Lost: The TV Show (spoiler-free for UK viewers)

this show is addictive already

I was gripped by it because I haven't had a 'TV as EVENT' feeling like this since Dr Who which wasn't that long ago I know but when it's American it always feels bigger anyway.

And with regards to cutting: what was up with the pilot in the tree? presumably this scene was cut...

this whole scene felt straight out of Predator so I am figuring something along the lines of that ("they skinned them?! why would they skin them?!"). God I love Predator...

i a) don't know how torrents work (in a surprise move), b) there's no hard drive space on my computer for tv programmes anyway.

Alba, ace, thanks!

i am feeling useless.

The short answer is no. Depending on the format they come in, a few DVD players may be able to play them, but really you're looking at watching them on your computer, with a program like the (free) VLC player.

Don't worry about disk space though - you can just watch them right off the recorded CD or DVD withouth copying them to your PC.

x-post

I thought you meant The Fall lineup for a minute there - ie Mark E Smith and whoever else is in the band these days.

(i am currently reading the televisionwithoutpity.com recaps and have found myself unable to stop where tonight's episodes stopped. i think i'm going to end up reading the entire series ahead if i'm not careful.)

I'll be able to stick it on the same disc, you'll be fine.

Hey, I could get some John Wayne films for you too, if you like?

i have never watched a dvd or film or tv thing on my computer before! this is a step into the unknown and tremendously exciting. i only have windows media on it.

it's not done any harm so far tho.

i watched the first three episodes (downloaded) when they aired in the states. and the one thing that's really been bugging me is the polar bear. that's the main reason i've been excited by lost coming to c4. i finally get to find out why there was a polar bear on the fucking island. although, i won't be surprised if there is no reason given especially if the show gets weird(er).

come on kids. let's do some polar bear speculation!

and it was making the same noises as the mystery monster so i think it is a 50 foot tall polar bear

I missed the polar bear and the gun bits because I was outside, smoking.

Was quite disturbed at the beginning when the doctor gave up resuscitating the unconscious black woman in order to save the pretty blonde woman when the plane's wing started collapsing on her. Though maybe the unconscious woman was dead already. Still, it said something nasty on an almost subliminal level.

Well, what's the geography? Flying from australia to (somewhere in the US?), six (?) hours into the flight they turn towards Fiji instead, then come down 1000 (?) miles off course. Where's that then? Surely we can work it out. And which pole do polar bears hang out at?

i'm stumped.

ha!

i'm thinking the polar bear was in the hold, ie. being transported to a zoo or summat.

i am teh dull.

Haha POLAR BEAR! This is just to distract us from the realactual monster which is a giant penguin.

IT'S ALMOST LIKE THEY KNEW SOMETHING...

I don't feel as dissatisfied as I would have expected, given that they've only opened the secrets cupboard about a millionth of an inch because I suspect that if they opened it all the way we might (or might not) get 1-3 terrific shows, then we could all give it up. I also suspect that there is less in the way of exciting revelations than there needs to be. I think there's a lot of weird shit and apparent clues and a flimsy idea behind it all, but I hope I'm wrong.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. If he really was so psychic why did he even BOARD that plane!?!?

Haven't been so frantic to find out what happens next since Special Agent Dale Cooper got shot in his hotel room.

Still, Desperate Housewives returns next week to fill the void.

stevem otm

I'm watching this for the first time ever, just made it through the entire first season. Really amazing show, totally worthy of all the hype it got. There is some unbelievable writing (like Claire just handing her baby off to crazy-eyed French lady, ok show, sure) but even when it's clunky it all seems to come together in service of the story.

enjoy these good feelings toward the show because you'll wish you had them back when it's over

Hah that's what i hear.

Um I just finished season 3. I like most of the characters less and less each season. Locke in particular has gone from my favorite character to just an amoral wild card for the writers when he killed that poor Naomi girl.

I am starting to hate this show a little, especially that god-awful episode where they showed Charlie getting impaled every 5 damn minutes.

the hate is swelling in you now.

it's all downhill after the first season, until you crash in an enormous pile of fetid, stinking pseudo-religious/spiritual bullshit right at the very end.

the second half of s4 and most of s5 are really fun

Ok yeah Season 4 is picking up. Interesting new power dynamics. There was a great scene where Ben and Hurley are waiting alone in the jungle just sitting on a tree and Hurley has a candy bar and he breaks it off and gives half of it to his former enemy and that was really nice.

Sort of disappointed to be focusing on post-island stuff as it is not nearly as interesting as the pre-island flashbacks. Just massively prefer mystical/scifi research island as a setting when placed against the 'real world' or whatever. I'm holding out for the 'pseudo-religious/spiritual bullshit' cos right now it's just infinite onion layers of people manipulating other people.

Does this show reward repeat viewings? Maybe you see the Others as the 'good guys' or something?

[[SPOILERS WARNING]]

Finished the finale last night. It was a nice way to do a Clips Show without doing a Clips Show. The ending was.....eh, it was ok. I don't really buy that the alt timeline was purgatory but whatever. It was all vague enough that you can probably spin in any way you like. Much like the rest of the show.

I think making Locke the embodiment of the smoke monster or whatever makes sense from a storytelling standpoint but does not make for good pop TV. Suddenly a character that was a favorite (and the series' hero) for many people is rejecting himself as a fool whose life had no meaning. I can see how this could be taken personally by the audience and I bet it's largely responsible for whatever negative reaction the finale got. There is a lot of self-hatred in the final series of this show, you can tell the writers were getting sick of it. Still, it was a great show, a wonderful example of pop pulp at it's finest. A mano y mano fight while the island crumbles beneath them....could it have really ended any other way?

Out of curiosity I tried listening to the Weezer album titled after Hurley. I had no idea they had gotten so bad!

Man, you really blasted through that. Maybe that's the only way to appreciate the ending.

I speed watched the whole last series in a day or so recently, forwarding through the alt timeline (off island) stuff.

I can see how this could be taken personally by the audience and I bet it's largely responsible for whatever negative reaction the finale got

no. the negative response was largely due to the "flash sideways" crap and the general lack of a satisfactory resolution to the whole thing.

One thing that jolted me was in the alt timeline Juliet is Jack's wife and the mother of his kid (who doesn't exist?) and then when they get to the church at the end Sawyer is with her and Jack is with Kate. Maybe I read that wrong.

I did appreciate the meta jokes, like Sawyer asking Locke why he doesn't just turn into smoke and fly off the island. "Oh, cos THAT would be ridiculous".

Man, you really blasted through that. Maybe that's the only way to appreciate the ending.

― Simply The Bessed! (Old Lunch), Wednesday, December 17, 2014 4:28 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I speed watched the whole last series in a day or so recently, forwarding through the alt timeline (off island) stuff.

― MaresNest, Wednesday, December 17, 2014 4:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I have no life right now, so at certain points in the past few weeks I mainlined a half a season a day. I told a friend of mine I just started watching it and she said she saw the whole thing start to finish in a weekend when she was sick.

that's insane!
flash-sideways didn't bother me so much as the really weak, final, de-mystification of the Others and the Island
low points of the show was def. early season 2 (lol bear trap), early season 3
still, would you say overall its worth it based on the strength of the show's high points?

Hell yes it's worth it!

That first season is so killer. Like there is a scene where Claire and Charlie share an imaginary jar of peanut butter and it's way more affecting than all the characters realizing their true loves as they ascend into heaven five seasons later.

They really dropped the ball w the Dharma Initiative tho, introducing it in such a mysterious and awesome way (OMG this island is a playground for all kinds of experimental science!) and then it turning into yet another group of people shooting and capturing other people.

It was pretty hilarious when Jacob stepped in towards the end of the series and is like "Actually, this is pretty much exactly like the Survivor TV show" wrt the whole 'candidates' thing.

They really dropped the ball w the Dharma Initiative tho, introducing it in such a mysterious and awesome way (OMG this island is a playground for all kinds of experimental science!) and then it turning into yet another group of people shooting and capturing other people.

But this is the thing: they dropped the ball with almost every exciting thing they introduced. I don't think I could even count all the questions that were left unanswered and forgotten at the end.

Did we ever find out exactly what happened with Sayid's death and revival on the island? He was kind of a zombie for a while. What was that about? What was the 'sickness' that Dogen was concerned about?

― sund4r, Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:30 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the same sickness that Rousseau had to deal with amongst her shipmates, but yeah never really explained properly iirc.

― mdskltr (blueski), Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:36 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

never explained properly? how about not at all. what were those injections desmond was taking when he lived in the hatch?

― cutty, Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:46 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who exactly were those people ben had sayid kill when they were off island

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:49 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

STOPASKINGQUESTIONSITISOVER

― JimD, Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:50 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they had built up enough mysteries by the time they announced an end date, but instead of boringly paying off all the set-ups, they just gave us new ones, not all of which (in purgatory-type place the island is sunk) made sense

― long time listener, first time balla (history mayne), Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:57 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"The writers were geniuses at manipulation, but couldn't plot their way out of a wet paper bag. And didn't."

In their defense I don't think anyone could have plotted their way out of the mess they set up. Is David Lynch superior for never having tried?

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 25 May 2010 11:59 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They swept half the series under the rug with "oh, Dharma didn't really understand anything about this place anyway." If they were just more variables in this crazy cosmic game, then why give us so much material to care about?

― mh, Tuesday, 25 May 2010 12:00 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...
they had built up enough mysteries by the time they announced an end date, but instead of boringly paying off all the set-ups, they just gave us new ones, not all of which (in purgatory-type place the island is sunk) made sense

I can forgive stuff like never explaining "the sickness" or building things up like "Walt is special" but never going anywhere with it

it's introducing brand new shit in s6 and never explaining it that's like .... why. so annoying!

I mean luckily I realized sometime around s3 or 4 that all the coincidences built into the show were just stuff for obsessive fans to notice and would never add up to anything. but at the beginning it seemed like the show was going to be both -- that it would make sense as an emotional / character-driven story for the casual viewer but that there was a second layer of crazy obsessive puzzles that made at least a little bit of sense and were logically consistent (key concept) when you picked em apart. At some point they pretty much jettisoned that and just told the characters' not-very-coherent story, and the puzzle aspect was just a bunch of random references to old episodes thrown around with no rhyme or reason plus a bunch of new shit that made no sense.

― dmr, Tuesday, 25 May 2010 12:15 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

let's see how much I can remember without cheating

the same sickness that Rousseau had to deal with amongst her shipmates, but yeah never really explained properly iirc.

never explained properly? how about not at all. what were those injections desmond was taking when he lived in the hatch?

who exactly were those people ben had sayid kill when they were off island

they had built up enough mysteries by the time they announced an end date, but instead of boringly paying off all the set-ups, they just gave us new ones, not all of which (in purgatory-type place the island is sunk) made sense

I can forgive stuff like never explaining "the sickness" or building things up like "Walt is special" but never going anywhere with it

it's introducing brand new shit in s6 and never explaining it that's like .... why. so annoying!

the show as a whole makes sense, thematically they nailed a LOT, just by season 6 they were running out of plot

s6 was so weird, they knew for years it was their last season and yet the whole thing felt like it was dashed off in a last-minute panic. i'll never get over jin deciding to stay and die with sun, with nary a mention of the daughter he was voluntarily choosing to orphan as a result.

The whole thematic point of a show like Lost should be that some things are just unknowable. That is anyone the philosophical point they namechecked over and over again. But they became quite clumsy about that in the end.

Like, that third-to-last episode with young Jacob and brother-in-black had the right idea, but completely botched the execution. Idea: The island is so old that it's past has been lost: Brother-in-black kills mother before she can tell anyone what only she knows, so there's a break in knowledge that can never be remade. But the execution is both horrible because the child-actors are awful and the dialogue is boring, but the central unsatisfying 'answer' that the episode should deliver - there are things nobody knows about this island, Jacob has been making it all up as he went along - is hidden behind attempts at other answers, like the Adam & Eve skeletons, and the origin of the ancient wheel, none of which is satisfying, or even really makes sense.

They crapped out at telling it like it was: That life is a meaningless chasm of unknowability, and then you die. Instead we got a golden light and purgatory.

i've just started watching this with my housemates as a group--we're two seasons in now and i've enjoying the ride very much so far.

So was every 'ghost' that appeared to people in the jungle the Smoke Monster?

I think so? And the trapped voices were actors who were mean to damn lindelof souls who didn’t get to the sideways island, for reasons