beginning, a question memorably uttered by Charlie at the end of the Pilot:
"Where are we?"
was never answered. Ok, we got some "where" answers, in that it was hidden from normal view, and moved around a bit too...but what is the island? The format of answering questions with more questions proved unsatisfactory. Ben has all the answers? No...but Richard maybe does. No...ok, but Jacob most certainly would. No...what about his adoptive mother? She was a load of crock, blaming man for ills yet committing the darkest sin of all: murdering a new mother and stealing her babies.
The answers we did get were the kind of generic, non-committal ideas Manga fans get: spiritual place, special light that must not get polluted by the dark, the dead cannot rest there because the place is a limbo/gateway between life & death etc.
Yawn...this is all stuff we've heard before, from countless fantasy stories. I really thought Lost would shock us in Season 6 with some massive fresh new idea. Season 6 was alas predictable hokum, even to the point where Evil Locke loses his powers momentarily so that he may be killed (old old trick). Or where the supposed almighty characters just turn out to be weak Mummy's boys (Jacob & brother = Darth Vader/Annakin Skywalker).
The whole series was flawed, in some significant way. The brilliant, truly mesmerising mystery of Seasons 1 & 2 were slowed down painfully by some boring, counter-intuitive flashbacks. Season 3 was possibly the worst Season, in that the contrivedness reached its peak, the music was way overcooked and the acting melodramatic...as well as the disappointment that the Others were just normal people and not a real 'other'. Seasons 4 & 5 had some really strong moments, moments that completely rekindled my faith in the series (The Constant & The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham surely count among the best episodes from any show ever). The Seasons boasted the freighter & the time travel as main storylines, and very well-executed they were too. The flashbacks/forwards were also much more interesting than in the previous 3 Seasons. The main issue was that they ultimately repeated the format of Season 3: build-up to big fight at the end with enemy group, namely the Others, Freighters & Dharma...same contrived action story with stock bad-guys and their nameless goons.
Season 6 had some very fine in-jokes, and built up the sideways-flashes quite well, but ultimately failed to deliver thanks to the weakness of the 'answer' characters (the brothers, Dogan, Richard) and the continued obliqueness, or cluelessness, of what they had to say. The schmaltzy church ending was awful, the irrelevance of Widmore a joke, the Jacob flashback episode turned out to be rubbish...ultimately, the motives for most hardcore actions of our main characters remained implausible.
The contrived scenes & characters so evident from Season 3 was really out in force during the final Season. Dogan, especially, was created for no other reason than to build him up for a fight with Sayid. How and why they started fighting is irrelevant.
Still great TV on the whole tho'. The character of Locke/Evil Locke is up there among the most memorable TV characters ever. The actor who plays him and writers who developed him deserve all the plaudits in the world. The flipside of his role being so strong is that it made the other characters seem quite weak...only Ben & Sawyer could come close to matching the depth of John Locke. It's a pity no female character could match these three - the only candidate being the young/middle-aged/old Mrs Hawking - all 3 actresses for her were strong, but the character was way underused. Sun & Juliette became defined by their men, Kate has always been two-dimensional, Claire came out fighting near the end, but she also ended up just being a little girl lost looking for other people to prop her up. From the other males, Hurley & Desmond were good, Sayid became a caricature of himself. Jack developed interestingly enough, but the writers should have switched him to the Mr Eko role towards the end of Season 3.
Lost, in short:
Good:
- gripping & well-made production.
- generally deep memorable characters, interesting enough to sustain 6 Seasons (just about). Locke, culminating in Evil Locke, confirmed his status as one of the best characters TV has ever seen.
- the concept & storyline (if not the pay-off) was on the whole brilliant.
- faithful to fans, providing answers to many smaller mysteries, bringing back old minor characters.
Bad:
- far too much concentration on the...yawn...love stuff. Believe it or not, life is more complicated than simply striving to be with the one you love. Jack got it in the end, but he should have got it 3 Seasons ago.
- Jacob was a big disappointment, lacking sense, strength and purpose. They should have kept his character trapped in that house.
- too many forced scenes, very textbook.
- providing weak answers to the big questions.
- none of the major characters ever died, and when they did, they contrived to remind us of them (Mr Eko excepted...shame).
- the promising handling of minorities in the beginning Seasons just progressively got worse, with it almost being an in-'joke' that any new black character would die shortly after being introduced. Even on the sub it was the three minority characters who died (Kwons & Sayid) while the all-American Jack, Kate & Sawyer got away. At least Hurley got good coverage.
But thanks for Locke, for the production and for the mystery (if not the answers). Lost is still better than almost all other TV I've seen, I think Battlestar Galactica narrowly beats it (thanks to its focus: not concentrating on love triangles & providing good answers to deep questions).
And thanks to all you Fuselage members, for providing such entertaining and informative reading over the last few Seasons!
Mayhap see you in another life, brothers & sisters.
I've only just now got round to watching the final Season. I thought I'd post my concluding thoughts for the record here.
Like all of you I have invested more than 100 hours of viewing and many hours of discussing/reading about Lost. Yet ultimately, the whole point of the series, the one question we all had from the very beginning, a question memorably uttered by Charlie at the end of the Pilot:
"Where are we?"
was never answered. Ok, we got some "where" answers, in that it was hidden from normal view, and moved around a bit too...but what is the island? The format of answering questions with more questions proved unsatisfactory. Ben has all the answers? No...but Richard maybe does. No...ok, but Jacob most certainly would. No...what about his adoptive mother? She was a load of crock, blaming man for ills yet committing the darkest sin of all: murdering a new mother and stealing her babies.
The answers we did get were the kind of generic, non-committal ideas Manga fans get: spiritual place, special light that must not get polluted by the dark, the dead cannot rest there because the place is a limbo/gateway between life & death etc.
Yawn...this is all stuff we've heard before, from countless fantasy stories. I really thought Lost would shock us in Season 6 with some massive fresh new idea. Season 6 was alas predictable hokum, even to the point where Evil Locke loses his powers momentarily so that he may be killed (old old trick). Or where the supposed almighty characters just turn out to be weak Mummy's boys (Jacob & brother = Darth Vader/Annakin Skywalker).
The whole series was flawed, in some significant way. The brilliant, truly mesmerising mystery of Seasons 1 & 2 were slowed down painfully by some boring, counter-intuitive flashbacks. Season 3 was possibly the worst Season, in that the contrivedness reached its peak, the music was way overcooked and the acting melodramatic...as well as the disappointment that the Others were just normal people and not a real 'other'. Seasons 4 & 5 had some really strong moments, moments that completely rekindled my faith in the series (The Constant & The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham surely count among the best episodes from any show ever). The Seasons boasted the freighter & the time travel as main storylines, and very well-executed they were too. The flashbacks/forwards were also much more interesting than in the previous 3 Seasons. The main issue was that they ultimately repeated the format of Season 3: build-up to big fight at the end with enemy group, namely the Others, Freighters & Dharma...same contrived action story with stock bad-guys and their nameless goons.
Season 6 had some very fine in-jokes, and built up the sideways-flashes quite well, but ultimately failed to deliver thanks to the weakness of the 'answer' characters (the brothers, Dogan, Richard) and the continued obliqueness, or cluelessness, of what they had to say. The schmaltzy church ending was awful, the irrelevance of Widmore a joke, the Jacob flashback episode turned out to be rubbish...ultimately, the motives for most hardcore actions of our main characters remained implausible.
The contrived scenes & characters so evident from Season 3 was really out in force during the final Season. Dogan, especially, was created for no other reason than to build him up for a fight with Sayid. How and why they started fighting is irrelevant.
Still great TV on the whole tho'. The character of Locke/Evil Locke is up there among the most memorable TV characters ever. The actor who plays him and writers who developed him deserve all the plaudits in the world. The flipside of his role being so strong is that it made the other characters seem quite weak...only Ben & Sawyer could come close to matching the depth of John Locke. It's a pity no female character could match these three - the only candidate being the young/middle-aged/old Mrs Hawking - all 3 actresses for her were strong, but the character was way underused. Sun & Juliette became defined by their men, Kate has always been two-dimensional, Claire came out fighting near the end, but she also ended up just being a little girl lost looking for other people to prop her up. From the other males, Hurley & Desmond were good, Sayid became a caricature of himself. Jack developed interestingly enough, but the writers should have switched him to the Mr Eko role towards the end of Season 3.
Lost, in short:
Good:
- gripping & well-made production.
- generally deep memorable characters, interesting enough to sustain 6 Seasons (just about). Locke, culminating in Evil Locke, confirmed his status as one of the best characters TV has ever seen.
- the concept & storyline (if not the pay-off) was on the whole brilliant.
- faithful to fans, providing answers to many smaller mysteries, bringing back old minor characters.
Bad:
- far too much concentration on the...yawn...love stuff. Believe it or not, life is more complicated than simply striving to be with the one you love. Jack got it in the end, but he should have got it 3 Seasons ago.
- Jacob was a big disappointment, lacking sense, strength and purpose. They should have kept his character trapped in that house.
- too many forced scenes, very textbook.
- providing weak answers to the big questions.
- none of the major characters ever died, and when they did, they contrived to remind us of them (Mr Eko excepted...shame).
- the promising handling of minorities in the beginning Seasons just progressively got worse, with it almost being an in-'joke' that any new black character would die shortly after being introduced. Even on the sub it was the three minority characters who died (Kwons & Sayid) while the all-American Jack, Kate & Sawyer got away. At least Hurley got good coverage.
But thanks for Locke, for the production and for the mystery (if not the answers). Lost is still better than almost all other TV I've seen, I think Battlestar Galactica narrowly beats it (thanks to its focus: not concentrating on love triangles & providing good answers to deep questions).
And thanks to all you Fuselage members, for providing such entertaining and informative reading over the last few Seasons!
Mayhap see you in another life, brothers & sisters.