And those things were solved. In fact, as you even say yourself, they were SPELLED OUT FOR YOU. And the people who are all butthurt about "mysteries" that they didn't solve either A) Just don't know because they haven't looked. or B) Are making mysteries out of something with no mystery. Didn't you see the guy for 10 or 20 posts talk about PICTURE FRAMES?? The big storyline that didn't REALLY get resolved was Walt, and that was for obvious reasons. Unless you're going to throw him down a magic well and have him pop up again 3 feet taller and 3 years older.

grunch:

if i only watched the pilot and the finale, the ending would have made perfect sense, and i would be completely satisfied with it. unfortunately, i also watched everything in between. i also now believe the writers "always knew what the ending would be" because it had nothing to do with anything, so they could happily make up whatever else they wanted along the way.

luckily, season 6, culminating with that POS "across the sea" episode, completely prepared me for the letdown that the lost finale was destined to be, so at least i could go into it with the lowest expectations possible, and watch it for what i knew it would be.

a few people yesterday and today have made the argument to me along the lines of "but now people will keep discussing the mysteries and everyone will have their own theory! how fun!", but if there exists no actual answer, that's just a stupid exercise in futility. i know there are plenty of people happy with that ending, but i will go back to what i said a couple weeks ago - those people either had extremely low expectations, or are in some sort of denial. blah to lost, i am (sadly) glad it is over.

so what time is breaking bad on?

There were 3 options with Walt other than abandoning the story:

1. Creative people writing for a show where time travel is possible could work his growth into the plot.

2. They could have originally hired a young looking 18 year old to play a 15 year old because it didn't really matter to the plot if Walt was 11 or 15.

3. Keep the same actor and ask the audience that was asked to believe in a magical island to tolerate the fact that children grow.

I'm fairly happy with how the Walt story ended, and I will buy that they didn't intend for him to be a long lasting character, but to say that his growth spurt caused them to drop his character sounds like a cop out.

Yeah this, well said.

Spot on. Here's Lindelof on the Numbers back in 2008:

First of all the writers then totally contradicted this by offering the Valenzetti non-explanation. But secondly, I've read this kind of analogy a lot and it's complete nonsense. The Force was never set up as some kind of mystery that needed explanation. And the reason Qui-Gon's explanation ruined it is that it was originally set up as a mystical Tao-like energy and the explanation in prosaic scientific terms contradicted this.

Stamping the numbers everywhere and then not having an explanation is like stamping "BLACK CONSORTIUM" or some creepy-sounding name like that on a bunch of stuff, having dramatic music play every time you see the stamp, and then at the end going "Oh that would be a lot worse if we explained it". Is it really Lindelof's contention, for instance, that the numbers having to be entered into the computer every 108 minutes would be more fun to rewatch if you know that at the end of the show the numbers are arbitrary and there's no explanation?

LOL at people saying that the ending sucked and was uninteresting smack in the middle of a 2k post thread discussing the last episode. It's already the 5th largest OOTV thread and its only discussing the final episode while the other longer threads are discussing entire seasons or series.

The ending allowed all of us to discuss the ending and its possible meanings for a long time to come. If the show ended and wrapped everything up in a nice little bow, do you think this thread would be half as long?

wrt the picture frames, I was pretty confused and interested in what that was all about when it happened. I watched and re-watched the scenes over and over.

I haven't seen it recently, but I eventually realized that the same pictures hung on the wall downstairs were also hung on the upstairs wall outside the dead kids bedroom. You couldn't really see them as well there, unless you'd beeen re-watching the scenes around it over and over!

I was pretty happy to conclude that the frames probably got moved around when they shot the upstairs scene, since I'm sure it's common to recycle props. There might have been a gap between filming or re-filming any of the scenes.

I really wanted it to mean something though!

Of all the pointless questions, I would like to know about the food drop! Stuff like the numbers doesn't really matter as much.

Its not that they werent resolved, its that they were weak plots to begin with and their resolution involved many characters basically spelling it out for us. I wanted better plots, ie like the hatch, and resolved in a way that was less beating me over the head like i'm a moran, ie the hatch. I mean mabey its too much to ask for a group of writers to maintain that level of consistency over 6 seasons, I dont know of any show that has really done it. But we got what we got and many people were not satisfied with it.

thank you for making my point - everyone is now doing the "writers'" job for them, because they clearly couldn't handle it themselves.

that actually would have been typical Lost fashion by season 6 standards(smoke monster? jacob threw MIB into a cave and he came out smoke, LOL). all the fans that would have liked more answers or were as intrigued by the island/mystery side as they were by the characters, have 2 major gripes, either storylines that were abandoned or poor writing that resulted in large gaps in continuity that have been pointed out ad nauseum in this thread and countless others.

the walt example is just the most blatant and obvious. and yeah i can live with the fact that they abandoned his arc just like im ok with the fact they killed off Eko when he was my favorite character...except that they brought him(walt) back for cameos and referenced how special he was for every season leading up to six. so i guess thats my fault for thinking we'd get even a small tidbit of something? oh yes, not to mention the showrunners said 3 days before the finale at a Q and A in NYC that walt would be back...

I'm confused, was the hatch a good or bad plot?

Also, I wasn't surprised by much of anything the last few seasons after I realized what the island was. Then everything made "sense" (although I'm sure I've forgotten a hundred tiny-mysteries through the storyline, like the Hurley-Bird). But to me that's a sign of good writing, not bad. Most shows are TERRIBLE. With TERRIBLE writing. When I find something that actually keeps up with how I would have done it, it's super rare and I always enjoy it.

Also Golden_Rhino, it's not like they just abandoned the story. He was even shown in a later season in order to try to tie up the story. In the end, if getting rid of Michael took getting rid of Walt, then farewell to both of em

Season 6: LAX
Rose says to Jack "You can let go now."

Season 6: Recon
That evening, James arrives home and prepares a microwave frozen dinner. He sits down and watches an old episode of Little House on the Prairie. A little girl, Laura, tells her father that she would be devastated if anything ever happened to him and her mother. Her father tells her that if you live your life worrying about the future, life will be over before you know it. He tells her that people aren't really gone once they die, and that you hold on to their good memories until you see them again.

Haven't read this thread yet but will do. LOST has been my favourite tv show since it aired in 2004 and I've just finished watching the finale. First time I've been really disappointed in an episode, but overall I feel it's good that the show finally has got some closure. Eventhough the finale was a letdown for me I do believe that I will look back at LOST as one of the most interesting and entertaining shows ever created. LOST<3

yes this is what im talking about, these are intricacies that make lost special, and there were these moments in season 6, they were just heavily outweighed by contradictions in the writing and dead screen time with pointless dialogue.

another neat "easter egg" is in the vending machine with sawyer and juliet there is an "avalon" candy bar along with the apollo bar(nice nod to season 1) that sawyer is trying to get.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon

does that mean definitively that the island is "Avalon?" no, but its fun/neat that they put that in there.

I mean, this might be what the show was about for you, but it very clearly wasn't the ultimate purpose of the show, nor the intention of the writers. Just because you wanted answers does not mean you deserve them, and they certainly were not promised. If anything Darlton belabored the pressure from fans to provide answers, and did not want to vanquish the mystery they had created.

This show did an excellent job of putting us in the position of the lostaways, so what was meaningful and mysterious to them, at any given point of the show, is what was meaningful and mysterious to us. At one point we knew nothing of the others, and neither did the lostaways, so ofc we thought The Others were exceptionally important. The same goes for Dharma and Jughead and Widmore/Ben and Alpert and The Hatch and Jacob's Lists, The Rules, etc, etc...

I said it already, but, ultimately, what we learn is that humans sublimate meaning on to all of these things, when in fact they are just man made constructs that are not of supreme consequence. The only thing that matters is the people who we shared our trials, tribulations, loves, and losses with.

I mean, who really gives a **** about Walt's Powers, or Dharma Food Drops, or why Libby was in the Hospital. NONE OF IT MATTERS. The shows essence has nothing to do with answers or mysteries. In the end, they are simply compelling storytelling devices to deliver messages about the human condition. The writers have been telling us what the show was about since the very beginning...

"LIVE TOGETHER, DIE ALONE"








































and once your dead, get back together, so you can move on!

Ya the hatch was good. I had very little interest in season 1, but I was totally drawn in by the promise of finding out about the hatch. The scene with locke and the hatch light going off was amazing, and then we basically got a whole season about the hatch. There was a progression to the story line that wrapped a lot of things up while opening up a lot of new questions. I think the biggest problem is when they started to introduce time travel, the show then became more about shifting the characters around and their interelationships, which isnt a bad thing but they lost a great part of the mystery the show was trying to go for in the first couple of seasons.

I just felt they could have done a lot more with the show given what they had started off with. All in all it wasnt terrible, just not what I expected given my expectations from the first couple of seasons.

Yeah I wasn't a big fan of the time travel, either. But look waht it gave us:

most of the posts in this thread are discussing why the ending did or didn't suck, not what it meant.

Top Series I've seen in my lifetime (non comedies) - if we are just talking network TV then LOST goes to #1. 24 would normally be on here but like the last 2-3 years killed it for me post David Palmer.
I'm only including series that have concluded.

1. The Wire (5 Seasons) - Cable
2. LOST (6 Seasons) - Network
3. Sopranos (5 Season) - Cable
4. The Shield (6 Seasons) - Cable
5. Six Feet Under ( 5 Seasons ) - Cable
6. Buffy ( 7 Seasons) - Cable
7. The West Wing -mainly the Bartlett years - (7 Seasons) - Network
8. Angel ( 5 Seasons) - Network
9. Firefly - really shouldn't be on here given how short it lasted but whatever - ( 1 Season) - Network
10. The X-Files - went to **** once DD left - (9 Seasons) - Network

fair enough, lol

I think in 5 years, when I hear of or remember LOST, this image will the first in my head. I honestly thought it was a brilliant final shot...

I didn't think of it at the time, but even Jack's wound to the torso is mirrored from the pilot. My sensitive side says "Jack didn't need to die, Desmond could have put the cork back in, and Jack could be healed by the island again", but that would not have really worked.

Oh well

Agreed 100%. I've been thinking about how great this last scene was since the finale aired. I may or may not have cried.

Round about now is when I would be thinking of firing up Tivo to watch Lost...

Whatever people say about the finale, the final scene was amazing.

I think my only real beef ATM is the lack of explanation behind the smoke monster especially being thrown into the light and his creation or recreation. I can suspend disbelief IRT just about everything else, but the lack of back story and the tease of the Mother being smokey really bothers me.