OT - for those that watch LOST

[Mudcat]

Being a snooty, above-it-all type, I feel like I have to explain why I watch it and make some kind of excuse. I dunno. I got sucked in. My sister's fault. Whatever.

I'm just wondering if, at this point, others are experiencing the same thing as me.

At first I found it very intriguing. I like puzzles and it was like this big, interesting complex puzzle. But now I just feel like I'm being jerked around. It seems like pointless busy-work. It seems like they're jangling keys in front of me to create noise and light - but there's no real substance to it.

I get it, they can create mysteries. That was cool for a season or two. But now I find it tedious. Is it going anywhere?

And that is the question: is it going anywhere? I'm close to the point where I could stop watching and just ask that someone alert me if they ever start explaining anything. Maybe I only need to see the last episode. Maybe it's all Hurley's dream the end.

Talking to my ex today - she still loves it. Are people still loving it?

[Sinister Cat]

I wouldn't say I "love" it but I still really like it. I felt like I was being jerked around in season 2. It seems like they are on the path to resolving some stuff now. I think it is going "somewhere"-- supposedly there were 34 episodes left (as of beginning of this season) and everything is all planned out. Whether that "somewhere" will be very satisfying remains to be seen.

[Mudcat]

34 episodes left. Ugh. I hope it starts going somewhere instead of just piling more mysteries on mysteries.

It could end up being the cleverest thing of all time.

Or it could just be a half-assed resolution with still a million loose ends.

Or it could all be Hurley's dream.

I guess I'll keep watching.

[Matt Rain]

I'm at the point where I pretend that I don't watch it anymore.

I don't think that the writers had the whole thing mapped out since the very beginning. Not even close. This season, making the losties return to the island and having these "time loops" seems to be a very convenient device that allows the writers to do whatever the hell they please.

[Matt Rain]

BTW, found this funny blog posting a couple of days ago:

http://throwingthings.blogspot.com/2009_01_18_archive.html#8633932775461248659

PREVIOUSLY ON LOST:

PILOT: So, we have a little time and the auto-pilot’s on. How ‘bout you tell me about the island?

JACK: Well, we lived on the beach, mostly, except for the time we lived in the cave with the skeletons and the time we lived in the secret underground bunker with the lending library and the time we lived in the village built by the scientists that the people who don’t age gassed to death with the help of their leader, my third nemesis, the nebbishy con man with spine cancer, which we took over when the freighter people came to kill everybody. We ate wild boar and fish, and then the supplies stashed in the storeroom of the bunker, and then the scientists who the people who don’t age gassed to death were nice enough to replenish our food by airdrop, but only once, but that was okay, because the people who don’t age had some agriculture that we completely ignored while we stood in front of their refrigerators with the doors open. And I saw my dead dad just hanging around on the island, which I didn’t think too much about because I was preoccupied with the smoke monster and the baby stealing and the mind games with the nebbishy guy and my TOTALLY AWESOME tattoo which got my ass kicked in Thailand and the power struggle with my second nemesis, the formerly paralyzed bald survivalist mystic, who was, frankly, nuts.

PILOT: Nuts, you say?

JACK: Yeah, man of faith, thought the bunker wanted you to punch Hurley’s lotto numbers into the computer every few hours, and I was like, it’s a GAME, you lose, sucker.

PILOT: And?

JACK: So he finally came around after the shipwrecked sailor who lived in the bunker for two years told him that you had to punch the numbers, which obviously meant you didn’t have to punch the numbers. Which, come to think of it, I guess he was right in the first place. Missed the numbers, cratered the whole freaking bunker, knocked the guy who used to live there right into last Tuesday. Literally.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my dead father came back and kidnapped my secret sister.

PILOT: Um, okay. So … happy to be getting back?

JACK: Yeah, you know, I’m looking forward to having the time to grow a beard.

PILOT: How about you, freckles?

KATE: Don’t call me that.

PILOT: Sorry.

KATE: You know, I’m a convict. I didn’t even want to get off the island. I killed my boyfriend.

PILOT: So what was so good about the island?

KATE: Well, when my boyfriend and I …

PILOT: The dead guy?

KATE: What? No, Jack. My boyfriend and I had a good thing going on the beach and in the cave and in the bunker, except for everybody dying and the smoke monster. And then our friend led us into a trap, even though we knew it was a trap, but it was okay, because while we were captured I got it on with my boyfriend in a cage …

PILOT: With Jack?

KATE: What? No, Sawyer. Jack was watching, though. Anyway, I got back together again with Jack, kind of, but he was really into this doctor that the gassy people kidnapped from Oregon, and then I got back together again with Sawyer, and then I left him for Jack. I forgot to mention that I had a nice proper date with a new dress and dinner on the beach …

PILOT: With Jack or Sawyer?

KATE: What? No, with the nebbishy spine cancer con man who loves me – KEEP UP. But it didn’t go well, which is why I ended up having sex in the cage in the zoo.

PILOT: There was a zoo on the island?

KATE: What? No, different island. The polar bears on our island were free-range.

PILOT: Well, at least I understand how you have a baby.

KATE: What? No, he’s not mine. The island is actually a contraceptive, THANK GOD.

PILOT: Okay, forget it. You, what’s your story?

SUN: Pretty simple, really. I was trying to run away from my emotionally abusive hit-man husband, but he was on the plane with me when we crashed. So I pretended not to speak English for a while, and then I got pregnant and he’s really just a sweetheart, really. Just my luck, though, he missed the helicopter when he and our friend who killed our other friends and later went undercover on the murder-freighter on behalf of the nebbishy guy took too long unsuccessfully trying to defuse the giant bomb. So I’m going home to buy my asshole dad’s conglomerate with funding from the guy responsible for blowing up my beloved ex-soon-to-be-ex-husband, the father of the long-lost lover of our time-traveling sailor friend who was living in the secret bunker.

PILOT: Is this a joke?

HURLEY: No, all of the jokes around here are mine.

PILOT: Oh, great, tell me a good one.

HURLEY: What has two thumbs and is dead?

PILOT: I give up.

HURLEY: My girlfriend and my best friend and the French paramilitary lady and her daughter and Arzt. Wait, that’s eight-to-ten thumbs.

PILOT: Ouch.

HURLEY: But at least I got to hotwire a 20-years-abandoned VW bus, because 1970s VW electrical systems never go bad when untended in humid weather, and drove it over Big Tom, the murderous teleporting gay non-aging gasser who sometimes wears a fake beard and wool cap that he keeps in a locker in the abandoned medical and child-care bunker.

PILOT: Okay, last guy. What’s your story?

SAYID: I tortured a shitload of people.

PILOT: I meant on the island.

SAYID: I tortured a shitload of people.

PILOT: That all?

SAYID: Got tortured.

PILOT: Well, new day, and all that. What are you going to do now?

SAYID: Go to work for a guy I tortured.

PILOT: Doing what?

SAYID: Torturing, mostly.

PILOT: Say, look at the time, gotta get back and check on the autopilot.

JACK: Wait, what did we miss when we were on the island for a flexible length of time?

PILOT: Every financial institution you’ve ever heard of is out of business, America fell in love with a gay cowboy movie, and we elected a Black college professor President instead of a war hero.

JACK: We find your story implausible.

[Sinister Cat]

pretty funny...

here's an interesting article about the guy working for the show (script coordinator) who keeps track of everything they do so they don't mess things up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/arts/television/18wyat.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&sq=lost%20script%20co-ordinator&st=cse&scp=1

And some interesting comments on a blog post that references it, here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/21/keeping-up-with-lost.html

Basically, it does seem like they just make it up as they go along. And they themselves forget what they've done so someone has to keep track of everything so that future things make some sense. The show's producers also admit to "stalling".. which definitely explains much of seasons 2 and 3. Seasons 4-6 (last season, current, next) were apparently all actually planned out. Still, if they manage to explain the interesting stuff from early on (smoke monster, seeing dead people, the weird cabin, polar bear, etc) in a satisfying way I think I will be surprised. It's almost like a totally different show now.

[raydog]

Lost lost me in season 1. it is as boring and drawn out as prison break. thank god they are doing away with that piece of shit show. freaking gf is in love with wentworth miller and just to be a bitch, she dvr's the show and watches it on the nights when i stay at her place.

[Matt Rain]

I feel as though most mysteries, paranormal sightings, etc. have lost a lot of their appeal, so to speak, ever since time travel (backwards time travel, that is) has entered the picture. Everything was supposed to be scientifically plausible... so much for that.

To me, the only mysteries left are the connections between the Losties and the reason why they were seemingly put on that plane on purpose. I don't think solving these enigmas is on the writers' agenda anymore, and that might be the only thing that'll put me off the show completely.

Honestly though, like Mudcat, I don't think there's any way I can stop watching, no matter what. I will go down with the ship/plane.

[Matt Rain]

Actually, this thread got me thinking. Locke saying to 1954 or 1956 Richard Alpert that he should come and visit him in 2 years, the year of Locke's birth, sort of explains why he ends up on the island.

But come on. Time travel is so convenient. It's the lazy writer's way out of a frickin' mess.

[Matt Rain]

[themajormt]

I have been a die hard LOST fan and have to say this season is starting to piss me off!!! All this going back and forth non sense is getting annoying. It was great to watch before when there was actually drama and suspense, but I dont think they have it anymore...

[Mudcat]

I have to say:

Juliet had some extremely hot nude lesbo scenes with Angelina Jolie in the movie Gia. But all the goodwill that earned for her has finally run out and she is pissing me off.

Also, I appreciate a show that has the balls to kill off significant characters, but they have killed off too many hot chicks. They need some hot chicks back.

But thank gawd Charlie is gone. My worst case scenario is they start finding some way to have that dude back from beyond the grave.