Lost--Season 6 - Spoilers Abound!!!

[sindatur]

Two ideas: first, if the show's meaning is up to the viewer, then if the viewer decides it sucked, then it did suck. There's no condemning it; "You could've interpreted it differently," would be false or else miss the point.

Personally, I think the entire show might make sense, if thought about hard enough. (But then (atheist I may be) I still have faith that the Trinity makes sense, too.) The writers denied that the island was purgatory. But we ended up shown purgatory leading to paradise. However, it's our mistake if we too quickly jump to the conclusion that the island alone anteceded heaven. Instead, it could be easily believed that the entire world in which the conflict on the island was set was that antecedent.

I'm pretty certain it's clear that Purgatory was the Sideways flash (without time, so, it didn't matter if people died 50 years apart, we'd still see them together in the Sideways World). When everyone died, they were all ready to ascend. Also it was a self created Purgatory.

The Island, and all the flashbacks/forwards in S1-S5 were all real living world. The Sideways Flashes in S6 were not the real living world, only the Island (And Island Flashbacks) was the end of the story of the real living world in S6.

The Island only brought them together, it's not a passageway to Purgatory, it all could have happened like in the Sideways Flashes, or any other scenario, without the Island.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Well then, maybe the island/our world is hell. It still seems to make sense to me (maybe I'm missing the point of what other people talk about not understanding?).

I also have to consider that these guys are involved with Fringe, which people've told me is about parallel realities. What Juliet thought "worked," I'd guess(?), would be the nuke: it split the universe along a quantum fault line, generating two parallels. The "you created this place together" phrase seems half-metaphorical: not that the nuke alone rendered the flash-sideways world the way it was, just it wasn't mystical power but the choices made in the original timeline that led to heaven in the end, choices including those made after the conclusion of season 5.

[Cagliostro]

My apologies Cag. I got heavily involved in LOST without really aiming to. It just happened.

I went to the website about the Damon Carlton and Polar Bear, but I didn't spend much time there. Now I wish I had. It sounds like quite a kick. Congrats on all of the fun and insight.

btw..Congrats on the son!!He appears to be growing fast. May good luck and fortune be his!

Awww...thanks. He's quite a nut, and just had his first taste of candy on Sunday after trick or treating. It should probably be a while before we try that again. Sugar made him crazy.

[lurch]

You keep talking about how awful it is to be a Man-of-science, and that we should "kill our Jack" and so forth, but you seem to ignore the implications of the Man-of-faith embodied in Locke (or you just haven't gotten around to it yet ) Locke viewed the embodiment of evil as a pillar of light, he was essentially the tool of this being that almost led to the destruction of the Island and presumably, though I'm not convinced, the world. It was the Man-of-science that opposed this evil, and the Man-of-faith that exacerbated it.

If the flash sideways are any indication, I'd say that the lesson to be learned is that both philosophies could lead to undesirable results, (as was in the case in the real world) but they can also lead to good results as well (as when Jack operated on Locke in the fake world).

Once again, I'm not convinced that this was done as effectively as it could have been done. It was not a total bust, but if the lesson can not be learned from the show without stumbling onto some works I've never heard of before... then I tend to think that something is wrong with it as popular entertainment (even if it is a good modern commentary on surrealism).

Okay..to be fair..the John Locke character, was, Man of Faith. His " flaw" was that his faith he placed externally. He was constantly taken advantage of because he placed his " faith " outward..in every one but himself. I mean,,it became a matter of being stupid..Daddy pushing him out the 8th storey window. And Yes..Locke had to die..metaphorically,,and be reborn, metaphorically as,,what I liked to call him, LockeZilla. And,,again very much in the vein of Andre Breton,,LockZilla gave the " message" the answers,,but wasn't THE Answer Himself..so..yea..he HAD TO Die as well. Its the messages of LockeZilla that was of great import. " Realizing choices that you never knew you had"..was meant for the viewer even more than it was meant for Sawyer.

Basically,,the plot of LOST was Illusion. None of it made any logical sense from the get go. So.. how is that Logica is even considered to be used to view and analyze this show?. It doesn't work..Kill Your Jack!!.. As every episode went on and every season passed, plot just got more separated from any recognizable or acceptable reality than believable. The more any one stayed with being Logical and Reasonable with this show , the more frustrated , disappointed and " disillusioned" one just had to get. TPTB announced a year before the 6th season that They would only be answering the questions in season 6 that THEY FELT were pertinent to THEIR Story. TPTB also shut down, made disappear,,hasta la bye bye..the PLOT BOARD at Lost abc.com. Rather BIG clues that Plot no longer, if ever, was to be taken as anything Real. No, it wasn't. Plot's only reality was that it was Illusion.

I've said this early on and I say it again.. LOST only makes sense in the realm of the metaphor. Correct, not Purgatory, but what else is a holding tank,,a place where souls are held to determine their future?..an Insane asylum. LOST was a view of Modern Man,,thru the eyes and mind of one of its victims...a deemed " crazy person. "...who exactly? ...The Viewer? Me? You?

[Zarathustra]

Lurch, I think it's great that you have found a way for the show to be meaningful *to you.* You have found a way to view it so that the contradictions, inadequencies, and loose ends are forgivable and quite possibly intentional on the part of the creators--a metaphor for life itself. That makes for a pleasant experience on your part, which I don't begrudge you.

But everything you're saying could also be true of a show that posed too many questions for the writers to answer, that bit off more than it could chew. "It never had a plot," could just as easily be said of a show which had a plot that lost focus and meandered in ways due to the writers' lack of imagination. If you can propose a way to distinguish a show that failed to live up to its promises from a show that intentionally left its promises unfulfilled, I'd like to hear it. (But perhaps that would require an objective criteria, separate from our own personal subjective interpretations, which would undermine the merits of your interpretation.)

I actually agree with you that many people took the show too literally. I do think it was more about the characters than the plot. But if everything was metaphor--including the characters--then this reduces them to mere plot devices. And maybe that's the problem I have with this story mode. My complaint that the charactes weren't treated well could be entirely explained by the fact that they weren't characters at all, but merely metaphors for Science or Faith or Freewill.

[Farm Ur-Ted]

Seriously, pop in disc 1 and try to watch Walkabout. When he yells, "Don't tell me what I can't do," I want to just slap him. He couldn't do shit. He's just worthless and pathetic. There is nothing else to him at all.

Lol, good post!

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

You could say that the LOST finale reconciled reason and faith by saying that any coherent explanation of what happened in it *could* count as the right one, so it's a matter of faith (within the limits of reason) that any one elected *is* right, but only metaphorical or indirectly (to avert intellectually coercing others into accepting the same, maybe).

EDIT: Remember the armada of religious icons afloat on the church wall at the end?

[lurch]

You could say that the LOST finale reconciled reason and faith by saying that any coherent explanation of what happened in it *could* count as the right one, so it's a matter of faith (within the limits of reason) that any one elected *is* right, but only metaphorical or indirectly (to avert intellectually coercing others into accepting the same, maybe).

EDIT: Remember the armada of religious icons afloat on the church wall at the end?

What I do say of the finale,,is what I said at end of season 5 there abouts..by the end of LOST, Unity, Wholeness, will be the final thrust. What did we get?..All the Losties together, unified, equal..in the house of worship...a house of worship with a big statue of Jesus in front ( LOVE) and yes..stained glass work noting all the major religions...Every Thing With Love, for a man and Mankind.

No..I don't expect anybody holding onto reason and logic in viewing this show, thus with expectations planted in logic and reason , to have gotten that message. No big deal to me. If one takes a presentation of people surviving a plane coming apart at altitude, smoke monsters, etc, etc,,literally, thats your business and you get what you got. I recognized the Surreal of this show and have been amazed, entertained, overjoyed by most, and fulfilled by Everything presented by TPTB. ..And you know what..I wasn't the only one who " connected" to the peanut butter jar. I'm not being sarcastic, uppity, patronizing...I'm just saying..Its there if you want to go there. If you don't want to..no big deal to me. There is beauty, and magnificence in LOST..if one gets into the Surreal,,researches it and comes to knowledge and understanding it,,and views LOST with that understanding. Its There. You don't choose to go there, hey, its your choice.
There is no argument. There are only choices. If the consequence of your choice is disagreeable with you, you still have choices.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Well, my idea is that there are a lot of theories—totally logical when it comes down to it—that could equally well explain the meaning/nature of the world depicted in the show, only because all lack absolute proof, to accept any particular explanation as absolutely right would be itself wrong. But there are some interpretations that can be ruled out (for an extreme example, imagine being of the opinion that the monster was actually a cleverly disguised Chinese dragon).

[sindatur]

Well, my idea is that there are a lot of theories—totally logical when it comes down to it—that could equally well explain the meaning/nature of the world depicted in the show, only because all lack absolute proof, to accept any particular explanation as absolutely right would be itself wrong. But there are some interpretations that can be ruled out (for an extreme example, imagine being of the opinion that the monster was actually a cleverly disguised Chinese dragon).

Who's to say that Chinese Dragon Lore/Mythology didn't originate from Smokie?

[earthbrah]

I believe the writers or creators or someone said at some point that the original inspiration for the smoke monster came from the rover on the original Prisoner show.

Yet another surreal connection.