Lost: Runaway plane, never coming back
Graham Thompson
Issue date: 6/15/10 Section: Arts and Life
Just as we drag out the box full of flip-flops and snorkels to head for the beach, island-life of a different caliber came to a screeching halt.
We're not talking Aruba or the Bahamas here, but rather the Island that fans of ABC's juggernaut television series LOST have become utterly perplexed with over the course of six seasons. That's right: it's over, and the conclusion proved to be fiercely polarizing for a large chunk of the viewership.
By now, most Losties have come to terms with the half-baked series wrap-up, but others are adamantly sticking the finale with the 'cop-out' label, feeling especially let down that their favourite sidewinder plot-line went unanswered entirely.
But, you can't blame the naysayers, really. I mean, (SPOILER ALERT!) they're all dead? This is the same series that knocked us on our collective backs in season three by revealing that there is a fully-thriving community of Others living in the depths of the jungle, who play touch football and hold weekly book clubs merely miles away from the beach that the crash survivors had savagely lived on for months. The same series that turned our expectations on their ears when we watched Oxycodone-addicted Jack's downward spiral, as he drove around blaring Nirvana and clutching a clipped newspaper obituary, only to learn that the flashback narrative device had morphed into a post-plane-crash, post-Island flash-forward.
While creators Damien Lindelof and Carlton Cuse claim to have envisioned the series conclusion all-along, finding out the grand scheme that didn't feel that grand at all, pinned our favourite characters as dead-on-arrival at the church that housed the closing sequence of the series. Needless to say, it left casual and diehard viewers alike having a hard time digesting the all-too-glossy finish that LOST writers fed to them.
Now, it could be a matter of series masterminds biting off more Dharma fish-biscuit than they could chew, but at the root of the viewer malaise lies two glaring issues that need to be addressed. First, what we were expecting was far greater than what we received. The hype surrounding the LOST series was practically moving at locomotive intervals before the survivors even pulled their rugged selves from the wreckage. It was only a matter of time before a surplus of online discussion forums, and wiki pages propelled the LOST saga to a level of bona fide Trekkie status.
We're not talking Aruba or the Bahamas here, but rather the Island that fans of ABC's juggernaut television series LOST have become utterly perplexed with over the course of six seasons. That's right: it's over, and the conclusion proved to be fiercely polarizing for a large chunk of the viewership.
By now, most Losties have come to terms with the half-baked series wrap-up, but others are adamantly sticking the finale with the 'cop-out' label, feeling especially let down that their favourite sidewinder plot-line went unanswered entirely.
But, you can't blame the naysayers, really. I mean, (SPOILER ALERT!) they're all dead? This is the same series that knocked us on our collective backs in season three by revealing that there is a fully-thriving community of Others living in the depths of the jungle, who play touch football and hold weekly book clubs merely miles away from the beach that the crash survivors had savagely lived on for months. The same series that turned our expectations on their ears when we watched Oxycodone-addicted Jack's downward spiral, as he drove around blaring Nirvana and clutching a clipped newspaper obituary, only to learn that the flashback narrative device had morphed into a post-plane-crash, post-Island flash-forward.
While creators Damien Lindelof and Carlton Cuse claim to have envisioned the series conclusion all-along, finding out the grand scheme that didn't feel that grand at all, pinned our favourite characters as dead-on-arrival at the church that housed the closing sequence of the series. Needless to say, it left casual and diehard viewers alike having a hard time digesting the all-too-glossy finish that LOST writers fed to them.
Now, it could be a matter of series masterminds biting off more Dharma fish-biscuit than they could chew, but at the root of the viewer malaise lies two glaring issues that need to be addressed. First, what we were expecting was far greater than what we received. The hype surrounding the LOST series was practically moving at locomotive intervals before the survivors even pulled their rugged selves from the wreckage. It was only a matter of time before a surplus of online discussion forums, and wiki pages propelled the LOST saga to a level of bona fide Trekkie status.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
jb08tu
Jenny
posted 6/15/10 @ 1:26 PM EST
You didn't quite get the ending. Everybody dies sometime.
Lost is like life; in the end, you're not going to have all the answers and if you're not happy with that, well, you're dead. (Continued…)
JamesP
posted 6/16/10 @ 6:23 PM EST
You didn't understand the ending. Everything that happened on the island was real. The plane crash, the polar bears, the smoke monster, the Others, all of it. (Continued…)
Post a Comment