LOST season six

[Amentep]

I don't think we need all the i's dotted and all the t's crossed, so I don't mind. They said before the season started they would only answer the questions important to the characters - who at this point has a burning desire left to find out who did that?

[Pope]

They said before the season started they would only answer the questions important to the characters

Yes, that's part of the lame.

 

Come on, it's not like one of those little things from back in the early seasons; they only introduced this last year. To me and many others it was one of the more intriguing little mysteries of season 5, because it really felt like this would have a significant impact to the story later on. Any time some characters took to the sea (and that's happened quite a lot this season) I thought "now it's gonna happen". I can't believe they'll just let it hang.

 

To me, this is just another blatant example of how the writers have always only cared about wtf'ing the viewer by introducing mysteries, rather than actually tying a coherent plot around them.

Edited May 13, 2010 by Pope

[kirottu]

Juliet shot someone?

[Pope]

Juliet shot someone?

Somewhere in the beginning of season 5, the people who got left behind flashed to sometime in the future (as evidenced by them finding an Ajira water bottle in an outrigger). When they took the outrigger to go to the Orchid, they were attacked by some people on another boat. Juliet was able to shoot one of them just before they flashed again.

[Purkake]

I agree. Just what 'is' the mother ? Is she a smokey humanfied ? How did "Mother" take out all those villages and bury whatever was down the well. Was she able to turn into "Smokey" aswell ? I suspect she could. She probably went into the light previously which is why she told Jacob never to do it. She probably didn't want either of them to become so powerful. And he stabbed her before she could talk to him. Hence he was able to kill her!? I'm assuming the temple was built over the hole that his mother showed him. Which is maybe the spring in the temple?

Yup, apparently some people have magical powers for whatever reason.

 

Snooze, it's like BSG all over again.

Certainly sailing in that direction.

 

 

I would have liked to see some of the previous canditates and maybe even other island guardians, the writers seem to have narrowed the scope significantly and made it be all about Jacob, MiB and the Losties.

 

EDIT: The flashback at the end was pretty heavy handed, certainly not season 1-5 style.

Edited May 13, 2010 by Purkake

[Gorgon]

The whole point of a 'who done it' or a grand plot is that there is an answer, an explanation that accounts for all the clues. Of course if you just chose not to worry about it you can string people along all the way to the last episode, which is where the big letdown inevitably happens. That all sounds pretty BSG to me, I have to admit.

[Purkake]

I'll reserve my opinion until I've seen the finale, but so far the whole 6th season just made me gain a lot of respect for shows that are completely planned out from the beginning.

[Darque]

Writers have confirmed that they won't be answering

who got shot by Juliet on the outrigger

. How very lame.

 

Seeing as we've seen at least 3 timelines at this point... I'm guessing it's someone in a timeline already gone.. so no real point.

 

edti: clarification:

 

Timeline 1: Season 1-4

Timeline 2: Season 5

Timeline 3 and possibly 4: Season 6

[Junai]

Boring backstory. Too banal in it's duality theme.

I agree.

 

The writers of Lost trifle with philosophical topics far beyond their comprehension, trying to give the show a

"theosophical" ending, or whatever. I was under the impression that show was intended for an entirely

different audience, seeing as how they fill it up with time travel and all sorts of geekish topics.

 

They should get John Boorman to write the script for them.

I remember his interpretation of Thomas Malory's description of Merlin's cave in "Excalibur";

 

"Here you enter the coils of the Dragon. Here my power was born. Here all things are possible

and all things meet their opposites."

 

 

They should've introduced their "glowing cave" 3 series ago, not two episodes before the ending.

 

 

J.

[Amentep]

Boring backstory. Too banal in it's duality theme.

I agree.

 

The writers of Lost trifle with philosophical topics far beyond their comprehension, trying to give the show a

"theosophical" ending, or whatever. I was under the impression that show was intended for an entirely

different audience, seeing as how they fill it up with time travel and all sorts of geekish topics.

 

They should get John Boorman to write the script for them.

I remember his interpretation of Thomas Malory's description of Merlin's cave in "Excalibur";

 

"Here you enter the coils of the Dragon. Here my power was born. Here all things are possible

and all things meet their opposites."

 

 

They should've introduced their "glowing cave" 3 series ago, not two episodes before the ending.

 

 

J.

 

They did introduce it - in fact I think it was at the end of season 3 or 4. It had a donkey wheel attached to it and Locke was supposed to spin it to move the island but Ben did instead. That's what MIB was trying to do in the well before The Mother went all Norman Bates on his people (ha-ha!) to tap into a way to control the power in the glowing cave (MIB even pulled a bit of the rock showing the glow just to hammer the point home).

[Darque]

Yup!

 

They even semi-explained it in the room with the time traveling bunny!

[Purkake]

I was just thinking about how the writers had everything "planned out from the beginning" with Smokey randomly destroying the jungle, being a "security system", being summoned by Ben and also things like the Others having superhuman strength.

 

[Pope]

- Exhibit A: before MIB dug the well, there was no wheel yet (as evidenced by the fact that he was building it himself)

- Exhibit B: Mother made the well collapse before MIB was able to finish the wheel

- Exhibit C: when Locke descended into the well, they flashed to a time before the well was even dug (as evidenced by there being no remains of a well whatsoever)

- Exhibit D: even though the well wasn't dug yet, the wheel was already there (as evidenced by Locke being able to turn it)

 

Verdict: sloppy writing! Even if you ignore the question as to who exactly finished the wheel, these facts just don't add up.

Edited May 17, 2010 by Pope

[Reinoc]

You assume it's the same well. When MiB threw Desmond in the well (!) he said there were many of them around the island, iirc.

[Darque]

- Exhibit A: before MIB dug the well, there was no wheel yet (as evidenced by the fact that he was building it himself)

- Exhibit B: Mother made the well collapse before MIB was able to finish the wheel

- Exhibit C: when Locke descended into the well, they flashed to a time before the well was even dug (as evidenced by there being no remains of a well whatsoever)

- Exhibit D: even though the well wasn't dug yet, the wheel was already there (as evidenced by Locke being able to turn it)

 

Verdict: sloppy writing! Even if you ignore the question as to who exactly finished the wheel, these facts just don't add up.

 

A) No, he and his people were building it - hence the need for Mother to kill them too.

B) Across the Sea takes place at like... 23AD.. I think... plenty of time for Smokie to sucker some of Jacob's "other" pawns to finish it. And Jacob has apparently brought a LOT of people to the island.

C) The Wheel might have been "unstuck" too, and bouncing through time as well. Or it might have been because of Locke's presence... other items timeshifted too.

D) See C.

 

Verdict - not really looking at the big picture.

 

Also - note: When Smokie talked to Locke about turning the wheel (in the cave) he was in Christian's form at the time... who's corpse hadn't hit the island yet. So clearly more than just the castaways could shift through time.

[Amentep]

I was just thinking about how the writers had everything "planned out from the beginning" with Smokey randomly destroying the jungle, being a "security system", being summoned by Ben and also things like the Others having superhuman strength.

 

 

Smokey wasn't randomly destroying the jungle he killed the Captain of the ship (just like he did with The Black Rock); my guess was he was trying to do specific actions - taking out people in leadership positions, scaring and confusing people - to maneuver himself to a position he wanted (just like he did with Alpert and the Black Rock).

 

We don't actually know why Smokey responded to Ben's call, so we can't really say there was ever a real intention to have smokey be a security system.

 

The Others having superhuman strength could come from having access to the temple (which several people have said changed people).

 

As far as the well goes, we don't know how many times in the past this stuff has been repeated, how many wells created and destroyed. Certainly its implied there are more than one. What was the exchange from "The Incident"? Something like MIB-"I'll end this again" to which was give the reply from JACOB-"It only ends once; everything else is just progress".

Edited May 17, 2010 by Amentep

[Darque]

One other thing, Smokie's been gunning for the "candidates" since season one... ever since he tried to lure jack off a cliff using his father's form in like... episode 2

[Purkake]

I meant destroying the jungle in the Pilot episode, some of the stuff that he(it?) does seems pretty random and more animal-like than a 2000 year old dude following a plan.

 

Also, Lostpedia has a nice compilation of unanswered questions.

[Darque]

Thanks for the link.

 

As for Smokie - after 2000 years in a non-human body - he'd be likely to be pretty wonky in his through process.

 

Of course, everything he did as "black smoke" seemed to be to create fear or kill targets... and as dead people, to manipulate Locke/Eko (till the actor wanted out) and possibly Ben.

[Hiro Protagonist]

I was just thinking about how the writers had everything "planned out from the beginning" with Smokey randomly destroying the jungle, being a "security system", being summoned by Ben and also things like the Others having superhuman strength.

 

 

 

The writers did have a 'bible' at the start of the series of where the series was going to go and how it was going to end. But it seems it was only a vague outline. Many sources have confirmed they did have this bible.

 

However, the problem is they decided to put in this 'really cool stuff' not realising that this 'cool stuff' needs to be explained which they probably didn't have the answers at the time. A good example is the Numbers (as per below quote). It's also cool to throw in an egyptian statue and heiroglyphs, but where did they come from? It's cool to have a lighthouse, but where did this come from? Yeah, we'll just throw in a lighthouse which will explain the numbers but not explain where the lighthouse came from. It's cool to have the island, but where did the island come from? etc.

 

I hope one day they show this bible they had at the start of the series so all the fans can see what they had at the start, what they had planned and what they had to work with.

 

 

Here's an interview with the Lost writers and Stephen King from 2006.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1562722,00.html

 

Lindelof: My father was into the Illuminati and the number 23, so he was a big reader of Robert Anton Wilson. So there was some intentionality behind it, but we had no idea, no grand design behind the Numbers. But suddenly, the No. 1 question stopped being 'What is the Monster?' and went to being 'What do the Numbers mean?' This isn't to say that the Numbers don't mean anything. We just had no idea it had this potential to get totally out of control.

[Pope]

- Exhibit A: before MIB dug the well, there was no wheel yet (as evidenced by the fact that he was building it himself)

- Exhibit B: Mother made the well collapse before MIB was able to finish the wheel

- Exhibit C: when Locke descended into the well, they flashed to a time before the well was even dug (as evidenced by there being no remains of a well whatsoever)

- Exhibit D: even though the well wasn't dug yet, the wheel was already there (as evidenced by Locke being able to turn it)

 

Verdict: sloppy writing! Even if you ignore the question as to who exactly finished the wheel, these facts just don't add up.

 

A) No, he and his people were building it - hence the need for Mother to kill them too.

B) Across the Sea takes place at like... 23AD.. I think... plenty of time for Smokie to sucker some of Jacob's "other" pawns to finish it. And Jacob has apparently brought a LOT of people to the island.

C) The Wheel might have been "unstuck" too, and bouncing through time as well. Or it might have been because of Locke's presence... other items timeshifted too.

D) See C.

 

Verdict - not really looking at the big picture.

 

Also - note: When Smokie talked to Locke about turning the wheel (in the cave) he was in Christian's form at the time... who's corpse hadn't hit the island yet. So clearly more than just the castaways could shift through time.

You know, I was once like you: defending the show and its writers, believing that there was a perfectly acceptable explanation for everything, even stuff that didn't seem to make any sense at the time. Now, with only 2 episodes left, I realize how incredibly naive that was of me.

[Darque]

If presenting the info and most likely situations based on what info we have is defending, then so be it, I'm defending.

 

Or maybe I'd rather wait till we have all the info (i.e. all episodes) before trying to blast it, rather that than jumping the gun because it doesn't seem to fall into place based on what we've seen "so far."

[Pope]

If it were just this one instance, I would agree with you and wait until after the finale, but there's many more such cases that can never be resolved satisfactory in what little time is left.

[Amentep]

I've never expected to have all the answers from the show, so I guess that's why any dangling plot ideas or unexplained bits don't bother me in the least.

[kirottu]

I've never expected to have all the answers from the show, so I guess that's why any dangling plot ideas or unexplained bits don't bother me in the least.

 

Same here.