The characters on the former ABC hit series “Lost” were not dead the entire time, executive producer Carlton Cuse said this past weekend during a discussion marking 10 years since the show was launched. The creators of “Lost,” about survivors of a plane crash on what initially appeared to be a deserted island, previously had denied that theory, which Cuse suggested may have originated because of a few seconds of footage of the plane wreckage alone on a beach at the end of the finale. “When people saw the shots of the plane and there were no people there, that I think exacerbated the problem.”
They're still making it up as they go. I'm surprised the interview didn't take place in the corner they wrote themselves into a decade ago. They're selling us popular fiction as literary fiction. (source)
Damon Lindelof, a “Lost” co-creator and show runner with Cuse, also debunked a theory that the characters were in purgatory, during the Paleyfest discussion in Los Angeles. Cuse did say that the show, while literally about people lost on an island, was metaphorically about people “lost in their lives” who are seeking redemption and are looking for meaning and purpose in their lives.
You can't create rules the characters have to abide by without explaining why those rules exist. If you do that, your story fails the Dues ex Machina test and passes the bullshit one. (source) I'll grant the show does speak metaphorically about people lost in their lives. This rebuttal takes a stab at flushing that out. That said, I was the poster child for seeking redemption and looking for purpose from 2008-2011, during the show's last few seasons. I was recently divorced and bouncing between several jobs and yet I didn't latch on to the show as such.
The writers agreed early in the series that its ending would be a spiritual one, he added. “We would have long discourses about … what all of our journeys mean, how all of us are here to lift each other up in our lives.” Cuse also said the writers decided not to provide answers to all the questions raised by the storylines in the final season. “Every question sort of begets another question. … We just didn’t feel like there was any way to answer all the open questions at the end of the show without it feeling really didactic and boring.”
Like sands through the hourglass...this really is another example of the writers dodging questions. Even Reddit's "Ask Me Anything" segment was just another chance for Cuse to avoid facts and spin drama. (source) For the record, here's what they sold ABC before the pilot. (PDF source)
In the finale, broadcast May 23, 2010, their goal was “to tell an emotional story that tells what happened to the characters,” Cuse said. Lindelof said they did write a scene that answered who was on the Outrigger, but the scene was never shot. That script may be auctioned off to raise money for a charity in the future, he said.
By the time they got to the finale, they'd used up most of their misdirection tricks and were firmly in the corner they'd written themselves into.
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Lindelof also said he was “really grateful that the show was on network” television despite its limitations on language and other aspects. “It would have been a different show on cable and probably not as good.”
Debatable. Networks are losing viewers to HBO just as fast as both are losing viewers to Netflix. I'm not even going to use the Emmys scoreboard to help make my case.
The actors and creators discussed the tendency of “Lost” characters to be killed. Ian Somerhalder, who portrayed Boone Carlyle, said he was told about three or four weeks in advance that his character was going to die near the end of Season 1...Lindelof said the writers had considered having a major character die in the pilot, but a network executive said they would lose the audience’s trust. “It ended up being a great note,” he added.
Speaking of HBO and killing characters off, guess what other show I consider a soap opera?
Somerhalder recalled a trick played on him by Maggie Grace, who played his character’s stepsister, Shannon Rutherford. Somerhalder said he was called back to do another take of a scene in which Boone kissed Shannon. When he kissed her, he discovered that she had been marinating a mouthful of mint garlic after a couple puffs on a cigar and also was wearing a large baseball cup. “Nothing like a garlic-flavored sister.”
Uhmm...
I'm losing steam here. Lost had millions of viewers and so many of my friends loved this show. Even after the finale. My smart friends still stand by the show. I thought after a few years my Lost-bashing bandwagon would have a few more people. But the Netflix rating is still close to four stars. IMDB rating is at 8.6 (up from 8.4 in 2012). About 13.6 million people (per episode) viewed Lost on ABC. They can't be that wrong, can they?
So here's another stab. Lost was to the 2000's what Creed was to the 90's. That decade Creed averaged more than 13.6 million per album in the United States. I'm publicly shamed if I drive around listening to Human Clay with the windows down. But as of March 2014 it's still cool to admit how much of your life one has devoted to the show Lost. That's the planet I live on. Alright.
But House, MD is better than Lost.
Other sources:
http://ndeming.tumblr.com/post/19836946897/the-ending-of-lost-sucks
http://ndeming.tumblr.com/post/18580147320/the-ending-of-lost-sucks-part-2
http://wiw.org/~jess/archives/2008/06/19/lost-wtf/
Another source: http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2014/04/how-i-met-your-mothers-legacy-the-most-successful-lost-clone-ever.html
ReplyDeleteNot sure how I missed this before, but I still love you even tho you're wrong.
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