LOST versus BATTLESTAR: The Poll

Battlestar was boring by Season 3 and has no polar bears.

ya the main diff is both got kinda bad 1/3-midway through; lost recovered, BSG just blasted itself out the airlock

both had very strong opening acts tho. watched lost s1 recently and it was just jam-packed.

yeah lost kind of has to win just by not utterly fucking up the last few seasons....

.....yet

exactly...

Huh I feel like Lost has already fucked up more than BG did in its full run, plus BG had a lot more going on intellectually than Lost ever has, it had lots of great noncommittal examinations of morality and war and religion while Lost is ultimately just like GOOD vs. EVIL.

I enjoy both shows but Lost to me is just like a ridiculous serial (I don't try to think about the show's logic or how it will turn out any more because it seems like a losing proposition) while BG had some actual heft to it.

Also the acting on BG was for the most part waaaay better than the acting on Lost.

well i guess we're at an impasse then.

lock thread

actually Lost pilot vs BSG pilot (not the miniseries) would be a fucking killer

can't really judge until lost is over imo

which is the bsg pilot if not the miniseries? the first ep? that was a sick ep.

final season of BSG made me want to blow my branes out

lost would have to take a serious turn for the shit to match BSG's ending. and its last couple seasons have been pretty great. so it would really have to "all be a dream" or something to even be in the naybs.

yeah i don't mean pilot re BSG but '33'

i never even finished BSG

nick is maybe right that its 'heavier' or 'more intellectual' but the end was so terrible it felt like a betrayal--lost has gotten pretty shitty at times but its never pulled a BSG

can we do Wire vs Sopranos next?

i don't think Lost can fuck up as much as BSG did but man it really seems like they are trying to lately

then again, BSG's main characters never got as hateable as JATE?

there was some excellent acting on BSG but it pretty much entirely came from two actors. LOST isn't the royal shakespeare company but it has a lot of great character performances.

When Lost pulls its ambiguous or "unsatifactory" Evangelion/Sopranos-style ending, at least it'll be predictable given the show's run and themes. I think people were honestly expecting too much of a neat ending for BSG anyway.

Tired of people complaining about the BG finale; it wasn't great but it doesn't go back in time and erase several seasons of really awesome TV.

lost has gotten pretty shitty at times but its never pulled a BSG

― max, Thursday, February 25, 2010 10:10 AM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

man I want Lost to have an amazing conclusion but have a sneaking suspicion that no matter how it ends the number of people bitching about the show's failure to wrap up every single thread is going to eclipse the BG conclusion naysayers off the internet forever

basically:

can't really judge until lost is over imo

― shite new answers (cutty), Thursday, February 25, 2010 10:09 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Tired of people complaining about the BG finale; it wasn't great but it doesn't go back in time and erase several seasons of really awesome TV.

i'd be sympathetic if it hadn't basically sucked since early season 3

even season 2 was pretty hit and miss

SO WHY DID YOU WATCH THE WHOLE THING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHH?

sorry. I don't really want to argue about TV on the internet.

tv on the internet >>> arguing about tv on the internet

man I want Lost to have an amazing conclusion but have a sneaking suspicion that no matter how it ends the number of people bitching about the show's failure to wrap up every single thread is going to eclipse the BG conclusion naysayers off the internet forever

SO WHY DID YOU WATCH THE WHOLE THING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHH?

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:20 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cuz i liked the first part soooo much i kept holding out hope it would get better! and the beginning of season 3 sort of gave me hope, but then let me down again.

like it never would have occurred to me before the fact that it would get as bad as it did, so i held out hope.

dean stockwell's fault

Lost is still pretty great. It has it's duff moments but still fuck the haterz.

I at least cared that the end of BSG was shit; I'm only watching Lost at this point because I'd feel like I'd wasted four years of my life if I didn't. it's awful these days.

dean stockwell's fault

by not being in it enough yeh

bsg went downhill after new caprica and just got worse and worse. lost had a bit of a dip in quality in S3 but imo has just got better and better. this current season of Lost has been slightly ropey in places but the writers are clearly trying to do something ambitious for the final season. by the end of bsg i just think they'd run out of places to take the series.

better question perhaps: lost's dodgy wigs vs. lee adama's fatsuit

fat lee is a technological pinnacle

"it had lots of great noncommittal examinations of morality and war and religion while Lost is ultimately just like GOOD vs. EVIL."

Haha we don't know that yet!

Since both Lost and Health Care Reform are still going on, wouldn't a better matchup be those two things? I sense that the level of frustration with both right now is about even.

lost has been more consistent, and despite what the hataz say has more clearly known it's ending. but i surprised myself voting bsg, cos at its best it really was simply the best telly. there haven't been any highs in lost as high as bsg got, but lost never flagged really badly except when they were in a self-imposed holding pattern

so i voted on MAX rather than an AVE

Lost irritates me because I never watched it and now I'd have to watch over a hundred hours of television just to catch up. I'm OCD enough that I'd HAVE to watch every episode.

whose fault is it that u didn't watch it to begin with nerd

lol so true ;_;

to be fair though it premiered during a time when i wasn't watching any tv at all. i didn't even start watching BSG until well into its third season. catching up with BSG was easier though.

lb just wait till u feel like watching some epic tv - u will dig it for sure

there haven't been any highs in lost as high as bsg got

gotta disagree, as much as i love a space battle or the tension/bleakness of BSG at its best. finding Lost much easier and more enjoyable to rewatch too. less 'heavy'.

BSG's writing and acting is miles better than Lost. Though I think I enjoy Lost more, but it really depends on how they end this thing.

lost can do big WTF moments better than any other show ever. that is no small potates

frakles, frakles, frakles

buffy in its prime over both of these tbh

lost can do big WTF moments better than any other show ever. that is no small potates

― nitzer Ed (s1ocki), Thursday, February 25, 2010 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the season finale w/ beardo jack and the funeral was JAWDROPPING, one of my top tv moments of all time, a GAME CHANGER, as they say

feeling kind of glad I de-bookmarked the Lost thread.

I tuned out of "Lost" somewhere in the middle of the second season because I could tell it was getting so nutty the only way they could tie stuff up would be to veer from science and toward religion (which every single serialized show seems compelled to do these days, Christian people be watching TV, I guess). Has this indeed happened to "Lost" in its waning days? The big bummer of "BSG" is that, despite bringing religion into it pretty early on, the first two seasons seemed to be speaking directly to our present and its various intellectual conflicts. And then it went all mumbo-jumbo for no good (almost wrote "god") reason.

Rewatching "Buffy" lately my wife and I were struck how little religion then stick into a show about a girl decked out in crosses fighting demons from hell. If "Buffy" were around today its relationship to god would be a lot more explicit, me thinks.

I dunno. Whedon's not much into overt religion talk, however couched. Well, at least not that I've seen in his other shows, post-Buffy. Agree on BSF front though...Moore isn't shy about bringing it up, but he seems more content to let the arguments rattle around, rather than make any strong proclamations for or against. He stirs the nest, but that's about it. I think he likes playing antagonist.

BSF? Gah. I meant BSG.

When it was on I was in the habit of calling it "BFG," as in "Big Friendly Giant."

http://io9.com/5540241/lost-has-already-given-us-more-answers-than-battlestar

bsg

I liked the ending of Lost, but my brain still tells me BSG is the better show just because of the number of themes it tackled from time to time.

feeling kind of glad I de-bookmarked the Lost thread... after s02e01

same here. Lost should have ended 5 seasons earlier.

I once considered starting a best Cylon model poll, just so I could call it 'And they have a POLL...' I'm a pretty funny guy.

so far the only BSG i've seen is the mini-series/pilot thing, and it really didn't hook me at all. but the way people were SO INTO it those first couple years and then SO MAD about the turn it apparently took at some point kind of has me more curious to watch it than for any other reason, like i kinda wanna know why they fucked up and how badly.

I saw the mini-series, couldn't be bothered, and left it for a year or two. Then the internets told me I should watch it, and I duly obliged. There are a duff episodes throughout, and if the ending was a bit of a cheat and a cop-out, there were good things about it (and some great things elsewhere in the final season). The internet-nerd rage was a bit ridic, especially as the writers always said they were making it up as they went along. I still say it's definitely worth watching, and even if the Iraq stuff probably doesn't have the impact it had at the time, the first four episodes of season 3 are among the best television you'll ever see.

the first four episodes of season 3 are among the best television you'll ever see.

Couldn't agree with this more.

at its best, bsg is better than lost i think

bsg had robots

Battlestar by sad default; I watched a season of it before giving up, but only made it through the first two episodes of Lost.

they both swing pretty wildly between great and awful. Lost disappointed but BSG failed to hold my interest enough that I actually want to finish it. Advantage, Lost.

naybs.

― nitzer Ed (s1ocki), Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:10 AM

potates

― nitzer Ed (s1ocki), Thursday, February 25, 2010 10:32 PM

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

totes

bump

still gotta vote lost.

battlestar gave me like, at most, 2 total seasons of entertainment

lost gave me a lot more even if it crapped out in the end

at least 3/5 of BSG's run was me being all headinhands jpg

gonna vote for battlestar galactica -- lost was more consistently entertaining for a longer time, but BSG's high points were so much higher than almost anything i got from lost.

man, i still haven't watched Teh Plan

DON'T

no good?

just awful. discussed on the BSG thread iirc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow ... i would've thought that lost would've won simply b/c the series ending was so recent. then again, i never really followed ILX's take on BSG so perhaps the result ISN'T so surprising after all?!?

Justice is served. If lost had won this I would have lost all faith in humanity. And Cylons.

if battlestar had won i would have have battled the stars of humanity

sigh, internet backlashes

it's s.thing like... everyone acknowledged that 'BSG' began to really suck way before its beyond-suckitude ending. whereas you could still hope that 'lost' would come together in the end, as recently as january.

plus the greatness of 'lost' was -- partly -- based on the idea that it would pay off in the long term. 'BSG' actually went to shit the more complicated the mythology got.

it's s.thing like... everyone acknowledged that 'BSG' began to really suck way before its beyond-suckitude ending. whereas you could still hope that 'lost' would come together in the end, as recently as january.

^^^ this

everyone was excited about the last season of "lost."

everyone was resigned to watching the last season of "battlestar galactica."

it wasn't so much a sigh backlash as the show actually went to shit.

i think everyone who thinks that still reps for it when it was good.

you must've missed all the bawling and hawing about how this show was NEVER worth watching because it was all bullshit, don't u see

i did miss that!

BSG, at its best, dealt with interesting issues from politics to moral quandaries. Lost, at its best, was emotionally engaging melodrama and mind-blowing wtf shit.

sort of surprised BSG won here. i mean, i watched the entire series while never having seen an episode of Lost and voted accordingly (for Lost).

BSG, at its best, dealt with interesting issues from politics to moral quandaries. Lost, at its best, was emotionally engaging melodrama and mind-blowing wtf shit.

― Gee, Officer (Gukbe), Monday, May 31, 2010 7:54 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'd rather see a well-executed melodrama than shitty tv with Big Important Themes

can't find the Brothers and Sisters thread. you could start one tho.

is it well-executed

yes

do the brothers and sisters 'have a plan'

no

while i agree with slocki's points about battlestar, i also think that Lost never had anything as good as BSG's space battle scenes or love-hate tension or general cylon freakiness - and i can instantly recall many more scenes from BSG than i can from Lost (i do wish tho that BSG had stopped somewhere in season 3).
there were also many times while watching Lost during the winter that i seriously thought "oh you've got problems, blahblahblah fuck you at least you're on a tropical island." i have more sympathy for people stuck on dirty spaceships with no clear destination.

Balthar a Trumpie prez

Yeah, he definitely had a failing upward thing going on

These shows have so many parallels, forgot we had this thread. Lost turned out pretty much exactly the same, didn't it? The BSG miniseries and the Lost pilot are two of the best things on TV ever, the first couple seasons of both are quite good. Then the cracks start to show, and at some point you know that the writers don't know what they are doing and you watch more for the spectacle. Then even that isn't very good towards the end. Both last seasons terrible.