Lost

Don’t start thinking that some piddly 15 minutes will satisfy any amount of questions. You’ll get to find out more about the misadventures of Ben and The Fatman (which doesn’t need any further details) and Walt (who storyline was already concluded)!

Are you being a dipshit on purpose?

When I say the metacontent shouldn’t be required to understand the show, or used to explain things that are not explained in the show, that is precisely what I mean. If they used the tagline “The island is a crashed UFO that uses nanobots to disguise itself!,” or used that in an interview or anywhere else without also making that evident within the show, it would be bullshit. Just a different type of bullshit than what’s being discussed here.

Since you can’t seem to connect the dots when left to your own devices, the type of bullshit being discussed here is metacontent that is used appropriately to make certain promises and create certain expectations, but then they never deliver on those promises or expectations. Saying “everything happens for a reason” in a tagline and in interviews doesn’t impact anyone’s understanding of the show at all, but it does make one think “hey, these guys are talking the talk. They must have this thing plotted out pretty well to walk the walk. Let’s see how well they deliver on this promise.” That’s terrific metacontent. It’s the creators interacting with the fans to foment excitement and strut their stuff, but isn’t at all necessary for the casual fans who don’t pay attention to any of it to understand the show. If you can’t see why someone would be disappointed when the creators of a show repeatedly abuse this type of metacontent (which is entirely option for them, too) break their promises, I don’t know what to tell you.

And once again, because you apparently haven’t read it the past umpteen times I’ve said it, I’m not disappointed that they didn’t give me the reasons behind everything that happened. I know that gets in the way of your ignorant hyperbole, but fucking give it up already and attack things I’ve actually said.

Finally, are you arguing that even without the metacontent there should be no expectations whatsoever by the audience for a show to reasonably explain itself to them? It sure as hell seems like it, and I don’t think someone could pick a more weaksauce argument to defend Lost’s storytelling indiscretions, so I’m curious if that’s what you meant.

I’ll never understand how fanboys can’t concede the few weaknesses of whatever they’re championing and instead just focus on the good stuff. Lost has plenty of the latter, so again, it’s pretty hilarious to see people rallying around the former no matter how ridiculous the aspects they’re defending objectively are.

Nobody was asking for a reason for everything.

What I was hoping for was a context. And that, we did not get.

In fact, I’d argue that the “reason for everything” is a strawman to ignore the fact that they couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with a context.

I’ve said it here before, if they’d done it right you would have been able to do the thing that rhinohelix is describing, which is plug the questions back into their context.

But we have no hooks to hang our suits on.

If I was going to try and describe the solution to their problem I might as well create my own show.

why be a…

(clip from Austin Powers, contextually NSFW)

Dude…

You reap what you sow, rhino.

I know you wouldn’t be a dick unless it was going to be important later, right?

If by that you mean by engaging in a thread with a strident jerk that there is a chance you will strident jerkiness on you, I believe you are correct.

Anyway, nothing is served with a session of Internet “I know you are, what am I?” Done.

Well, I finally watched the rest of this. I’m sure no-one cares about my verdict, but here it is anyway: the start is good, a lot of the acting is good, but the writers appeared early on to be working on the same system that is apparent in Alias and Y: The Last Man; hit the audience with lots of dramatic conflict, and mysterious situations that confuse and intrigue, and promise that “all will be revealed” later. Then, when you do your “big reveal”, make it so that the “explanation” is only partial and relies on something else that will be revealed… later. And so on. The problem with this is that unless you know exactly where your story is going, what you end up with is less like the unfolding of a story or a mystery and more like a shaggy dog story, or those “jokes” that little kids tell when they understand enough about the narrative form to be able to say “and then something else happened…” but not enough to understand that jokes need punchlines and narrative needs closure. Except that they did sort of understand that they had to end the whole thing somehow, so they slapped some “closure” onto the end of it, but it’s about as convincing as Tori Spelling’s boob job.

Given that so much of its momentum came from the various mysteries and the desire to have them answered, the slow realisation that the questions we’d been asked to invest so much interest in didn’t have any answers, or that those answers when they came weren’t going to make any sense (even within the context of the world of the story) was something of a disappointment. Which is really a shame, because so many of the elements of the show were so good - especially the acting, which for the most part managed to breathe life into characters that would have been paper-thin in less capable hands. So, it was entertaining, I had a lot of fun along the way, and I don’t regret following it through. But it could have been a lot better than it was if it had been written and especially plotted more thoughtfully, and I’d recommend it only with the caveat that one shouldn’t go into it with any expectation that the “long story arc” actually leads anywhere.

That’s a good summation, and I like the “little kid’s story” analogy. Fits rather well.

This blew my mind. Look who was on the old videogame show “Judgement Day” (now known as “Reviews on the Run” in Canada)…

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_9J-ti3hdYsJ:g4tv.com/videos/10845/Evangeline-Lilly-on-Judgement-Day/+Evangeline+Lilly+"judgement+day"&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

I had no idea.

Hawt.

Yea, G4 bragged about that one for awhile after Lost came out.

Wow, she’s a terrible merchandise model or whatever it is you want to call those Vanna Whiteish ladies.

On Star Search they called them spokes-models.

Just saw this commercial on TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ6hIEqKR7A

She was in a Live Links commercial! Haha.

Looking at some of the other early stuff up there, she was clearly the go-to girl for bare midriff.

I see no problem with this assertion. Also: HAWT.

This tiny chunk of the DVD extra mini-ep gives more answer happy than the entire finale.

And here’s the whole chunk!