No. It sucked for a season and a half. Second half of Season 2 and most of Season 3 were hard to watch. Once they got an end date, they were able to stop with episodes that seemed to run in place.

I think there is plenty of quality to the show.

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Well, they did flashbacks and flashforwards so maybe we should have seen this parallel crap coming. It does seem like a cop out. I can't feasibly predict how it might be relevant to the main storyline (what ever that is at this point). I doubt it is relevant.

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Here's something to ponder as a possible plot twist...Is the new Locke actually bad and is Jacob actually good?

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

I quit trying to tie up loose ends. I just take every week where it takes me.

But, I enjoyed last night's episode if only because it paired up the two strongest characters, Locke and Sawyer, in scenes together.

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You know me like that.

i get that in a "mystery" show, the questions can't be answered. and most of the time, questions aren't answered in dialog, they're answered in action. shown instead of told. but does every question have to be a little mystery to solve? it's just convoluted. and it's not necessary.



There's a difference between leaving something open-ended for the purpose of philosophy and interpretation and just flat out missing your own details.

Hell I guess they could still redeem themselves because we still have the rest of the season to go.

Here are a couple of plot holes that are menial but still apparent. Then I'll get to the machina's.

I got this from another web site that was pointing out such things:





My bigger question is about Jacob. He was clearly invented because there was no explanation for the black smoke. I think Jacob is used as a plot device to serve as some kind of magic trick. Ultimately that's what this show has thrived on: it's a series of magic tricks. Doesn't have to make sense because it's "Lost".

While the show has gone through a laundry list of deus ex machinas (the invention of Faraday being one of the more recent), the biggest one is time travel. It is the ultimate convenience in science fiction writing and typically the most frowned upon device because lazy writers think that anything is possible in time travel, but it isn't. The fact that Rousseau meets Jin when she's a child and doesn't recall it later in life, or the fact that if the time-continuum was molested enough that perhaps as a child she would already know who Jin was because the time travel in "Lost" happened so frequently and so randomly, it was possible. The time travel elements created a very narrow view of what the characters went through. But time travel affects *everyone* and *everything*, including minute details. Plus, the island itself should have been affected by the time travel.

My comparison to show a superior show that deals with similar themes is "The Prisoner". To be fair, "Lost" isn't the same situation because "Lost" wasn't expected to be a hit. It was never intended to be a 6 season long show. I believe "The Prisoner" was meant to be a 17 episode long show.

But even with all of the inconsistencies of the plot itself, my biggest problem is the drop off of the quality of the characters themselves.

All Sawyer does is drink alcohol, has a scowl on his face, and eventually goes along with a plan.

Jack cries about everything and blames himself, and then gets redeemed by something else. Laughs mockingly when told something he can't believe, tries to get into a fight, and loses.

Kate cries about everything and still gives longing looks to Sawyer.

Hurley says "dude".

Locke is asked a question, looks off to the distance, then starts walking away.

About the only interesting character still is Jin.

My other question is about the numbers...but I still think there will be a reveal about this. If the numbers represent the survivors, and it was important to key those in or else bad things would happen. Now this goes back to the DHARMA Initiative, I believe. They've been keying in those numbers for decades. If that's the case, there was only one "candidate" that was shown as being a child when Jacob met them. And what about the other candidates? How far back does that go? And the biggest problem is...once time travel was introduced, that could have screwed up the continuum for that as well.

But even more important...what did Leonard mean when he said "You've opened the box!". Was Leonard on the island? Did he know Jacob? He told him to "get away from the numbers". How could he do that if the numbers MEANT HIM? And why would Leonard know about the numbers, but not what they mean if he knew something was wrong with them?

And Leonard is nowhere to be found when Hurley returns to Santa Rose in 2006.

Of course they could bring this all back sometime this season. But time is really getting short...

so far all we've learned this season is the writers have replaced time traveling with shark jumping.


And judging by the way they pandered to the audience in the previews it seems obvious the network realizes this season has been an unmitigated disaster so far. Basically the whole preview was "please keep watching we know the show sucks but next week we PROMISE SOME ANSWERS! You gotta believe us, please keep watching!!!"

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i missed the last half hour. but something tells me i didn't really miss it.

Hurley finds a secret passage and hits a button that sends the island to the Planet of the Apes. In front of the egyptian statue you see Smokey yelling "YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

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Then, the Smoke monster turns back into Locke and all the people that died on the island come back as zombies and they dance to Thriller in front of Kate.

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Then Ash drops from the sky with his beat up oldsmobile and his chainsaw and takes out the zombies as well as Smokey, who happens to be holding the necromonicon, but as he says the wrong words, he is transported back to Cleveland where he is imprisoned to live the remainder of his life in a poor comedy with Drew Carey.

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Hurley and Miles return from the island and decide that the best way to use their money would be to go into business together and fight ghosts. Unfortunately, they cross the streams and open a parallel universe where the island is covered with cheetos and Hurley must eat his way off.

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In the parallel universe, Smokey has found his way off the island and realizes his dream that was thousands of years in the making. He starts a sports message board in Chicago.

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So, not interested in the Czechs & the Finns then?

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Here are my random thoughts.

1) Every show, movie, book has plot holes. There's been like 100 episodes of a show that intentionally tries to be mysterious. It would be impossible to have everything work out perfectly especially given the fanatical nature of some of the fans who study this show like the bible.
2) I think it's tough to judge the show for this season until we find out what exactly they are getting at. I'm pretty sure that they are building towards something with the stuff that is going on. If it's fun to watch, exciting, and ties up the general purpose/moral of the show I'll be satisfied.
3) The biggest complaint about this show was the lack of "answers" for previous questions. Almost all of them have been tied up. There is just too much there to remember. I guess we'll see what the deal is with the numbers corresponding to specific individuals. However, it shows that the numbers were significant and that there will be some sort of answer as to what they are for.
4) This show should ultimately be viewed like every tv show. For some reason it's been treated like it should be a work of Shakespeare and critiqued nearly as much. Compare this to another show I enjoy. I really like the show "Chuck" but when we have yet another episode where Chuck gets in trouble and all of a sudden the bad guys turn into statues as they get beat down by people without guns I don't question it. I grew tired of the whole "run into the forest for a purpose" storyline that seems to be pretty much every episode too. However, I concentrate more now on the general quality of the show and ignore some of the clear flaws in LOST.

All in all, I give this season a B- so far. If it builds into something big and memorable to end the series that will be an A+. I just hope I'm not disappointed in the end.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I think this season has been pretty good so far. Better than seasons 3, 4, and 5 in my opinion.

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BR is right, a whole lot of the early mysteries have been solved, people just don't remember them because the answers were rather mundane, and the show had moved on to bigger mysteries by then. That's been the modus operandi of the whole show: the viewer steps further and further back from the picture and the world gets bigger and bigger, and the earlier, smaller details begin to seem trivial. I think the writers have done a great job creatively in continuing to successfully widen the scope of the story.

I think what people need to equate the show to is a magic trick. The fun is in being fooled by the trick and the burning curiosity to find out how it was done. But the explanation of the trick is never as fun as the trick itself.

There was never any chance of a "real" explanation for a lot of this stuff. In the very first episode we saw the smoke monster, and ever since then people have been dying to know what it is. Okay, but, honestly, what did anyone ever think it could possibly be? As far as I know, there are no smoke monsters in real life. Turns out (seemingly) it's Satan and one of his many manifestations. If that's not a good enough answer, fine, but what else would be a better answer? I mean, seriously here... it's a smoke monster. By definition it's absurd.

In that same light, a friend of mine is all pissed off about the explanation for the numbers. "They're just random numbers!" he's complaining. "What if Locke had been assigned #2 instead of #4? Then the numbers would have been 2 8 15 16 23 42." Yes, I answer, and he replies "but, we were led to believe there was something intrinsically super-special about the number FOUR!!!" It's as if people thought the LOST writers know the secrets to the meaning of life and were going to reveal it on this TV show.


WZ, you mention a lot of the mysteries are convoluted, and of course yes, they are. And yes, the characters have stopped developing as the show started focusing on time travel etc etc. No doubt about it. My guess would be that in their candid moments, the writers would admit the show could have been done in four seasons. It's been stretched out. It's not perfect. But it's fun and actually I'm glad it didn't end two years ago.

As far as the specific plot holes: I thought the whole thing with Charlie was that he was afraid to swim as a child, but then they showed a flashback where he finally took a leap of faith into his father's arms and then he got over his fear. I could be remembering that wrong, I don't know. But see, things like that don't get to me too much when a show goes on over 100 episodes. The logistics for putting this thing together for this long is bound to result in some discrepancies here and there. The thing with Ben taking the baby, I would have to rewatch it, I remember people saying his face was always in the shadows, or maybe the French lady is so crazy 16 years later she can't remember details anymore, I don't know. I guess it's possible that she does remember Ben, but he threatened her into capturing him and turning him over to the Losties, since it does seem he did mean to get captured. Who knows. Again, I'm more concerned with the overall arcs than the details.

I don't know if time travel was used as a deus ex machina, since if anything, all it did was make the story even more complicated, rather than fixing up any plot holes.

Yes I think they still have to explain how the numbers became known to other people and to Dharma. I think it all originated from the broadcast from the island that kept repeating the numbers. Maybe the transmission came from Jacob, to inform his agents (such as Anthony Cooper perhaps) who the final candidates were, so they could help direct them to the island. I don't know.

I guess it all just depends what you want from the show. I know people are pissed off about Jack having a kid in the new timeline. That kind of thing doesn't bother me a bit, and I really enjoyed seeing that. I don't care if a writer twists the plot a bit as a sacrifice to telling an interesting or touching story. Yes when you deal with the supernatural or time travel, it gives the writer a free license to mess with the plot. Buffy magically got a sister half way through the series thanks to a goofy plot contrivance, but it made for some great stories.

It just comes down to how much suspension of disbelief you are willing to give an author for what they are trying to accomplish. To me, LOST presents a very unique story-telling method, that put some pretty interesting characters into a fantastic supernatural setting, and lets them all play off each other until (hopefully) there is a satisfactory ending. I'm not going to sweat it if something that happened in episode #38 doesn't jive with something someone said in episode #59. I'm just enjoying the ride. If the ending is not satisfactory, then the writers will have failed in that aspect, and the show will be hurt despite the many good things that led up to it.

but it's trying to cover the plot holes, and what i mean by it being a deus ex machina is that it's a device for the writers to basically answer any question with "well, this is Lost and that's time travel." While time travel's been in science fiction a long time, there's usually a reason for it, and there should be a theme involved. This was just used as a mechanism that was covering up for the fact that the writers didn't know where else to go with their complicated plots. So what's the answer? Oh, TIME TRAVEL. Anything's possible in time travel!



that could be the whole show wrapped up in one sentence. now, the thing is, i already knew this show was going to be like this because like i said, i already knew that this was only meant to be a "pilot" and they had to literally make the rest up as they went along. but they've had off seasons to enhance the creativity and character development. instead they just wanted to pull off, as you say, a magic trick.

magic doesn't really thrill me. i like mysteries, i like science fiction and i even like to be teased and the occasional mind-fuck doesn't bother me. but have a purpose. there doesn't seem to be one anymore with this show. it's just twisting plots within plots to make it as complicated as possible so no one can follow it, therefore say "it's brilliant".

Like i said, maybe the thing can save itself in the end. I'm hoping for an entertaining end to the show...doesn't have to answer the questions. in fact, that's probably the opposite of what should happen. but it can answer the plot holes at least.

i'm mostly venting because of how disappointed i am personally with how the show has gotten. but like i said, if i don't really think about it, it can still be entertaining, even with all of the cliched shit the characters have been reduced to.

sometimes i can watch bad TV and enjoy it.

I heard this show is bad and hokey and into outrageous plot ideas... I'm amazed at the passion you all have for it.

Twin Peaks used to have similar criticism. Two shows I never watched

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

Ah, I see what you mean. Could be, we'll see after this season how much they wrap up and how much they explain away. My own feeling is, they didn't add time travel as a way to explain away plot holes, but rather as a way to add more shock-and-awe moments and mind-bending conundrums... and also to stretch the story out another season. Either way, eh, it made for some good moments. Was it absolutely necessary? No.







Could be, from a cynical point of view. I could argue that it was necessary to hide a lot of plot elements, otherwise people might have figured out the mysteries early on. The show thrives on the mysteries, so, they had to wait to reveal things like Jacob and the course-correction theory (another deus ex machina!). People were supposed to be confused, and thus they could not reveal all the relevant plot details. Now, whether these plot details were withheld, or made up along the way, I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

I will say this though, in the writers' defense - They did leave a lot of "evidence" early on:

The numbers were introduced all the way back in season 1, and now do have some relevance to the plot (though not completely fleshed out as of this point).

At the beginning of 2, Sayid noted the thick concrete walls in the hatch, and stated that it reminded him of Chernobyl. 3 seasons later (but years earlier) an atomic bomb is detonated at the construction site of the hatch.

In season 3, there were references to "Jacob's list", way before we were introduced to Jacob's character. 3 seasons later we find out what that list is.

In season 3, the others were building a runway, but nobody knew why. In season 5, the Ajira plane would have crashed, but Lapidus managed to land it... on that runway.

The foot of the four-toed statue goes back to season 2.

The Adam and Eve skeletons go back to season 1 (yet to be explained however, but the writers insist it is a critical plot point).

I'm sure there are other examples. So while these don't necessary PROVE the writers knew everything all along, a case can certainly be made in their favor.




If magic doesn't thrill you, then I understand why you aren't thrilled with the direction of the show. Because yeah, it's largely about misdirection and shock-and-awe moments. You say they're just making it as complicated as possible, and I agree. But, they have to justify that with an ending that wraps it all up in a satisfying way. Their day of reckoning is rapidly approaching.



It better, or at least most of them; the big ones.



I understand the venting because as I admitted, the show would have been better served if it was, say, just four seasons or so. That might be it's biggest problem of all; how much it's been stretched out. But I would stop short of calling it bad TV. Maybe you don't watch enough bad TV to know the difference Did you try watching the new V? It's shows like that that make me appreciate Lost.

i'd say we've had a mighty good chat about this, but i'm willing to leave it on the table until the show actually ends.

i have my misgivings and my cynicism but i'm done venting for now...i think it's only fair to let the season play out and see how they wrap it up.

there is also LOSTpedia which does a pretty good job of defining a lot of the characters/events/etc. i guess it could all be pieced together, but i still think the writers have gotten away with murder so far in what they've created out of thin air.

if they pull it off, i will give them full credit for it.

Thought it was a really solid episode last night.

ABC isn't doing themselves any favors though with the way they are advertising this season. When you tease an episode saying there are scenes so shocking and revealing in the preview that you can only show images during the preview and then the episode doesn't deliver, it creates a lot of bad will and opinions about the season.

Seriously just say ABC's LOST: The Final Season. You've watched it this long, you aren't going to stop now.

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Team Cutler.

i thought it was pretty entertaining.

shocking...but i sort of like where this is going, with the black smoke sort of "infecting" these guys. i have a feeling the worlds are going to collide with the parallel universe somehow. it'll come down to sawyer, jack, and kate.

i'm still waiting to see how they tie up other loose ends but i got a strong feeling it won't happen.

I thought it sucked yet again last night. Don't give a shit about the parellel universe since its most likely going to be erased or merged in some way eventually. It seems like wasted effort to even care about it.

They aren't spending any time on what is happening on the island. Like, for instance, how about an episode showing what happened to Claire for the past 3 years as opposed to this parallel universe crap.

And when Sun and her crew showed up at the temple I had no idea where they even were before that...and then i realized I really don't give a shit anymore.

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but the lighthouse, shakes!

THE MAGICAL LIGHTHOUSE!!!!!

i think they are going to do something with the parallel universe vs. the island universe.

i think even the Lostpedia guys are having a hard time trying to follow what's going on and put it all in their entries.

i found the episode entertaining at least. i think if there becomes something revealed about a TRIBE of black smoke people, that would be a collision course with wackiness.

oh, forgot about the magic lighthouse. What is pissing me off about this season is this whole parallel universe thing. Its completely unnecesary and is ruining the show for me. I really don't give a shit about what might've happened if the plane didn't crash. There was already enough loose ends and avenues they could've gone this season to fill 500 episodes if they wanted without having to create an entirely new story angle. All its doing is taking up time that could be used for more important things on the island. And now there's only 12 episodes left! And they haven't explained shit. And by the time they wrap up this parallel crap there won't be anytime to wrap up the stories people care about on the island.

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I want to know more about Richard.

I want to know what Claire's been up to.

I want to know more about what happened on the island from the beginning of time (Jacob and that other dude) to now.


Stuff like that would've been more than enough to keep this season going, but now with all this parallel crap they won't have time for any of that stuff.

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But shakes, here's the thing (and, here's how the LOST writers have fooled you and the rest of us) - the "answers" people are looking for will only take a couple of minutes of screen time to relay. And it won't happen until the very end of the last episode. Believe me, we'll be watching the two-hour finale, and be more than half-way through it, we'll still be wondering what the hell is going on.

Part of that is because, it's not as complicated as we're led to believe. Here's the answers to the questions you listed:



He came to the island one day, probably on the Black Rock. Jacob liked him and dipped him into that Fountain of Youth (back when it still worked). Since then he's hung out with the Others and kept himself well manicured.



Hanging out in the jungle, like we've already seen.



Jacob and the other dude sit around on the beach, discuss human nature, and eat fish. Once in a while, people come to the island, and Jacob and his nemesis fight to control them.

The whole thing about this show is misdirection. Think about the mystery of the four-toed statue. We saw the foot a long time ago, and wondered, wow, what's that four-toed statue? We got the answer - it's, well, it's a four-toed statue.

Damon and Carlton have already said that this other timeline is not what would have happened if plane did not crash. After this past episode, it appears that the alternate timeline may be these "hard bargains" that Dogen and Sayid were referring to. Locke/MIB has talked to Claire and Sayid, even Sawyer about promising a life, things that the survivors want most. The timeline appears to be these wishes, where the survivors could live their life with the things they want. Sayid has Nadia back...but not with her. Claire is pregnant with Aaron...Jack doesn't have daddy issues, etc.

It has also been confirmed that there is a Richard-centric episode, set to air aound episodes 12-15 that focuses almost entirely on his background...where he came from, how he doesnt age, etc.

People just need to be patient. The writers know they have to explain the MAJOR plot lines, which include the whole Jacob/MIB thing. As a member already posted, it's most likely all going to come within the last 2 episodes.

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The world's gene pool could use a little more chlorine.

I loved last night's episode. Michael Emerson, who plays Ben, is an excellent actor. My only quibble, and it's a minor one, is why did he back down from the principal when that douche threatened to ruin Alex's life? In my opinion, Ben still carried the bigger hammer and should've just included Alex's letter of recommendation to Yale in his grand blackmail scheme.

Loved the scene with his dad and how Ben had to change his dad's oxygen tank as opposed to gassing him to death on the island. Good stuff.

i'm not sure either, since the principal's rep would've been ruined by that. yale would've probably listened to the acting principal (ben) over the tarnished fired one.