DOLMEN

I concluded watching a French miniseries that had many of the same elements of LOST: supernatural, stone glyphs, murder, greed, legends, dark secrets, extortion, blackmail, love triangles, betrayals, lies, revenge, beautiful scenery, layered story lines, mental illness, episode cliff hangers and stunning plot twists.

The six- part French miniseries from 2005 is called Dolmen. I found it by accident channel surfing the high numbers on the cable box to land on a secondary PBS channel showing International Mysteries.

The story is set on the fictional fishing island of Ty Kern (which is, in real life is an island off the coast of Brittany, France). The main character, Marie Kermeur, a young police lieutenant, who returns to her home island to marry her childhood love, Christian Bréhat, who is a local celebrity because he is a world sail boat champion. In Ty Kern, four families are connected by ancient rivalries and secrets: the Kersaint, the Le Bihan, the Pérec and the Kermeur. But on the day before the wedding of Marie and Christian, strange events begin to happen. The bloody corpse of a seagull is brought in by the tide, Marie is assaulted by strange nightmares a sea of blood and a woman's scream, her brother Gildas is found dead, and the town's menhirs (glyphs carved into large upright stones) begin to bleed at the dolmen, a megalithic tomb with a large flat stone laid on upright ones, found chiefly in Britain and France, near the island's lighthouse.  Aided by an inspector from the mainland, Lucas Fersen, Marie decides to clarify these strange phenomena. It is now that a series of deaths begin.

Dolmen's story centers around Marie and the secrets of the island. It involved the re-telling of a local legend about ancient piracy, the island's sinister past, and tragic consequences which follow grim decisions in the past. The body count quickly piles up and the police are baffled by the silence of the town people and the fact that no one can explain the ghostly appearance of the bleeding menhirs. Suspects and conflicting motivations swirl throughout the series, as prime candidates suddenly meet their own demise, unraveling more mysteries.

Dolmen did in six episodes which LOST failed to do in six seasons: answer the questions posed in the beginning of the series, and show the clues that were previously scattered throughout the show as part of the final explanation. It was clear that the writers knew where their story was going to end up prior to shooting the first episode. They charted out the complex family relationships and back stories in order peel away the onion skin of island secrets one by one. And the show put in important clues randomly throughout the series which seemed like minor background material until the murder mysteries and "breaks" int the case began to surface.  In the finale, there was no need to dwell on any lengthy verbal explanations to give the viewer enough information to say "Ah ha! That makes sense." And even this series ending left the viewer to postulate a final literal cliff hanger.

The story was so well done that I watched all six episodes even though it was broadcast in French with English subtitles.

As I finished the Dolmen series, which I do not know if it is available on DVD but I highly recommend anyone to watch it if you can,  I read an article written by LOST show runner Damon Lindelof, who was asked by the Hollywood Reporter to write an epilogue of Breaking Bad when that series ended. Lindelof was a big fan of Vince Gilligan's hit drama where an unemployed science teacher finds he has cancer, and decides that he needs to cook meth in order to support his family. That decision leads the main character, Walter White, down a path of evil darkness. The fan base knew that there were possibly only three real endings for their show and the main character. They got a sentimental family farewell; they got Walter trying to make his own twisted redemption, but in the end he finally admits that everything he did, he did it for himself, so he could feel alive.

Successful creative people have an built-in ego which needs to be fed. So as Lindelof is writing a piece on Breaking Bad's ending, he detours to rant out about his own show's ending, and the negative backlash that he still gets from LOST fans.

Lindelof wrote in part:

I am a huge fan of Breaking Bad and have been a zealot of its Church of Awesomeness for years. It's spectacular TV -- spectacular storytelling -- and I am lucky to have borne witness to it. The opportunity to sing the show's praises one last time was not one I could possibly pass up.
And here's what I was not aware of but am now.

All story is reflective, designed to illuminate its own characters and the themes surrounding them. When a show is as brilliant as Breaking Bad, it's not just about the people we're watching, it's about those watching them. About us. In other words, the better the show, the deeper it forces you to look at yourself. On Sunday night, I took a good long look at myself, and this is what I found staring back …
I agreed to write this piece because I am deeply and unhealthily obsessed with finding ways to revisit the Lost finale and the maddening hurricane of shit that has followed it.

I am surprised that after all this time, Lindelof still stings about the criticism of his show's finale, comparing, I guess, the critics to a violent storm of crap. Anyone can read my views, opinions, criticisms and positives of the show in this blog; but I don't think I threw down the feces gauntlet to the show producers. What I, and many other viewers wanted was explanations (separating the wheat from the chaff, the red herrings from the real clues) for the mysteries and questions that Lindelof himself set up in the story lines. Fans had high expectations for the ending.

Lindelof continues:

And this morning? I am Walter White. Arrogant. Conceited. Selfish. Entitled. Looking for ways to blame everything and everyone but myself, even though it is perfectly clear the situation I find myself in is of my own making. And here's the worst part: I'm still naive enough to believe I can attain some level of redemption.

Redemption is a thing that saves someone from error or evil or the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, such as clearing a debt. It is a personal decision for each viewer whether the show's producers and writers breached their promises in giving us a completed story. Fans spent their time watching LOST with the expectation that certain mysteries would be answered in a reasonable fashion. For a top notch show, they believed they were entitled to a mind blowing finale. TPTB never downplayed those expectations.

He continues:

Earlier drafts of this piece were a love letter to Breaking Bad. The show was a masterpiece. I listed the reasons why. We all know what they are. The finale? Fantastic. Not a false beat.  * * * *  And that would have been the piece you would have read had I finished it. But …

In the comments section of the piece I did not write, the following sentiment would have been echoed dozens of times over: "What the f--- do you know because you f---ed up Lost?!?" How do I know this? Well, for starters, my Twitter feed was pretty much a unanimous run of, "Did you see that, Lindelof? That's how you end a show."

Three years later, it appears that it is not just enough to love Breaking Bad's finale. You also have to hate ours. Yeah, I know. Waaaaaah for me. I should go cry into my barrels full of money. But I swear to you, I'm not looking for empathy. I'm just looking for a way to stop. And I can't.

Alcoholics are smart enough to not walk into a bar. My bar is Twitter. It's Comic-Con. It's anytime someone asks me to write an article even casually relating to Lost.

There is some twisted transference going on here. Why would people who loved the Breaking Bad finale automatically hate LOST's ending? How many cross over viewers were there? And why would a person have to filter a third party's work through their own series' fan issues? It seems narcisstic;  vain, prideful, and selfish to transfer gratification derived from admiration of someone else's work to defend one's own accomplishments.

He goes on with this self-realization:

And what do I do? I jump at the opportunity to acknowledge how many people were dissatisfied with how it ended. I try to be self-deprecating and witty when I do this, but that's an elaborate (or obvious?) defense mechanism to let people know I'm fully aware of the elephant in the room and I'm perfectly fine with it sitting down on my face and shitting all over me.

And this is how pathetic I've become -- I'm using an opportunity to put Breaking Bad into the pantheon of best shows ever (where it undeniably belongs) to narcissistically whine about the perceived shortcomings of my own work.

God, I hate myself. But isn't that what's expected of me? Don't I have to do that? Is it possible for me to ever comment on anything I love without cheekily winking at the audience and saying, "But what do I know -- after all, I ruined Lost?"

It does bear mentioning that not everyone feels this way. There are fans who actually love the way Lost ended. And I can feel the abuse they've taken for having what has become a wildly unpopular opinion, which only makes me love them more. Unfortunately, these kind souls are vastly overwhelmed by, well, less kind souls. So now what?

I'm sick of myself for continuing to beat this particular drum, so I can't imagine how sick of it you are. If it's unpleasant and exhausting for me to keep defending the Lost finale, aren't you getting tired of hating it? And so … I, like Walter White, want out. To be free. And to grant you the same.
I'd like to make a pact, you and me. And here's your part: You acknowledge that I know how you feel about the ending of Lost. I got it. I heard you. I will think about your dissatisfaction always and forever. It will stay with me until I lie there on my back dying, camera pulling slowly upward whether it be a solitary dog or an entire SWAT team that comes to my side as I breathe my last breath.

And here's my part: I will finally stop talking about it. I'm not doing this because I feel entitled or above it -- I'm doing it because I accept that I will not change hearts nor minds. I will not convince you they weren't dead the whole time, nor resent you for believing they were despite my infinite declarations otherwise.

Lindelof proposes a pact, a bargain, with still angry LOST fans. He acknowledges their anger for the ending, and he promises to stop talking or trying to convince them to change their minds about the ending. It is not anger but disappointment. But Lindelof or the other PTB took us on their vision of story ride asking us to believe in the plot, its twists, its questions, its mysteries; to find clues, connect the dots, and watch everything come together. The problem continues to be that TPTB never have explained what happened in the series. That is is what is most upsetting to fans. Even if the ending's explanation of the premise, island, mysteries were bad, unbelievable, or contradictory . . . just give us your creative vision of how all the pieces fit together. And that is why some people continue to be mad, because no authoritative explanation for the missing pieces will ever come.

So Lindelof defiantly concludes:

I stand by the Lost finale. It's the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I'll always care what you think, I can't be a slave to it anymore. Here's why:
I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.

So, after several years of fans pondering the questions, asking for explanations, Lindelof will not clarify what the show's ending was all about in concrete terms. Instead, he declares he is slamming the door and closing the book on LOST. The End.