LOST was a mainstream show as well. Buffy, Angel, Battlestar Galactica...yes maybe they did have better endings, but they were on smaller networks and had smaller audiences. I'm not using it as an excuse, but it needs to be looked at in perspective.

 

Abrams had NOTHING to do with LOST after the Pilot. He served as an executive producer, but he had no input in the creative process at all. The same goes for Fringe as well, he really has nothing to do with it aswell. He's more tied up with The Untouchables for NBC...

 

I really dont think the size of the network makes a hell of a lot of difference, it's about the WRITING mate at the end of the day.. Buffy and Angel pretty much were mainstream shows, they were very popular, as is 24, and those stories always seem to end extremely well (particularly season 1 of 24 where the writers actually had the guts to give us a dark-as-hell conclusion with the death of Bauer's wife; and while we're on the subject of Mr Bauer, I dont exactly see him acting all hopeless and despairing, and I'd say given that everything that's been done to him during the course of 24's run he doesn't exactly have much to live for either, I think he'd probably trade "Lost Jack's" life for his any day :lol: ...).

 

If Abrams had nothing to do with the way Lost developed in terms of plot-lines, themes, etc after the pilot, how come on IMDb it has his name down for writing credits on all 114 episodes of the show...? True, he only DIRECTED a couple of episodes, but check this out....

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008/fullcredits#writers

 

So, sorry mate, I dont buy your theory that he just walked away from the writing, plotting, etc, after the pilot, and IMDb backs me up on this, unless you think that the heading "Series Writing Credits" can be interpreted in some other way...

Honestly Abrams had nothing to do with the show. All he did was serve as an executive producer. He's said it in countless interviews. He left the show to concentrate on Mission Impossible 3, and then later Star Trek & Cloverfield. He just has to be credited because it was his and Damon Lindelof's inital idea about the plane crash on the island and a lot of his ideas were used in the first season. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have both stated on numerous occasions that it was essentially THEIR show as JJ Abrams chose to leave the show (and in very good hands). Infact I think he only directly wrote, or helped write 3 episodes, and that was the first two and the Season 3 opener iirc.

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have both stated on numerous occasions that it was essentially THEIR show as JJ Abrams chose to leave the show (and in very good hands). Infact I think he only directly wrote, or helped write 3 episodes, and that was the first two and the Season 3 opener iirc.

 

But Cuse is only credited for 32 episodes (roughly a quarter of the series, well, okay just over...), whereas Lieber, Lindelof and Abrams are credited for the whole lot, so how does that work...?

 

Anyway, I'd actually like to get back to the religious elements... Yes, the show had religious overtones, but they tended to be Allegorical and Metaphorical in nature, and a wee bit more subtle (yes, I got how Jacob and MiB were basically Cain and Abel, etc, etc).. The finale was full-on bloody Catholic redemption bullsh!t laid on with a trowel, and frankly we were beaten over the head with it... How does Catholic redemption work when Sayid was a Muslim, and presumably Jin and Sun, being Korean, would likely be Bhuddist or Taoist....?

I'll think you'll find the church at the end was a multi-faith place of worship, the window behind jack and christian had symbols for many religions. Also redemption had been a major theme of the series I dont get whats wrong with it being a part in the finale.

 

And unless Lidnelof, Cuse and Abrams have all lied a lot in interviews, it was very much Lindelof's and Cuse's TV show, Abrams helped create it and helped come up with the concept but he didnt do much more work on it after the start, he probaly gave advice/ideas now and then, but not formally, im pretty sure the end was all Lindelof and Cuse.

I'll think you'll find the church at the end was a multi-faith place of worship, the window behind jack and christian had symbols for many religions. Also redemption had been a major theme of the series I dont get whats wrong with it being a part in the finale.

 

And unless Lidnelof, Cuse and Abrams have all lied a lot in interviews, it was very much Lindelof's and Cuse's TV show, Abrams helped create it and helped come up with the concept but he didnt do much more work on it after the start, he probaly gave advice/ideas now and then, but not formally, im pretty sure the end was all Lindelof and Cuse.

 

The END maybe, but Cuse is only credited for 32 episodes, check out the IMDb link, 32 episodes out of 114 hardly makes it HIS show... So, he basically only came in for about two seasons worth more or less.... Which means more than half of the work was done before he even got there surely.... So, it suggests to me now that perhaps they steered things towards this conclusion in the final two seasons, whereas it was likely to have been going in a different direction before Cuse got on board....

 

And, er, you dont see many stain-glass windows and pews in mosques or Bhuddist temples mate.... The iconography is Western/Christian, the outside facade screams "Church" as well tbh, it doesn't even remotely resemble a mosque or a temple......

Lost went down in quality after Season Three, the last two seasons were mostly a badly written mess, the characters became flat, repeating archs they've already been through (Sayid I'm looking at you) or just walking through the jungle aimlessly, bringing in characters that take up valuable screentime, just to kill them off, their motivations changing with the wind, actors practically winking at the camera with that God-awful self-aware dialogue. The only character I thought had decent motivation and development in the last two seasons was surprisingly Kate. However, I didn't like how CC and DL basically came out and admitted to not knowing the answers to the questions themselves, saying that they used to sit around in the writing room and come up with ideas they thought were cool and added them in for no reason. So... they put plot points in without any meaning, because they thought it would be 'cool'? Right...

 

There were some nice moments in the finale, I liked the circular aspect of Jack dying where he woke up, cliche as it is. I also was moved by Christian's heart to heart with Jack, Locke forgiving Ben and Jack saying goodbye to Kate, although that scene overall felt pretty hollow (Hurley and Sawyer barely even looked at eachother). The reason I went off Lost, was mainly because the writers were so far up their own asses by the end of the show it was unbearable, I just wanted them to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and sadly they fell apart towards the end. One thing though, I don't think not knowing the ending is a bad thing (I just wish they would come out and admit it, instead of being superior), Stephen King had no idea what would happen when Roland reached The Dark Tower when writing the Dark Tower series, and Moore openly said he made BSG up as he went along; it just comes down to how good of a writer you are, and DL and the writing staff either lacked inspiration towards the end or they showed themselves up as being just purely mediocre.

Edited July 30, 201014 yr by Daniel Gleek

Lost went down in quality after Season Three, the last two seasons were mostly a badly written mess, the characters became flat, repeating archs they've already been through (Sayid I'm looking at you) or just walking through the jungle aimlessly, bringing in characters that take up valuable screentime, just to kill them off, their motivations changing with the wind, actors practically winking at the camera with that God-awful self-aware dialogue. The only character I thought had decent motivation and development in the last two seasons was surprisingly Kate. However, I didn't like how CC and DL basically came out and admitted to not knowing the answers to the questions themselves, saying that they used to sit around in the writing room and come up with ideas they thought were cool and added them in for no reason. So... they put plot points in without any meaning, because they thought it would be 'cool'? Right...

 

There were some nice moments in the finale, I liked the circular aspect of Jack dying where he woke up, cliche as it is. I also was moved by Christian's heart to heart with Jack, Locke forgiving Ben and Jack saying goodbye to Kate, although that scene overall felt pretty hollow (Hurley and Sawyer barely even looked at eachother). The reason I went off Lost, was mainly because the writers were so far up their own asses by the end of the show it was unbearable, I just wanted them to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and sadly they fell apart towards the end. One thing though, I don't think not knowing the ending is a bad thing (I just wish they would come out and admit it, instead of being superior), Stephen King had no idea what would happen when Roland reached The Dark Tower when writing the Dark Tower series, and Moore openly said he made BSG up as he went along; it just comes down to how good of a writer you are, and DL and the writing staff either lacked inspiration towards the end or they showed themselves up as being just purely mediocre.

 

The latter I reckon, Moore can clearly think on his feet a lot better than Cuse and Lindelof can, some writers thrive on that "seat of the pants" idea.. As Silas pointed out on another thread, the final season of Alias (the other big Abrams show) went a bit stupid and self-indulgent as well (with some pretty ridiculous plot twists which would make even the makers of 24 go a bit "WTF?? Even we wouldn't do something that dumb..."), so I dunno, is it some sort of pattern or summat...? Like I said, at the moment, I'm really enjoying Fringe, but have an awful feeling that that show will end up going down the plug hole as well as it gets past the third series...

 

There were still ideas floating around in seasons 4 and 5 that seemed pretty sound, I mean, you had them trying to get back to the island to rescue the others, you had the plot arcs involving Charles Widmore and Dharma, which were relatively sound, but this season just showed it all up as Emperor's New Clothes in the end, which is a real shame, because the promise the show had, especially seasons 1-3, was huge....

The New Man In Charge leaked the other day. It's pretty good - spells a few things out and also answers a few things that weren't answered in the show.

 

Personally, I loved the end of Lost; I just don't see any other way it could've ended. Yeah, it was flawed, but it was never going to be perfect.

 

The only thing I didn't like about this series was how a few of the character arcs that felt so important in other series came to a bit of a damp end. For instance, Charles Widmore and Ben. Widmore's death was so lame and insignificant, especially when you look back to series 4 and that awesome scene in Widmore's penthouse.

The only thing I didn't like about this series was how a few of the character arcs that felt so important in other series came to a bit of a damp end. For instance, Charles Widmore and Ben. Widmore's death was so lame and insignificant, especially when you look back to series 4 and that awesome scene in Widmore's penthouse.

 

Now, yeah, that really got my goat... Especially when from about season 3 onwards Ben is put forward as being an extremely important character, and Widmore was put forward as this sort of "evil puppeteer" type who was manipulating events in the background, the whole Dharma thing, The Others, etc, even Desmond all seems to get cast aside..... The ending comes, and it's really just a load of old tosh that short-circuits a lot of stuff that was put forward as being apparently OH-SO important to the overall plot.....

 

Im on season 2 of my rewatch now, just watched 'The Other 48 Days', I noticed that when Ana Lucia and Goodwin were talking, just before she kills him, she asked why he killed Nathan, and he said 'Nathan was not a good man, that is why he was not on the list", only just realised, the list they found on the other was probaly people picked by Jacob (maybe in the same style in season 6 where he lists Jack, Hurley etc), as 'good' people, aka possible replacements for him. Maybe they did have some idea of the Jacob's candidates arc this far back? probaly hadnt fully developed the idea, but still.