SOMETIMES IT IS BEST TO LEAVE SLEEPING DOGS LIE

Sopranos creator, David Chase, recently stated in a widely circulated interview, on what happened to his iconic characters.

In the finale, Tony's family is at a small restaurant when a menacing group of men approach the front door. As the scene begins to pan for the next explosive scene, the screen goes BLACK. The End. WTH?

It was ballsy, gutsy, and controversial. Why end the series with the biggest mystery and unanswered question of all: what happened next?

LOST's creators always said they were quite impressed by the Sopranos ending. A few even teased that they wished they could make a move like that ending.

The controversial end of the Sopranos left die-hard fans wondering, debating, creating their own theories, yelling, screaming, crying foul and pondering what that hole was going to to be filled with just bitterness. If it sounds familiar, this is the same carnival ride from die hard LOST fans after its finale.

LOST answered some questions, but skirted or refused to address the Big Ones.

The Sopranos left everyone literally in the dark.

Until now.

Chase tells Vox that Tony Soprano did not die in the restaurant scene.

One mystery solved, but more questions arose. Why not? Who were those men? What happened?
It was telling a young child she can have a cookie, but then just give her a picture on one.

The revelation left die-hard fans wondering, debating, creating their own theories, yelling, screaming, crying foul and pondering what that hole was going to to be filled with just confusion.

There really was no reason for the Sopranos creator to make such a statement. It does not help explain the ending at all. It does not give closure to the series that many fans wanted from their show. It sort of rekindles the negative emotions of many fans, who may have moved on after struggling with their own personal resolutions.

Lesson: at times it is better to leave things be, for good or ill.

THE BIG QUESTION

The producers at the Paley conference indicated that they wanted to finish the show with the big question, "what is life?" How the sideways world ending answer that question in itself is clouded in mysterious contradictions.

For science is trying really, really hard to answer that question.

Before her death in 2005, Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper of the Netherlands was the oldest woman alive. She lived to be 115 and three months old.
Surprisingly though,  CNN reports that when she died, her brain was still in good shape - no sign of Alzheimer's or other diseases typically associated with old age.
Scientists wanted to know her cause of death, and by implication how she lived so long. They now say it might have to do with dying stem cells.
Scientists at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam say at the time of van Andel-Schipper's death, she had just two blood stem cells.  
Blood stem cells are what your body uses to replenish your blood. Humans are typically born with around 20,000 of these cells, and on average about 1,000 work to keep your bloodstream pumping.
But this study suggests over time our stem cells weaken and die out, which might actually limit the ability of your stem cells to replenish your tissues.
"Once the stem cells reach a state of exhaustion that imposes a limit on their own lifespan, they themselves gradually die out and steadily diminish the body's capacity to keep regenerating vital tissues and cells, such as blood," the study states.
Although it's not known for sure whether van Andel-Schipper died because of this exhaustion, this study does reveal her white blood cells were mutated, leading scientists to wonder if some genetic mutations are actually harmless.
The scientific community will debate whether it could mean that  "Genetic mutations may hold the key to a long life."
The researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Genome Research, say more studies are needed to investigate whether dying stem cells can cause death at extreme ages.

Likewise, medical science still does not know why certain people get cancer (the mutation of cells which destroy vital cells and organs) and other people with the same environmental factors do not. The human body is a complex bio-chemical-electric factory of inter-related factors which creates a living human being. 

At some point, medical science will try to inject substitute blood stem cells into patients to see if that treatment can prolong their lives. Immortality is something that human beings have dreamed about for ages, since the fear of death (and its unknown) has been culturally significant throughout history.

LOCATION SET QUESTION

There was some concern about how LOST would be shot. Since the setting was going to be on a tropical jungle, the idea of shooting the series outdoors in Hawaii would be a daunting task. Hawaii has been the venue for various other shows, including the original Hawaii- Five-O and Magnum PI series, who used location shots as well as sound studio sets to tell their tales. The practical shooting (and therefore show cost formula) was extremely important to network executives. The pitch-writer's guide attempted to address this issue:

TV SHOWS NEED HOME SETS - SO?

We all realize that attempting to shoot a weekly TV series with no interiors would be...
challenging. So how do we create standing sets for a show that takes place on a tropical island? The first three episodes (or perhaps as few as two) focus on a growing concern amongst our castaways - rescue isn't coming. The food on the plane is gone. There's no fresh water. So... 

The mission is clear - Despite the inherent dangers of the jungle, they have to RELOCATE.

Our idea is to build a jungle inside a soundstage. And in this patch of jungle, our characters will begin to build their own "mini" sets. Call it a primitive "Melrose Place." 

This new "camp" will become our home set. A set where we can regulate time of day, weather conditions, etc. This is where our thirteen characters live, eat, sleep - it is their base of operations. It is their Precinct House. Their ER. Their Law Firm. 

And as we mentioned earlier, if and when these sets grow visually tiresome, some or all of the castaways may relocate to the vast UNDERGROUND COMPLEX they uncover, although this might not happen until well into the second season.

The goal for LOST is this - structure each story so that half of the episode plays out at HOME (the camp) and the other half plays out AWAY (any where else on the island). "Home"stories will traditionally be more character-driven and survival-based while the "Away" stories will obviously have more action/adventure elements. 

Cost containment on the "home sets" seems to be a selling point to the network. Half of the stories would center around character interaction at the camp (home set) and the other half would be the action-adventure in the jungle. The whole series would be moving toward permanent locations such as the camp and the "vast" underground complex the survivors would find by the end of Season 2.

It appears that the producers tried to make this set/location map work.  

Hawaiian island of Oahu was used for most of the  diverse filming locations.  The original island scenes for the pilot were filmed at Mokuleia Beach, near the northwest tip of the island. Later beach scenes take place in secluded spots of the famous North Shore, the big wave surf area. Cave scenes in the first season were filmed on a sound stage built at a warehouse. In 2006, the sound-stage and production offices moved to the Hawaii Film Office-operated Hawaii Film Studio^, where the sets depicting Season 2's "Swan Station" and Season 3's "Hydra Station" interiors were built. Various urban areas in and around Honolulu are used as stand-ins for locations around the world, including California, New York, Iowa, Miami, South Korea, Iraq, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Paris, Thailand, Berlin, Maldives and Australia. For example, scenes set in Sydney Airport were actually filmed inside the local Convention Center,  while a World War II-era bunker was used as both a Republican Guard installation and a Dharma research station.  Several scenes in the Season 3 finale, were shot in Los Angeles, including a hospital set borrowed from Grey's Anatomy. Two scenes during season four were filmed in London because actor Alan Dale (Widmore) was at the time performing in the musical and he was unable to travel to Hawaii.

Very few people would criticize the look and feel of the LOST series. The photography and sets used in the series really transported viewers to a tropical island. The transition shots between vast island valleys, to the close, dense jungle vegetation led us to believe that the show did create a real environment that the characters had to live in. It was probably shot more "on location" that originally proposed, because the main characters never moved everyone from the beach camp into the vast underground bunker. In fact, the beach became less and less a focal point as the series moved forward. The remaining survivors did not set up a functioning "town" at their original camp as inferred by the guidelines above.

The show's original idea that the 13 main characters would have two leaders (Jack and Kate) would have a home base for story structure seems to have been abandoned toward the more action-adventure elements of finding new mysteries, exploring the jungle, being attacked by the unknown and hiking about the jungle on sometimes dubious missions. Then things get really skewed when the O6 gets rescued by Penny's boat and a good chunk of story is removed from the island to LA. 

But all in all the stage and setting of the series did work.