Lost

Posted:
in AppleOutsider edited January 2014
Rather than discussing LOST in the mainly BSG (what a show?) thread http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...0&pagenumber=4 , I felt LOST deserves its own post.



So here?s the deal. I really, really wanted to like LOST a LOT. To the writers and actors credit, they have thrown out some juicy morsels from time to time. I?ve stated this before, the idea that these castaways are blithely strolling along through the jungle of LOSTZILLA and its denizens irritates me to no end. That?s just me.



Despite my critique, I?m still watching the show. However, tonight?s episode was in my humble opinion, hands down, superior to ANYTHING done so far with the cast we have come to know as the regulars. Tonight?s episode was simply outstanding. Great writing, great acting. Rodriguez even managed to keep her patented snarl to a minimum.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 37
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Excellent episode.



    The problem with a successful show like "Lost" is that it now has two competing and opposite dynamics in play: to be satisfying there has to be a finite arc to a worked out mythology, but that arc now has to be stretched or appended for as many seasons as the ratings hold up.



    Ideally, you would go into this saying "this story will take three years to tell" and you pace your revelations accordingly and when it's over it's over, but of course American broadcast TV will never do that.



    My fear is that the whole thing will go the way of "Twin Peaks", where it became clear that Lynch was just sort of tossing ooga-booga around randomly, or "The X Files", which hit a natural stopping point but just kept limping along in a muddle of "oh yeah, did we mention that the conspiracy lived on?" kind of tedious vamping.



    Of course, there's always the possibility that J.J. Abrams is just a straight up pop genius sadist and he has no idea what is going on either and will just keep piling on apparently interrelated details and numbers and symbols and father troubles and eyeballs and telling biographical data and new characters and perplexing revelations and "spot it on the DVD" secret decoder ring stuff for the geeks until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own artifice, which will either be a great moment in post-modern television or a reason to hunt him down and kill him, depending on how much anyone still cares at that point.
  • Reply 2 of 37
    I watched Lost season one with great interest and devotion. Season two has been a big disappointment for me. It just seems that it has no direction anymore. Its like they ran out of ideas so they thought, "hey lets start over with the other half of the plane." I am really looking for a reason not to stop watching. In the end, I think it will be the beautiful HD content that keeps me coming back.
  • Reply 3 of 37
    Lost is the sort of show I watch whilst doing other things. The Mrs loves it though!



    BTW, apologies if this has been posted before, but it made me laugh much.



    http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/lost



    I don't *think* there's any language in there that's not safe for work, but it's certainly weird
  • Reply 4 of 37
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    You should dig my Lost wiki, then. And yes. Last night's episode was fantastic.
  • Reply 5 of 37
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by midwinter

    You should dig my Lost wiki, then. And yes. Last night's episode was fantastic.



    Whoa. Someone went crazy on my wiki overnight. 50+ edits!
  • Reply 6 of 37
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    i got interested because of hype and thursday mornign office banter, so i threw the first season into my netflix queue and my wife and i watched the whole series on and off for about 2-3 weeks. i have to say, i like it MUCH more on dvd and even itunes downloads... why? no friggin' commercials. it's so hard to maintain a sense of dramatic pause when you skip to a trio of "buy my car! watch my concert!" crap. ugh.



    i have so far been fairly accurate in my guessing of how the story turns, in a broad sense. i may not always guess which character will betray or die at what time, but i can usually guess there WILL be a betrayal at some point.



    can we get this out of th eway now?



    (***********************************)



    THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT WATCHED THE SHOWS SO FAR. since a LOT of the drama is lodged in getting such strange clues, and then answers in flashbacks (or old films... hint, hint), half of the interest is being as clueless as the lost-aways in trying to figure out what's going on. that having been said...



    (***********************************)




    it was pretty cool when, in the first season dvd set, the subtitles accurately said the replying voice ont he radio when boone was calling out "we're the survivors of fligth 815"... that, and rose's insistence that her husband was alive was proof that the tailies had survived.



    and it's really interesting to hear some things that are repeated VERBATIM in th series by some cast members, but you don't notice it in the network broadcasts, because there are weeks and months between them. when you see everything back-to-back-to-back, the questions and answers really start to take shape. plus, go back and watch the first series knowing hurley's numbers, and count all of the references to them, even in flashbacks.



    anyway, i'm pretty happy with things so far. and i'm glad the tailies are back to stir up trouble. i felt the main survivors were getting a wee too comfortable with their lot in life. i mean, seriously, sayid building a house gilligan island-style? dude, you need a hobby.



    is the island purgatory and they're all dead already, atoning for their mortal baggage, and once they have, they "die" and are at peace? is the island one enormous abandoned experimental facility, and the "others" are remnants of the staff and their families? is there just one set of others, or more (ethan's = "evil", goodwin's = "good...sorta")? is there actually a sickness on the island? would that explain the hallucinations people are having? why can locke walk? what the hell was the black smoke? was it the same as the "monster"?



    so many damned questions. and every answer brings up two more questions.



    by the way, i have a hunch cindy the stewardess from the tailies is another mole. we'll see if i'm right. wasn't she the one who gave jack the vodka he would later use?



    p.s. i dunno if this episode was the best (I would have liked two episodes.. it felt rushed to me), but any episode that features terry o'quinn's locke character is pretty cool. the man has perfected "creepy guy with a history" over many b-roles in his career, and he's allowed to let loose here.



    p.p.s. minor spoiler alert for everyone:



    the next two episodes after next week's are titled "what kate did" and "foundations." the first is self-explanatory. the second, i know nothign abotu except that hibbs (robert patrick) is back, meaning a sawyer episode (this gleaned from cast info on the imdb for unaired episodes).
  • Reply 7 of 37
    hxc04hxc04 Posts: 145member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DanMacMan

    I watched Lost season one with great interest and devotion. Season two has been a big disappointment for me. It just seems that it has no direction anymore. Its like they ran out of ideas so they thought, "hey lets start over with the other half of the plane." I am really looking for a reason not to stop watching.



    Agreed they got dumb and abandoned the numbers, hugo, the hatch, & jack. Lame so far it needs to get better
  • Reply 8 of 37
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    My favorite moment in the series so far: in the 2nd season 1st episode, after watching the out-of-nowhere hatch-life orientation film, Locke glances up and says "I think we need to watch that again".



    For anyone who's interested, there are Oceanic Airlines and Driveshaft websites, complete with numerous easter eggs. I think there must be a whole squad of production team people whose job it is to come up with mythology tie-ins and little bits of business to fuel the internet fan base chatter.
  • Reply 9 of 37
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hxc04

    Agreed they got dumb and abandoned the numbers,



    They're typing the numbers every 108 minutes. In shifts.



    Quote:

    hugo,



    Agreed. He needs to be in every stinkin episode.



    Quote:

    the hatch,



    They're in it.



    Quote:

    jack.



    I imagine that Jack will be back soon. Personally, I think the show is too Jack-centric.
  • Reply 10 of 37
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by midwinter

    They're typing the numbers every 108 minutes. In shifts.



    Agreed. He needs to be in every stinkin episode.



    They're in it.



    I imagine that Jack will be back soon. Personally, I think the show is too Jack-centric.




    yeah, they've been hammering the numbers home almost every episode... and from next weeks' previews, it looks like they're gonna make the bunker a new home for a while.



    re: jack, well, yeah, they focus on him a LOT. but i think the entire series will eventually boil down to him and locke. he and locke seem to be flip-sides of each other in how they approach the island. i've seen this plot before -- at some point, locke will be given a choice... keep his legs, and betray the survivors, or lose his ability to walk. locke acts like he's so confident, but he folded like a bad hand when he started losing his ability to walk... which we never quite figured out why that happened near the plane, and only that one time. my guess is, in the end, he'll just be too weak to resist the temptation to keep walking.
  • Reply 11 of 37
    iposteriposter Posts: 1,560member
    Great show overall, but one thing is really bothering me so far about Season 2:



    Nobody, especially Jack, seems concerned about the quarantine signs, or the mysterious substance the Bunker Guy (can't remember his name) was injecting himself with.
  • Reply 12 of 37
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Completely ignoring last episode's amazing revelation seems to be a hallmark of the series.



    Part of it, I think, is the conceit that relatively little time is passing in the course of a season (something like 45 days?) so episode to episode there isn't much time to come to terms with weird doings.



    They make a bit of a joke of it. At some point somebody brought up the polar bear and one of the "bit" passengers said "A polar bear?!" and the response was "Oh yeah, did we forget to mention there was a polar bear?"
  • Reply 13 of 37
    Last season I couldn't get enough of the show. This season? Well...



    I think what made last year SO great for me was the character development that each episode had. Did the show move slowly? You bet. You didn't find out a whole lot in a short period of time in terms of what was happening ON the island. But in terms of what happened BEFORE the crash... you would find out a lot each episode. But with only one character at a time.



    I think the show reminds me a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation in terms of the character development. Last season, I was really able to grow attached to the characters. I disliked Sawyer for a long time last year and then came an episode where I had to admit to myself... "Hey... he's not that bad." Same with Michael. For the first half of the season I kept thinking, "Gee... this guy sucks as a dad." Then you get to know him better and you start realizing that he has problems just like a lot of normal people and he has a lot of skills that normal people could never have.



    Mix all that character development in with an AMAZING plot-line... the show was a hit for me.



    This year... everything is moving too fast. One episode that covers 45 days of the other survivors!? That's both too much time on the other survivors (why they even needed to be there is beyond me) and too much time crammed into one episode. If they wanted to include the other survivors, they should have spent an entire SEASON on them like they did the first group. That would have allowed people new to the show to grab some new characters (almost like starting over) and allow the previous viewers to grasp some new tidbits of the island through the eyes of these others survivors. Instead they just made sure to kill most of them off quickly in those 45 days/1 episode so that there will be only a few new characters to work with. Weird.



    I think the show should've stayed focused on the original survivors and developed them even further while continuing to release a little bit at a time about the island and what's really going on. Instead we add Ana-Lucia that drives everyone insane ... but there's no episode about who she is, what she does, why she acts that way, etc.



    Right when you were ready to like Shannon... they kill her off. I hated Shannon throughout the entire show until the episode where she's shot. (I still think Sayid could've done better...)



    I have a love/hate relationship with the show now. I'm tempted to not watch anymore this season and rent the DVDs at the end of the season and catch up quickly. It has just lost (no pun intended) its touch IMO.
  • Reply 14 of 37
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    I had really hoped that season 2 would be about the Tailies.
  • Reply 15 of 37
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by midwinter

    I had really hoped that season 2 would be about the Tailies.



    Wait, we have Lost specific lingo?



    Have I been hanging out in the wrong chat rooms?
  • Reply 16 of 37
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by addabox

    Wait, we have Lost specific lingo?



    Have I been hanging out in the wrong chat rooms?




    Primer It's recently become INCREDIBLY active. Hundreds of edits over the last two days.
  • Reply 17 of 37
    Are you guys talking about episode 207?
  • Reply 18 of 37
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Hey midwinter, I don't watch Lost, but we were talking about post-modern recursiveness in the context of Life of Pi, so check this out:
    Quote:

    THIS SEASON, the TV drama "Lost" will make pop culture history when it becomes the first show ever to have a character write a book in the real world. Hyperion (a division of Disney, which owns ABC, which airs "Lost") plans to release "Bad Twin," a mystery novel credited to one Gary Troup, who, the publisher informs us, was a passenger on "Oceanic Flight 815, which was lost in flight from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles in September 2004."



    Although that air disaster is the genesis point of "Lost," the event from which the entire series unfolds, Troup is hardly a central figure in the action ? in fact, he's not a living presence at all. He died in the plane crash, leaving behind the manuscript of his private-eye story, which will be found in the wreckage during an episode this spring. The discovery of this manuscript will magically overlap with the novel's release date.



  • Reply 19 of 37
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BRussell

    Hey midwinter, I don't watch Lost, but we were talking about post-modern recursiveness in the context of Life of Pi, so check this out:



    That's hysterical. And maybe Driveshaft will go on tour and release an album or two?
  • Reply 20 of 37
    Good stuff people.



    midwinter, I already complemented you on the LOST wiki on the "Friday night..." thread. However, I'll say it again, awesome work man.



    Now, adamrao brings up something I meant to put in and I'm sure the DVD collection will have; the extra footage that should have been included in the tailies tale. That episode should have been at least a two parter. None the less, an excellent episode. Oh well.
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