1981

Even sillier than that is the ridiculous xray of Ben’s lumbar spine – you can’t make heads or tails of the tumor with the low quality 1960s xray image. To further the plot hole when Jack talks to Ben he says the tumor is in Ben’s neck when the xray was of Ben’s lumbar spine!. Oops!

Even dumber is Jack, a trained spine surgeon, giving Ben a prognosis over an xray. That tumor could be benign or malignant. No one can tell on 1 view of an xray. Whatever happened to CT scans and MRIs? How about a biospy?

To further this huge plot hole once Ben gets his surgery (assuming it is a malignant tumor of his cervical spine) and the tumor is sucessfully resected Ben would still need radiation treatment (and maybe chemo??). The rest of his body would need to be surveyed as well. Ben isn’t home-free post-op.

Even if Jack gets all the answers and then operates on Ben who is to say that Ben would honor his agreement to let Jack go where he pleases after he gets what he wants? Ben et al. have screwed him before. What’s stopping them from screwing Jack again?

They should hire me as their medical consultant because, right now, their writers are sucking.

Then again… it is just TV land.

1982

There was definitely one x-ray that was of the head/upper spine, but the rest of that stuff is all accurate.

Of course, maybe Jack knows all this and expects that Ben doesn’t. Maybe all he knows is that there’s a tumor (or even probably a tumor), and the rest of it is all bluster based on the assumption that he was grabbed to deal with the tumor.

The “been screwed before” was why I figured Jack would insists that Kate/Sawyer be returned before he did the surgery. Then, even if they screw him post-op, two folks are back home.

1983

Yeah, this is what I’m hoping is the case. Nobody else, including Juliette, really has any experience in that area, so they’re pretty much at Jack’s mercy regarding diagnosis.

1984

Yeah, true, but how stupid is it to see all those TV screens and not ever realize they might have, you know, some actual purpose, and maybe you ought to see if you can get them working? And some bimbo notices what everyone else has overlooked all this time?

Lost is full of that sort of thing.

1985

Just because she has breastesess the size of watermelons doesn’t mean she is a bimbo.

Women with large breastesess have feeling too you know…

1986

Shall I recount the times I’ve assisted troubleshooting network problems with actuall technical people, and gotten “awwww, shit!” back as the reponse to “um, is the cable plugged in?”

Besides, as mentioned, Locke was the one who had the “duh” moment, not Sayid. This was the first Sayid was seeing it.

1987

So, the criticisms of Lost are spot on (mostly) but I’ve gotta respond to this. There were two hatches, the Pearl and the Swan. The Swan was the main hatch, with the button they had to push.

Sayid inspected the Swan when they found it, and found some kind of core encased in concrete, which is what you are remembering above. Sayid had never visited the Pearl hatch before - only Locke and Eko had, and only briefly.

But, yeah, it’s dumb for the blonde chick to suggest hooking up other feeds (clearly that would’ve occurred to Sayid) and it’s also kinda dumb that Locke/Eko didn’t tell anybody about the Pearl. For people whose motto is supposedly “live together, die alone”, they sure don’t tell one another anything.

Anyhow, Lost is like the X-Files - they are just making it up as they go along. It’s more about mood and manufactured drama than coherent plot development.

1988

Can’t wait till wednesday when all the haters come back and pick apart that episode concluding with Lost sucks!

1989

Dude it’s not just the haters. I boggle at the people here who pick apart Studio 60, BSG, Heroes, and the like - but Lost really has just lost it. THeir metaplot is not very good and it’s meandering wildly; it’s obvious they’re just making it up as they go along. And they’ve all but abandoned what made the show awesome in the first place - the really rich character dynamics between the original survivors. They keep introducing (and then killing off) characters who just aren’t very good (The Tailies, and now the two newbs from the last episode) and they aren’t providing much payoff on our previous stuff. Remember last season, when Jack and Sawyer played poker and Jack totally pwned him? That was great, it was some real character drama and it was awesome payoff to their rivalry. It was also a rare thing last season, and literally nonexistant this season.

1990

I agree the show feels untracked, and I think jeffd’s reasoning is as good as any I’ve heard. Basically it’s becoming less and less character driven as we’re forced to watch more and more scenes of the separated characters making another trek to this hatch or that wreck.

I think losing their hatch was a huge mistake. The cave may not have been great, but the beach is boring and it’s hard to put characters into interesting situation there, so instead we just get endless scenes of people leaving the beach to go somewhere interesting.

1991

Well, personally I was bummed that they killed off Eko. Saying “oh, well their backstory has been completely resolved, so there’s no more interest in them” seems kinda like a cop out. As though the writers had everything all planned out (which is becoming obvious is not the case).

It’s definitely been slowing down to me, and I’m not as psyched to see it as I once was - I’m an optimist though, and I think the writers can pull it back together (of course, I still belive that the Cylons “have a plan” so maybe I’m just a blind optimist…).

1992

I’m in the “it is losing its spark” camp as well. I dare say Ecko was a very popular character and still seemed to have a lot to do… maybe doing something so unexpected bodes well for the rest of the season?

1993

Eko was written out for “real life” reasons, same as Libby and Ana-Lucia. In LIbby’s case she got a pilot of her own so she left the show. For Ana-Lucia? Michelle Rodriguez is a royal cunt who apparently pissed everyone off so they said fuck her. In Eko’s case, AA (not even going to try to spell his name out) suffered some deaths in his family (parents, I think) and so wanted to move back to London to be with his remaining family.

It sucks that it happens, but I actually don’t blame the writers for these things - when an actor decides to leave you really just have to work around it.

However that doesn’t excuse them for the rest of their awful writing (the total lack of focus on the inter-character development and drama, and the utterly meandering and at this point barely compelling metaplot)

1994

What amuses me is even with the obvious flaws, and the fact that I know the writers don’t really know where they are going with the main plot, I still just keep gobbling up the show and can’t wait until the next episode.

Contrast that my relative lack of tolerance for BSG, whose meandering plot is certainly no worse than Lost. I think what it is, is I just don’t like any of the characters on BSG, with the possible exception of The Chief and The Admiral. I mean, I wouldn’t shed a tear if BSG scooped up the Fat Guy, the Moody Bitch, the Dumb Jock, the Cylon Traitor and her Boyfriend, the Smug Politician, and Xena and dumped them all out the airlock.

Meanwhile, I like pretty much everyone on Lost (even characters like Ben, who is approaching Hugo Weaving status as “the guy I love to hate”). And, you have to love dialog that includes obscure references to the movie Chinatown :)

1995

These are the exact same arguments against season 2.

1996

Jazar: I don’t think you’ll find anyone who says season 2 was as good as season 1.

But at least in season 2 we had some character dynamic and development. Admittedly not much, and some of it sucked but it was there. In season 3 so far it’s been entirely absent.

1997

Ok. So in Season 2 there were a lot of people complaining that the main mystery was going nowhere and with too many filler episodes focusing on character backstories. Now here we are in Season 3 and people are complaining that there isn’t enough characterization and too much going on which obviously means that they’re making things up on the spot.

1998

I don’t think it’s the back stories we’re talking about. It’s Plot driven stories. The characters seem to be chasing the plot instead of having things they want and the story unfolding around that.

All the main characters are basically helpless victims of unknown plot mysteries at this point. What does Jack want? Does anyone have a clue? He’s certainly got the tight-lipped anger thing down to a T.

Season one you had everyone fighting for stability, and the audience was constantly fighting to understand interior motivations and fighting to get somewhere. Now everyone is kind of just going through the motions, running to the next hatch or clue like an Internet blogger.

Even Locke, who always seemed to be motivated has been totally set adrift.

1999

On the contrary, I believe that Locke is the character who’s been the most fleshed out. Locke is a character who lives his life according to a set pattern of needing to have blind, unwavering faith in something bigger than himself - his father, the compound, the island, the button. When that thing lets him down, as it inevitably will, he’s lost - geddit? - until he can find something else.

2000

Also, Jack always has to fix things, so the Benry plot plays right into that.