All That Nerdy Stuff » Lost

Beautiful Cacaphony: the Lost Series Finale

Jason Ward — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:11:37 +0000

**SPOILERS BELOW, BEWARE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LOST SERIES FINALE BUT PLAN TO**

It’s a shame, really. I do love the cast and characters (except Kate–I hate Kate for being a stereotypically weakfemale lead, always making stupid decisions that seem to illustrate that “if she’d just listened to the man” things would have been better), who’ve managed to grow on me, each in their own, wonky ways, over the course of the six seasons leading up to the Lost Series Finale. The drag is that the resolution was disappointing enough that I really will never recommend anybody start from the beginning of the series and watch it. Great acting is always wonderful, but without a well executed overall story, what’s the point?

But enough about the cast and characters; everyone already knows those are wonderful. The problem with Lost was always in its plot, or more accurately, lack thereof. In the end it sort of works out, in some sense, because Cuse and Lindelof successfully managed to explore a number of interesting themes both in the main body of the series and in the finale, not the least of which are those about personal choice and sense of self in the formation of identity.

Like life itself, Lost ends with no real revelations, no magical key to sudden knowledge or wisdom, and with countless plot threads utterly ignored. Lost can be summed up as a “beautiful cacaphony,” leaving you starved for a melody, yet mesmerized by its absence. As a series, Lost is chaos incarnate, with very little meaning in most of its machinations. It’s like Cracker Jacks: tasty by the handful, but ultimately you really do need to eat a real meal.

Is it worth the time investment? If you got into the series at the very beginning and already had a sizable time investment, say maybe, the first 3-4 seasons, I’d say yes. If you’ve never seen Lost and are wondering if you should start, I’d say no. Why? Simply put, you can get all the major philosophical themes of Lost via countless other stories or films and understand its meaning in a few short hours, whereas the series will leave you, most of the time, confused and spinning your wheels. I submit that life does that enough already.

In the interest of helping you, dear reader, avoid spoilers in the event you haven’t seen the finale but plan to, this is your last chance. Beyond the break you’ll find a list of top Likes and Dislikes about the finale, and I hope you’ll share your thoughts on this non-event Event in the history of television.

Top things that disappointed me:
1. No mention of Walt. He went from being so UBER important to being an “also ran”
2. No “special revelation” of knowledge for characters who accepted being the Island’s guardians, they’re as clueless as everyone else.
3. Very little explanation of the alternative universe. Was it really JUST for them? Were they the only “dead” people in it or was EVERYONE in it “dead”?
4. When the Man in Black went into the hole with the Magic Lightbulb, he became a Smoke Monster. When two additional people went into the same hole, nothing happened to them. Why did the Man in Black become a smoke monster, exactly? Because he wore black?
5. No explanation for virtually anything that happened on the island over the years. Christian’s empty coffin, the Time Travelling, the Polar Bear, Walt appearing to people in visions, women unable to have babies, the Dharma Initiative–everything appears to have been a dead end.

Top things I ENJOYED:
1. Thematically, the idea that YOU have to decide the person you are, and not fall into the trap of what other people TELL you you are.
2. Thematically, the idea that the people in your lives, whether friend or foe, are there because you need them and they need you, to help shape the course of your life.
3. The “connection” of the living characters to the dead and the reunions of people who loved but had lost each other; those scenes were SO effing sad, I love it!
4. That all the characters died in the end. No possibility of “Lost: Return to the Island!” in five years.
5. The urge to wonder and criticize: Lost did a lot of things well: connecting the dots of a coherent story is not one of them. What’s an interesting emergent from the chaos, though, is the desire to think about what happened, how and if any of it connected or didn’t connect, and to think about abstract ideas such as identity of self, relationships, etc. It’s unsatisfying, but at the same time cool, and in a sense it mirrors life–there are no easy and guaranteed answers; from childhood until death we must always question, always wonder. That’s a decent moral.

All in all I feel both cheated by and glad that I watched it. I wouldn’t recommend the series to anyone else because thematically the whole series could easily be summed up in a 2-3 hour movie (See: Pleasantville, among others), but, having gotten on board not knowing what to expect, it was an interesting–if frequently frustrating–ride.

Tell us what you watch, win a game!

The Web N3rd — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:57:25 +0000

I’m just going to admit it right now: I am lazy and forgetful about certain things. One of those things involves giveaways, and this is one that I meant to do waaaaaay back during E3 of this year. Sadly, I suck, and I tucked these snazzy little cards into a backpack pocket and promptly forgot about them. However, you’re in luck: they’re still valid!

So what I’ve got are three copies of Battlefield 1943, which is a digital download. I have two copies for Playstation 3 and one copy for Xbox 360. The way this will work is simple: In the comments, tell us what your three favorite nerdy shows are and a sentence or two about why you watch them. We’ll sift through the comments and choose from those who make their case with the most…I dunno, I want to say “elegance,” but on the other hand, maybe “humor” would be a better criterion. In any case, get commenting and we’ll select the three luck winners on Halloween!

Nerdy TV: Can Dexter Please Kill Kate from “Lost”?

Jason Ward — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:31:21 +0000

I spent the last 3 hours catching up with the most recent 2 episodes of Lost, and finished the evening off with 2 episodes of Season 3 of Dexter to get the rancid taste out of my mouth. As usual this season, Lost continued along its path of predictable horse shit where the characters are concerned, with the promise of hope in Sayid’s shooting of young Ben quickly snuffed out by the ever-stupid Kate hurrying off to help save the little future genocidal maniac and manipulator. After all, no child deserves to die, even if you have factual knowledge that in the not too distant future he’s going to murder all of your friends and a bunch of egocentric but otherwise rather harmless Dharma initiative clowns (and does anybody REALLY buy these quacks as Scientists?) before telling a massive series of lies to manipulate you and said friends into being trapped–again–on a bizarro island that just so happens to also be a fucking time machine.

Lost, I am sad to say, has long since jumped the shark. Of course, that much was obvious the minute the writers decided it’d be fun to move the island. Through time. But only some of its occupants actually do the time travelling, not all of them. The show is an interesting mishmash of brilliance and epic stupidity. On the one hand, the depth of character history (not to be confused with character development) is just phenomenal, with all the show’s major cast members enjoying what might be the biggest backlog of info that any single series has ever assembled for its ensemble. The acting is also consistently top notch from all corners (at least, once they got rid of the annoying Michael, Walt’s father, who was never anything but a waste of space). The problem is that beyond the late season 3 deliverance into ultra-bizarro land, in which a seemingly endless mess of mystical crap is piled on top of the character and island mythology so as to confuse the hell out of the average viewer, the show has simply devolved into a morass of unpredictable events and utterly predictable character responses to said events.

As evidence of this, I was earlier this very day discussing the show with a friend who is also a fan of the show (much more than I am, but then, I’m starting to feel about Lost as I do about Heroes: sick of the bullshit), and mentioned I’d be catching up with the most recent episodes later on. I commented that my hopes and expectations were twofold: first, I wanted Sayid to kill Young Ben (and indeed, he shot the little bastard, but in typical Lost style he failed to finish the job properly), and second I wanted Jack to refuse to save the little twerp. I theorized though that even if Sayid were to attempt killing YB, the ever-stupid Kate would either interfere with the attempt or would otherwise act to save him if indeed someone managed to make the attempt on his life.

And that, my friends, is exactly what happened. Which brings me back around to our sleek and sexy title: Can Dexter please kill Kate? My God, that woman has got to be the most stupid female character on television, disguised as the “strong” female when she’s in fact anything but. What she is, plainly enough, is a weak-willed whiner who can never make a rational choice, forever relying on the blind wailings of her emotional state of the moment as if she were an uneducated child or a rabid animal. Enough is truly enough-kill this character off soon.

Dexter, as I proceed into Season 3, continues to be brilliant. In a break with the typical pattern of television, where some episodes are good while others are less so, every single episode from the first of season 1 to the second of season 3 has been superb. Lost fans, you only wish your show had the complexity, intelligence and cleverness of Dexter. Whereas the former show asks endless meaningless questions, Dexter asks serious questions about the nature of life, of good and evil and of man’s relationship to all three. And it provides answers that are, if not conclusive, at least, satisfying. They fit well within the context of our characters and are conveyed smartly and effectively by what is truly the finest ensemble cast on television.

Nerdy TV: Lost is truly, truly Lost

Jason Ward — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:27:13 +0000

Let me preface this with some fundamentally important information.

1. I am just at the end of Season 3. I have now seen seasons 1 and 2 twice in their entirety but am not yet caught up to season 5.

2. I love great character development. Lost gives me this by the acre.

3. I love great plot development, which even the best characters need in order for me to care about their plight. Lost is devoid of plot.

With all that said, I’m going to start blogging about each episode as I catch up from here. Recognize, therefore, that I’m a little behind and will catch up shortly. When I began watching Lost, I was quite entranced. The show was rich with character development (and it still is) and in the first season there was a fair amount of plot development as well. Most of the time, it even related to the character development in some way, which was pretty cool. I’m not at all sure there was any kind of epic point to it, but nevertheless it was quite enjoyable.

Season 2 came along and that was also very good. Not quite up to the first season, as I thought it was a little too…convenient that the cast suddenly took it upon themselves to press a button and save the world, but hey, there was food and music in the newly discovered hatch, so whatever. Sometimes I’d do wacky shit to get my hands on a bag of chips, too. I enjoyed, in both season 1 and 2, that the writers did a good job of getting us attached to a character (even ones as shallow as Boone and his fuck-buddy sister, Shannon) and then killing off said character. The only time I saw this fail was with Anna-Lucia, who was a horrible character whose death couldn’t come fast enough for me. When she died, I cheered. Come to think of it, if they get around to killing the Juliet character, I’ll cheer then too.

But then Season 3 came along and brought with it questions but very few answers. Is there a time traveler on the island? Who the fuck knows. As far as we’ve been shown the dude might just be an unhappy Medium. At the end of Season 2 we were teased that his former girlfriend somehow knew something about the island, about the fact that Desmond was on it, and aside from the arrival of a chick in a chopper late in the season we haven’t heard another peep about it. The first 6 episodes of the season were painfully slow and boring, with virtually no plot development whatsoever. The next several episodes became pretty good–and then the bottom fell out as the previous “go to” good guy, Jack, became an untrustworthy prick, Locke’s quest for truth got him shot by a man it’s been clear was a liar and a sociopath for, oh, the entire fucking season–and that’s just about when the ghost showed up. Either that or Sociopath Ben is secretly a ventriloquist to boot.

It’s bizarre enough that we’ve watched the cast get chased around the island by what sounds like a robotic dinosaur yet mysteriously looks like a whisp of smoke (and how does smoke make any of those robot sounds or stomp the ground or dig holes, by the way?). It’s also pretty damn odd that we keep seeing polar bears on a tropical island somewhere in the pacific, that now we’re told that flight 815′s complete wreckage was found with all passengers dead several miles underwater and oh–we’ve heard no mention whatsoever of the “very special boy” Walt since Season 2′s finale. Apparently this kid was uber-important to the mysterious “Others”, and yet now he’s nowhere to be found nor heard of (yes, I know he left the island in a boat with his jackass of a father) and mysterious crap keeps happening. Seriously, I haven’t seen a plot become this convoluted and pointless since the X-Files crapped in its own corn flakes not too long before Mulder left the show.

It’s fairly evident what’s happening on this island. For whatever reason, and contrary to all laws of reality, people with intense desires or thoughts for certain things can make them come true on the island. It’s why Walt was able to make Polar bears appear. It’s why Shannon saw flashes of Walt when he had gone missing and she was feeling all guilty and shitty for doing a sloppy job taking care of the dog he’d left her. It’s why Locke is able to walk again. And it’s why Ben, who clearly has some mommy and daddy issues and blames his own birth for the death of his mother, is subconciously making it impossible for women on the island to have babies without dying. Where the ghost fits in is anyone’s freaking guess.

For a time after getting past those first 6 episodes of the third season (you know, the pointless ones where almost no plot development occurred) I was beginning to think that the writers had gotten something figured out. Now I’m starting to think they’ve just hit the paote pipe a little too much. Beyond the increasingly ridiculous amounts of coincidence (now Claire is suddenly Jack’s half sister? WTF?) Let’s just get down to reality here, people: wishing and dreaming for things to happen doesn’t make them happen. Actively pursuing a goal and accomplishing the steps needed to get there is what makes things happen. That process is also known as “working your ass off”. Believing otherwise is living in a fantasy world, and if you’re going to buy into that kind of crap you might as well sign yourself up for the nearest cult waiting for the next Jesus-Comet to fly by, and kill yourself so you can hitch a ride to Heaven.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate fantasty and science fiction a great deal. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were both a pair of sci-fantasy shows that I think remain among the very best television ever produced, but both were always clear that theirs were worlds of fantasy. I’ll also add that both had vastly superior plot development to accompany their rich character development (and I’ll be fair here: Lost’s characters have much more backstory development, with the possible exception of the title character in Angel; unfortunately there is precious little plot advancement to go along with it).

I intend to give Lost a fair shake. I’ll keep watching and catch up, and will follow it to the end. I can only hope that the series gets better, because right now all I feel is a bit disgusted by the stupidity of it. Oh, sure, there’s a fair amount of philosophy underpinning the show, but very little of it is well acted upon by the writers, and primarily that’s because there appears to be no real focus or direction. More than anything else it seems like we have a long series of stumbles from one weird event to another, with a desperate grab for something just a little bit weirder every few episodes. Where this is going and why remains a complete mystery, and I’m not convinced that even the writers know. Like so many other shows that dabble in the fantastical, it appears that Lost has become, as its title announces clearly…lost.