Messages

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Episode 4x05 / Re: Dude, that sucked

« on: February 29, 2008, 09:07:42 AM »

I think Writers_Strike disliked it too. As he said, "Phone call = fixed time traveling just ruined it for me."

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Episode 4x05 / Re: Dude, that sucked

« on: February 28, 2008, 11:31:18 PM »

...it was the brain collapsing with the back and forth and not being able to deal with it.

Oh, my bad. I mistook that for something contrived. 

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Episode 4x05 / Re: A-HA!!!

« on: February 28, 2008, 11:28:12 PM »

Ben indeed sent Michael on a bearing of 325.

http://www.lost-tv.com/transcripts/Live_Together_Lost.htm

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Episode 4x05 / Dude, that sucked

« on: February 28, 2008, 11:24:02 PM »

We've been waiting 2-3 years for something definitive about the island, and we get time travel?!

And for a climax, we cured a brain aneurysm with a phone call???

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Episode 4x02 / Michael and Walt

« on: February 13, 2008, 09:59:02 PM »

A little food for thought. How can the outside world still think everyone on 815 is dead if Michael and Walt escaped? They must not have ever made it back to the mainland.

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Season 4 / Re: I'm Still Wondering...

« on: February 04, 2008, 11:58:09 AM »

I can understand your frustration ... but that is what makes Lost a show in its own.  As I tell my friends who get frustrated for the same reason, if you don't like ... that everything gets resolved by the end of every episode, find a new Drama to watch like ER or CSI.

I don't need conclusions after only forty minutes, but I do think three years is more than pushing it.

I still remember an old show called Twin Peaks. It was also arc-driven and extremely popular. But "the storylines became obscure and drawn out" [*]. Viewers got frustrated, ratings dropped, and the show was eventually canceled. Lost has survived on other merits, but I think it could have been so much better if the timing for questions and answers were handled differently.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying I want all the answers sooner. I'm actually saying that I think the questions should have come later.

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Season 4 / Re: I'm Still Wondering...

« on: February 04, 2008, 11:13:52 AM »

As far as the hatch... I am going to assume that you are serious in your questions and explain just what happened. 

The Swan Station was a station designed to electrically discharge the huge magnetic force that the island generates

Well yes, my question was serious. And that question still stands, because I don't see where the show justifies your conclusion. In Orientation, we learned that "Station 3 was originally constructed as a laboratory where scientists could work to understand the unique electromagnetic fluctuations emanating from this sector of the island." So all we really know is that the island is unique, and that the Swan was a labratory. Anything else—including that the station was "designed to electrically discharge the huge magnetic force"—is really only speculation.

This is why I say these questions are getting moldy, because when you look back, the show actually told us very, very little, and the Swan now seems like an insignificant and forgotten chapter of Lost.

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Season 4 / Re: I'm Still Wondering...

« on: February 03, 2008, 05:00:12 PM »

The disease is just a front for the purge.

It's a decent enough guess, but I don't think it fits with everything else we know. We know Daniel killed her crew because they were infected. But the toxin used in the purge seemed to kill within seconds. That doesn't give Daniel much time to decide that her crew and her husband must all die and shoot them herself. It doesn't fit with the Lost Experience either.

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Season 4 / I'm Still Wondering...

« on: February 02, 2008, 06:31:11 PM »

With the recent discussions of whether Jacob and Smoky are the same entity, I remembered Daniel from season 1 calling Smoky a security system. "It's purpose it that of any security system: to protect something." Now most people when they see a man-eating, tree-ripping black cloud wouldn't just assume that it's the latest tech gadget. So what has Daniel seen that we don't know about?

And while we're at it... what about all the other loose ends? The numbers clearly are more than just part of an equation. They've brought Hurley terrible luck, they were the code at the Swan station, and the timer (108 minutes) is the sum of the numbers. So what's up with them? For that matter, what was the Swan station? It had something to do with magnetism, and then it imploded in a bright white flash, leaving Locke and Eko scattered around the island and Desmond in the future. So what's up with that? And for that matter, what's up with Desmond seeing the future? What about Walt's powers. What's the disease that supposedly infected Daniel's crew (and I think it was mentioned in the Lost Experience as well). Why did the Others want children? Who do the Others deem to be "good" people, and why does it matter? Why did the psychic insist that Claire must raise her baby? What's special about Aaron?

These questions are getting moldy. Does anyone have any new thoughts on them?

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LOST Talk / Poll: LOST Viewers

« on: August 16, 2007, 08:48:42 AM »

According to Wikipedia, LOST's second season had fewer viewers than the first, and the third season had fewer viewers than the second (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(TV_series)#Ratings). And season three itself showed a general decline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28season_3%29#Ratings).

So, do you think LOST will continue to decline into the fourth season, or will it rebound?

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LOST Talk / Re: If I Had Creative Control Over Lost....

« on: June 16, 2007, 06:11:35 PM »

I only ever get left with my jaw unhinged at season finales.

I actually think that's the way it needs to be. A show needs to spend some time establishing a status quo, to get the viewers to think they know what to expect. And that's when you blow the expectations. Find the one thing no one thinks you're ever going to do, or the one character no one think you're ever going to kill. (Set 'em up, knock 'em down.) Those are the powerful finales. (But it doesn't need to be just the finale. Two or three of those super powerful episodes per season is about right, I think.)

LOST has had so many cliffhangers that fizzled out and went nowhere that I just don't get excited about them anymore.

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LOST Talk / Re: If I Had Creative Control Over Lost....

« on: June 16, 2007, 01:45:52 PM »

I think one of the reasons its never gotten to me is that I watched an entire season and a half in 4 days to catch up during season 2 (Pilot through Maternity Leave)... so I never had really had to time to stop and think about things that far back

lol... I did almost exactly the same! I came on board to this show when season 2 was just starting to air. I got to watch all of season 1 and a portion of season 2 back-to-back. And those arbitrary cliffhangers I was talking about before (the kind of cliffhanger that's resolved in the first 3 minutes of the next episode, sometimes just finishing a person's sentence) seemed so much more fun when I could go straight to the next episode.

But now, for the rest of season 2 and all of season 3, I had to wait at least a full week to see how it's resolved. The anticipation grows during that time, and I start thinking to myself, "This better turn into something good." But it rarely does. Those cliffhangers started to become a letdown rather than an excitement. Like Jack's "What would it take to raise an army?"

And that is the fundamental problem I have with LOST. The story is good, but I think the structure is bad. It's not like a book where you can read straight through the night if you were really into it. With LOST, we're forced to wait weeks and months and years.

The 4400 and the new BSG are both going into their 4th season. I love those shows, and I've also never become agitated with them as I have with LOST. Those shows seem to recognize the medium through which they are telling their stories. For the most part, each episode in those shows can stand on its own, and yet is also a logical sequel to the one before. And the mysteries and plot threads in those shows don't go for much more than about a season before being resolved. And when they are, they're replaced with new mysteries and plot threads. (Usually the new mysteries and plots logically follow from the resolution of the old ones.)

I could keep rambling, but you get the idea. When it comes to a weekly TV show... arbitrary cliffhangers, bad; logical sequels, good. 

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LOST Talk / Re: If I Had Creative Control Over Lost....

« on: June 16, 2007, 12:25:39 AM »

I didn't mean to come off like I was attacking. Sorry. I've become so irritated with this show that I think it rubs off here.

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LOST Talk / Re: If I Had Creative Control Over Lost....

« on: June 15, 2007, 07:56:50 PM »

The voices in the jungle were always inferred to be the Others, watching, plotting, deciding what to do next.

No offense, but there's no chance those whispers were the Others. There never was a chance. Did you think the Others were hiding in the tree tops like the men of Sherwood forest, whispering to each other? A real whisper couldn't even be heard from that far away. Usually someone whispers to you from within a few feet. So these whispers always seemed to be another supernatural something. Either way, it was a mystery introduced very early and then forgotten about for 2 1/2 years, just like so many others.

I've always thought that the sickness as Desmond and those before him knew it was a hoax - this was shown when Desmond finally left the hatch.  The counter-example here would be Rouseau's compatriots.

Having both examples and counter-examples means we really don't know what's up with this alleged sickness.

The numbers were explained in the LOST experience last summer.  Though you're right, it hasn't happened in the context of the show yet.

Yes, the numbers have not been explained in the show, where they ultimately must be. It also doesn't explain Hurley's cursed-ness.

I feel like the Swan station was explained.... The Swan Station was doing what its inhabitants thought they were doing - controlling an electromagnetic abnormality.

Abnormality. That's a word we use when we have no clue what something is. What was it before the Swan was put there? What did it do when the hatch imploded? (Something abnormal enough to induce time travel.) What was "the incident"? Why did Walt (or maybe Smoky) say the button was bad?

If you think about it, all we really learned was that it's not a hoax. That's it.

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LOST Talk / Re: If I Had Creative Control Over Lost....

« on: June 15, 2007, 01:24:02 PM »

I think the reason that this debate persists is that, on the whole, the television viewing populace do not turn on the TV to think.  They turn it on to relax and shut off the brain.  A show that is designed around pervasive mysteries and questions does not fit this norm.

You may be right about the viewing populace on the whole, but that's not true of me. My favorite shows have been ones that ask the hard questions and then leave it to the viewers to decided the answer for themselves.

It's not the existence of mysteries that's the problem. It's that those mysteries are dragged on, even long after our curiosity has turned into frustration. The majority of the mysteries from the very beginning haven't even played any role in the story yet -- Adam and Eve, Walt's powers, Aaron, voices in the jungle, the sickness, the numbers, even the hatch (Swan station) has fallen by the wayside now.

Obviously the writers are putting lots of thought and care into when and how we get answers. But I think they needed to put just as much thought and care into when and how we got the questions.