Just watched the last episode. I'm trying to agree with what you're saying Timbo but I just can't. Rubbish episode. The first two seasons were brilliant viewing and series 3 and 4 were alright. What bothers me about the writers isn't the fact that they 'made up stuff' as they went along- it's that they're so busy reading and doing what the viewers tell them to do.
I know you have to satisfy the viewers but doing what they say or trying to prove the viewers wrong is just stupid. It reminds me of that episode when the writers decided to put older Walt in a 30 second scene talking to Locke and that was it- just because everyone was complaining that Walt wasn't in the show. Instead of succumbing to the viewers' impatience they could have perhaps created a good storyline or explanation regarding Walt, his specialness and his 'ghosts' later on in the series.
The show for me was so much better when the answers came along slowly and were explained well, but everyone complained about how there weren't any answers. This didn't bother me at all. I could have waited. Instead the writers stuffed all the answers hastily in a few episodes with crap explanations.
One of the biggest let downs in this show for me was the explanations for visions like Christia and Walt- both charactes I liked a lot and were very mysterious. I can't even remember the last time Christian appeared and MIB just says he wasd Christian all along. Really disappointing.
Don't worry Seeb, Brucie'll be touring again soon I'm sure. He's got all the answers as we well know.
Seriously, though, I can sense your real disappointment and frustration. And I do feel a tinge of sympathy for the likes of yourself. And it seems - judging by all the message boards - as if you're far from alone if not actually in the majority of folks who’ve followed the show.
The thing is it's not that I don't see the sort of thing that is frustrating you all - the realisation that loads of your questions are likely not going to be answered, the final series introduction of major players that seems more gratuitous than planned and the fact , I guess, that the plot appears to have more inconsistencies and have reached more dead ends than Liverpool's attack this season.
From my own viewpoint whilst I do see most of the things that irk so many people I have to say such things simply don't detract from my own enjoyment. The Across the Sea episode just gone forinstance. Whilst most seemed to think it was rubbish I just absolutely loved every second of it. Now I can't adequately explain such disparity of views but clearly a large part of it has to stem from what each watcher was expecting to derive from it and how little or far those expectations were met.
Many were pissed off since they felt it never delivered one iota of what they craved. Me? Well I was just captivated. The biblical/mythical feel. The Old Testament style slayings. The initial washing ashore of Claudia against the island backdrop that hadn't changed from what we see today. The main protaganist making that point subtly but surely in her 2500 year old Roman garb. The simplicity of the plot seemed to jar with most who dissed it as weak and vacuous but for me it worked beautifully. I loved the whole feel and atmosphere of it. If it had tried to go any further for me it would have cluttered it and spoilt what I felt was something really special. Sure the dialogue may not have vied for literary awards but it felt perfectly congruous to me with what it was intended to convey. Certainly in filling in gaps in our understanding of the basic concepts at play whilst as ever teasing us with what it didn’t answer.
Obviously we all see things through differing lenses with our different sensibilities but for me it worked magically as the episode when we all needed to stop and smell the roses and see just how pivotal the island figures in the creators mindset. In the underpinning of the story they’ve striven to tell. That for me was the main thrust of the episode – the permanence of the island and its place in the storyline.
I also have similar ambivalence to earlier gaffes/plot shortcomings . The point you make about the writers'/series early pre-occupation with Walt followed by his airbrushing out without so much as a bye your leave or nod and a wink. Then the frequent appearances of Christian Shepherd with only that scant admission from Flocke in explanation.. Or the abrupt cheerio from Eko and his brudder. Or the switching from science to myth to magic and back to science.
Okay so I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t want them to smooth out a few wrinkles like these. But in overall terms I also can’t say any of it really jars that much with me. I really do see them as mere blips set against the huge ambition and scope of the entire thing. Sure they’ve fucked things up. But I for one am certainly not counting up any of the debt that others seem to feel they’re rightfully due payback on.
Thing is I do just honestly see the thing for what I think it is. That is a TV rollercoaster of complete and utter nonsense and bilge but the most enjoyable nonsense and bilge it's ever been my privilege to be entertained by on the telly. And a real attempt by television entertainment at true art to boot. I see the entire thing as an entity. Not as something to be graded – or more likely in recent times torn to shreds - episode by episode. The episodes for me are merely parts of a whole. And it’s the whole which I absolutely love. I got in for the ride and the ride has been amazing, flat spots, warts and all.
And moving onto the upcoming finale, crucially not even for one tiny minute do I believe the writer's can supply us with one panacea explanation or better still a glut of them to sate our cravings to know the answers to every significant loose end they've laid down and teased us with. Surely to god only a gullible fool would think they ever could given the burst mattress nature of what we’ve been watching these past six years.
But as far as I'm concerned that doesn't mean the creators have cheated anybody. Not in the slightest minutest nano way. For the simple fact is that these guys have dished up the most fabulous swathe of exciting, probing, thoughtful, dramatic, sad, funny and utterly ridiculous and lovable television we could ever hope to be privileged to see featuring some of the best characters TV has thrown up in one series. A series that if it is not already will in time surely be ranked up there with the very best as long as television continues to provide our staple entertainment diet - and we all know the sort of Sopranos, Deadwood, Wire levels we're talking about by the term ‘best’.
So I repeat. Fuck off all you nerdy, nitpicking whining geeky twats. And just be fuckin grateful you didn’t have to put up with Dixon of Dock Green like me
