i remember somebody describing a lot of the really crappy, unsatisfying answers of season 6 as being like a college student writing their paper at the last minute and just putting in everything on the rubric.
The more we discuss this the more tempted I am to rewatch. A lot of stuff is coming back to me that I liked. Maybe I'll go from pilot to incident, then stop (:
d ( i n o s r o a ) r "She essentially tore apart the Hex Girls with a simple STAT" LUCK CREATOR | HEART HACKER | BUY GOLD BYE
But then when the shock wore off I started saying "Wait, that's it?"
This show should have had so much rewatch value. All the mysteries felt like they were part of some huge puzzle waiting to be put together. In the end they were all just there for effect, and didn't really mean anything.
I can't imagine how amazing it would have been to rewatch this show if every mystery had truly served some purpose and been part of a bigger picture which was been slowly pieced together.
I've watched it since. I watched Lost Chrono out of curiosity and watched the show plain one more time other than that.
My take on it after all this time is that really, what sold the show was pure hype. I think I often attribute my memories of the show to that same hype. But really, that was something different.
My take on reading interviews with Damon Lindelof when the show ended was that it'd kind of spun out of control for him. That he really wanted to be a part of this deep and winding mystery show that basically became driven by an enormous fan community. I don't think he ever understood it, and I think that gulf of understanding is what led to issues towards the end. He was catering to a more generic audience and trying to shy away from the wealth of people chanting about toy trucks in the background of scenes and other minutae.
In the end he seemed to really actually resent that side of things, which certainly comes across on the podcasts when he speaks to that audience wearily and sarcastically. But really; that to me was the show. I don't think any show before or since has garnered such a momentous cult following during its own air time. I could be mistaken, but it seems that most shows only get to the same level of cult status some years after they're off the air or during their final seasons.
Lost was different. People dipped into the show at various points, but the fanbase who stayed for the final season were the ones who were there at the beginning or certainly near to it. I know from my own experiences of watching with friends that there was only a very small group of us who even watched the final season. Most people dropped out and they all had differing dropout points. For some people it was Expose, or the Man Behind the Curtain. I know at least one person who resigned as soon as Locke uttered the words "We have to move the island".
But those core fans who stayed from start to end and obsessed over the show were different. We didn't drop out at the mention of questionable plot points or new questions on top of new questions. We loved it! We lapped up every question and it made the show and the universe ever more exciting for us. Since then, I can't remember when a show's mysteries were ever quite so captivating. I've thought maybe that Lost burned me out when it came to mysteries so I became wary of them, but I think it might be something else entirely.
I think Lost wasn't a show about conclusions; it was entirely a show about POTENTIAL. And this is where I think Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams crossed their wires on what the show was meant to be. Some people have grown wary of JJ Abrams' views on this subject but the hatch on Lost was an analogy to this idea JJ had about a mystery box. Apparently he has this box which he refused to open, because the contents of the box will never match what his imagination wants to be inside the box. Anything he takes out, will only serve as a disappointment. It's a box of potential. Lost was his mystery box writ large across six seasons.
We did care about what was in the hatch, and we found out. We cleared that mystery up but to get everything resolved neatly took approximately five seasons. Even then there are jagged edges to the thing. It was the jagged edges that inspired us to take to the forums each week and discuss to the depth that we did. We cared about the characters and there were some good ones, but honestly on re-watch they do come across a lot blander and their stories quickly lose momentum.
Why is it that everybody stopped caring about the flashbacks passed early season 2? Because we didn't care for the characters as much as we may have admitted back in the day. The only flashbacks that maintained any level of depth or interest were the ones that had the potential of leading us down the addictive formula of opening a mystery box. And what would we find inside the box? A reward of a story tidbit and more boxes. More of the crack which had us in a hypnotic state week in week out.
With Season 6, I feel like Damon Lindelof tried to do away with this as much as possible. He ended Season 5 and with it, gave us one of the most incredibly show-changing tidbits of all time. Then he bowed out and said "this was always a character show to me, so that's what we're doing". As a result, the island plot fell extremely flat and when we came to watch character stories, we got incredibly bored and restless. It seemed like we were done opening boxes containing boxes. The few that we opened contained an explanation. A tired, boring and unfulfilling explanation. Like JJ's own box, it would never match what we'd spent 6 full years building up in our collective consciousness. Damon didn't understand the mystery aspect which is ironic, because he had a hand in some of the most rewarding episodes in that regard. But he seemed to genuinely hate it.
To me, there was no way looking back that this show of potential could ever satisfactorily be closed down. Could they have given us some resolution that would've appeased us? Maybe it would've satiated a fraction of the community; I actually think the ending they gave did. But the point was that we were all taking with us our own box of potential with that show. We each of us had a different expectation and wish. There was never any way that it was going to wrap up in a way that we all would've liked because we personalised the show.
That's what made it so special, and that's why the feeling has never been able to be captured since. All other mystery shows have felt flat because their scale, and the sheer magnitude of the things they dare to throw at the audience pale in comparison to some of the curve balls Lost threw down the line. I think network executives are wary of doing something quite as out there again, so many of the mystery shows will not layer their boxes as deeply. They'll leave some things hanging but it all gets wrapped up with the final answer before too long and there's never quite the time to foster the collective imagination that Lost gave us.
The setting of the show, the eclectic Giaccino score and the wealth of acting talent all added to this of course. It wouldn't have landed in quite the same way without it. Plenty of shows make secret organisations who are operating behind the scenes; so much so that the trope is now bland to watch. But the Dharma Initiative were such an organisation who had mysteriously disappeared and didn't appear to be in control of much at all.
The Island was pretty wonderful, because strewn throughout its vast vast array of temples, diverse fauna and mysterious tonka trucks was a bigger overarching question. This was the "Where are we?" that Charlie uttered back at the start. It was never meant to be a literal "where are we geographically", but more of a "what the hell kind of place is this?" The Island was its own living breathing entity with fascinating stories to tell and a tremendous array of history that couldn't possibly be uncovered. It was occasionally pock-marked by a polar bear and a drug plane and you'd wind up asking yourself the same exact question.
I don't think this level of mystery or scope has been achieved since, and severely doubt it will be again. There won't be a show quite so daring, quite so willing to go balls to the wall and just out and out sell a mystery it had no damn clue of wrapping up all to feed a gaping audience who were so captivated by the potential of this place and all of its many secrets.
That's a potential that can't be matched now. Is it Lost's fault? It's hard to blame the show. It's hard to blame JJ Abrams and it's hard to blame Damon Lindelof. The show got out of their hands and it got out of ours. It became the Island, this living breathing entity carving its own path and we loved the ride. When we got off that roller coaster, it was a disappointment to most. It always was going to be. There's no way they could've done it without it being.
We've often joked in our old community about saying the show ended at The Incident and Season 6 never happened. Honestly, that might not have been a bad shout. A lot of new boxes were laid out bare and one of the most satisfying reveals of all time. Maybe carrying it past that point was a mistake. Maybe we should've been like JJ and just let that unopened box of the imagination sit on a shelf. Can you imagine what we'd have collectively put inside it, had we never been show further? Those stories would've been wilder than anything the entire of the Lost writing team could ever conjur up.
I can't hate this show, after all this time. Parts will fall flat on re-watch but the same feelings I had when we first discovered those moments of potential are still relived. Yes the feeling has dulled, yes occasionally I'm bitter about how some things panned out. But I can watch those scenes and I still get the goosebumps I remember getting when it all happened for the very first time. And I'd then rush on and discuss the show with a great community of people.
That to me, was the show. It was more than just the 40 minutes a week on air. It was the wildest, craziest experiment ever concocted on TV. I can't put Lost on a pedestal as a TV show anymore, because to me it was something else entirely. I can't compare it or rank it next to any other show. It stands alone because it's not the same thing. The show itself has flaws, but the collective experience didn't. It was perfect, and I wouldn't trade a second of it away for something else.
I'm glad I took the ride, ultimately, even if I didn't want it to be over. I can hate the ending but I can't hate the experience and nothing could ever take that away from me.
I'll leave you with the best scene of the show, which I think pretty much sums up what it's all about in some strange way:
We've often joked in our old community about saying the show ended at The Incident and Season 6 never happened. Honestly, that might not have been a bad shout. A lot of new boxes were laid out bare and one of the most satisfying reveals of all time. Maybe carrying it past that point was a mistake. Maybe we should've been like JJ and just let that unopened box of the imagination sit on a shelf. Can you imagine what we'd have collectively put inside it, had we never been show further? Those stories would've been wilder than anything the entire of the Lost writing team could ever conjur up.
I completely agree with this. I seriously wouldn't have minded, either. The Incident was such a high point that filling in gaps with theories and ideas for years to come would have been okay with me.
I DO think the show could have had a great ending, but it wouldn't have been a "satisfying" one. I don't think it was possible to have both. The more doors they tried to close the worse off things were. The final season was trying to corral an every expanding frayed end of a string into an extremely thin needle they came up with early on. The show grew but the ending didn't. There was no way to satisfy every single point. But the ending could have been good with an entirely different s6 that embraced the mysteries instead of trying to move around set pieces and absolutely avoid asking any questions it couldn't answer before the end.
I disagree about why people got sick of the flashbacks, though. It was just a gimmick that overstayed its welcome, and no matter how much we cared about the characters, we could only enjoy it a limited number of times. Once you get the story of Jack's daddy issues the first time, you don't need to see it again to know the character. Trying to tell that same story a 5th time just gets in the way of what is happening to the character NOW, which is a far more interesting story. Even the most well-written 100% character centric drama can't get away with telling the same story 5 times and not saying something new about it.
d ( i n o s r o a ) r "She essentially tore apart the Hex Girls with a simple STAT" LUCK CREATOR | HEART HACKER | BUY GOLD BYE
desmond (in another life bruva).....I liked his episodes the most I guess. "flashes before your eyes" - wow that was awesome. it's what really kept me interested....and hoping to see the TAMPA job one day...le sigh
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
