Lost - Should I have finished it?

[Raymond Lin]

Whilst it was captivating, I watched season 1 over a weekend and kept up with it up to they found the second island, which is when I stopped. I wanted answers, even one now and again to keep my interest but eventually it got stupid and the lack of answers turned to frustration so i gave up on it.

Now, the question is, did I do the right thing? Would the ending given me all the answers I craved for up until that point, like how did the Polar Bear get there. Was the ending some magical eye opener enlightenment that was worth 6 years of curiosity and time and effort or was was it lame like:-

It was all a dream?!

I am not going to watch it, just wondering what you guy's take on it now that it has been over for a while.

 

[Weazle]

It was all a dream?!

No ... but you may be disappointed with how it ends. One thing to note, whatever happened on the island ... really did happen.

For me, it was a satisfying end for the characters themselves. The last few seasons were pretty damn good in terms of how innovating the writing was for a mainstream television network show.

Season 2 kinda lost momentum and really didn't pickup until last quarter. I would say Desmond, a regular from season 2 is one of the best Lost characters and has the most interesting arc.

 

[v0n]

Now, the question is, did I do the right thing?

Yes. As with everything co-authored by Lindelof, his mind runs in 100 directions then suffers momentary laps of reason and instant amnesia, then just keeps of wandering in circles without aim. Roughly 60% of stuff never gets answered, 10% gets half baked WTF answer while remaining 60% just turns into smoke and mirrors. If you've just counted 130% above, welcome to world of Damian Lindelof's creative license, you ask questions, he answers random few but you end up with even more unanswered questions after answers.

Would the ending given me all the answers I craved for up until that point

No

like how did the Polar Bear get there.

Yes to that one. You'd get very rushed and half baked "stop askin, that was like gazillion seasons ago" answer to that in last season.

Was the ending some magical eye opener enlightenment that was worth 6 years of curiosity and time and effort or was was it lame like

Oh, it was even lamer. I think there was shortage of flatscreens across the world for weeks, that's how many TV sets were chucked out of windows across the planet on May 23, 2010.

Spoiler

It had a dog and tearful music and used a cliche "full circle story loops" device and it was one step short of ****** rainbows and unicorns and meant absolutely ef all.

 

[Rroff]

The ending was unbelievable cack - but to be fair how on earth do you end a premise built up like that?

I think its worth carrying on with for a bit tho, you might not get all the answers your looking for but it mostly shakes down to making enough vague sense you probably won't really care too much unless your OCD about it.

 

[v0n]

I think its worth carrying on with for a bit tho, you might not get all the answers your looking for but it mostly shakes down to making enough vague sense.

Not if he stopped watching in the middle of season 1. He would just keep on watching the "Walt is special" storyline for 13 more episodes just for it to lead absolutely nowhere. Most of the WTF! and Ehhhh? moments in season 1 just get forgotten and wiped from the Lost universe later on.

 

[robgmun]

Season 3, 4 and 5 were some of the best TV out there. Then they dropped the ball badly on the 6th and final season

 

[DampCat]

Season 1 was awesome, season 2 was good. Stop there. You don't get answers anyway.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

For me the ending was the worst ever and my daughter won't even discuss it however about a month ago I watched the ending again and it made sense.

 

[Andrew_McP]

Season 3, 4 and 5 were some of the best TV out there.

Ah, that's useful to know. I lost Lost when it disappeared onto Sky after season 2, and have been itching to watch it since then. I was contemplating a free month of Netflix to do so, but I knew the end was universally described as disappointing, so I'd shelved the idea. I'll reconsider... though not now, when the sun's shining.

 

[Nymins]

Season 1 was awesome, season 2 was good. Stop there. You don't get answers anyway.

This. Once the time travel stuff or whatever happened, I just noped myself out of it.

 

[J.T]

It finished, it wasn't the best ending or even an ending people wanted but it did at least end so for that I would suggest you finish it.

 

[gettothechopper]

loved every second of lost when it was on tv

after watching it all again on bluray, my opionion has changed slightly, but its still one of my favourite tv shows

season 1 - pretty good, slow start but its still good
season 2 - best series, only a couple of dodgy episodes
season 3 - stalls a bit and sort of creates a lot of dead ends that dont get used again, excellent desmond episode (best episode overall?) start and ending is awesome
season 4 - short series, last episodes are awesome, takes a while to get to that point though, another excellent desmond episode too
season 5 - pretty good all the way through, skips about a a lot though and does a lot of joining up of plotlines / questions, love the faraday episode and the ending
season 6 - stalls a lot, very slow to get going, liked the ending
watch the little extra ending bit as well - it answers a lot of questions (but by then you wont care too much lol)

so overall id say worth watching, they did tend to create too many directions to go in and end up abandoing them later on, its worth it though for the odd episode that is fantastic (usually start, middle or end of a series) I guess in between is a bit of filler but only some of them are really crappy

if they had made shorter series (like 12-14 episodes, instead of 24 in some) it would have cut out the stalling, filler, wrong turns and ditched plotlines, and would have been better overall

ending defence though - people moan about the ending, but I liked it, by the time you get to the end, I cannot see any other way of ending that wouldnt have annoyed someone.

 

[MooMoo444]

Lost really suffered from lack of coherence. Towards the end it was just giving fans what they want instead of having any sense of story or path. I think I actually read an interview once where they partially admitted to making it up as they went along.

Don't bother finishing it.

 

[THMRK]

If you're looking for a show which emotionally delivered on every single level, then Lost is certainly that. The ending might not tie up all of the mystery, but it does emotionally conclude every character's story and for me, I thought it was ace.

Lost is still a really interesting show. It was one of the first shows in a long time which essentially sought to create an entire mythology from scratch. Much of the narrative spends time setting up the island, the reasons behind its weirdness, the Dharma project and so on. It goes to great lengths to create a sense of history and back story surrounding that mythology, imbuing it with both scientific and supernatural aspects to make it appear all encompassing.

Sadly, it's a narrative device that they just keep adding to, and its something which becomes so huge and so full of weird and interesting things that there was no way they could conclude or bring a resolution to the mythology.

But for me, that mythology that they've built is simply there to heighten the emotional impact of the show. It really delivers in that sense, and if you follow the character's emotional arcs instead of getting bogged down in the island itself, it's a very satisfying series. Season 3 is a little slow because it's clear they were just fumbling around in the dark, but once they were told how long they had left, they pulled it back together in season 4 and it slowly starts to become a strong show again.

I'd say it's definitely worth finishing. It's only frustrating if you focus on all the extraneous stuff that goes on on the island or with the dharma project etc. But if you think of it, and watch it, more as a collage of characters and their stories which just happened to intersect with a greater mythology, then I think it's a brilliant TV series.

Also, it has probably one of the best episodes of any television show I have ever seen.

Spoiler

season 5 - Richard's backstory. Utterly triumphant television from start to finish.

EDIT: If I had to suffer through waiting a week for the next episode, or six months for the next season I'm almost certain that my opinion would be different. However since I watched it on Netflix and could binge on it, you actually begin to focus more on the characters because you're not spending a week or a month or six months wondering about stuff like "What's the black smoke?!" etc. It's definitely a show which benefits from binge viewing.

TL;DR - it's a character piece, so treat it like such. If you get attached to the mystery of the island you're almost certainly going to be let down.

 

[Zuban]

probably not worth carrying on if you were getting frustrated by the lack of answers by just the end of season 1. Whether you like lost or not i think depends on what you take out of it, its really a character peice and about relationships and how our choices in life affect each other, if you want answers all the time about why this is there or that is like that, then you will be dissapointed, a lot of it is left a mystery, none of it actually matters to the story though.

As usual Lindelhof gets the blame for everything, even though it was him and JJ Abrams that came up with the premise and made the pilot, then JJ went of to do other things and left Lindelhof to carry on with a daunting task, and he was only one of many writers, yet he gets the entire blame for everything when people dont like it, its not rational, but its how it is lol. I enjoyed it, I can see why some people didnt though they thought it was a different show than it was.

 

[feedtheram]

As usual Lindelhof gets the blame for everything, even though it was him and JJ Abrams that came up with the premise and made the pilot, then JJ went of to do other things and left Lindelhof to carry on with a daunting task, and he was only one of many writers, yet he gets the entire blame for everything when people dont like it, its not rational, but its how it is lol. I enjoyed it, I can see why some people didnt though they thought it was a different show than it was.

Here is a great article about how Lost came about and the hectic first series.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8670609/alan-sepinwall-origins-lost

My frustration with Lost was the amount of unanswered questions that could probably have been easily answered in a satisfactory way - they just didn't bother and you felt a bit like some episodes were a huge waste of time in retrospect.

Have to echo the comment above regarding Richards story - so so good.

 

[Weazle]

Have to echo the comment above regarding Richards story - so so good.

I would follow that up with "The Constant", one of Desmond's story arc.

I recently rewatched Lost form season 1 through to the end, I was surprised at how much I actually missed and that some of the things that were annoying actually made "more" sense in the context of things (sometimes not 100% but more "mostly" )

 

[ShortWarning]

For me it was the greatest show on television.......right up until the final season. I know I shouldn't let 1 season ruin the whole experience for me but it kind of did. It wasn't even the lack of answers it was the massive cop-out finale that bothered me. I know they couldn't please everyone but the vast majority seemed to be bitterly disappointed.

It just felt like a massive missed opportunity to be something great.

With that being said I will probably watch it from beginning to end again at some point. Maybe the ending will sit better with me the second time round.

 

[div0]

Lost went from being largely engrossing with a bit of filler, to mostly filler interspersed with just enough great episodes to keep you watching.

The show was hugely dragged out, which massively spoilt the latter series.

There are a handful of great revelations in the last few seasons, which open up the back story to some of the most interesting characters (Richard, Desmond), but by that point the effect is completely dumbed down by the introduction of other poor characters, pointless episodes and generally poor writing that really ruined a lot of the main story arc.

None more so than series 6 - introducing two new characters, who seem to be key to the island. Wow, maybe we're really going somewhere...oh no wait, their story has just descended into total nonsense. And now we've got to go back through the whole dragged out storyline process with not much happening.

The ending itself was ok at best. The thing that annoyed me is that the ending could have been used at almost any point in the entire show. You could write it in almost anywhere and it would still make sense. So basically they dragged out the show as long as they could and when they'd run out of semi-related storylines to include, they pulled out their 'joker' card to conclude the show.

 

[BrightonBelle]

Do not waste your life Ray!

BB x