Lost

At least we haven’t for THREE PAGES discussed something you don’t feel strongly about.

Of all the things to complain about, some of which are legitimate, I can’t believe this is the one some people are getting hung up on.

This reminds me of the Chris Rock bit about Tupac giving clues to his murder in records released after his death.

Once we get through this phase, please turn the thread over to the people who thought Rose and Bernard didn’t get enough screen time. After them, the people who thought it was all a Vincent dream. Then, give the people who didn’t get enough science fiction in the series finale another go. Everyone gets a turn!

Edit: For some actual “Lost” content in this post, I think they didn’t name him in order to strengthen the association with whomever’s form he was assuming. Giving him a name makes him “_____” no matter what form he takes. I am of the opinion they wanted the audience to follow along with the characters who referred to him as “Locke” throughout the last season. This is evident as well in the way the character speaks, with him referring even to himself as Locke when he and Jack lower Desmond towards the Magic Drain Cork. They didn’t want a final confrontation between $MONSTER$ and Jack, they wanted a confrontation between Locke and Jack, which is what the whole series had been building towards. Jack had been moving toward the position of the original Locke for a while, which to my mind makes the original Locke’s death more poignant and Jack’s praise of him in the lowering more emotionally powerful.

If you don’t want to talk about it, why are you talking about it?

Of all the things to complain about, some of which are legitimate, I can’t believe this is the one some people are getting hung up on.

Nor can I, but from the opposite perspective.

Once we get through this phase, please turn the thread over to the people who thought Rose and Bernard didn’t get enough screen time. After them, the people who thought it was all a Vincent dream. Then, give the people who didn’t get enough science fiction in the series finale another go. Everyone gets a turn!

Again, if discussing Lost in the Lost discussion thread bothers you so much, go hence.

Edit: For some actual “Lost” content in this post, I think they didn’t name him in order to strengthen the association with whomever’s form he was assuming. Giving him a name makes him “_____” no matter what form he takes. I am of the opinion they wanted the audience to follow along with the characters who referred to him as “Locke” throughout the last season. This is evident as well in the way the character speaks, with him referring even to himself as Locke when he and Jack lower Desmond towards the Magic Drain Cork. They didn’t want a final confrontation between $MONSTER$ and Jack, they wanted a confrontation between Locke and Jack, which is what the whole series had been building towards. Jack had been moving toward the position of the original Locke for a while, which to my mind makes the original Locke’s death more poignant and Jack’s praise of him in the lowering more emotionally powerful.

Giving him a name makes him “" as long as he’s in "'s” form. Just like he’s “Locke” as long as he’s in “Locke’s” form. It wouldn’t have detracted at all from the ending.

Like, whoa. Dude. Do you think we can make this thing run again? I’m gonna jump-roll it down a hill and launch over a rock. It’s a big rock, though. It’s dangerous. I might even jump a Dharma shark.

I have no idea where I was going from there.

But what is it’s name? Otherwise, I am glad this thread is going off the air and you are dumb and smelly.

And you are…

LOST

This the group I really don’t understand at all. You have hard core science fiction fans crying that the show was always science fiction based and then it turned to shit because it went all fantasy and magic at the end.

How can you be a hard core science fiction fan and not know Clarke’s Third Law? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Does that make Harry Potter the hardest core science fiction of them all?

The primary distinction that I’ve started to draw in recent years (this applies more to books than anything) is that science fiction tries to explain the fantastic events it depicts in something at least approximating a coherent manner while fantasy just snaps its fingers and whispers “Magic.” I like both equally, but what Lost did is a pretty classic example of one of the best methods to dick the whole thing up. They started out with a bunch of stuff that was magic. Cool. I’m down. I watch Supernatural. Pissed off giraffe in the jungle - roger. Then they introduced technology in the form of the Dharma Initiative and basically the second through fifth seasons. Hell - last year was the time travel season, and I think the last guy to do fantasy about time travel that anybody paid attention to was Mark Twain. Not just that, but they got REALLY, REALLY DEEP with the whole time paradox question, essentially bating the sci-fi nerds. Then in their last season, you find out that it was all science…based on magic. Specifically, a hole with a waterproof nightlight in it. Or something. If you put the first season next to the sixth season, it’s a fine fantasy show - it’s just that they introduced a bunch of other genre stuff in the middle that ultimately didn’t factor into the show.

It’s an observation that’s supposed to drive story, not an excuse to tell a bad one. And even fantasy has rules. Once you’ve determined where magic comes from and how it’s used, you’re supposed to stick with that. We wanted a suit and we got a bolt of cloth. It’s pretty, but not exactly wearable.

I think the confusion here is that people think this is a case of the audience being the annoying kid that asks “Why?” after every answer they get. It’s not. It’s the case of the writers being the kid that says “Just because” after every question you ask.

You didn’t want just a suit, apparently: You wanted an tailor-made silk suit with a custom inseam, sleeve, trunk, shoulders, chest, and waist; what the writers gave you was a set of robes. You complain that it isn’t appropriate to the event to which you want to wear it. The writers had a different occasion in mind.

It’s not that there were that many unanswered questions, to my mind. They just weren’t as specific as some people wanted, which to those folks made them really not answers at all.

And you wanted nothing, apparently. And you got what you wanted: The Emperor’s New Clothes, writ large.

It saddens me to see people continually defend Lost’s writers and act like their willingness to settle for sloppy storytelling is some sort of admirable trait. I sort of envy you your ability to do that as it lets you enjoy many more things than I do, and I don’t judge individuals based on their TV preferences, but in aggregate that sort of attitude hurts everybody by lowering the bar to the point where crap casually steps over it.

A huge number of those questions are impossibly stupid. Who the fuck cares how Hurley got his nickname?

I don’t think it’s sloppy, given the medium.

The collegehumor.com video had a better list of less stupid questions that were unanswered.

This one.

I guess you’ve never seen a TV series that’s both well-written and tells a great story. I have, and it’s made me unwilling to use “given the medium” as a qualifier for TV series. What about TV makes you do so?

Yeah that’s a great list.

I know what a suit looks like:

If it was a robe, it had no belt, and your junk would hang out.