Official Lost Thread

[PartisanRanger]

Don't forget that Locke "miraculously" regains use of his legs after the plane crashed... I mean.. what the heck is up with that?

[Shabadoo]

Originally Posted by PartisanRanger

Don't forget that Locke "miraculously" regains use of his legs after the plane crashed... I mean.. what the heck is up with that?

Again, all these things are symptomatic of the weirdness and mystery that surrounds the island. For the sake of the show, I prefer to (yes the catch phrase again) suspend my disbelief. It is silly, but it doesn't compromise what the show is about.

I thought that the Charlie scene did though. Spriggan is obviously a big fan, and will say that I'm blowing up a small event. That might be true, but that scene really annoyed me.

My point is also that lots of folk like Spriggan say that the show is "a breath of fresh air" while in actuality the show is very conventional. This is evidenced by the fact that it is stylistically the same as Alias and that it falls victim to the strictures of network TV convention.

I like the show though.....I'm just really negative. :wink:

[spongyfungy]

I made a post about Charlie coming back to life and how disappointed I was when it happened. It was a very emotional scene and I didn't like the fact they were toying with us but still it was a great scene. However, the past episode though kind of made up for it.


Spoiler maybe (stop reading) :

The past episode went with the theme of the island giving and taking life. The whole show can be interpreted so many different ways and the supernatural things that happen adds another layer to this show. This show is the best drama on television.

[Gonzo]

Lost is one of the best shows I've seen in a while. If you pay enough attention to it, you become obssesed. It's crazy...

Yes, they did find a plane with heroine in it. I heard that Locke is going to try to blow up the "hatch" by tightly packing the heroine (if Charlie doesn't get to it first). This maybe what we're seeing in the teaser, Locke isn't getting shot, he's blowing up the hatch.

[cherokeejack]

Lost is a really good show but I would say it is not even the best new show of the season. To me it is Veronica Mars, an all around fantastic show that I think is more consistent than Lost.

Originally Posted by Shabadoo

I thought that that particular scene would could have been a fantastic change for the show to reaffirm it's vision. Letting Charlie die would have been a marked break from television convention, and something entirely unexpected. Instead they stupidly brought him back, which is something I'm sure we all expected. Instead, the show compromised its intent in favour of convention, and Charlie lives on.

I didn't like the scene either but actually many shows today do kill off main characters, to the point where it is almost becoming cliche. Off the top of my head all these shows have killed off important characters besides Lost.

Alias
24
NYPD Blue
Sopranos
ER
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel
Deadwood
Everwood
Law and Order
Third Watch
Farscape
Nip\Tuck
and at least 3 Star Treks

[Spriggan]

Originally Posted by Shabadoo

Again, all these things are symptomatic of the weirdness and mystery that surrounds the island. For the sake of the show, I prefer to (yes the catch phrase again) suspend my disbelief. It is silly, but it doesn't compromise what the show is about.

Why is it silly? There's a huge difference between suspending disbelief and suspending any belief (which is what you're supposed to do with this show). Why watch it "believing" anything? It's their world. We don't even know what the island even is, whether it's purgatory, some alternate dimension, the future, the past, some alien experiment, some government experiment, the Bermuda Triangle, the end of the world, who knows? When the show is 20 episodes in and is still this hazy, how could you be surprised by anything that happens? A kid seemingly has psychic powers, a plane crashes and 48 people survive and are stranded on an island, it's been a month and no one has come to rescue them, a woman seemingly gave birth to a demon-baby, there are cursed numbers that show up everywhere, there seems to be a dinosaur-sized monster roaming the island, etc. I could keep going on. The point is, this is one ****ed up show. It's all over the place. In a good way, of course. Did you really call it predictable?

Locke "miraculously" regains the use of his legs on the island, and that's silly? That's a vital part of the story. Just because it hasn't been explained yet doesn't make it silly or odd.

I thought that the Charlie scene did though. Spriggan is obviously a big fan, and will say that I'm blowing up a small event. That might be true, but that scene really annoyed me.

Why can you chalk up all the other strangeness to "the mystery of the island", but not Jack reviving Charlie? Couldn't that be the island's doing as well?

My point is also that lots of folk like Spriggan say that the show is "a breath of fresh air" while in actuality the show is very conventional. This is evidenced by the fact that it is stylistically the same as Alias and that it falls victim to the strictures of network TV convention.

Can you elaborate on that? "Conventional" is the last adjective I would use to describe this show.

You're allowed to criticize the show all you want, but some of your criticisms seem out of sorts to me.

[Shabadoo]

Originally Posted by cherokeejack

Lost is a really good show but I would say it is not even the best new show of the season. To me it is Veronica Mars, an all around fantastic show that I think is more consistent than Lost.



I didn't like the scene either but actually many shows today do kill off main characters, to the point where it is almost becoming cliche. Off the top of my head all these shows have killed off important characters besides Lost.

Alias
24
NYPD Blue
Sopranos
ER
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel
Deadwood
Everwood
Law and Order
Third Watch
Farscape
Nip\Tuck
and at least 3 Star Treks

Fair enough. However, without intimate knowledge of all those shows, I'll guess that most of them didn't kill off a main character when the show was in its infancy. I know that Buffy and ER had to get rid of people as the show progressed, and its staff wanted to move on to bigger and better things.

24 has had a few notable deaths, but again, they weren't right at the start. I don't think any were as "loved" as Charlie either.

A lot of shows kill off people out of necessity as people wish to leave the show. That is, as you correctly pointed out, a cliché. However, I don't think it's all that conventional to kill of a popular character in episode 10. That would have, in my opinion, been a fair departure from canon. I don't know much about those other shows though, so I may be wrong.

[HKF]

Lost is a good show, but it doesn't seem like a show that is built for a long shelf life personally to me. I think after next year, they'll have nowhere to go (if they even get to the end of Season 2). It leads me to believe that the network people didn't expect this show to be so good in the first place.

[Spriggan]

Originally Posted by HKF

Lost is a good show, but it doesn't seem like a show that is built for a long shelf life personally to me. I think after next year, they'll have nowhere to go (if they even get to the end of Season 2). It leads me to believe that the network people didn't expect this show to be so good in the first place.

They could screw this show up very badly, if they keep sticking in new mysteries and forgetting to resolve older ones.

As long as it all wraps up neatly in the end (whenever that may be), then it's all good.

I would say that 80% of the show's appeal right now is because we have absolutely no idea what's going on. We're as much in the dark as the characters.

So far they're doing very well at keeping the viewer hooked, but I agree that the show probably will have a short shelf life simply because of its nature.

But then, it never really did seem like a television series to me. More like a really, really long movie.

[Shabadoo]

Originally Posted by Spriggan

Why is it silly? There's a huge difference between suspending disbelief and suspending any belief (which is what you're supposed to do with this show). Why watch it "believing" anything? It's their world. We don't even know what the island even is, whether it's purgatory, some alternate dimension, the future, the past, some alien experiment, some government experiment, the Bermuda Triangle, the end of the world, who knows? When the show is 20 episodes in and is still this hazy, how could you be surprised by anything that happens? A kid seemingly has psychic powers, a plane crashes and 48 people survive and are stranded on an island, it's been a month and no one has come to rescue them, a woman seemingly gave birth to a demon-baby, there are cursed numbers that show up everywhere, there seems to be a dinosaur-sized monster roaming the island, etc. I could keep going on. The point is, this is one ****ed up show. It's all over the place. In a good way, of course. Did you really call it predictable?

Locke "miraculously" regains the use of his legs on the island, and that's silly? That's a vital part of the story. Just because it hasn't been explained yet doesn't make it silly or odd.



Why can you chalk up all the other strangeness to "the mystery of the island", but not Jack reviving Charlie? Couldn't that be the island's doing as well?



Can you elaborate on that? "Conventional" is the last adjective I would use to describe this show.

You're allowed to criticize the show all you want, but some of your criticisms seem out of sorts to me.

Alright. The show is good for all its far fetched randomness and mystery, as long as one suspends their disbelief. However, with the barrage of unbelievable events and unrealistic activity it is all becoming a bit silly. You can disagree with that, but it makes it harder for me to watch when things happen randomly and are later reasoned and rationalised.

My beef with that particular scene is that essentially it's a departure from what makes the show so good. It would have been different for the show to kill of Charlie, and quite unexpected. That is what the show seems to pride itself on doing. Instead they "sold out" and went the route of the conventional TV show.

It seems entirely incongruous for me to distinguish between all of the Jesus like miracles that happen on the show, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling that the Charlie seen stuck out. I don't react very much to TV shows much, but I think that for other people the scene might have been emotional exploitation. That's dishonest in a show that encourages fair play with the audience- namely that they give you clues to help you figure out what is going to happen. Essentially, the Charlie seen was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of suspension of disbelief.

In terms of predictability, I was talking about within each show. For example, I have no idea what will happen in 5 episodes. However, after a few minutes of the standard flashback, it isn’t that difficult to see where this is going. I’m not saying I know exactly what is going to happen, but it is sort of easy to approximate some of the climaxes in plot. Lost does flag to the audience what will happen.

As for the conventional argument, while the show might seem weird, I believe that it sticks very closely to what it mainstream television. This however should not come as much of a surprise as the show is obviously designed with this purpose in mind.

I talk about this though as people tend to elevate the show above others because it is completely different from other shows. In actuality it is not. As I said before, the music and the plot structure is essentially the same as Alias. The show doesn't take chances in killing off its characters like Charlie. As Minstrel hinted, the entire premise of the show is lifted from Gilligan's Island, which presumably lifted its concept from the Swiss Family Robinson. Terry O'Quinn (Locke) was even a fairly major character on Alias.

The characters of the show are of course not atypical of the genre. The hunky hero doctor guy. The damsel with attitude. The creepy old guy. Comic relief from a stoner and a big-boned nerd. The dialogue and emotional tweaking is reminiscent of melodrama and soap opera. The hard to get, love triangle of Sawyer, Jack and Kate is really formulaic.

So the show has the façade of being unique because of all the randomness, but it has its feet firmly planted in the formula of the network television drama. For that reason, I think it is unfair to elevate the show above others for being "fresh" and "different". It is more similar than you think to its TV drama antecedents.

[lukewarmplay]

i really didn't like the last episode, where they completely changed locke's character into a whiny *****. i wasn't so happy they killed boone off, i thought locke having a sidekick had great potential, but i guess they thought they needed to kill someone off for "legitimacy", especially since they didn't kill jack off in the pilot like they planned.

but locke was one of the greatest tv characters ever, and the 4th ep, which featured him and the ever present line, "don't tell me what i can't do!" was just ... amazing. and now he's crying at the top of the hatch, "i did everything you asked," succumbing to some voodoo mysticism instead of a solid faith in himself and his environment, it's just really bad writing. this is not the same man who cured charlie of his heroin addiction, who gave walt's dog to his dad so he could look like a hero. jack calling him a murderer doesn't make any sense either. why would he assume that? have locke and boone been feuding? did locke not just carry him in from god knows where so jack could save him?

this show could go downhill in a hurry.

[HKF]

Originally Posted by Spriggan

They could screw this show up very badly, if they keep sticking in new mysteries and forgetting to resolve older ones.

As long as it all wraps up neatly in the end (whenever that may be), then it's all good.

I would say that 80% of the show's appeal right now is because we have absolutely no idea what's going on. We're as much in the dark as the characters.

So far they're doing very well at keeping the viewer hooked, but I agree that the show probably will have a short shelf life simply because of its nature.

But then, it never really did seem like a television series to me. More like a really, really long movie.

I think you brought up a good point. It's riveting because you just have no exposition. You don't what's happening, which makes you watch every second. How long can they keep that up? I don't know. I guess people will keep tuning in to find out.

[R-Star]

Originally Posted by lukewarmplay

i really didn't like the last episode, where they completely changed locke's character into a whiny *****. i wasn't so happy they killed boone off, i thought locke having a sidekick had great potential, but i guess they thought they needed to kill someone off for "legitimacy", especially since they didn't kill jack off in the pilot like they planned.

but locke was one of the greatest tv characters ever, and the 4th ep, which featured him and the ever present line, "don't tell me what i can't do!" was just ... amazing. and now he's crying at the top of the hatch, "i did everything you asked," succumbing to some voodoo mysticism instead of a solid faith in himself and his environment, it's just really bad writing. this is not the same man who cured charlie of his heroin addiction, who gave walt's dog to his dad so he could look like a hero. jack calling him a murderer doesn't make any sense either. why would he assume that? have locke and boone been feuding? did locke not just carry him in from god knows where so jack could save him?

this show could go downhill in a hurry.

I like locke more and more every episode. He went from being the food provider and evny of the island to a man whos slowly but surely going insane. Also, I think the reason Jack thinks Locke killed Boone, or had something to do with it was because A) Locke was nowhere to be found right after Jack turned his head, and B) Boone said he didnt fall off a cliff, but was in a plane, which contradicts what Locke had told him.

I agree about not wanting Boone to die. He was one of my favorite characters. I viewed the whole Locke Boone thing differently though. I thought it was obvious Locke was going nuts, I mean, when he tied up Boone and then put that drug on his cut head? It made him seem pretty nuts. I wanted Boone to follow Locke into lunacy.


Anyways, I think this shows great and it hasnt let me down one bit yet. Its one of the few shows I watch religiously.

[spongyfungy]

Originally Posted by lukewarmplay

i really didn't like the last episode, where they completely changed locke's character into a whiny *****. i wasn't so happy they killed boone off, i thought locke having a sidekick had great potential, but i guess they thought they needed to kill someone off for "legitimacy", especially since they didn't kill jack off in the pilot like they planned.

but locke was one of the greatest tv characters ever, and the 4th ep, which featured him and the ever present line, "don't tell me what i can't do!" was just ... amazing. and now he's crying at the top of the hatch, "i did everything you asked," succumbing to some voodoo mysticism instead of a solid faith in himself and his environment, it's just really bad writing. this is not the same man who cured charlie of his heroin addiction, who gave walt's dog to his dad so he could look like a hero. jack calling him a murderer doesn't make any sense either. why would he assume that? have locke and boone been feuding? did locke not just carry him in from god knows where so jack could save him?

this show could go downhill in a hurry.

We'll just have to see next episode. The teasers don't tell the entire story and sometimes they take stuff out from the commercials just to mess with us.

[mook]

I happen to think Deadwood is by far the best program on TV right now. I really like Lost--my second favorite show-- but it's comparatively shallow and banal. I've never seen a TV show like Deadwood that so expertly used language and setting to immerse you in another period, and the scheming and plot developments are Shakespearean in complexity.

Originally Posted by Shabadoo

A lot of shows kill off people out of necessity as people wish to leave the show. That is, as you correctly pointed out, a cliché. However, I don't think it's all that conventional to kill of a popular character in episode 10. That would have, in my opinion, been a fair departure from canon. I don't know much about those other shows though, so I may be wrong.

DEADWOOD SPOILER:

they killed off both the priest and Wild Bill Hicock in the first 12 episodes of Deadwood, and both guys were extremely memorable characters. (but then there's not a single character who isn't brilliantly written and acted.) I was completely shocked by Wild Bill getting killed--it seemed obvious afterward but I never saw it coming.