Comments on: Lost nearly had a completely different leader, who probably wouldn't have grown a beard

By: Petzl

Petzl — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:21:00 +0000

To everyone complaining about the Lost finale:

At least it wasn’t as bad as the Sopranos finale.

Be thankful for small things.

By: Aargh-a-Knot

Aargh-a-Knot — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:01:00 +0000

If I ever meet Abrams, I will sock him in the gut the second I’m done telling him how much I like his work. “This is for Lost!”

By: Brad Bell

Brad Bell — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:06:00 +0000

Aren’t there literary cops – perhaps retired librarians – who could come around and wrap the writer’s knuckles with a ruler while sternly reminding them about the concept of ‘tying up loose ends?’ The rules are, you can make up any crazy shit you want, but you have to justify it as some point. It has to be bound by the logic of your narrative. The audience agrees to trust the storyteller on the assumption the storyteller will justify their trust. When the author just makes up a bunch of weird, meaningless shit, and then fails to justify it or explain it, they can not properly be called storytellers. They are story trolls.

By: NI MEN HAO-DY TRAMPOLINA

NI MEN HAO-DY TRAMPOLINA — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:52:00 +0000

Yep. Exactly.

By: Blinkers

Blinkers — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:47:00 +0000

This was actually revealed in the DVD extras.

By: bryan rasmussen

bryan rasmussen — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:48:00 +0000

I think the thing there is also BSG had still moments of greatness up until the end. Lost’s whole final season was crap.

By: baronkarza

baronkarza — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 06:36:00 +0000

Hated the last 2 seasons of Lost. It ends with the big explosion for me, and if you’re watching the show for the first time, that’s a good place to stop. Just tell yourself it worked and stop watching.

It may interest some to know that Michael Emerson is the voice of the Joker in the newly-released animated film “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, part 1″ (yes, the Frank Miller graphic novel, and it’s an awesome adaptation). Mind you, Joker doesn’t have many lines in part 1, and part 2, which features the Joker more, isn’t out ’til January, but he’s got a great crazy schemer voice!

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:16:00 +0000

They could have made a really good show if they’d stuck to three seasons and worked out a basic story arc for each one.

Season 1: Basically the same. The castaways try to figure out what’s up with this crazy island and who the “Others” are.

Season 2: Shown from the perspective of the Others, includes surprising revelations that explain their formerly-presumed-sinister actions. Finale: everybody gets rescued.

Season 3: Castaways and Others alike cope with post-Island life and its unexpected consequences. Finale: everybody is revealed to NOT be in Purgatory.

By: morgane

morgane — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:13:00 +0000

Michael Emerson played the best character of Lost. No contest

By: morgane

morgane — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:10:00 +0000

i totally agree with you, i’m still mad at the writers for the last season.

By: morgane

morgane — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:08:00 +0000

I watched every bloody Lost episode when they first aired. I was addicted to Lost. So I’m still angry at the writers for the last season. GRRRR. Instead of this stupid mystical stuff they ended with, they should have followed the Dharma trail, the most interesting part of Lost in my opinion.
But that last season…. i want those hours back. The last episode was so fucking crap! I’ve decided never to follow another serie from these writers. They fucked up bad, i’m still angry at them! I loved that show the first few seasons. Me bad.
Homeland better not do the same thing…

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:06:00 +0000

At least [SPOILER ALERT] BSG had an ending. “The One True God sent some angels to teach humanity a lesson about being nicer to robots” beats “there’s, like, a big cork in the island, and if you pull it out bad stuff happens, and also you might turn into a smoke monster who is never referenced by name and a sequence of seven numbers is evil and pregnant women all die.”

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:46:00 +0000

How about ANOTHER drama show where the leader is a white male called Jack?

By: pjk

pjk — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 02:37:00 +0000

I can at least thank the lessons Lost taught me for saving me from huge disappointment with Battlestar Galactica. Two seasons and done, thank you very much. Once you wade into spirituality without some really clear rules, you have almost no chance of a satisfying resolution.

By: hawkd_sf

hawkd_sf — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 02:32:00 +0000

While it was in progress, I SO looked forward to rewatching it to savor the fun. When it was over, I was embarrassed and gut-sick. So much meaningless embroidery in the narrative. So much of seeming (yet non-existent) significance. I sometimes want to watch an ep and then I feel as if I’m going back to being a junkie with my abusive spouse and think better of it. Frankly, if you have to re-watch a show, watch ‘Buffy’. The final season was pretty uneven, but aside from a few bad notes (really, killing Anya?!!) I thought the finale was nicely done.

By: conflator

conflator — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 01:19:00 +0000

Suitably intrigued!

I know once I hit the penultimate episode, I won’t be able to keep from hitting the Next button.

I’ve suffered through enough series being cut down in their prime, so I’ll just imagine it’s that, and I’ll weather it.

By: JontKopeck

JontKopeck — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:49:00 +0000

Kind of sums up what went wrong with Lost, too much pandering to the fans, but in the wrong ways. The fun of Lost was not knowing what was going on, the best part of every series barring the last were the big reveals that posed more questions than the answered and made the situation incrementally worse for the survivors. We might have tortuously searched for the answers, we might have begged for them, but they weren’t supposed to give them to us, unless we said the safe-word.

By: Bodhipaksa

Bodhipaksa — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 23:39:00 +0000

I was about to say exactly the same thing.

I loved the first five seasons, but once season six came I was pretty sure I was having my chain yanked, which turned out to be the case. I came this close (imagine two things very, very close together) to not watching the finale because I had totally lost interest, except for a morbid sense of curiosity to see how bad it was going to be.

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 23:03:00 +0000

Worth it for the villain. You may want to make up your own last episode rather than watching the official one, though.

By: Rider

Rider — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:51:00 +0000

It’s amazing how they keep trying to convince people they had it all planned yet they continually also admit they made the entire convoluted mess up and had no exit plan.

By: Ashen Victor

Ashen Victor — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:44:00 +0000

Audiences would have skyrocketed!

By: mccrum

mccrum — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:34:00 +0000

Thanks, this helps a lot.

By: 2overwrought

2overwrought — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:28:00 +0000

If you keep your eyes on Michael Emerson, Jack’s beard isn’t so scary.

In fact, knowing it was probably another XFiles, I started watching it just last year on Netflix and continued only because MICHAEL EMERSON!!!

And now I get to watch him on Person of Interest, which has already had two members of LOST’s cast as guest stars. And now Revolution is also playing, “Why does that face look so familiar?”

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:14:00 +0000

Why do the others kidnap children? FUCK YOU, that’s why.

By: Supernumerary

Supernumerary — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Kind of a bummer that Kate didn’t step into her originally-intended role, I believe. I may’ve misread, though.

By: Aaron Akins

Aaron Akins — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Learning to not trust this show, in the first episode, would have been the best possible lesson for the audience.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:07:00 +0000

I think the sentiment is more along the lines of “We have so few good female-led successful shows, it’s kind of a bummer that we were SO close to having another one” (but instead had a successful show led by a dashing white male, where one of the girl’s major roles is to be the prize sought after by him and another white male).

By: C.Nate

C.Nate — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:02:00 +0000

Michael Keaton was going to play Jack BECAUSE he died in the first episode, he didn’t want to be in the series. When they decided to keep Jack, Keaton pulled out.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:59:00 +0000

I felt exactly the same way about “The X-Files” back in the ’90s. Then the movie that was supposed to finally answer all those Big Questions came out.

By: conflator

conflator — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:43:00 +0000

When it was airing, I quit partway into season two because I began to suspect we were all just being led on.

After reading this article yesterday, I started re-watching it on Netflix. At least this time I know there’s no there there, and it is entertaining.