Well, I’d agree that Xfiles did more to explain/expand/otherwise squeeze full value out of its concept…during the run of the show. However I do believe the way it ended effectively voids that effort. Like a juggler who blows your mind juggling an insane amount of items, but then drops everything at the end. I can still enjoy watching an episode, even the mythology ones, but I do so knowing that not only was there no payoff, it was all for nothing.
Lost hasn’t actually ended yet, so of course I can’t say anything about what impact the ending will have on the value of the rest of the episodes. If they somehow nail an incredible ending, that will redeem the wasted opportunities in my view. If the ending turns out to be a ‘meh’ affair, that will just mean I’ll lament what could have been. If the ending is downright bad, then I’ll be mad for wasting so much time watching the show.
bloo
6542
Apologies if someone else posted this upthread and I’m cryptomnesiacally stealing this from up thread, but I was talking with my brother today about MiB and Jacob and how it wasn’t clear about the smoke monster, the source, the baby-stealer, the candidate bit, etc. - a lot of the questions posed already - and we came up with working theory of the moment.
Baby-Stealing Flamingo Lady is the “protector of the source”. As such, she gets some powers including the ability to “Smoke on”. Eventually, she knows she needs a replacement, who will get her powers and mission.
Claudia appears and her children become candidates (for whatever reason - being born on the island, being raised by Baby-Stealer, or something else). If Jacob had been an only child, everything would have been fine (assuming Jacob doesn’t lose his standing as a candidate). But there were two babies that made two candidates. But there’s only one source.
She mojoes them so they can’t kill each other. Yada yada, MiB falls down, breaks his crown in water that hits the source. He becomes Smokey, but Jacob becomes the Protector. They’ve split the protector powers and role. Now there are two personalities with some power, and MiB wants off the island, away from the source, badly. And Jacob doesn’t have the power to put him down - the Baby Stealer’s magic against them killing each other directly is ineffect (though the ‘falling down loophole’ suggests any pittrap or poison would do).
So, since MiB’s death, the protector powers have been split between two persons and hilarity has ensued.
Bill Simmons interviews Carlton Cuse on the BS report.
Good podcast discussing the writing of the show over the seasons.
No spoilers in the interview.
Mp3
http://c.espnradio.com/audio/314039/simmons_2010-05-14-161449.32.mp3
or stream 5/14
-Tim
Heh. PREVIOUSLY ON LOST:
[Any Character] Says something cryptic about what has to be done or that they know the answer to some random mystery about the island
[Any Other Character] WHAT!?!?
Plot moves forward…OR DOES IT?
JeffL
6545
So - what kind of ending WOULD make everyone happy?
I cannot come up with an ending that I could imagine would make everyone go “Cool! What a great ending! THAT is how this great series should go out.”
Should it have a tidy ending with closure for everyone and all things explained? I note that the writers state over and over that this is the story of the main characters, i.e. the plane wreck survivors, and not the story of the island. So I could imagine some type of ending in which the “cork” is put back in the bottle and the alternate sideways life goes on. Or a scene in which Jack and John end up sitting across from each other playing backgammon, and some comment on the rules.
But this is one of those series where I’m not sure it CAN be wrapped up in any kind of tidy closure finale.
Well when I watched the premiere of Lost, I was watching a show about a group of people who were stuck on a seemingly deserted island. These people mostly all wanted to get back home, where they all had issues of some sort.
So in my view Lost needs to end by: Showing us who, and who doesn’t, get off the island and make it home. The ones who don’t make it, we need to see some interesting and unexpected reasons why. The ones who do make it, we need to see how their lives back home are affected by the island experience, hopefully in interesting and unexpected ways.
Those would be the only kind of ‘answers’ I need for a satisfying ending. Meh would be predictable and boring resolutions for the characters. Bad would be ambiguous or otherwise less than definitive resolutions to any of the main characters’ fates.
edit: To elaborate a little and use my Xfiles ending idea, something like this…
The remaining main cast get to a point where they can choose finding out what the hell that island’s secret really is, but never getting home OR getting home and back to their lives but never finding out what it’s all about. Maybe some choose home, some choose finding out. The thing is, if ANY of them choose finding out, then we the audience must be able to find out with them.
I’d like to see Sam finally make the leap back home and re-unite with his wife.
Getting off the island and getting home isn’t a particularly good ending, because hey, they already did that 2 years ago… and, uhh, came back.
“Lost” has been about what is going on with the Island and how these people came to be on it. Every season has peeled back the layers, from our characters’ perspective, as they came to know about that battle, which has stretched out over thousands of years. First we found out about the Island itself. Then we discovered the Others, who were looking for “special children”. Next they revealed the internecine warfare between the human factions already on the Island, the whole while parsing out tidbits about the Island itself. Then we came face to face with the underlying conflict between Jacob and the MiB. Understanding that conflict and the nature of the Island’s special properties (even at a basic level) are central to any proper end of the series. As long as they bring that (at least from our characters’ perspective) to a conclusion, that will be a satisfying end to me.
drewl
6550
Word.
It’s like they’re using us as a test audience and re-writing on the fly.
If the writers have any sense at all, the show will end with the alternate reality becoming the “real” one. Otherwise why waste hour upon hour elaborating on a what-if scenario that has no bearing on the actual outcome?
Of course, any sentence about Lost that starts, “If the writers have any sense at all…” is guaranteed to be incorrect, so you can safely ignore me.
In the end, I think I’ll still thank Lost for the flash forward season finale with bearded Jack. That was such a nice mindfuck.
I’m mostly in agreement that the wrapup is getting disappointing. I don’t like seeing my enjoyable, potentially sci-fi experience deteriorating into this mystic miasma.
We never learned how the island exerts its will to heal people and kill birthing mothers. And if it’s Jacob or Smokey, then why? We’ve had alot thrown at us: impervious ashes, sound barriers that keep a low-flying smoke cloud at bay, electromagnetic discharges, suicide-prevention magic, ghosts, resurrections, future-forecasters, relentless death-destinies, etc.
The questions of all the previous seasons have been intriguing and fun to speculate on, but if all we have to look back on, post-finale, is knowing they are never answered … it does feel like failure. It’s too hard to go back and capture the sense of wonder at the unknown, knowing that there was nothing behind it.
Watching the characters live and deal in this world has been entertaining, but the breakdown of rhyme or reason as we wind down adds an element of playful gods (Lindelcuse) toying with their creation that isn’t satisfying to me.
Also, Kudos to HRose. Great points about the mystery of the hatch.
(Not surprising coming from a fellow grendel, I suppose)
Getting off the island only counts as done if they stay off. Since they came back, it just counts another kind of tease by the writing staff. Sort of like when a character is killed then shows up alive again, that doesn’t count as the character being killed off. Killed off would be dead AND off the show.
Getting off the island means off the island and not coming back for the duration of the show.
Walt!
Though I think that was more a problem with aging years real time while it was still merely days island time.
Danielle! Ana Lucia! Yeah!!
Finally someone explains something.
But all the original candidates were not “alone”: Jin and Sun, pregnant Claire. Even Hurley had his parents.
Desmond is going to pull the series out of his hat in the end.:)
Really liked the contrast between Ben and alt Ben.
400 years for Richard’s story to get resolved like that? Ugh.
Manta
6557
yeah that was great, Anna Lucia caught me totally by surprise
drewl
6558
just what is Desmond up to?
And all that Dharma/others fighting was for nuaght, everybody figured out who the candidate would be, I guess Smoky had nothing to say to Richard, Ben is starting to remember, when did Hurly become “aware”? I must have missed that.
At least Jakob and Smoky assured us it will be coming to an end soon.
I’m guessing he meant alone in a more metaphoric sense rather than strictly literal. Hurley’s mental state and “curse” (real or perceived) kept him isolated from his parents, Jin and Sun were estranged from each other, etc.
We’ve seen almost everyone important again. Of course, Julliet will be Jack’s kid’s Mom at the concert.
