LeoInNYC

May 25, 2010 3:47 pm "It was all about character" is going to be my new euphemism for when I monumentally fuck something up and I'm trying to avoid taking responsibility.

May 24, 2010 8:03 pm

I'll say this - it was a fun ride. I wouldn't trade any of it, even if I didn't like the ending. The characters were great characters, the mysteries were great mysteries. The thrill of each new strange. perplexing twist. The light at the bottom of the hatch; the immortal Richard Alpert; remember the first time we saw the polar bear in the jungle? It was a great ride. I could have done with a different destination but the drive was fun no matter where we ended up. Three cheers for LOST when all is said and done. 

 

May 24, 2010 5:34 pm

Dude, I am ALL about the characters. But a) you can't JUST do one and not the other or else it's not coherent storytelling, and b) I don't even think that the character stuff at the end of Lost made any sense. Killing characters and resolving characters aren't the same thing. 

So first, on point a -- characters exist in a context. That context is story. So, for instance, Mad Men is a story about a complex, internalized man whose stoic exterior hides a dark past. The story is: he works at an ad agency. Shit happens there. Batman is a story about a complex, internalized man whose stoic exterior hides a dark past. He wears a cape and fights crime. Story -- and the context it provides, really, really matters. 

What that context does is create stakes for the characters. And here is really the key, central failure of the Lost finale (for me). It's not that they didn't tell us what the numbers meant or why Walt could kill birds or whatever. It's that they never told us anything that compellingly grounded the action of the last 6 years in a way that created cohesive stakes for what everyone has been doing for god's sake (literally, apparently). Years of numbers and Others and buttons and hatches and time travel and atom bombs has come down to: you have to protect the light; it's bad if the Man in Black leaves the island. Why? Cuz Allison Janney said so, one episode ago. What's the light? Doesn't matter. Why is it so bad if MiB leaves the island? Don't you worry about it. Why is it all important? Because someone said it's important. But he seemed like a nice kid! He's been trapped there for thousands of years -- cant he go get laid and take in a movie? NO! He must remain on The Island! But... Don't ask why! So this light - I'm guarding it for eternity..? Yup. What happens if it goes out? The light inside each of us goes out. Um, what light..? Like, we'll die, or all just get super cranky? Don't worry about it. Cuz Sayid got the sickness and he didn't turn evil so much as just get really quiet, so... Not important. Guard the light. What's the smoke mon- Zip it!

Ok then. No problem. Then I see it is my destiny to martyr myself in service to the great cause of, umm... whatever it is we're doing.

As a Jew I found the hard right turn to Christ-land jarring and frankly stupid and shallow. But at least Christ died for a reason that has some kind of internal logic within Christianity: He died to redeem the sins of the world. Jack died for... well.. to, um... for some light, I guess...? He died for the light? 

 

Like, just give me SOMETHING! Aliens. Tell me it was aliens. Fine, really no problem -- protecting the world from alien invasion. An evil wizard -- great. Fine. Nobody likes an evil wizard. Nanobot. Rabid gophers. Dick Cheney's evil-er twin. Whatever. But my friend who I watched with said it best when she looked at me five minutes before the end when it was clear that we we're gonna get nada -- she said, "what have we been watching for the past 6 years?" Exactly? I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea what all of this was about. What they stakes were. What they've been fighting for. 

A show about someone who has to confront his past because if he doesn't it threatens to unravel his life is a lot more compelling than a show about someone who could confront his past. Or he could watch "wheel of fortune" -- whichever. That is less compelling. That's what makes Mad Men a great show. It's not about twists and turns and big reveals. It's subtle and understated. But the stakes are super clear and compelling and relatable. There is absolutely nothing clear or relatable (to me) about where Lost ended up.

 It's like after writing Lost for 6 years the writers suddenly decided that they'd rather be writing 6 Feet Under. Great show. Different show. You can't do 2 hours of a Spider-Man movie and then just decide you'd rather be directing a musical or... oh wait...  Anyway, point is, you gotta do both. You have to tell a good story and create and develop good characters. Good story+Bad Characters=Flash Forward. Bad Story+Good Characters=Lost.

 Which leads to the question of the character development it self. Jack and Kate? But we've seen what happens when Jack and Kate get together in the Season.. 3 I think... flash-forward. It doesn't go well. So how did we arrive at, they're meant to be together? What is Sawyer's resolution? The last thing he did was get Jin and Sun and Sayid killed. And what about Sayid? What was his arc, exactly? He gets "The Sickness" which just makes him taciturn. And then he dies. Claire on the Island goes crazy, and off the island meets Jack but that's not character development, it's circumstance. Kate's still running, on island and off. Desmond and Penny, the star-crossd lovers, they... well... hmmm. Desmond is last seen unconcious on the island, and off the island is apparently Michael Landon. Miles seems like a pretty happy camper, I guess. 

Look, I gotta go. You get my points I think. I'm so, so glad you dug it. I wish I could have been an 8-year-old when the Prequel Trilogy came out and gotten the kind of enjoyment from it that I got from the OT when I was a kid. So I am not trying to ruin it for. If you dug it then feel free to write me off as a crank -- I won't take it personally. : ) 

May 24, 2010 2:59 pm

Oh man. I wish i could get behind the Lost finale. I really really do. I swear -- although I don't think anyone will believe me -- that I went into this pretty much down for anything. I had long since abandoned any preconceived notions or expectations about the ending (aside from wanting it to, you know, not suck). And I had seasons-ago stopped expecting or needing answers to every little question. And I love character! I really do! In fact my biggest complaint about Lost for a while -- seasons 4-5 -- were that is had become all story and no character.

 But I thought this was awful. Painfully, glaringly awful. Obviously not everybody feels that way and for those of you who felt like you got a satisfying end to your 6 years then that is totally awesome for you.  

 I agree with just about everything Jim says in his great article. But I think the key line is this: "that is the one advantage Lost had over most comics. It got to end." Jim calls this an advantage but I think it's just the opposite. The difference between a mainstream comic, which runs "forever" and isn't telling one story, and Lost, which was (allegedly) telling one cohesive story is that your story has to make sense. Lost wasn't Claremont's X-Men or The Flash -- it was Y: The Last Man or Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns. It was one story with one "creator" -- the showrunners. If Y had ended with the Allison Mann's father revealing that what killed the men was "the hidden mysogyny in all of us" and then everyone held hands and lit candles and suddenly all the men re-appeared...? That would suck. If Watchmen had ended with Daniel and Rorschach approaching the arctic fortress and then! Daniel wakes up goes, "boy that was some dream!" That. Would. Suck.

 Lindelof and Cuse have spent the last few months telling us again and again the Lost is "a love story" and it's "all about character" which is fine -- those are vital parts of a good story. But Lost wasn't The Wire or The Sopranos or Mad Men -- all shows that I love btw. It was a sci-fi genre show with a complicated mythology and plot-twist -based storytelling. If they wanted to write a sweet family drama about love and redemption with schmaltzy, half-baked Christian overtones, nothing was stopping them. They just should have started that way from the beginning so I would have known not to watch the 6-year sci-fi preamble.