The TV and Streaming Thread: That's Entertainment!

[Lexx]

2 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

So I was going to skim through From's 1st season as a reminder, then watch 2nd season. Hubby went "what u watching". So I had to rewatch whole thing, didn't skim through it.
Then started on the 2nd season. I think we're about halfway through. There is then the 3rd season, and wiki top summary said it was renewed for a 4th season, and I read an article with the creator saying something like (totally paraphrasing) "have tons of stuff/ideas for endless seasons."

I like the 2nd season enough - although the influx of new people pattern already feels a little old, plus it's getting weirder and more convoluted - but my thoughts on all of this is:

"Is this going to be another Lost?" ... which I wouldn't be keen on. May watch all 2nd season and then wait again, see if they ever "finish" it, first.

Watched From a few weeks ago... is the same silly stuff as Lost. It started great, but then they just kept slapping mystery upon mystery and it became ridiculous and annoying. In the latest season I started to zone out of it and not sure if I will even bother with the 4th season once it arrives. People need to learn when to end something... not everything has to go on forever.

Edited January 6 by Lexx

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

So I was going to skim through From's 1st season as a reminder, then watch 2nd season. Hubby went "what u watching". So I had to rewatch whole thing, didn't skim through it.
Then started on the 2nd season. I think we're about halfway through. There is then the 3rd season, and wiki top summary said it was renewed for a 4th season, and I read an article with the creator saying something like (totally paraphrasing) "have tons of stuff/ideas for endless seasons."

I like the 2nd season enough - although the influx of new people pattern already feels a little old, plus it's getting weirder and more convoluted - but my thoughts on all of this is:

"Is this going to be another Lost?" ... which I wouldn't be keen on. May watch all 2nd season and then wait again, see if they ever "finish" it, first.

5 hours ago, Lexx said:

Watched From a few weeks ago... is the same silly stuff as Lost. It started great, but then they just kept slapping mystery upon mystery and it became ridiculous and annoying. In the latest season I started to zone out of it and not sure if I will even bother with the 4th season once it arrives. People need to learn when to end something... not everything has to go on forever.

Yes its very similar to Lost, 2 of the executive producers  on From also worked on Lost 

And its a good formulae if you enjoy that type of design, you not suppose to know whats going on and you end up guessing as the series unfolds. But lots gets revealed 

@LadyCrimson watch till the end of season 3. I have a very good theory about what the town is about and we can discuss it  once you updated to the end of season 3

 

From has become my favourite supernatural horror series of all time 

 

 

[Lexx]

I think it's cheap and lazy. Whenever you think something gets resolved, they do a switcheroo and now - oh shock! - it's actually something else, a much bigger mystery! At some point it gets insulting to the audience, imo. Same reason why I stopped watching Lost. It just got too much and just wasn't believable anymore.

[BruceVC]

20 minutes ago, Lexx said:

I think it's cheap and lazy. Whenever you think something gets resolved, they do a switcheroo and now - oh shock! - it's actually something else, a much bigger mystery! At some point it gets insulting to the audience, imo. Same reason why I stopped watching Lost. It just got too much and just wasn't believable anymore.

I get the criticism, this is not the first time I have heard it before about these types of shows 

Lost and From is   not for everyone because one thing that wont change is you will never know  whats really happening until its confirmed in the last season  

But since you have watched season 3, heres my theory 

 

Spoiler

Its all about Dark Fae. The  talismans, the creatures and the  way humans sacrificed there children to gain something better is very much fairy lore and they basing From on fairy lore  across different cultures. Like the Japanese women is Asian mythology 

The portals and the town is in a pocket universe controlled by Dark Fey and there are  good Fae as well like the boy in white 

Here is a link that convinced me

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/11/27/whats-really-going-on-in-from-on-mgm-the-best-theory-so-far-is-all-about-faeries/

And here is some general Dark Fae lore 

https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/arts_culture/2022/10/the-bad-neighbours-the-dark-side-of-the-fae.html#:~:text=Regardless of the name used,%2C demigods%2C demons and devils

 

 

[Gfted1]

The Fall Guy on Prime.

I thought it was awesome. Really hit me right in the funny bone.

[LadyCrimson]

I haven't actually watched Lost. I saw the first couple episodes on ABC way way way back, went "seems interesting but not enough to wait every week for it (no streaming then). By the time a few seasons had gone by, I'd read enough to know it was nowhere near an end, so I kept waiting. When it ended, "everyone" said it sucked vs. how long they'd been waiting. So I never bothered.   My record for liking/having patience for shows with never ending main plots/mysteries is usually low (1-2 seasons). Something like early Dexter, Supernatural, House, crime shows, as I've said before, that have 1-2 background season arcs but are generally self-contained episodes on top are fine. Nothing against something like Lost, I just lose patience or motivation to watch if I can't watch it all in 1-2 months to get the whole story.

Although Lexx's point re: ever growing silly mysteries on top of mysteries - or patterns obviously designed to keep something going (can't have lots of red shirt deaths without constant influx of new people) - also makes me roll eyes. 2nd season an average busy busload. Does the 3rd season do 2 full tourbuses or 10 trailers of families all vacationing together?  eg, such series, if they go on for a long time, run into ever growing power creep. Every season has to up the stakes/cliffhangers until it's just stupid. Supernatural ran into this after 5-7 seasons, in some ways Walking Dead, many others.

It's why I respected Breaking Bad. Guy had an idea and knew where he generally wanted to go, and stuck to it. So we have a complete long form tale without (too much) filler or power-creeping just for the sake of power-creep/endless seasons stakes.
Anyway, From is definitely good at making you wonder wtf is going on for a good while so I'd be willing to semi-binge it at some point to see if it keeps it up. I'll just probably wait and see if it ever gets finished, first.

Edited January 7 by LadyCrimson

[Lexx]

Finished s2 of Alice in Borderland. Some of the characters have ridiculous strong plot armor.

Anyways, don't really want to dwell on it much longer. Kinda meh-show. Squid Game is better.

[LadyCrimson]

I remember I was really liking Alice sn1, until episode 3 killed it for me. I tried a couple episodes after that but couldn't get into the characters/direction it went.

Occasionally I get too attached too quickly and then when the rug gets pulled, I never recover.  

[bugarup]

On 1/6/2025 at 3:49 PM, Lexx said:

I think it's cheap and lazy. Whenever you think something gets resolved, they do a switcheroo and now - oh shock! - it's actually something else, a much bigger mystery! At some point it gets insulting to the audience, imo. Same reason why I stopped watching Lost. It just got too much and just wasn't believable anymore.

I didn't stop, and since then my unit of "Utterly failed to stick the landing" is Lost.   E.g. "KOTOR2's unmodded ending is 20 miliLosts". Dark had the same problem, so I was quite OK when their next "Wtf-is-happening" show 1899 got canceled, because open for speculations end is better than fåck-up end.

[BruceVC]

21 hours ago, bugarup said:

I didn't stop, and since then my unit of "Utterly failed to stick the landing" is Lost.   E.g. "KOTOR2's unmodded ending is 20 miliLosts". Dark had the same problem, so I was quite OK when their next "Wtf-is-happening" show 1899 got canceled, because open for speculations end is better than fåck-up end.

I just want to clarify, did you watch to the end of Lost and did you not enjoy it? Or are you saying you didnt enjoy the ending and explanations but you enjoyed the formulae of " not knowing whats really going on " ?

I loved Lost, it was the first time I had ever watched this type show and it blew me away with all the possible theories. I was disappointed by the ending, I thought they rushed certain things or changed certain things that were not part of the original idea. Like the smoke monster

But Lost is still one of my favourite series and there were so many memorable scenes or developments like this one with Charlie, one of the saddest and most evocative moments I had ever experienced in any series. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[majestic]

Lost's problem was not the ending episode (I stated it before, but I think it tied the themes of the show together well enough), but the way they handled long running storylines in season six - they just killed them off, sometimes in a very literal fashion. For three seaons there was this back and forth about what is going to happen if Charles Widmore manages to come back to the island. Naturally, having not thought of anything beforehand, nothing happens when he does, and after that he is unceremoniously shot.

53 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I was disappointed by the ending, I thought they rushed certain things or changed certain things that were not part of the original idea. Like the smoke monster

The funny thing with the smoke monster is that it started out as something that fits the final season pretty well (rewatch the early episodes with the final season in mind), it was the middle parts of the show that did not fit.

[bugarup]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

I just want to clarify, did you watch to the end of Lost and did you not enjoy it? Or are you saying you didnt enjoy the ending and explanations but you enjoyed the formulae of " not knowing whats really going on " ?

I loved Lost, it was the first time I had ever watched this type show and it blew me away with all the possible theories. I was disappointed by the ending, I thought they rushed certain things or changed certain things that were not part of the original idea. Like the smoke monster

But Lost is still one of my favourite series and there were so many memorable scenes or developments like this one with Charlie, one of the saddest and most evocative moments I had ever experienced in any series. 

Watched to the end, the ending (that fcking cloying afterlife bullsh!t, not Jack expiring in Smokey's embrace) was such a travesty it ruined all the show for me.  

 

[Hurlshort]

I don't know how anyone watched Lost and expected anything other than a buddhist afterlife type ending. I thought it was good. It isn't a show I would re-watch, but it was an interesting time in TV history.

[Malcador]

Rewatching Space Above and Beyond...wasn't a good idea.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I don't know how anyone watched Lost and expected anything other than a buddhist afterlife type ending.

Don't know how either, a variation on the theme of "they're all dead" always seemed far and away the most likely end game. The 'weakness' of that particular sub genre is that people project a lot more onto it than is there, though that's also its strength since the theorising is what often attracts people and keeps them around. That does lead to disappointment when they find out the mystery box isn't as much of a mystery as they'd like though.

Response wise I've always found it an interesting comparison to another controversial ending from a similar era show in a different genre; thirty second fade to black while "Don't Stop Believing" plays on the jukebox. Which was also always the most likely ending if not exactly, uh, executed as might be expected.

[majestic]

19 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I don't know how anyone watched Lost and expected anything other than a buddhist afterlife type ending. I thought it was good. It isn't a show I would re-watch, but it was an interesting time in TV history.

The flash-sideways universe is a purgatory not related to the actual island storyline - insofar as it pertains to the present of the series - so the complaints are fairly understandable. It is used to tie up the themes and character arcs of the series neatly enough, and it is similar, albeit much less disconnected, to the original NGE ending in that regard. It is the rest of season six that fails in wrapping up the ongoing island storylines (i.e. what happens while the survivors are still alive - the showrunners have stated often enough that "present day" island actually happened while they were alive) in a satisfying manner.

I've said it half a dozen times on the boards before, I don't dislike the ending episode of Lost, but the handling of the rest of the season was somewhat unfortunate. Charles Widmore reaches the island is basically Jon Snow vs. the Night King a decade earlier, but the problems crept up earlier, Kate and her forced love triangle being a huge part of it. They could have done something interesting with it, but bringing it back after Sawyer spent a long time apart from Kate (and with Juliet, who the showrunners later decided was his soul mate after all) was... let's be generous here... not good, as was introducing the concept the ending of the island storyline hangs on in what is basically the penultimate episode, and it was not properly related to the events of prior seasons. Turning the island into Guf five minutes before it ends is just not good writing. It's a mess.

It's not nearly as dumb as Mass Effect's Starchild and explanation for the Reapers nor is it as much off a drop off in quality as the final seasons of Game of Thrones, but that is hindsight. People not being happy with how the story wrapped up, that I can understand. Many of the other revelations that did provide answers were also fairly uninspired and/or boring to the point where it would have been better to never explain why Richard was seemingly immortal or how the Black Rockended up this far on the island.

People not understanding the ending or having a problem with them basically meeting in purgatory to pass onto nirvana in a mixing of relegious themes that was always present in the series? No. That's on them alone indeed.

My biggest problem of the ending episode was Sayid's soulmate being Shannon. I mean come on. Really? After Sayid spends six seasons pining after Nadia?

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, majestic said:

People not understanding the ending or having a problem with them basically meeting in purgatory to pass onto nirvana in a mixing of relegious themes that was always present in the series? No. That's on them alone indeed.

Sounds like it could be another example of viewers not truly knowing why they didn't enjoy something but knowing that they didn't enjoy it, so they latch onto whatever reason they can and public perception runs with it and subsequently snowballs out of control. It's probably just more fuel to the fire if the actual problems started cropping up way earlier but the majority of viewers failed to notice until the very last second, so they feel like it got dumped on them all of a sudden even when that's not actually the case.

Edited Saturday at 04:51 PM by Bartimaeus

[Hurlshort]

The whole appointment television time was such a fascinating phenomenon. I mean it existed for decades, of course, but mostly in the sitcom format that didn't have long-term stakes. It really ramped up right before the end with shows like LOST, Survivor, and American Idol. The whole country would sit down on a certain night and have to watch these shows to keep up with the storyline. Such a strange time. 

[majestic]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Sounds like it could be another example of viewers not truly knowing why they didn't enjoy something but knowing that they didn't enjoy it, so they latch onto whatever reason they can and public perception runs with it and subsequently snowballs out of control. It's probably just more fuel to the fire if the actual problems started cropping up way earlier but the majority of viewers failed to notice until the very last second, so they feel like it got dumped on them all of a sudden even when that's not actually the case.

Yes. There's a somewhat clear divide between the seasons, which is rather noticable on a rewatch, but probably not so much when you watch the show on a weekly basis for six years with a lot time passing between seasons. Like anyone needs a spoiler warning for an almost 20 year old show, but, warning. Spoilered more to keep the post short than to hide the spoilers.

Spoiler

There's season one which is a rather typical season one and has ideas and themes that are quietly dropped as the writers and the cast progressed and grew with their project, which is rather common in first seasons. There are seasons two to four which are arguably about something else than the final two seasons, the problems exacterbated by a Screen Writers Guild strike that troubled the production of season 4.

This is essentiall the same thing that happened with X-Files when looking at the double episode Two Fathers and One Son. The ending of Lost's season four tied up enough to have made a decent ending to the series, and with a bit of work a pretty good one. The same with the double episode of X-Files that pretty much wrapped up the ongoing mystery arc of the series (except for Mulder's sister, but the actual resolution was so bad I wish they had not bothered). Alas, both series continued.

Lost's arguably biggest problem with the storyline was, apart from the writers making much of it up as they kept the series going because it was a ratings monster for ABC, that the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a magical island, and the episodes kept teasing that there would be an explanation for the events that happened, and most importantly, for the conflict of the groups on the island.

There are the survivors who find the remnants of a scientific expedition called the DHARMA initiative to the island with the job of studying the magical properties of the island, and the mysterious Others, a group of "natives" with mysterious motives (who, in the past, wiped out the scientific expedition), and there's an external force at work with Charles Widmore, who is working hard to find the island. The leader of the Others, Benjamin Linus, is an accomplished liar and a manipulative bastard seemingly always in control who receives his instructions from a mysterious and unseen entity called Jacob. Jacob likes making lists, and so the Others abduct certain survivors and kill others. Lastly, there is a dangerous entity on the island. It sometimes attacks the survivors, leaving dead bodies in its wake. Rather early on, some characters survive their run-in with what they call the smoke monster.

When the events and conflics were explained and came to a head it was, well, not very good and rather underwhelming. Like I said in a previous post, Charles Widmore reaches the island, which was always teased as an event that might as well being the biblical apocalypse, but nothing really happens. Well, not nothing, these events allow one of the characters, Desmond, to communicate with the purgatory the characters are in after their death, but that is about it and has nothing to do with the island storyline - the purgatory is basically an "alternative universe" character piece where the characters are until they learn to let go, like the Academy in Utena. It might have been this moment that made people think there's more to the purgatory parts of the episodes than there actually was.  

The long running conflict between conflict between Charles and Ben that spans decades in the series and has a focus in season 5 by employing one of the characters as assassin to carry out a string of murders simply ends with a whimper. Ben also admits that Jacob never talked to him, so everything the Others did on his behest had no rhyme or reason, he just felt like it. The premise isn't bad, making Ben a cult leader, it just invalidates half of the events of the past seasons. It is doubly strange because there's Richard, a long time and apparently immortal member of the Others who has contact with Jacob. Jacob's the one who made him immortal in the first place.

The magical island was eventually explained to be the source of life (hence me likening it to Guf, the place where unborn souls dwell). The smoke monster (otherwise unnamed and sometimes called The Man in Black) and Jacob are brothers whose mother came to the island on a shipwreck during Roman times. One of the natives adopts them, designating the The Man in Black as future guardian of the island, which was her job until then. The Man in Black does not want the job and just wants to leave the island. He leaves and starts living with a group of survivors from the shipwreck and starts exploring the island and its magical properties.

His adoptive mother kills them all, which in turn makes the The Man in Black kill her. Jacob, being furious at the loss of his mother, tosses The Man in Black into the heart of the island, which turns him into the immortal smoke monster. Jacob becomes the guardian of the island, also pretty much becoming immortal. The smoke monster is since still trying to kill Jacob and leave. Jacob says that the smoke monster leaving the island would be the end of all that is good in the world.

These last two paragraphs happen in the penultimate episode of Lost, and it barely ties into what is going on in the final season, which is just Smokey trying to kill Jacob by pretending to be Terry O'Quinn.

The smoke monster gets Ben to kill Jacob after he finally reveals himself to Ben and trying to leave the way Charles Widmore came (Season five was time travel and survivors who left the island at the end of season four trying to get back because WE HAVE TO GO BACK!). Because the writers needed an explanation for Widmore's coming being a problem, they then say, through Jacob, that the smoke monster leaving would be the end of all that is good in the world. Well, great, that explains why Charles coming to the island would be bad.

Except for the Others having had a submarine to come and go to the island on their whim ever since the 70ies when they wiped out the DHARMA Initiative, and Charles Widmore got a freighter to the island before. Huh. The series storyline on the island closes by the smoke monster putting a cork into the well of souls, an act that turns him back to mortal. He is then killed, the well of souls is reopened again and hooray, we have saved the island from a threat that was made up an episode ago.

Right, I forgot what Jacob was up to. Jacob was trying to find a replacement for him. It was supposed to be Jack Shephard, the somewhat protagonist of the series, but Jack sort of dies saving the island, so Hurley becomes the island's protector in a handwavy moment (and a kid who was written out of the series became it off-screen). It was so silly that they even made a ten minute after-the-finale explanation episodelet after the fact. The candidates for his replacement was what always were on Jacob's ominous list (not that Ben ever knew what was on the list because Jacob never talked to him). The list is the primary reason our main characters can survive the damndest situations - as long as they are on the list, and on the island, they cannot be killed. Not even by the smoke monster. They can't even kill themselves.

Uh. In the face of this Sailor Moon'eqsue plot, people's problem with the ending was that the characters meet in a church, with Jack's father, who is aptly named Christian Shephard, ushering them into the afterlife after Desmond makes them realize what is important and how to let go.

Edited Sunday at 12:42 AM by majestic

[Hurlshort]

That was a fun read majestic. I am surprised how much of that I still remember.

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, majestic said:

Yes. There's a somewhat clear divide between the seasons, which is rather noticable on a rewatch, but probably not so much when you watch the show on a weekly basis for six years with a lot time passing between seasons. Like anyone needs a spoiler warning for an almost 20 year old show, but, warning. Spoilered more to keep the post short than to hide the spoilers.

  Reveal hidden contents

There's season one which is a rather typical season one and has ideas and themes that are quietly dropped as the writers and the cast progressed and grew with their project, which is rather common in first seasons. There are seasons two to four which are arguably about something else than the final two seasons, the problems exacterbated by a Screen Writers Guild strike that troubled the production of season 4.

This is essentiall the same thing that happened with X-Files when looking at the double episode Two Fathers and One Son. The ending of Lost's season four tied up enough to have made a decent ending to the series, and with a bit of work a pretty good one. The same with the double episode of X-Files that pretty much wrapped up the ongoing mystery arc of the series (except for Mulder's sister, but the actual resolution was so bad I wish they had not bothered). Alas, both series continued.

Lost's arguably biggest problem with the storyline was, apart from the writers making much of it up as they kept the series going because it was a ratings monster for ABC, that the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a magical island, and the episodes kept teasing that there would be an explanation for the events that happened, and most importantly, for the conflict of the groups on the island.

There are the survivors who find the remnants of a scientific expedition called the DHARMA initiative to the island with the job of studying the magical properties of the island, and the mysterious Others, a group of "natives" with mysterious motives (who, in the past, wiped out the scientific expedition), and there's an external force at work with Charles Widmore, who is working hard to find the island. The leader of the Others, Benjamin Linus, is an accomplished liar and a manipulative bastard seemingly always in control who receives his instructions from a mysterious and unseen entity called Jacob. Jacob likes making lists, and so the Others abduct certain survivors and kill others. Lastly, there is a dangerous entity on the island. It sometimes attacks the survivors, leaving dead bodies in its wake. Rather early on, some characters survive their run-in with what they call the smoke monster.

When the events and conflics were explained and came to a head it was, well, not very good and rather underwhelming. Like I said in a previous post, Charles Widmore reaches the island, which was always teased as an event that might as well being the biblical apocalypse, but nothing really happens. Well, not nothing, these events allow one of the characters, Desmond, to communicate with the purgatory the characters are in after their death, but that is about it and has nothing to do with the island storyline - the purgatory is basically an "alternative universe" character piece where the characters are until they learn to let go, like the Academy in Utena. It might have been this moment that made people think there's more to the purgatory parts of the episodes than there actually was.  

The long running conflict between conflict between Charles and Ben that spans decades in the series and has a focus in season 5 by employing one of the characters as assassin to carry out a string of murders simply ends with a whimper. Ben also admits that Jacob never talked to him, so everything the Others did on his behest had no rhyme or reason, he just felt like it. The premise isn't bad, making Ben a cult leader, it just invalidates half of the events of the past seasons. It is doubly strange because there's Richard, a long time and apparently immortal member of the Others who has contact with Jacob. Jacob's the one who made him immortal in the first place.

The magical island was eventually explained to be the source of life (hence me likening it to Guf, the place where unborn souls dwell). The smoke monster (otherwise unnamed and sometimes called The Man in Black) and Jacob are brothers whose mother came to the island on a shipwreck during Roman times. One of the natives adopts them, designating the The Man in Black as future guardian of the island, which was her job until then. The Man in Black does not want the job and just wants to leave the island. He leaves and starts living with a group of survivors from the shipwreck and starts exploring the island and its magical properties.

His adoptive mother kills them all, which in turn makes the The Man in Black kill her. Jacob, being furious at the loss of his mother, tosses The Man in Black into the heart of the island, which turns him into the immortal smoke monster. Jacob becomes the guardian of the island, also pretty much becoming immortal. The smoke monster is since still trying to kill Jacob and leave. Jacob says that the smoke monster leaving the island would be the end of all that is good in the world.

These last two paragraphs happen in the penultimate episode of Lost, and it barely ties into what is going on in the final season, which is just Smokey trying to kill Jacob by pretending to be Terry O'Quinn.

The smoke monster gets Ben to kill Jacob after he finally reveals himself to Ben and trying to leave the way Charles Widmore came (Season five was time travel and survivors who left the island at the end of season four trying to get back because WE HAVE TO GO BACK!). Because the writers needed an explanation for Widmore's coming being a problem, they then say, through Jacob, that the smoke monster leaving would be the end of all that is good in the world. Well, great, that explains why Charles coming to the island would be bad.

Except for the Others having had a submarine to come and go to the island on their whim ever since the 70ies when they wiped out the DHARMA Initiative, and Charles Widmore got a freighter to the island before. Huh. The series storyline on the island closes by the smoke monster putting a cork into the well of souls, an act that turns him back to mortal. He is then killed, the well of souls is reopened again and hooray, we have saved the island from a threat that was made up an episode ago.

Right, I forgot what Jacob was up to. Jacob was trying to find a replacement for him. It was supposed to be Jack Shephard, the somewhat protagonist of the series, but Jack sort of dies saving the island, so Hurley becomes the island's protector in a handwavy moment (and a kid who was written out of the series became it off-screen). It was so silly that they even made a ten minute after-the-finale explanation episodelet after the fact. The candidates for his replacement was what always were on Jacob's ominous list (not that Ben ever knew what was on the list because Jacob never talked to him). The list is the primary reason our main characters can survive the damndest situations - as long as they are on the list, and on the island, they cannot be killed. Not even by the smoke monster. They can't even kill themselves.

Uh. In the face of this Sailor Moon'eqsue plot, people's problem with the ending was that the characters meet in a church, with Jack's father, who is aptly named Christian Shephard, ushering them into the afterlife after Desmond makes them realize what is important and how to let go.

Thats  a good and quick summary of  the Lost ending and overall narrative , it works for me more or less

I still think there were unanswered questions 

But the main point for me is From  must be more definitive around its ending 

Why dont you start watching From, it would be interesting to get your insights now while its still on season 3 with all the questions 

Its better than Lost and if you watched Lost to the end and enjoyed it you will be more than happy with From?

 

 

 

 

[bugarup]

On 1/11/2025 at 6:51 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Sounds like it could be another example of viewers not truly knowing why they didn't enjoy something but knowing that they didn't enjoy it, so they latch onto whatever reason they can and public perception runs with it and subsequently snowballs out of control. It's probably just more fuel to the fire if the actual problems started cropping up way earlier but the majority of viewers failed to notice until the very last second, so they feel like it got dumped on them all of a sudden even when that's not actually the case.

I know bloody damn well why I don't enjoy things.  I liked science fiction-y, or at least sci-fi adjacent feel of the majority of seasons (it appears my memory helpfully erased the story of two color-coded twąts stranded on the island, so that saccharine religion fusion at the end, while still the worst thing, isn't the only bad thing). And why I hate "It's magic, OK?!" aka "A wizard did it" type of ending -- especially after flirting with science fiction for so long -- is because it is lazy, cheap-ass, boring cousin of Deus Ex Machina that no self-respecting writer should ever use. Not even in pure fantasy settings. 

 

Does reminded me of Fortitude quite a bit, fortunately that one wrapped up first season in a way that didn't poke my suspension of disbelief much before going into magical properties of deer piss in season 2. 

 

Edited Monday at 08:05 AM by bugarup
dem wurdz hard

[Bartimaeus]

I've never seen even a single second of Lost and I only have a vague idea of what it's about, so the details are completely lost on me: what I said is more a general commentary on the average person's inability to consciously discern and relate the specifics of their ire with media. The average person. You know, the person when they don't like a popular blockbuster movie, they just say "the CGI was bad". Despite their shortcomings and general lack of media literacy, average people nevertheless shape a lot of the popular narratives around media, and they sometimes also write hilariously stupid imdb reviews that should make you fear for the future of Earth and the human race.

Mind you, there are certainly times where I'm not completely sure why I do or don't enjoy something as well, but I at least try to be conscious of that.

[Gfted1]

This conversation reminds me about how I used to love the first few seasons of Heroes, then it went on to poop the bed by the time the series ended.  

[Lexx]

Heroes s1 was the only good thing. After that it all went down the crapper. It's amazing how much they were able to drive that car against a wall.