Just watched Lost's final finale. Emotionally cathartic - but without revealing a single goddamn thing. Which makes it some of the laziest, cheapest, borderline deceitful bait-and-switch writing I think I have ever seen.
I really thought they were going to pull it all together. As this last season continued without any resolution, I really thought it was going to end in a final masterstroke - because that's what it would have taken. I believed they CARED enough to do that. Naive, I know.
Now it's wreckage is scattered on the desert island of modern television; the sad remains of something that once seemed it would take flight.
And I'm diagnosing the scene of the accident. The culprits seem clear in method and motivation. In this interview, they present their account of the events:
"That's the best we could do," is a sad excuse to make for this kind of utter laziness.
But with that kind of laziness present from the beginning, how could the first two seasons have been so good? Well, is it just coincidence, that this writer left at the end of the second season?
http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/lost-former-writer/
Those first two seasons were so good, that I hung on for hope as the writing degraded for the next four years. And some of the most interesting ideas appear to be his - the Dharma Initiative, for instance. He very politely doesn't specify why he left. I think it was because he was trying to bring the ideas into some kind of resolution, and the rest of the writers, and especially the producers, just didn't care.
I know a series can end well, without chickening out on the ending. The Shield did it. Six Feet Under did it. But not Lost. "Emotional closure" doesn't cut it. You don't end a story with "and it all was a dream!" Let alone "and it all was a dream, except not, because it's somewhere beyond space and time, except it isn't, because...well a bunch of stuff happened but Kate told Jack she loved him. Here, buy the box set!"
Bastards.
We may just need a government agency to make sure this never happens again. the Television Intelligence Agency. They can pursue the quality control for shows that bill themselves as intelligent. They won't have a lot to investigate, that's for sure.
In the mean time, at least there's this:
I really thought they were going to pull it all together. As this last season continued without any resolution, I really thought it was going to end in a final masterstroke - because that's what it would have taken. I believed they CARED enough to do that. Naive, I know.
Now it's wreckage is scattered on the desert island of modern television; the sad remains of something that once seemed it would take flight.
And I'm diagnosing the scene of the accident. The culprits seem clear in method and motivation. In this interview, they present their account of the events:
...we made a very conscious choice to ask, "What are the big questions? And most importantly, what are the paths of these characters? Where do they lead?" And we followed those paths and tried not to trip ourselves up getting too diverted from that. We felt that that's the thing that's ultimately going to make the finale work or not work....That's the best we could do.Translation: When our stories weren't interesting we threw in new mysteries and promised a pay off, and when it came time to pay off on them we just didn't care.
"That's the best we could do," is a sad excuse to make for this kind of utter laziness.
But with that kind of laziness present from the beginning, how could the first two seasons have been so good? Well, is it just coincidence, that this writer left at the end of the second season?
http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/lost-former-writer/
Those first two seasons were so good, that I hung on for hope as the writing degraded for the next four years. And some of the most interesting ideas appear to be his - the Dharma Initiative, for instance. He very politely doesn't specify why he left. I think it was because he was trying to bring the ideas into some kind of resolution, and the rest of the writers, and especially the producers, just didn't care.
I know a series can end well, without chickening out on the ending. The Shield did it. Six Feet Under did it. But not Lost. "Emotional closure" doesn't cut it. You don't end a story with "and it all was a dream!" Let alone "and it all was a dream, except not, because it's somewhere beyond space and time, except it isn't, because...well a bunch of stuff happened but Kate told Jack she loved him. Here, buy the box set!"
Bastards.
We may just need a government agency to make sure this never happens again. the Television Intelligence Agency. They can pursue the quality control for shows that bill themselves as intelligent. They won't have a lot to investigate, that's for sure.
In the mean time, at least there's this:
