As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On | Hacker News Reader

As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On

wired.com

18 pointswinanga20 comments

It's going to bellyflop. At this point there is no way you can satisfy the questions people have.

In some ways I always felt Lost was the TV version of a pyramid scheme: resolve one mystery, create two more, repeat. I gave up myself when mysteries started getting resolved by papering things over with outright mysticism -- "that's the way it is in this world" or the magic science approach, if you will, which totally turns me off. When the show was just about the Dharma initiative, or even the Others, both artifacts of a lost civilization and grounded in human decisionmaking and anthropology, I was more intrigued. I had to pack my bags around the third season.

I agree it was better when it was all super mysterious. And I know a lot of people have given up on the show because it can be frustrating. But trust me, there are still many many millions of devoted fans who will be sad to see the show end. Myself included.

I think that expecting an answer for every single question is a bit ridiculous though. It's still a rather mysterious show, and if they decided they wanted to tell us every single little thing, that ruin part of what makes it special.

It would be like when Lucas explained the Force "scientifically."

I figured that I would wait until it was finished. That way, I could know if everyone else was angry about the ending.

Tell me what you think when it airs ... :-P

The thing that annoys me about lost (and we're leaving HN territory here) isn't just that the show makes things up as it goes along, or that the show pretends to be clever... it's that people actually believe the show is clever.

In a way, I can respect it that the producers/writers sit in a room and decide to throw mystery after illogical mystery at the viewer just because it does wonders for their ratings. What I can't respect is that people enjoy and are captivated by things that obviously have no explanation, or a Deus Ex Machina that is supposed to pass for one. What's the point of a mystery if you as the viewer can't think about possible explanations?

What is it that people like about Lost? I understand why people watch sci-fi, or medical dramas, or romantic comedies, or gross out comedies, or documentaries. All those things give the viewer something it wants (a laugh, a sob story, facts about history, and so on). But a show like Lost? I just don't get it.

For me, Lost is a deeply frustrating show. For at least the past 2 years I feel like I have been "chasing the dragon" - trying to regain that excitement I know I felt about the show at one point, even though I can't point to exactly when that was, or what I was excited about.

I guess I'm just disappointed that all the cool stuff that happened in seasons 2-5 was mostly filler, buying time until we got to the planned end in season 6. I'm sad that they neutered my favorite character, even though it seems necessary given how the plot is playing out. And I'm a little bit upset that the writers knew what they were doing all along, taking advantage of people's naive belief that they wouldn't dare give us all these juicy plot points with no resolution!

In retrospect, what we need is for someone to make "Lost: The Good Parts" which will be a 60-90 minute summary of everything that happens in seasons 2-5. That would greatly reduce the anguish of having watched so much with so little payoff.

It’s like when you spend time with a 3-year-old, you quickly find out that one question just begets another-- there’s a 'why' in the wake of every 'why'-- and the only way to end the conversation is to say, "Oh look, a Chuck E. Cheese!" The show is doing its best to say, "Oh look, Chuck E. Cheese!"

I am so glad I never watched this show, if that's the producer's attitude.

I like that they admit they're just not going to explain certain things. I wish they had told me this six years ago - would have saved me about 200 hours of my life.

I was so bitter from the BSG finale I never watched Lost. Woohoo!

When battlestar ended Lost was already halfway through its fifth season so that really doesn't make much sense

I tend to watch shows all at once in weeklong binges.

Breaking bad is next in queue.

The BSG finale was probably one of the better season finales that I have seen. I didn't like the Kara Thrace stuff, but I did find it fit thematically to the story.

I heard the argument that there was a happy ending to a dark story, but to see it as a happy ending is akin to seeing the arrival of the Europeans in "Apocalypto" as a happy ending; it was a prelude to horror. (Even if you don't buy that, the fact that the main character in the series (Admiral Adama) is basically a wreck by the end...)

single page: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_lost/all/1

I have never seen the show, but I think they tipped their hand, given 1) the existence of the continuity czar that began after the show started, 2) their commentary about figuring out the best way to run the show by watching the show, and 3) the explicit acknowledgement that they may have been making it all up as they went along:

    Locke is now the voice of a very large subset of the
    audience who believes that when Lost is all said and
    done, we will have wasted six years of our lives, that we
    were making it up as we went along, and that there’s
    really no purpose. And Jack is now saying, “the only 
    thing I have left to cling to is that there’s got to be 
    something really cool that’s going to happen, because I 
    have really, really fucking suffered.”

The were making it up in the beginning because a) they didn't know how long the show would be on for/when it would end b) the core of the show has always been known, but the stuff in the middle can be whatever is needed to keep the story going. They created a series of story arcs in the beginning that weren't truly important to the core story, so they could be made up. The continuity czar was brought on to keep those storylines going and from tripping over each other because of the web that was getting more and more complex to maintain.

If I may ask why on earth would you read an eight page article on a show that you've never seen?

I have a few friends who watch it, and someone told me to watch it once upon a time. Reading a flashy, well-written 8-page article at my leisure seemed like a much quicker way to find out what all the fuss was about than actually watching a 6-season show.

Yep - each time they wove a plot twist in, it was like writing a big check.

At the end, either all those checks are going to cash out and they are going to look brilliant (if it somehow all makes sense), or they will bounce (they were just making things up as they went), it will be revealed as a fraud and people will feel tricked.

It seems increasingly likely to be the latter as time goes on.

tl;dr: No spoilers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com