I can understand that the show has brought a ton of baggage going into the final season. I’ll accept the “turtles all the way down” explanation. I’m not thrilled by it, but I can accept it. What’s puzzling is that this name issue is brought up at the eleventh hour and still unresolved. It’s not like, “Oh crap we’ve got this bird that shouted ‘Hurley’ in season two we gotta explain that.” They’re in the midst of planning the specific details of the final moments of the show and say, “Y’know what would be great? One more fuck you! Hey, you guys love mysteries, here’s some mystery right in yer eye!”
I’m saying this even though I enjoyed the series as a whole and thought the ending was serviceable. I’m not a hater, but it’s kind of a light slap in the face from the writers to bring up this unexplained “mystery” in the final season.
After the discussion here on Purgatory, it’s fairly obvious that a decent explanation would have provided an obvious catch-all for 90% of the questions without having to answer them specifically.
I honestly don’t get why they didn’t bother to use the “Constants” concept in terms of the purgatory ending. Revealing that the characters had connections existed before, during, and after their lives, and that gave them special powers and protections in the context of the island, would have made a major difference.
Giving Jacob an ability exploit and use that “web of coincidences that go unnoticed in most peoples’ lives” would have been far more satisfying, and at least paid off some of what they were exploiting.
I never watched or paid attention to the buzz about Lost before January of 2009. Then I watched a few episodes per week on Hulu through the year. I finally watched the last episode last week. So for me, Lost was a 14 month-long movie with no cliffhangers that I couldn’t solve with a mouseclick. I didn’t spend any time spinning in my mind what would come next, though I DID find myself stopping the stream now and again and reminding myself who was in what timeline and/or why so-and-so was doing such-and-such. I don’t know how those of you who watched it for 6 years kept any of it straight.
Great show. Not so great an ending, but acceptable. But damn, Mayer’s idea I like. Maybe I’ll just assume that’s how it was. I still don’t get alot of things, but I don’t think I’m alone (including the writers).
MiB’s name couldn’t really be that important. He was human after all. It’s not like if they gave him the name of a deity everyone in the audience would say “Ohhh, so that’s why he…”. He’s just a guy.
Now in smoke monster form, he’s much more than just a guy of course. But that’s in smoke monster form. At that point, his human name is irrelevant in determining anything about him. We know Smokey is later in Locke form, and we know Locke’s name. Does it change anything? No.
Why would it if you knew MiB’s name?
In fact, the only name that could be a game changer is finding out Smokey’s true name, if he/it had one.
If it’s not important, and can’t be important, don’t use a storytelling device that sets it up as being important. This message brought to you by Storytelling 101.
Sigh. My post on this page has already talked about this. Gun… loaded… oh fuck it put it back on the rack. And put that hammer down. And unload it. And let it sit there. It’s not important, really; just another gun. It was exciting while we were out there running around in the jungle with it, but now it’s just not useful. Let us all stare at it, think about how sad its meaningless life is, and write a little story about it. Perhaps that will give it peace.
Replace everything you pictured about a gun just above this, replace it with a person, and think about how insane it sounds. They made a whole fucking prequel episode dedicated to the most masterful avoidance of naming the asshole. Come on!
When did they set it up as important? Simply omitting that piece of information doesn’t mean the information is at all meaningful. Again the only time they strained to avoid his name was in the second to last episode by which time it didn’t matter what it was. You’re conflating your own personal curiosity with what’s relevant to the story. The name never was and was never made out to be important.
The difference is there is no gun. This wasn’t a situation with the presentation of something that was never used, it was a piece of information that people thought was important, though not for any reason that was ever presented in the story, but really wasn’t. You’re a victim of your own expectations here. You thought it was significant, not because anything in the story said it was but because you built it up that way in your own minds.
The connotation was that he was the unnamed eeevil twin, except to me his motivations made more sense than simple Jacob. (My mmmm-Mom’s mmm-murderer says I have to be the Island’s guardian!)
Writers have this little bag of tricks called story devices or literary techniques that are tried-and-true methods used to tell compelling stories, or to add dramatic tension to a story by setting up expectations for their audience. You say I’m, “conflating [my] own personal curiosity with what’s relevant to the story,” but that’s not the case at all. I wouldn’t have been curious in the first place had they not used a variant of the cliffhanger during the scene where Jacob and MiB’s adoptive mom names them.
Here’s a transcript of the episode, and here’s the part I’m talking about:
It isn’t the fact they omitted it. It’s the way they omitted it. The naming of the first baby followed by the birth mother pointing out she only picked one name, followed by the second baby not getting a name at all just before the scene ends indicates to anyone who’s ever studied writing or even read a lot of books or watched a lot of TV that the name has some significance. It is a classic example of a cliffhanger being used to load Checkov’s gun, and the fact that they only refer to the second child using pronouns in future (and past) scenes just serves to amplify this point. In any well-written piece this would be a setup with a payoff, or it would eventually be revealed as meaningless and defused. By refusing to do either the Lost writers violated some very basic, established tenets of storytelling.
It’s funny that you and everyone else I know who defends the Lost writers’ handling of MiB’s name accuse me and people who agree with me of being, “victims of [our] own expectations.” It’s even funnier when you say, “you thought it was significant, not because anything in the story said it was but because you built it up that way in your own minds,” as if we’re crazy and just make this shit up in our heads. The fact is that Lost’s writers established those expectations and built up the significance in our minds by misusing some of the most basic tools available to storytellers. If that doesn’t register with and/or matter to you, so be it, but stop acting like people who actually know what they’re talking about regarding writing and TV tropes are just stupid, lazy viewers.
First, I don’t believe your curiosity about his name started with that scene. He’s been nameless for the entire series. Second, that scene wasn’t done that way for the purpose of establishing his name as being significant. It was done that way because the writers have a relationship with the audience and it’s them being coy and playing with the audience by teasing them with information they’ve been wanting for a long time. I have no problem with this sort of thing and I actually thought it was a little humourous in the context of it being a wink and a wry smile to the audience. I never once thought it implied any meaning to the name and saw it purely as a message from the writers to the fans that we’re just not ever going to find out what his name was. With that thought came the confirmation that his name was also meaningless.
Well…no. He’s been nameless since the finally from Season 5. Before that he didn’t exist at all and we were just as happy. He was introduced in Season 5 and not named (I think the casting call went out for Samuel, but that’s hardly official), knowing that The Mysterious Piven would be discussed during the downtime, however, and given the fact that you can’t even have a conversation about the guy without inventing some kind of name for him, I have to think that’s their intent.
Which would be incredibly poor writing. Metatextual reference like that is not a good practice, particularly for a show that is ostensibly a serialized drama and not a self-aware organism. I don’t want to get in to the variety of reasons why this sort of postmodern bullshit is One of the Things That Is Wrong With the World, but if the guy’s name wasn’t a big deal and wasn’t supposed to be, they handled it wrong. I’m not prepared to excuse their complete failure with that canard on the basis of, “they did a bad writing thing.” It’s a joke when Hurley and Miles have the conversation that the viewer is having with his friends. This is just bad form. If the name didn’t matter, they should have picked one and gone with it. Deliberately not revealing it, and sort of hopping up and down and waving at how you’re not naming him in that next to last episode, implies that it should have a greater value to the story because the story itself is bending over backwards to accommodate this needless complication.
The first couple of times MiB’s name was dodged, it was explainable. Once you go a full season with him being a nameless main character, it’s no longer funny. If they never meant for it to be a mystery, then they should’ve defused the speculation by just giving the character a name like they did with Jacob. By continuing to not name him, they purposefully amped the mystery. It became ludicrous. Are we to really believe that no one working for him ever called him by name? Everyone just went around saying “Hey, dude?”
I guess you could argue that him being nameless was a character trait, not unlike “the nameless one” in Planescape Torment. My problem with that is MiB wasn’t very well defined. For all the depictions of Black and White those characters (Jacob and MiB) were anything but.
I never said my curiosity with his name started with that scene. I said that when they hit us over the head with the fact he’s unnamed using the variant on the cliffhanger, they deliberately set up an expectation that the name would be revealed later. Anyone who writes for a living knows how a setup like that is supposed to play out if handled properly.
Second, that scene wasn’t done that way for the purpose of establishing his name as being significant. It was done that way because the writers have a relationship with the audience and it’s them being coy and playing with the audience by teasing them with information they’ve been wanting for a long time. I have no problem with this sort of thing and I actually thought it was a little humourous in the context of it being a wink and a wry smile to the audience.
A wink and a wry smile to you was interpreted by me as being deliberately manipulative and flipping the audience the bird. We’ll just have to disagree about that, since you’re interpretation of it is as valid as mine.
I never once thought it implied any meaning to the name and saw it purely as a message from the writers to the fans that we’re just not ever going to find out what his name was. With that thought came the confirmation that his name was also meaningless.
Again, in all the history of film, literature, and television, the way they set that scene up indicates there will be a later payoff, significant or otherwise. I obviously can’t convince you of this point, so I’ll stop trying.
It’s a rule of thumb that practically every good storyteller agrees on and uses to good effect. If you disagree with it I’d love to hear your reasoning, and hate to read your writing.
It’s unlike “the nameless one” in Planescape Torment because an adequate explanation for his namelessness is given in the game.
Good writers know when and how to subvert what is expected of them. Whether you think the Lost writers are good is a matter of opinion, but “Chekhov’s gun FAIL” is high-school level literary criticism.
Okay. So what good thing did they achieve by introducing a mysterious unnamed individual who might have a name and he might not but we’re not going to tell it to you? Checkhov’s Gun exists because it’s a very good general rule to follow because it is almost always frustrating and distracting to introduce elements that you contextually imply are important but textually fail to address. How is this particular case an exception to that rule?
Personally, I never gave a shit what MIB’s name was or wasn’t. I never had the sense that they were making a big deal out of his having/not having a name.
