The whole "making it up as they go along" criticism that LOST endured at the time is basically now understood as standard practice in serialized TV writing. You can criticize the conclusions, but it's silly to knock that method. Vince Gilligan has been very up front about how he had no f'ing idea what Walt was going to do with that M60 when it was revealed in the flash-forward from the first episode of Breaking Bad's final season. But he thought it was a cool reveal to start the season, and he came up with an idea, basically at the 11th hour, that seemed to satisfy most viewers. But just google any interview with Gilligan about Breaking Bad's conclusion and you'll learn that they were completely making it up as they went along - to the point where Gilligan was kind of going nuts about it.

Now let's contrast that with GoT, which to my eye, had all its actual plot beats and destinations fairly well mapped out (probably with a lot of help from George) - only all the stuff in between is a complete ****ing mess.

As for LOST, some of its mystery boxes (like the hatch) were opened and explained. Other mysteries were, imo, just actual MacGuffins that viewers were mistaking for mystery boxes whose contents were relevant to the plot. There are valid discussions and criticisms to be had about which promises LOST implicitly made and failed to deliver on, but there's an extreme side to that debate where people just complained about every little thing that was left hanging.

I think one additional thing worth mentioning is that Lindelof was forced to expand the runway by the network and only after much back and forth with ABC was he able to secure his end date and start to wrap things up - and even then, the network sort of insisted on an extra season or two than Lindelof really wanted. But he was essentially told by his bosses to keep making up more **** up as he went along.

Benioff and Weiss, as showrunners, were given complete carte blanche to have exactly as many episodes as they needed to tell their story and somehow the runway wound up being way too short and wasn't fully paved either.

The latter scenario deserves more derision imo.

Cool, thanks for this post. I agree 100% about BCS, but some others (Nath, mainly) have pointed out (astutely) that BCS is a show about a guy named Jimmy McGill for like 5 seasons. As much as I've enjoyed it, the show has been too slow.

I mean, say what you want about the show answering questions, but...



I mean, I'll never rewatch lost, it will be a waste of time. This is someone who thoroughly enjoyed it when I first saw it. It literally satisfied me at first then I was disgusted by it. If you enjoy it, cool.

I doubt there is any other youtube video that exists that could have more accurately reflected my point...

Eh, yes and no. "Making it up as you go" isn't necessarily a bad thing; the people complaining about LOST aren't complaining about it being made up as they went along so much as that there was the pretense that actually there was a huge mystery central to everything that would explain it all once it was finally revealed, and then that turning out not to be the case.

I think it's probably not a coincidence that the M-60 and the Captain Nazi Killer act on Walt's part was probably the weakest part of the final season; they wrote themselves something to write to without any way how to get there, and then had to put together something that worked in that regard. A better example of making it up on the fly that worked was season 3 of Breaking Bad, and it worked because they didn't place a phony mystery at the heart of the season or pick an endpoint for the season and then work to that; they wrote from what is arguably the key question to effective dramatic storytelling: What has to happen next? (Even then, some episodes stalled on the question; but the important thing is that they didn't stick to the original plan of making the Cousins the villain of season 3, once it became obvious that the two of them would never just hang out and wait to have a showdown with Walt.)

Enjoyed reading this discussion. Quality series' to me are like star sports careers in that most of the great ones go on too long and end badly. I grew up in the 80s and when I think of Kareem I think of an old, bald, average at best center who had been around forever. I had no appreciation for how he completely dominated the league in the 70s, totally insane numbers for that era. I guess a fair comparison could be The Simpsons.

The most fondly remembered great shows are those that weren't around long enough to suck, like Deadwood. Maybe a fair comparison is Sandy Koufax.

Given enough time and hype both great athletes and great shows seem to become caricatures of themselves as they become their own brands. I thought Mad Men stayed pretty good all the way through, although its peak wasn't ever high enough for GOAT consideration. Probably a few athlete comparisons here, like John Elway.

As someone who knows TV wrote somewhere once, Cheers was able to stay great for its entire run because it essentially reinvented itself twice, which enabled them to come up with fresh material despite limited cast turnover. Granted, the slapstick-style writing of the final act may not appeal to those who were used to the more subtle comedy which preceded it, but it was still very good.

There are a few series I've never seen which are considered great early on but awful at the end, like LOST. I'm not sure I'll ever start those because I would get too aggravated by the impending suckiness. If I had never started watching GOT I'm not sure I ever would after reading this thread.

I started watching Cheers around 2006 or so. I thought very highly of it then - it was funny!

I don't think Cheers, or the Cheers style, is that good in today's year.

But I think you're onto something, Tuqer.

What's INTERESTING is the complaints about GoT is NOT that it has gone on too long - rather, that it hasn't gone on long enough, which is the main reason things are being tied up in such a ****ty fashion. Certainly a unique situation!

THe problem as i see it in breaking bad is how boring walt jr is the entire show. He doesnt do anything. I think skylar is super unfairly pegged as a *****, and shes a great charcter. But walt jr jsnt. He sucks.

This is pretty interesting to me. Did you watch it as it originally aired? Because I think the current culture of mistrusting police definitely harms the viewing of it (not to mention the use of shaky cam cinematography which is fairly dated nowadays). I watched the series a couple of years and I had a lot of trouble emphasizing with the main character right off the bat, I mean he looks like a stereotypical douchebag cop. The side characters are great though, especially Walton Goggins. I agree with you though that the series finale is top tier though, just gut punching even though you know what's going to happen. It's like the complete opposite of Game of Thrones.

This has been a nice discussion.

I'm a big fan of Lost. I think it's a perfect example of a show that had a good premise, good casting, and an ending mapped out from the start which was landing well until it became so popular that it needed to extend it's story for more seasons thanks to $$$$. Now you have to prolong the story, make up new stuff for the characters to do, and make sure the important ones remain where they need to be for the ending and it just feels different. Once you started getting off the island, having characters spin their wheels, and start contradicting their previous motivations it just hit a steep decline. It was still an elite few seasons and "The Constant" remains one of my five favorite episodes of television ever. It just needed to be a 4 season show instead of 6.

As for GoT, the thing that keeps bothering me about it now that I've time to decompress is that George gave them his "three major surprises for the end" way back at the start. I think we can safely now call those as the Night King binding a dragon and knocking down the wall, Jon being a Targ, and Dany going Mad. If you had those plot points back in season 2, how do you miss so bad on creating a good lead up and explanation for those? The whole scenario that set up for the Night King to get a dragon was out of nowhere nonsense that made zero sense. Jon finds out he's a Targ in episode 1 or 2 of the last season and had gone on a dragon ride and abandoned Ghost and his Stark heritage in the span of 2.5 episodes. There's definitely signs for Dany doing what she did throughout the show but the final pieces of the descent just come out of nowhere. She goes from holding off on marching to KL so that she can save the realm from the White Walkers, gives a speech about winning the Great War now they need to win the Last War, and then she's burning hundreds of thousands of innocents.

They had 7 years to make sure that at least those three major things landed well and they failed miserably. Even if the concept of "Dany was always a monster and just was held in check by her advisers which promptly kept dying until she had no leash anymore" is what they were going for*, when you receive this much backlash from it that means you didn't set up your character and situation to develop to that end in a way your audience accepts.

So my point is: If they couldn't make any of those three things land after 7 years of notice, what would another season or two have actually accomplished for them?




*I think it's what George was going for. Along with some form of "I tried to rule Mereen your way and it failed. I'll rule KL my way".

Initial watch: God Skylar is ****ing awful just shut up and show me Walt doing Walt things.

Rewatches: Everything Skylar says is accurate and Walt is a giant POS

Breaking Bad got lucky in that it got picked up by Netflix before the finale season premiered. If you watched it week to week it wasn't that good of a show until the last half of the 3rd season till the end of the fourth. It benefits a lot from the bingeability since the Bryan Cranston and eventually Aaron Paul carry the show on their backs until Gus arrives.

Lost is the perfect encapsulation of a bygone era of TV. The pacing and flow of it, not to mention the multiple threads that never get resolved, project perfectly the dead era of the "water cooler" show. What will happen next? Where is this going? (See mystery box link by nath)

Even nowadays it's almost like watching something from another time, like the jarring acting from early black and white movies. I think Lost definitely delivered some of the best moments in TV ever (We're gonna have to take the boy...) but a big part of that suspense was that it came out on a set weekly schedule that encouraged discussion.

I think at this point it's clear that that the Netflix strategy of releasing the whole season at once is becoming the dominant way, which is why I think GOT is the last mega TV cultural series. It's sad in a way because I think a episodic release of a series leads to more discussion. I mean I can't tell you how many people have mentioned series to me on streaming that I should watch, and then when I do get around to it they've already forgotten it.

Exactly!! I think you nailed it re: the 3 major things (and how they failed to get us there)

The one thing ill always love about lost (the constant truly is great) is desmond. I still say “see ya in another life brotha” with one of my friends.

I also may be in the minority here but i hated pretty much every other lost character OTHER than desmond

Love me some Desmond. Season 2 opening up there in TV series moments definitely.

In Fact now that I think of it the hatch opening "pared with the old whatever 60s music" paved the way for the nostalgia fueled musics fest powered by cgi a la Guardians of the Galaxy and every marvel movie ever.

@nath, wait what's up with David Simon being a weirdo?

The Night King is not in the books, so that can't be one of them since it was a show-created character. Your other 2 are probably right, maybe the last one will be a big reveal in this next episode- my guess would be that it has something to do with Bran.

cant believe my favorite show the big bang theory is over. best series finale of all time?

I enjoyed it, nice touching way to wrap it up. I can't say how well it tracked because my only exposure to the show has been in TBS reruns so I'm not even to the point where Howard and Bernadette have their second kid, but as a standalone ep it was a decent enough way to end things.

David is very weird on twitter

Well, as a whole, I think it definitely has gone on too long. When it's all said and done, GoT is going to have the distinct feeling of two showrunners being given source material and a method of storytelling for 3-4 seasons and then having zero idea how to execute the very identity of the series on their own. If the second half of the series was told like the first half, then sure, it was cut short. But it's clear they ran out of narrative steam.

But, to play devil's advocate and come to their defense a little, when the series was being made in the early going, George had basically decreed that the books would be written ahead of the show. He said this multiple times, in fact. He even criticized LOST's ending in a way that makes him look like a clown now and at that time, he completely owned the ending of the TV series as his own. Now he's basically HomerSimpsonIntoBushes.gif about it. So there is an element here where George didn't appear to know how to end it either, and he just kinda told them "well, here's a rough sketch of what will happen" and the years kept passing with no material and Benioff and Weiss were kinda left holding the bag.

They definitely were - Bobbo just did it in this very thread. They thought that the plot failing to resolve in satisfying ways was a byproduct of the method of 'making it up as you go along.' But that's how serialized TV is made/was made back then. I feel like people had this idea in their head that the showrunners not having a master plan from the outset for every door they would ultimately open was a problem with their method - but it's just how things were done. And then realize that they were making LOST for a major network where executives were literally telling Linelof and Cuse that as far as they were concerned, there was going to be like 12 seasons of this thing. It was their prized possession and planning its end so early was a nonstarter for execs. Eventually, the show started to suffer so much that the network had no choice but to be like 'ok we get it' and they gave them their end date - and even then, the network insisted on more episodes than Lindelof/Cuse really wanted to do.

When you hear the story of how LOST came to be as a TV show, it's actually remarkable how good the first season is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzRjHDAgRmk <----1:27:00 of that if anyone is interested