LOST (GOAT SERIES) OFFICIAL THREAD VOL YOU CAN GO NOW.

[bastitch]

Originally Posted by franchise3

I'm still confused how MIB took over Jacob's brother's body, but the body is still in the cave for Jack and Co. to find.

Why? Dead Locke in the box and Flocke co-exist.

 

[duba169]

Crazy EBW wrote:
If you've been watching this show since season 2 to see why a bird got killed in Walt's house, i'm sorry. You have been watching a different show from me and I completely understand why you don't like this show.



honestly... i have been.

i really thought the entire show hinged on walt and aaron and "what is this island?" My imagination didn't make me see things that way, the writers did. to build those 2 characters up the way they did and abuptly throw them out of the entire series rubs me the wrong way. The island is special, walt is special, aaron is special, MIB is special. it's +!*@!*+ annoying.

it seems like we will never know more about the island. it was there. people were there. and people were there before that. jacob doesn't have answers because nobody does. it's condesending. just like the sopranos ending it's starting to feel like the writers played a dirty trick on me at points. They strecthed this whole thing out to make money. it's all over the place at this point. instead of answering questions we get more questions. it's hard to defend




Last night's "Lost" reviewappeared to put me in the minority in enjoying the episode. And"Lost" showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are certainly awareof the polarizing reaction to "Across the Sea," and we talked aboutthat - and about certain details of the episode, and complaints fanshave had about the season, and even about my own personal obscure"Lost" obsession - in a wide-ranging phone interview this afternoon.

How much attention have you paid to the reaction to last night's episode?

Carlton Cuse: Some degree. We geta little bit of general feedback. We try not to obsess about the boardsand all that stuff. So we have some sense.

Damon Lindelof: It's never exactly the reactionyou're expecting. We knew it would be an episode that would bedivisive. We've been talking since the beginning of the season aboutthe idea that the great thing of doing a show on your own terms is youhave no excuses, but it's also slightly terrifying that if you're amystery show, there will inevitably be episodes that answer mysteries.That has the potential to frighten, terrify, make people hate. This wasgoing to be the season where we said, "Whatever your theory was, ourpresentation of the endgame of the show may disprove your theory, sowe're sorry if you don't like the fact that you don't get the Man inBlack's name, but you don't get it." So that's going to piss somepeople off, and it's their right to be pissed off. In terms of what thespecific reactions are, it's too hard to say 12 hours after the fact,and without seeing where this episode plays in the grand scheme of theseries. That's all we can say.

One of the things I found interesting - and this is just me playingarmchair psychologist - is that there's a lot of text and subtext inthis episode about how much of Smokey's pain and the deaths it led towere caused by Mother's refusal to explain things and give him honestanswers. And I'm wondering if that was intentional on a conscious orsubconscious level - that perhaps after six years of doing this andseeing how angry people get when you don't tell them what they want toknow, you've recognized the downside to that approach.

CC: We want the show to speak for itself. We don'twant to offer up our interpretation of what the thematics are of theepisode. But a lot of the things you say are very interesting. But wewill say this: This is what an episode of "Lost" that is aboutanswering questions looks like. This thing is a big mythologicaldownload. Our belief is that the real resolution of the show and theone that matters is what happens to these characters. We've felt adesire to provide the audience with Jacob and the Man in Black's originstory and make it not the last episode of the show for a very goodreason. The show is going to focus on these characters. That's what webelieve is more important and that's what we believe the audience wantsto see. This all worked the way we wanted to. We planned it out so wecould do a big mythological download episode at this point so that itwould allow us to have the end of the show be more character-centric.That's the way we chose to tell our story.

Well, you guys have talked a lot over the years about howyou feel the show is driven more by character than mystery. There havebeen some fans who have been very vocal in saying that they disagree -that they're watching for the mysteries. I dealt with this a lot incovering "The Sopranos," where David Chase was making one show, and acertain segment of his fanbase wanted him to be making a completelydifferent show. How do you deal with losing control of the audience'sexpectations?

DL: Being fans of other shows ourselves, we alwayshave the perspective is that one of the things you sign up for when youdo a show like this is that it is a spectator sport. It feels it's avariance, because we all break up into respective groups and talk aboutwhat we think the show means, and there's a sense of ownership. Youcommit all this time to the show and you're inviting it into your ownliving room. But at the end of the day, it's David Chase's show. It'seasy for people to say what they don't want the show to be, it's verydifficult for them to say what they want the show to be. Carlton and Iand the writers and everyone else who's creatively involved - it's it'sour job to figure out what the show is and not what the show isn't.Usually, when we get criticisms, it's along the lines of, "I reallywish you hadn't done that." Or "I wish it had been different." And youthrow it back at them and ask, "Well, what did you want it to be?" Andthey say, "I wanted to see the statue built," or "I wanted the Man inBlack's first name," or "I want to know about the guy Sayid shot on thegolf course." Okay, that's cool, you wanted those answers and wedecided not to provide them to you.  It's not because we're beingcutesie, it's because that that didn't fit with our vision of the show.Right or wrong, we're going to have to deal the rest of our lives withquestions about how "Lost" ended. We're comfortable with that, and atthe end of the day, we have to remind people that we chose to end theshow. We did not go on for a couple of more seasons and sort of pad itoff to oblivion. And we knew we chose to end the show, that we weregoing to have to take our lumps. That's fine as long as we're happywith how we ended the show. We're not being obnoxious or cocky, it'sjust us saying we've done our best.

Even some people who were positive about the episode lastnight objected to or questioned its placement this late in the season,right after this big episode where so many characters died and rightbefore the final hours. And at times I and other people have wonderedabout whether Desmond should have more prominently appeared in thesideways universe sooner, or if we needed to spend as much time in theTemple as we did, etc. Looking back over the season now, how do youfeel about how you placed things and about certain landmarks. Did theyhave to be at the particular parts of the season where they occured?

CC: We told the story the way we wanted to. Like DavidChase, we tried to make the show to entertain the audience. That wasour primary goal. We kind of planned this episode to come at thisperiod of time because we actually wanted to take a break after thedeaths of these major characters. It felt like this was the perfecttime to take a time out from the main narrative. And since this was thefinal big mythological episode that we were going to do, we felt likeit was a good placement for it, and now we'll roll into the finale. Wemake no apologies. We planned this to be the way it is. Again, it isfunny, because there are a lot of people who are very happy with theshow, there's going to be a very vocal group of people who are nothappy, and that just kind of comes with the territory. We're making theshow the best way we know how to make it, and we stand by it, and we'reexcited about how it ends and how the journey's unfolded.

Let's get into a couple of specifics about last night. Last week, when you spoke to Jeff Jensen,you said all of the deaths happened in part so you could establishSmokey's bonafides as a bad guy, and to make it clear he's not on theside of our characters. And in that episode we were clearly meant toside with Jack as the newfound man of faith. But in "Across the Sea,"it's Man in Black, who's the man of science, who winds up being themore sympathetic character, and the victim of his upbringing. So is itsupposed to be black and white like the backgammon pieces, or is stillsupposed to be more complex in the war between the two sides.

DL: We have long sort of spoken about the interestingdynamic in the show is nobody is 100 percent good, nobody is 100percent evil. Everybody has the capacity for both. Every time you comeup with an explanation that's black and white, it turns into shades ofgrey. Ben Linus starts as a villain and then can become sympathetic.Sawyer and Jin who were also first presented in less than sympatheticlights became increasingly more sympathetic. We wanted to explain whythe Man in Black had behaved the way that he does, and to show thatlike a lot of other characters on the show, he's the victim of very badparenting. To reduce him to just a supernatural force, as opposed to aperson, was not our intent. "Across the Sea" was our attempt to say,"Here's why Jacob feels the way he does about people, why the Man inBlack feels the way he does about people," and a bit about theirchildhood. It's as simple as that and as complex as the themes of theshow are.

Okay, you've now said at a couple of points here thatyou're not going to reveal the name of the Man in Black. Is there asignificance to that, or you've just decided you prefer the air ofmystery it gives the character to not give him a name?

CC: I think for us to explain why we're not giving hima name veers too far into the territory of explaining things that wedon't feel the need to explain.

A couple of my readers pointed out that when Jacob sendsthe Man in Black down the log flume and he turns into the SmokeMonster, the light in the cave goes out. And they've wondered if thatmeans that Smokey now is the light that Jacob is supposed to protectand that's why he can't leave the island.

CC: You'll get more information that will help you understand that in the episodes that follow this one.

When Mother slaughters the people in the human village, theiconography looked very much like the Dharma bunkers after the purge.Was this your way of suggesting why it was Jacob might have allowed TheOthers to slaughter the Dharma folk - that this is the punishment foranyone who gets too close to unlocking the island's secrets?

DL: In terms of what Jacob allowed, what he didn'tallow, what The Others did of their own volition, with Ben basicallysaying "This came down from Jacob" is all in the area that is subjectto interpretation purposely. What our intention was is that there is arepeating vicious cycle that seems to happen on this island, wherepeople come to the island, they try to figure out what makes the islandwork, and the closer they came leads them to their own inevitabledemise.

CC: Like Icarus

DL: The more curious you become about why the islandhas its properties, inevitably the protector of the island feels theneed to engage in some form of mass genocide. It was more our attemptto say that history repeats itself, and this is an ongoing andcontinuing motif.

You've said many times that when people find out who Adamand Eve are, we'll all realize just how long you've been planning themythology. Well, I went back and watched the "House of the Rising Sun"scene, and Jack says that the clothing looks like it's 50 years old. Ishe just not very good at calculating the rate of decay on fabric?

CC: Jack is not really an expert in carbon dating.

DL: He's not really a forensic anthropologist. We need to bring in Bones.

CC: Or Charlotte. She's an anthropolgist.

DL: The other theory that I would like to throw outthere is that Jacob and his mother were just expert craftsmen. Theymade those clothes on that loom so well, it would appear that they wereonly 50 years old in decomposition, when in fact it's several thousand.

CC: Or perhaps the fabric is magic. A lot of theories there, Alan.

As we've gone into this final season and you've introducednew characters like Dogen and Lennon and the other Temple people, andnew mysteries, there have been some people who've said, "Okay, theydon't have to answer all the old mysteries if they don't want to, butit's not fair for them to keep introducing lots of new ones at thislate date." How do you respond to that?

DL: Are there any readers who actually like the show?

Many readers like the show. I like the show. But these questions are out there.

CC: We feel that we as storytellers, basically canonly approach the storytelling the way that we do, which is it feltlike there was no way that we could just be answering existingquestions without the show feeling didactic. There would have been nolarger narrative motor. For the show to devolve into running through achecklist of answers, we would have been, honestly, crucified for thatversion of the show. It's ironic that the episode that's generating somuch controversy is one in which we answered questions, but it's notsurprising to us. Between what the audience thinks they want and whatthey will find entertaining - we have tried ot make the show in a waythat people would find it entertaining, moving engaging. To do thatrequired having new mysteries. That's the way we operated.

Getting back to Adam and Eve for a second, can you talk methrough the thought process of including that flashback to "House ofthe Rising Sun." Was there ever a thought of not having it in there andhoping the viewer could fill in the blanks, or did you just feel thatthe skeletons were too obscure a mystery to not have that extra context?

DL: The reason that we put it in certainly wasn'tbecause we thought it was too obscure and we wanted to hit people overthe heads with it. It was more a matter of, here's an episode where ourcharacters don't appear in it at all, and we wanted to make it clear tothe audience that this little family drama, this dysfunctionalrelationship between these three people is really responsible foreverything that's happening to the passengers of Oceanic 815. We wantedto illustrate that by, at the very end of the show saying, "Oh, right,Jack and Kate and Locke are affected by the fact that Mother decided toraise her kids this way, and Jacob ended up bringing these people tothe island." The idea was to say that this chapter of the series issignificant to the story we've been telling you, and that the series isabout the survivors of Oceanic 815. To have an episode that they didnot appear in at all was never our intention.

CC: We also liked the juxtaposition of what thosecharacters were like in "House of the Rising Sun" versus where they arenow. We felt it was interesting for the audience to see the growth, thechange, the evolution, the degree to which these characters had beenaffected by their time on the island. And we felt that the mosteffective way to do that was to recontextualize the Adam and Evediscovery by replaying that scene. It really provided a contrast thatshows you how these characters have evolved.

The sideways universe, it seems as if those stories havealso been used to illustrate that point. We see a Jack who hasn't beenthrough everything on the island, a Locke who behaves differently,other characters reverting to a season one mode. Was that by design?

DL: Everything is by design. Unfortunately, when youask that question, if you're not a believer, you say, "They're makingit up as they go along," and if you are a believer, you say, "It's allpart of a design." It's lose-lose for us, because you think we're justlying if we say everything was by design. I do feel that hopefully theconversation about the sideways will be a different conversation whenthe series is over than it is now. We knew going into it that thesideways would be a very polarizing form of storytelling.. But asCarlton reiterated earlier, we're doing our best version of ours how.We understand that you can't please all the people all the time, that'sthe kind of show that "Lost" is. If we tried to please all the peopleall the time, it's an impossible task. We loved "The Sopranos" ending.It was actually shocking to us the next morning when people were going,"It's a cop-out."' We're looking at it as the best, most poetic thingthat we've ever seen on television, and other people were calling it acop-out, and we got into these very impassioned arguments about it. Thefact that he could make a creative choice like that that would createthat sort of debate, I'm sure it wasn't his intention to create adebate. He was just doing what he wanted to do - what he felt was rightfor his show. We're doing the same. Whether or not what we're doing isin the best interests of our show is a matter of debate, and there's noway that we can enter into the debate, because were' the ones who didit. We could say, "Yes, this was great!" And the fans would say that wejumped the shark. I love the idea that some fans are literally sayingwe jumped the shark last night! 119 hours in! We finally jumped theshark! So good! You guys are going to spare yourselves the agita of thefinal three hours of the show.

And I should say I was not challenging the whole plan/not-planissue with that question. What I meant was, was one of the purposes ofthe sideways a chance to, before we get to the end, revisit thesecharacters in a state similar to how they were before the planecrashed?

CC: The anser to that quesiton is yes. We wanted thereto be a symmetry to the show from the first season to the last season.In the first season, the show was very character-centric, and one ofthe great revelations was discovering who these people were. It'srevelatory when you learn Kate is a fugitive and Sawyer's a con man andHurley's a lottery winner. We wanted to have that same sense ofrevelation be a part of the final season. We wanted to bring the showback around to the characters and give a sense of this journey kind ofcoming full circle. We felt the sideways were a good narrative deviceto do that. You'll see in the end how the narrative closes. It's alwayshow we saw the show working out, and we stand by it.

You've talked about the idea that you're damned if you do,damned if you don't, and you can't please everybody. But how much of asense of responsibility do you feel you have - that the ending has - tothe legacy of the show? There are some people who say, "Oh, if I don'tlike the ending, this has all been a big waste of time," and others whosay they still will enjoy what they watched until then, and then otherswho say that if you don't stick the landing, they're never going towatch another show like "Lost" for fear of being strung along again.

DL: There are people who are in relationships withloved ones and then that relationship ends horribly and they say I'mnever going to fall in love again. Diferent people are going to havedifferent reactions. There are shows like "Seinfeld" where one guy saysthe "Seinfeld" finale wasn't a great finale, but it doesn't make it notbe a great series, because it's a sitcom. "Battlestar" was one wherethe vocal fanbase said the finale affected in hindsight their entireexperience of the show. But other people who said they loved thefinale, and it made the series better for them. But because they choseto end their own show, we are opening ourselves up to the fact that aninordinate amoung of attention will be paid to the finale itself. Theday after the finale ends, and the month after the finale ends, allanyone is going to be talking about is the finale. But hopefully a yearor two or three or five years down the line, people are talking aboutthe series as a whole. And certainly, that perception will be coloredby whether or not they liked the finale, and newbies may be less likelyto try the show if the zeitgeist says, "The last episode of 'Lost' wasso bad that it made every episode that preceded it terrible." That'sgoing to have an affect, but who are we to say what people are going tothink?

Okay, finally, I have to ask, simply because it's beendriving me nuts for a year and a half: what's going on with showing theother half of the outrigger shootout?

CC: The outrigger shootout is not something we'rebending around in gyrations so we can solve it. In the grand scheme ofthe show, that is a fairly obscure piece of the show. It is yourparticular obsession...

DL: ...and you're not alone in it.

CC: You're not alone in it. And yes, it would have been great if we hadhad the opportunity to close the time loop. But you can't geteverything done and keeping the narrative going in a straight line.This is one of those things where we made a very conscious choice toask, "What are the big questions? And most importantly, what are thepaths of these characters? Where do they lead?" And we followed thosepaths and tried not to trip ourselves up getting too diverted fromthat. We felt that that's the thing that's ultimately going to make thefinale work or not work. We got to the point where we made the finalewe wanted to make, that was our approach, and I think it was the onlyapproach we could take. We sat here in my office, had breakfast everyday for six years, talked about the show, and we used this gut checkmethodology, where if we both loved something and thought it was cool,that would go in. We applied that same methodology to the finale, andthat was the only way we could do it. We came up with a finale that wethought was cool, that was emotional and one we really liked. That'sthe best we could do.

DL: When we wrote that scene and somebodystarted shooting at them, we knew exactly who was shooting at them.That is not a dangling thread that we don't know the answer to. Thatbeing said, as we started talking about paying that off this season, itfelt like the episode was at the service of closing the time loop, asopposed to what the characters might actually be doing in thatscenario. It never felt organic. We decided we would rather take ourlumps from the people who couldn't scratch that itch than to produce anepisode that was in service of putting people in an outrigger andgetting shot at.

You put people in a lot of outriggers this season. It feels, frankly, like you're taunting me.

DL: We can't entirely deny that we're taunting you.

CC: Honestly, though, the logistics of getting allthe participants in the outriggers in the configuration that was on theA-side of the time loop was actually really daunting.

DL: Considering half of them had been killed off

CC: It's not like we didn't want to do it. Like Damon says, it was just too much of a narrative deviation to do it.

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com




not feeling their answers.

 

[crazy ebw]

It's your opinion that it wasn't good though. So "not good television" doesn't make sense.

 

[franchise3]

Bastich you're right.

@ me x1000

I forget the littlest things going from week to week in anticipation of a new episode

 

[mronegative]

Originally Posted by DubA169

Crazy EBW wrote:
If you've been watching this show since season 2 to see why a bird got killed in Walt's house, i'm sorry. You have been watching a different show from me and I completely understand why you don't like this show.

honestly... i have been.

i really thought the entire show hinged on walt and aaron and "what is this island?" My imagination didn't make me see things that way, the writers did. to build those 2 characters up the way they did and abuptly throw them out of the entire series rubs me the wrong way. The island is special, walt is special, aaron is special, MIB is special. it's %%%#!@! annoying.

it seems like we will never know more about the island. it was there. people were there. and people were there before that. jacob doesn't have answers because nobody does. it's condesending. just like the sopranos ending it's starting to feel like the writers played a dirty trick on me at points. They strecthed this whole thing out to make money. it's all over the place at this point. instead of answering questions we get more questions. it's hard to defend

THIS
I could care less about the little mysteries. To me it's all just falls into a pile of 'What is the island?' or 'Why are some of these people special?' Then they added 'What's with the time travel?' and 'Who's the Man in Black?'

After LA X we all knew they were gonna bs for most of the season until the last few eps. Last ep was the, OK we're ready episode. So what the hell was this?

It's weird how people I turned onto Lost are asking me what was that garbage on last night. It was just sloppy work.

'You don't get it like I do' isn't a response to that episode. Maybe they should've dug up this dude:

and made a better episode is an answer.

This ep: Lost

Mike Myers: Inglourious Basterds

 

[duba169]

the show is sloppy and all over the place at this point. that's the only way i can describe it. it reads like disconnected fan fiction. it's gonna lose more than a couple slots in the "best show ever" discussion. you can already tell. the backlash is gonna be really bad.

 

[airblaster503]

The show is meant to stir thoughts, but some of you dudes are looking way to into it conjuring up your own conspiracy theory and if it doesn't turn out that way then you are mad. Just wait and see how things get wrapped up. As far as the past episode, this is what everyone would have wanted to see earlier on, but now that you saw it now you are mad. Step back, this episode answered alot of questions, just stop trying to look to deeply into the story, or in most of your cases look into things that aren't there or even relevant at this point.

 

[cadillacflow]

Originally Posted by airblaster503

The show is meant to stir thoughts, but some of you dudes are looking way to into it conjuring up your own conspiracy theory and if it doesn't turn out that way then you are mad. Just wait and see how things get wrapped up. As far as the past episode, this is what everyone would have wanted to see earlier on, but now that you saw it now you are mad. Step back, this episode answered alot of questions, just stop trying to look to deeply into the story, or in most of your cases look into things that aren't there or even relevant at this point.

ding. ding. ding.

For those who say the last episode didn't answer anything or really sucked, I would HIGHLY suggest watching it again.

 

[crazy ebw]

Just wait another week and a half and see how you're feeling after that. I'm pretty sure people that didn't like this episode aren't going to like the endgame because of how they already feel. You guys are irritated, so you're going to be watching this like "well #@* that isn't Walt" and stuff like that. At least you'll get that reaction FINALLY.

 

[duba169]

Originally Posted by airblaster503

The show is meant to stir thoughts, but some of you dudes are looking way to into it conjuring up your own conspiracy theory and if it doesn't turn out that way then you are mad. Just wait and see how things get wrapped up. As far as the past episode, this is what everyone would have wanted to see earlier on, but now that you saw it now you are mad. Step back, this episode answered alot of questions, just stop trying to look to deeply into the story, or in most of your cases look into things that aren't there or even relevant at this point.

i wanted to know what the island was. i wanted to know what the game was

i got neither

it was cool to see why the wheel was there. i thought adam and eve was good enough. i didn't hate the episode as much as critics did. but if this is the last mythology of the island that we get. if this is the only background info we get.... then the show just fell off a ten story building.

instead of explaing jacob/MIB they passed the buck to their mother. now they will never explain the mother

that's weak writing. you can't answer mysteries with new mysteries.

 

[cadillacflow]

But, if they explained the Mother, then people would want her mother explained, then her mother, then her mother, etc. To me it was made clear that she was "brought" to the island like everyone else and took over the job of protecting it from someone else, who took it over from someone else, etc. This is just the most recent cycle we are seeing.

As far as the island... the light explanation was.... ehh... but at least we know that it IS indeed a special place.

And again I thought they made it pretty clear that "the game" is a game Jacob made up to show people are good.

We may not be getting the "very beginning of time scientific answers", but they answers are there.

 

[duba169]

you didn't think that we would learn what "brings" people to the island!? that's what people want when they say answers. This is the core of the show. we didn't learn what the island was in the least bit. we just learned jacob and MIB's background stories.

she called MIB special. why was that? because everyone is +++!$#@ special. and that's all we need to know. it's hilarious. i can totally understand why non fans bash and laugh at the show.

 

[crazy ebw]

Thats not good enough for some people. It's good enough for me.

 

[duba169]

well different strokes for different folks. i'm happy you still love the show.

i know I'm going to be in pain when i re-watch the series though. so many wasted opportunities and stuff that goes nowhere. they bit off more than they could chew and now it's crumbling imo

 

[cadillacflow]

Would people like them to just say.... {insert name} created/found this very special island where he handpicks people crash there so they can protect it because it's mostly invisible except on certain occasions because he found a way to make it like that because {insert explanation}. And it also helps sick people heal because he found a way to {insert explanation} by using the light and water in the center of it. Then people would say... That explanation kinda sucks... but now... Where does HE come from? I need that answered NOW!!!

The questions would NEVER end. This is a Sci-Fi show everything is not going to be answered or answered "normally".

But, there is still 3 1/2 hours left, plenty of time to answer plenty of questions.

So, not to keep looking like the biggest STAN of the show.

I'm just going to sit back and enjoy. I REALLY hope everyone who invested time into watching it feels satisfied at the end.

 

[jamesonnt]

Good/bad, complaints/rants .. At least this thread is more active.

 

[crazy ebw]

Originally Posted by CadillacFLOW

I'm just going to sit back and enjoy. I REALLY hope everyone who invested time into watching it feels satisfied at the end.

They will.

 

[hymen man]

Originally Posted by Crazy EBW

Originally Posted by CadillacFLOW

I'm just going to sit back and enjoy. I REALLY hope everyone who invested time into watching it feels satisfied at the end.

They will.

you read the finale spoilers, didn't you!

 

[mronegative]

If this dude didn't catch the way that episode got me...

Major spoilers for Lost's latest episode follow.

Last night's Lost episode, Across the Sea, sealed the show's fate for me - an awful, poorly written ****heap of an episode, it guaranteed that I am sitting through the show's final three hours only out of a sense of obligation to finish what I started. I'm a guy who cheered the end of The Sopranos and who thinks the finale of Battlestar Galactica is essentially brilliant, so it isn't like I'm put off by shows not meeting my expectations or going where I want them to go. I'm put off by shows being bad, and then being kind of dickish about it ("Every question you ask will just lead to another question" is an actual quote from one character blowing off another last night). 

But I don't think it had to be terrible. I may never be happy with the limited answers we were given - the cave of urine, the origins of the Smoke Monster, the contrivance of never giving the Man in Black a @##%**! name - but this hot carl of an episode could have been handled so much better.

Here's how:

[color= rgb(153, 204, 0)]1) Don't make the episode.[/color] This is the simplest one. Across the Sea didn't need to exist. It actually gave us very little new information, and what we did need to learn - Jacob and MiB's relationship, the origins of the donkey wheel - could have been imparted with a line of dialogue or two within a normal episode. After all, MiB already gave us the meat of his origin story in off the cuff remarks, only leaving out "My twin brother hurled me into a cave of urine." 

A lot of people have been comparing Across the Sea to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace not only because young Jacob superficially reminded us of Anakin Skywalker but because it's an example of a story we didn't need to hear, and a story whose banality undermines the foundations of everything else. 

[color= rgb(153, 204, 0)]2) Make the episode a flashback.[/color] It's been twice this season that Lost has broken format and given backstory to ageless characters  by simply having exposition-filled episodes where people stand around and talk about who they are, where they're from and what experiences they've had off-camera that make them who they are (which is the least dramatically satisfying way to get across information, and one that this show keeps falling back on). Why not have both Ab Aeterno and Across the Sea be flashbacks... you know, since the show was built on a foundation of backstory being given out through flashback? They could use a flashback episode to tell us how Jack got his @##%**! tattoos but not to explain the origins of the cosmic beings in whose game our characters are but pawns? And I know there are no flashbacks this season, but Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse could have earned their paycheck by spending an extra hour figuring out how to tell audiences they were seeing flashbacks, not flash-sideways.

[color= rgb(153, 204, 0)]3) Make it a story.[/color] Across the Sea was a poorly written series of expository scenes that contained little drama. The episode feels like someone giving someone else the Cliff Notes of a bigger, more epic tale... so make it exactly that. Have the Man in Black relate his story to Claire, or have the Losties discover a parchment or a cave painting or a tablet in the Lighthouse that explains this tale. By having the narrative gimmick of making this episode a legend/myth, the writers wouldn't need to have characters in it behave like normal humans as we expect to see them behave in modern TV shows. And the elements of mystery they're so gung-ho to preserve - like what's in the urine cave and why the hell did the Smoke Monster come out of it - could have been preserved because the writer of the legend wouldn't have the answer. Plus it would put in an element of the unreliable narrator, and since Lindelof and Cuse never met an answer they wanted to leave unmuddied, it would have allowed them to give us info but continue obfuscating. And it would have felt natural, a result of a tale being passed down over thousands of years - and since half the heavy-handed allusions in last night's poorly written episode were Biblical in nature, this would have fit right in. The grotesquely simple-minded metaphors and symbolism would have also felt more natural in a legend - otherwise we're left wondering why no one would ever give Man in Black a name simply so they have something to call him besides 'Hey you.'

[color= rgb(153, 204, 0)]4) Go back in time and change the way the characters deal with the mysteries.[/color] Hear me out. Lindelof and Cuse have said again and again that the show is about the characters, not about the mystery. The last two seasons feel like they contradict this statement totally, but let's take it at face value. So the show is about the characters... why not have the characters care about the mysteries? If the characters cared about the Island and what it was and who Jacob and Man in Black were the story we were given last night could have been told organically through discoveries made by the main characters. By making the characters not care about the mysteries the show is essentially forcing itself into two halves, and I don't think it's servicing either properly. The characters are stuck in an irritating loop of escape the island/go back to the island/stay on the island arguments and endless walks in the jungle to get from one scene where they're passive to another scene where they're passive. By making the characters active participants in the Island's mysteries, they would be driving the solutions to the mysteries as well as being much more active in the final episodes as the Man in Black's plan comes together.

I get that at one point it made sense that survival was what motivated these people, but now they're motivated by... well, it's unclear from episode to episode. Season five should have seen the Losties taking a role in figuring out what is going on and who is manipulating them, as opposed to just trekking across the jungle and occasionally pointing guns at people. Their lack of curiosity has come to the point where it's in direct opposition to their need to survive - they need to understand what is happening around them so they can know how to deal with it. And if they were searching for the answers the story of Jacob and Man in Black's origin could have been delivered in a much more dynamic, satisfying way - a way that felt earned, not like an hour of crammed-in backstory.

But more importantly it makes the origin of MiB and Jacob have a bearing on the main Losties. Yes, the conflict between these two is what our characters are caught up in, but I have still never been able to care about Jacob or his brother because they've been personality-free late additions to the mythos. By having Jack or Sawyer or Kate care about who Jacob is, suddenly I care more because I have been following them for six years and, on some level, I automatically care about their goals. Lost has tried to do what The Wire did - keep pulling the frame back and include more, and make the scope bigger. It's failed because unlike The Wire Lost has not successfully showed me how the different layers of the scope - ranging from Aaron to Jacob and from Jack to Widmore - are connected beyond "They're all on or have been on the Island." The Wire showed us an invisible web that made every element of Baltimore life interconnected; the way Lost has handled it would be as if Cheers had three different sets of characters at the bar, none of whom really interacted except by being at the same location. 

And by the way, here's a bonus way to have saved last night's episode:

[color= rgb(153, 204, 0)]5) Write better[/color].
...

 

[baik]

i completely agree with DubA...for now, but i think the writers will put out some real good stuff these last 3 hours of the show...i hope

 

[crazy ebw]

They intentionally let people down to make them bug out in the final two episodes.

 

[jamesonnt]

so the episode wasn't a flashback to that person? huh?

 

[Master Zik]

Originally Posted by DubA169

i wanted to know what the island was. i wanted to know what the game was

i got neither

Yes you did.

The island is just an island that happens to contain a magical light that can do a lot of amazing things. What wasn't answered about the island were the implications(every time they said "the island isn't done with you" or "the island brought us here for a reason", etc. but I guess they'll just say its a figure of speech) that it was a sentient being and actually did things to the ppl on it.

Going off of everything we've learned especially from last season and now we can infer that the game is to find out whether or not humans are good or evil. MIB doesn't give a #@@+ about the game and thinks humans are bad and just wants to leave the island, in a way if he is right what he wins is freedom from the island. Jacob is kind of neutral good. He appreciates that he is a human but was essentially raised to keep humans away and basically not be a human. He doesn't want to directly represent the good side for humanity but he does bring ppl(the chess pieces) to the island to find out if they're good. So he has Richard as a representative. The game doesn't just end when MIB kills the latest batch of ppl Jacob brings to the island, it's on going although MIB thinks it'll always end the same. The only rule goes back to the mother making it so that they can't kill each other. All the evidence for this goes back to the S5 finale, every time FLocke saw young Jacob, the entire last episode etc.

There was no way they were just going to flat out say that is what the game is and these are the rules. Last ep summed it up pretty good but I think all of us should've got an idea with the S5 finale and got the gist of it in Richard's centric ep.

it was cool to see why the wheel was there.
This was probably one of the biggest $#!%+%$# moves they pulled when trying to explain something. Simply because they didn't explain anything. We didn't find out why the wheel was there. Saying water + light + turning wheel = leave island is

. MIB looked mad dumb and gullible while explaining that.

Things like why someone is special, exactly what is the light, where did _____ come from and the person before and the person before are not important to the creators. It just is the way it is. I don't think they were aiming for some origin of life angle.

 

[cadillacflow]

The urine cave....

 

[andrew630]

http://www.profilesinhist...iew/lost-auction-preview