How Lost has become a poorly written show: An Analysis

[jimmyjims]

I am not looking to antagonize, but figure out what I'm missing. I welcome any and all responses, and look forward to spirited debates. Here goes:

I have watched every single episode of Lost. While considered one of the greatest television shows by many, I've experienced increasingly dwindling enthusiasm since the season 2 finale. You could say I've been, err, lost in a haze of frustration for some time now. I'm sure you've heard this before, but I still feel compelled to state my case and have someone explain what I'm missing. Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Characters:

Lost is a very complex television show, but at the end of the day it's a story about characters. The method and wonderful madness with which the show introduced its characters and their involvement in such unique circumstances, rightfully earned Lost the adjective "ground-breaking." Though the magical island is what initially grabbed our attention, it was the characters that took the show from a science-fiction flash-in-the-pan to a mainstream and culturally relevant story. Based on this fundamental fact, the show's ability to sustain relatable characters is of the utmost importance. While many of the Losties go through familiar life experiences during the flash backwards/forwards/sideways story lines -- triumphs and failures, both extraordinary and mundane -- as the show progressed, these off-island experiences seem to be the only place we can now relate to them. At first, the characters act in a manner that feels, well, human: Where are we? What's going on? Why is #### polar bear over there? But after a few seasons, the Losties' behavior becomes borderline-laughable.

At this point in the series, the characters seem utterly and completely resigned to being thoroughly uninformed. Apparently smoke monsters, polar bears, purple skies, violent indigenous inhabitants, hatches, and miracle cures are all in a day's work. Travel back through time and join the ranks of the Dharma Initiative? They act as if it would be weird not to. Watching Sawyer interact with Flocke, who he even realizes is not the same Locke he once knew and loved/loathed, I could practically see the thought bubble over Sawyer's head, "Whatevs. Just go with the flow man." To add insult to injury, anytime a character gets close to something resembling an answer, or a truth, or even a context for them to process their experiences, their quest for ignorance becomes stronger. It's as if they are allergic to answers. Forget about the audience finding out the answers, don't these poor characters at least give a damn? If Jacob whispered the answers Lost-in-Translation style into their ears, I'd take a great deal of solace in knowing that at least they care enough to know. But they don't. Why? Because they are committed, apparently, to being unrealistic and therefore unlikable. For example, Sawyer has a golden opportunity to demand real answers when he's in the cave with Flocke. Instead it's just another scene of half-baked questions and cryptic responses backed by spooky theme music, which has sadly become Lost's signature. And, somehow, Sawyer is satisfied with this. Actually, his mind is so at ease that joining forces with an entity he doesn't understand (and has taken the form of a dead guy) sounds like a good idea. Go with the flow man.Whatevs.

What happened to the Sawyer I knew and loved? What happened to Dr. Jack Shepherd, a man of reason, a man looking for reason? Remember that, when Jack was the voice of reason? Now, the best we get is him asking "What's in the pill?" "Poison?" "Oh, okay, cool. That's messed up, but cool." The new voice of reason, strangely, is Hurley. Unfortunately, though, his "voice of reason" is played for laughs and is purely rhetorical. He asks the questions I am asking, but he asks them to no one and then tacks on "dude." Hurley is our voice of reason. He also sees dead people. Fantastic.

I was hoping that one of the Losties would break down and plead with Dogen or Lennon, begging them to explain who The Others are and why the island is so important. Just to see this question asked would help Lost make sense. Compare it to The X-Files. The latter definitely kept the viewer in the dark, but Mulder was never comfortable with being uninformed. And his frustration with being uninformed was relatable. At the end of the day, Lost is a show full of questions, many questions, amazing questions at times, but nobody bothers to ask them. Just the audience, apparently alone in our curiosity.

2) Story:

I admit it; I'm an "answer hound." But not by choice. No, not at all. I'm not the kind of guy who bulldozes through the journey to get to the destination. I love the journey. I crave it. The journey is what makes a story work. But the journey has to make sense.

Let's go on a journey together. How about episode 6, "Sundown." FLocke raids the temple. People die. People run for their lives. Something appears to be at stake. The problem is that I have no idea what that something is. I have no idea why FLocke wants to invade the temple, I have no idea why Sayid is helping him (relatedly I have no idea "who" Flocke or Sayid are, because of the whole "they're claimed" thing), I have no idea who these Temple-dwellers are, why they're there, when they got their, if they want to be there, or if I'm supposed to care about anything I am watching. It feels much too much like I'm watching one of those ill-conceived $200 million dollar action movies. One of those over sweetened popcorn flicks that focused way too much on "awesome fight scenes" but forgot to create an actual conflict which would give any meaning to the fight scenes. Watching this we-can't-even-show-you-the-preview fight, I felt as if I had absolutely no more knowledge than someone who had flipped to the show randomly for the first time. Neither the devoted fan nor the channel surfer could explain what the true conflict is between these two opposing groups. That is crazy. (RIP Dogen; we hardly knew ya...seriously).

The above is not the real issue though, it's only a symptom of a much greater illness, that being that the story is sick (not in the slang way). Literally, it's not healthy. For a story to have a pulse, to be alive, to treat the audience to joy, pain, emotion, experience, intrigue, anything, the characters must have goals. That's what made the show great, after all. This was the story of men and women from different walks of life, united for a goal to escape an island. That changed. As the show develops, the story must develop and characters ought to progress. But somewhere along the way, the characters stopped having goals. If they don't have goals, then why am I watching them? We fell in love with Jack because he wanted to save everyone, but now what does he want? We loved to watch the evils and antics of Ben because he was always scheming for something. Now, what does he want? We can go character by character and realize that none of them has either an abstract or tangible goal, neither a short-term or long-term purpose and that's a major problem. We've all heard that great stories and great characters have "depth." Well, I can't seem to find it, this elusive depth. If anything, they seem to be like amorphous blobs, like liquids - simple liquids that take the form of their container and go through the flow of each scene.

Because these characters are no longer real, no longer relatable, and no longer are striving for or against anything whatsoever, how can I do anything other than wonder how the story ends? What was the point of it? I don't want to be an "answer hound," but what choice do I have?

3) The Acting:

No complaints here. The acting on lost is certainly pretty good, might even be some of the best performances on network television. But you know what, the acting performances in "Gigli" were good as well.

4) My favorite show that I never want to see ever again:

I run through my favorite shows in my head -- The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Oz, Seinfeld -- and I remember being almost upset when any one of them came to a close. More Sopranos? Yes please! More Seinfeld? Absolutely. But if you told me Lost would be on for another season, I would give up on the show completely. That's not a good sign.

[frankysox]

I agree with everything you say here. Good post and well thought out. I used to be obsessed with Lost before the beginning of Season 6, and now I'm not even excited for the next episode. I know it'll be something pointless and most likely a waste of my time. However I will say that after the series is over I think it'll make a lot more sense to go back and watch all of the episodes again. I think that will be more enjoyable than what I'm watching now.

[lowerstreet]

Well said. I agree particularly about the Characters part. Both Season 5 and this season, it seems like the main characters are walking pieces of cardboard. They might as well be video game characters, engaging in pointless gun battles or fistfights, walking from place to place like they're on King's Quest. Without time devoted to conversation or reflection by the characters, scenes *meant* to be touching, like between Locke/Helen, or Kate/Claire, or Sawyer/Kate by the docks, or Sayid/Nadia - these scenes only feel hollow.

I understand that the writers don't want characters to give answers in exposition. They want to show them to us. If that's the case, they need to make it natural why these characters wouldn't ask anything, or why the "all-knowing" characters don't tell them anything.

Maybe this will all make sense when the finale rolls around, but that doesn't make these last few episodes any less frustrating. It's irritating to watch these characters make mistakes because they don't have the full info... Dogen could have actually told Kate and Sawyer why they needed to stay in the Temple, or about MIB taking on dead people's forms (eg. Richard could have said something to Sawyer); or someone could have actually told Kate about what had happened to Claire (eg. Jack when he learned Kate was looking for her).

And what about having the actors react with a more incredulous expression rather than seeming like they're sleepwalking? Where's the sense of adventure? Where are the heroes who make smart decisions? Every protagonist is following something or other based on faith... Hurley with Jacob, Ben/Sun/Frank with Ilana, Sawyer and Evil Claire/Evil Sayid with Flocke. It's not fun watching people in real life be manipulated, and it's not fun to watch characters I used to love doing the same thing.

[PapaThor]

Originally Posted by lowerstreet

I understand that the writers don't want characters to give answers in exposition. They want to show them to us. If that's the case, they need to make it natural why these characters wouldn't ask anything, or why the "all-knowing" characters don't tell them anything.

And what about having the actors react with a more incredulous expression rather than seeming like they're sleepwalking? Where's the sense of adventure? Where are the heroes who make smart decisions? Every protagonist is following something or other based on faith... Hurley with Jacob, Ben/Sun/Frank with Ilana, Sawyer and Evil Claire/Evil Sayid with Flocke. It's not fun watching people in real life be manipulated, and it's not fun to watch characters I used to love doing the same thing.

That's been my one big beef about the show. Un-natural responses and pointless starting into space when a follow-up question should be asked. No one could be that dumb as not to ask after hearing that someone's coming to the Island, "Yeah, who's that?"

It's frustrating having to see favorite characters not express the smallest bit of curiosity or to have a scene end on such a note. Cliffhangers are one thing; not responding in a natural way is another.

[enigma420]

I think the biggest problem that people have when they say that the answers aren't coming fast enough, which in your summation of episode 6, you are basically saying (you're seeing action without knowing the cause or result, but it's not something that WON'T be answered, so you feel you should know the motivations beforehand, hence you think the answers aren't coming fast enough) is that while we are 6 weeks into the show, this is only the end of the first day in the story. And the entire crux of the story up to this point was lining up who would be with who and positioning the pieces where they need to be. I think things will begin to heat up tonight.

As for the characters, they've had a pretty tough day. It's not unlikely that they are all still in complete shock. I mean, they've all just had a huge world change, blown up an h-bomb trigger, been in a gunfight, time-traveled, and ended up where they started all the space of 24 hours. Its kind of hard to figure out how anyone would act after all that. As for accepting the weird stuff without question? At the point when the O6 saw the island disappear in front of their eyes, and the non-O6 time jumped around until they landed in 1977, I think they realized that a rational explanation wouldn't be easy to come by. All the people on island were perfectly happy, while the ones off island were miserable. For the most part, they figured the solution to that misery was to return to the island, come what may, and so they have committed themselves to seeing how it all plays out, but Jack is not being inactive like he was in Dharma, he's back in search mode. Hurley is speaking Jacob's will and moving that cause along. Sayid was brought back against his will, and that sure didn't end well. Miles is a go with the flow cat, you'd kind of have to be if you could read the last thoughts of any corpse in the room. Sawyer is ready to punish something, and I'm in agreement with those that think he's joined up with Locke with minimal fuss just to keep your enemies closer, and Kate is likely to go into heat again any minute now that Claire has been located.

I think the writing is great, I just think it's our perspective of how we think a story should be told and how the story is going to be told are two different things. I for one like the new ground lost has broken over its history and I'm onboard, Locke-like, in my belief that this story will end on a grand scale and with much satisfaction all around. And really, you'd think that after 5.333333 seasons of journeying almost every step of the way with these characters, we'd get the message they finally got: go with the flow, let go, and the ANSWERS WILL COME.

[ikonn]

well said jimmyjims.


truth is, abc greenlit the most expensive pilot every made. in order for the show to work, it had to have one of the best pilots in the history of tv. JJ and Damon achieved this and it led to some groundbreaking work in season 1.

JJ leaves immediately and Damon and Carlton win an emmy for their work. It's fairly logical that this show is going to be around for a while. Season 2 comes around and they continue their excellent work and introduce Michael Emerson and Henry Ian Cusack to the cast. Two excellent moves.

Then we get into season 3 and you can almost see the production meetings going on.
How long is this going to go on for?
How many plot diversions are we going to be able to take?
We should explain how Jack got his tattoos.
Hurley should spend an entire episode trying to fix a car.

I believe the writers when they said part way through S3 they asked the network to set an enddate.
What also gets forgotten about is that Carlton and Damon both got 8 figure contract extensions for the remaining three years.

So the end date remotivated Carlton and Damon. And the last third of S3 was some of their best work, leading to a finale I could watch over and over again.

Shortly after that, JJ plucked Damon out to cowrite/produce one of the biggest franchise reboots ever in Star Trek.

So Damon has this huge opportunity to branch out into movies.
JJ is completely gone from Lost and has no idea what's going on
and Carlton and Damon both are incredibly rich and have been given every guarantee that the show will get to end on their terms.


At the same time I started to notice:
- the character studies that made this show great started to break down
- we had a lot of people running around back and forth with no real rhyme or reason
- Michael Giaccino's music started to become the biggest character on the show, telling us how to feel with each loud overbearing note
- a million things were going on, with characters asking no logical questions or behaving the way we expected them to.


Now don't get me wrong, every now and then they managed to pull off some greatness. Most of which was in season 4 when it almost seems the end date reinvigorated the cast and crew of the show. The Constant still ranks as probably their best or 2nd best non-finale ep ever. But I notice they only do great work whenever they are under the gun to introduce some major concept that will move the show forward.

In the Constant time shifting became a huge part of the show. They had to sell it to the audience well in order for the last part of the story to be told. And they did. Thus paving the way for season 5. This is pretty much admitted two by Darlton in the S4 commentary of the episode. So when they are motivated, the quality work comes back.

That brings me to s6 - I've come to grips with a few facts:
1. When everything is working, this is the best show on tv
2. When things aren't working, it's still probably in the top 10.
3. If they pull off an amazing final season, it'll be the stuff of legend
4. If they fail, as I'm quite sure they could, I'm still not sorry at devoting 6 years to watching it.

Am I mad that they aren't putting out A+ work every time? Yes.
Am I bothered by the characters sinking down more and more into irrational behaviour? Yes.
Am I frustrated with them introducing new characters without proper explanation this late in the game? Totally.

But the show is still better than 99% of what's out there. So I've learned to accept it. And I hope that pulling off a thrilling series finale is one of the things that motivates Darlton and company to put out that quality work they've so inconsistently shown since season 2.

[Hanover]

Im getting the impression that even the people who have been living on this Island prior to our Losties showing up have no idea what's going on either. They've been acting on faith alone...so why would they have any "important" answers?

You can see from Richard's attitude that he really has no clue who or what Jacob is and what he wants from him.

Ben was allowed to do so much harm in the name of Jacob, and he obviously has no clue who Jacob really was.

So sure they could be more inquisitive but it really wouldn't do much good in the long run.

[-calypso-]

LOST has never been a poorly written show to me!

[dingosan]

Jimmyjims makes a good point, and since S3, the show has been spotty, but I think Ikonn really nailed it.

I want to add two things: I've been rewatching S1 over the last month, and it's still great. So I think it will hold up over time. Also, last night's episode, Dr. Linus, was the best since the S3 finale, in my humble Lostgeek opinion. The acting was superb, and it was tightly written, with the kind of parallels the other Sideways-flashes have attempted and missed. So that's an encouragement.

Plus, it's almost over, so I've given up being critical, and I'm happy to once again just be along for the ride.

[Capmaster]

Originally Posted by dingosan

I've given up being critical, and I'm happy to once again just be along for the ride.

I think we have earned the right to be critical when it's deserved. We've invested a fair amount of time in the show, and we have a right to complain when we see an apparent miscue by the producers. I think feedback is healthy, and necessary. How boring would this forum be if everybody always posted "I just LOVE it ..all the time" and "The best show on TV".

I know it's the best. We don't watch ANY network TV whatsoever, except for Lost. It's the only reason we pay for local HD channels through DirecTV. We wouldn't be doing that if we thought it sucked Lost is as good as mainstream TV gets, bar none. I remember watching M*A*S*H, All In The Family and Cheers and thinking those would never be outdone for genius writing. I was wrong