Lost: Season Six (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

It's a strange feeling to contribute to this thread, since I missed the show completely during its network run. I just never seemed to find the time to watch it, and when I did tune in out of curiosity, it made no sense to me. This is one of those shows you have to watch from the beginning. I got Netflix about a month ago, and have spent a few weeks watching the entire show from beginning to end. Now I know what all the fuss was about. Just fascinating, compelling drama. I would watch several shows at a time, and never had to wait more than a day to watch the next episode. I can't imagine what it was like for those of you who had to wait a week or several weeks or even months for the next episode.


What I take away from the show was how real the characters seemed to me. It was fascinating to watch James Ford change from a cares about nothing con man to someone who had done "a lot of growing up", and fallen deeply in love with someone. I thought of Kate as the woman a man would want, but never want to marry. I wanted to hang out with the warm, funny, geeky Hugo, and I could really feel the love between Jin and Sun.


I'm going to miss those people.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by RobertR

I can't imagine what it was like for those of you who had to wait a week or several weeks or even months for the next episode.

It probably sounds weird but, for me, part of the fun of watching Lost as it aired was not being able to immediately see what came next. Plus, it was always fun BSing with friends (in the real world and online) about what might happen next.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Josh Dial




* unsatisfied, disappointed, ripped off, felt it ruined the entire series... choose your flavor and degree of annoyance

 

[NeilO]

Originally Posted by TravisR

It probably sounds weird but, for me, part of the fun of watching Lost as it aired was not being able to immediately see what came next. Plus, it was always fun BSing with friends (in the real world and online) about what might happen next.

Yes, the speculation and all the various theories was loads of fun. I'm still looking forward to seeing it all again some day.

 

[Josh Dial]

Originally Posted by DaveF
But to suggest that a good number weren't disappointed...

The way I read the comment was that the "great majority" were disappointed, which, I think, is a gross overstatement. When you read the comment in context, including the other posts (for example, "the majority of fans" in post 1869 above), the feeling is that only a few die hard fans were completely-statisfied with the ending. I don't think that's true.


Clearly it's true that some fans took serious issue with the ending, but I don't think that number is anywhere near as high as people suspect: vocal minority and all that.

 

[RobertR]

When I would tune in briefly during the network run, the flashbacks confused and annoyed me. But when I watched it from beginning to end, I found the flashbacks to be an excellent way of fleshing out the characters (no one dimensional Irwin Allen type nonsense). Things got a bit...strange when the story started moving sideways, but it did serve the purpose of showing us "what if" scenarios. It made it more interesting than a simple, linear "crash and get lost, run around on island, get rescued, the end" story. This is the only TV show I can think of that managed to provide a "happy ending" and a "getting off the island isn't the end of your troubles" denouement.

 

[Ockeghem]

I watched only two episodes on network television. I couldn't get by the camera work, full-screen display, and commercial interruptions.


Having recently picked up the final season, I'm looking forward to watching The Incident again, and then the final season in its entirety without all of the garbage that comes along with having to watch shows on network television. Now I have to make time to watch it.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Josh Dial

The way I read the comment was that the "great majority" were disappointed, which, I think, is a gross overstatement. When you read the comment in context, including the other posts (for example, "the majority of fans" in post 1869 above), the feeling is that only a few die hard fans were completely-statisfied with the ending. I don't think that's true.


Clearly it's true that some fans took serious issue with the ending, but I don't think that number is anywhere near as high as people suspect: vocal minority and all that.

I took "many fans" to mean, well, "many fans" -- some significant number, but very possibly the minority. That seems the case.


I think that's the easiest conclusion to draw from the finale of Lost. After that, it gets muddled

 

[Sam Favate]

I finished my re-watching of season 6 yesterday with the finale. I still think the sixth season suffered from too much vagueness about this sideways universe and that a good many things in the prime universe went unexplained, but the finale really did deliver the emotional goods. The sideways reunions, particularly the remembrances of events that we all witnessed, were very powerful. Still haven't changed my opinion of the sixth season (overall, disappointing in relation to the previous 5), but the finale had moments that rivaled the highlights of the show. Great photography too, as usual.

 

[Holadem]

I have watched the show again pretty extensively in the last couple of months (out of desire to spend time with the characters). A lot of things make more sense to me now than they ever did. Take for example, how the Oceanic 6 made it back to the Island, and why they had to replicated the conditions of the first crash as closely as possible. The show has established repeatedly the immutability of destiny. In the universe of LOST, time consists of a series of goal posts that will be reached, no matter how. "The universe has a way of course-correcting," and "whatever happened, happened." Details will change, but the end result will happen. This was demonstrated most dramatically with the death of Charlie. The Oceanic 6 were not supposed to leave the Island (at that time), but they did. So they were going to get back there, one way or another. If they had missed that Ajira flight, their return would have occured some other way. Eloise Hawkings knew all this. By virtue of her encounters with some of the survivors in her past, she knew some of the things that would inevitably transpire, not least of which was the death her son at her own hands. After she left the Island, she wisely resigned herself to helping destiny along its path. She probably decided that it was safer to help things play out the way she knew they would, rather than have the universe "course-correct" to reach the same result. Her decision was wise, because course-correction is unpredictable. If she had ignored what she knew of the past/future, or worse, attempted to actively oppose it, the past/future would have happened anyway, except in ways unknown to her, possibly in dramatic, violent fashion. This explains her "God help us all" warnings. Recreating the conditions of the Oceanic flight was critical because it minimized the differences between the universe's planned course (Oceanic crash, survivors stuck until Jacob found his replacement), and its actual course, thus minimizing the need of further course-correction, and resulting unpredictability. By helping engineer the inevitable past/future (knowingly raising her son as a physicist, pushing Desmond to break up with Penny and sail toward the Island, finding the Ajira flight, etc...), Eloise maintained a measure of control over the events around her. Her knowledge of the universe's course ended when she sent her son to the Island. Things were out of her hands at that point. I find what she told Penny in the hospital, one of the most poignant lines of the series: "For the first time in a very long time, I don't know what is going to happen." Then, she was again, like the rest of us, facing an uncertain future. What makes John Locke special is that he was also acutely aware of the immutability of destiny ("we HAVE to do this," "we are SUPPOSED to do that"), purely on faith. But unlike Eloise, he didn't know what exactly had to occur, and was often wrong. -- H

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Holadem


Eloise Hawkings knew all this. By virtue of her encounters with some of the survivors in her past, she knew some of the things that would inevitably transpire, not least of which was the death her son at her own hands. After she left the Island, she wisely resigned herself to helping destiny along its path. She probably decided that it was safer to help things play out the way she knew they would, rather than have the universe "course-correct" to reach the same result.

Ms. Hawking is one of the very few elements of the series that I think either wasn't firmly set in the producers' minds when she was first introduced or that morphed somewhat significantly over time. In her first episode in S3, she has a very mystical quality about her (she knows that a random man is going to die which isn't something that she could have found out from the time traveling 815ers or from Faraday's journal). When they got to her second appearance early in S5 though, it seems like they knew exactly what the character knew, how she knew it and what her function would be in the series.

 

[Ockeghem]

My family and I just finished the final season of Lost, including the Epilog (The New Man In Charge) on the final disc. All in all, we found the series to be excellent, and I had most of my questions answered. Those that I didn't have answered really don't need resolution from my perspective. I thought the ending (and specifically, The End) was excellent, and the resolution to the 'flash sideways' events to be very well done. This was a special show, and I will savor watching it again when the time is right.

 

[EricW]

btw there's a pretty good Damon Lindelof audio interview on the latest "Kevin Pollak's Chat Show" podcast, it's 2.5 hours long.

 

[Will_B]

Thanks for the tip. I listened to it. Just a warning to folks: you know how talk radio personalities have to kill time by talking about nothing, or maybe musing about sports with a fellow personality? That doesn't have to occur on podcasts because there's no time to kill. But Kevin Pollack does it anyway. So be warned, there's a whole lot of crap before Lindelof finally appears. Lindelof was a great interview. He doesn't exactly admit that Lost had a bad ending, but he does say he was forced to consider that as a possibility for the first time, when a person he respected said it did. He also says that they (he and his fellow producer) only worked the show out in advance to the point where the Losties returned to the island. (Which maybe explains -- this is my opinion, not what he said -- why everything from that moment onward was a cluster-frag.) As a Lost fan, I always knew that JJ Abrahms had very little to do with the show, but I didn't know anything about the real showrunner, Damon Lindelof. This interview corrects that over a course of 2+ hours. Well worth hearing. It is also a video, so you could watch it instead of just listening -- but really all you need to know is that the interviewer is one of the actors from the Usual Suspects, and he wears a hat. And Lindelof is cool looking and dresses down.

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

http://www.kevinpollakschatshow.com/archive/?cat=304

 

[John_Lee]

Lindelof veered between fairly evenhanded about 'you can hate the ending and still be a fan,' and presumptive with the 'if you hated the ending, you probably skipped from season 2 to the last couple of episodes.' But Pollack had my blood boiling with the 'you met your own expectations, and that's all you need to worry about as a writer, and if you haven't actually written a television show and got it on the air, I don't give a shit about your opinion of my show.'

 

[NeilO]

It was a great interview. I liked hearing about the genesis of Lost all in one shot. I think I had heard some bits and pieces elsewhere.

 

[TravisR]

As suggested in another thread, I've resurrected this thread for the folks who feel that Lost didn't answer its questions to ask their questions and have them answered here.

 

[Wayne_j]

I for one thought that LOST answered the questions it needed to. The rest they gave enough information for you to infer the answer.

 

[Citizen87645]

Why did Nikki and Paolo?