A LOST RANT

 ScreenRant listed the 10 worst “answers” of LOST:

10. The Whispers are Souls.

The whispers come from the souls of dead people who haven't "moved on" yet like Michael.
It was an answer that gave evidence to the early purgatory theorists, which the show runner continually deny.

9.  Desmond had Mind Powers because of Electromagnetism

Desmond’s powers were nonsense and caused "electromagnetism" stemming from the hatch implosion makes no sense because there were others near the Hatch who were not affected.

8.  The Sideways Timeline is Purgatory

 
The opening of Season 6 seemed to suggest that Juliet had split the timeline.
In one branch, the island remained and nothing changed. In the other branch, the island was destroyed and the events of LOST never occurred. But then we found out that it was not a branching timeline, but purgatory. It caused a lot of confusion — "they were dead the whole time!" — but even those who weren't confused were left bitterly disappointed and upset with the reveal. Even some tried to salvage the sideways branch as being some sort of “dream” state (before moving on?) but it all comes down to Bad Filler episodes.

 7.  Walt’s Special Powers

 
Walt plays an important role throughout the first season, and to some extent, the second season as well. It's very clear that he has some type of special connection with the island, and has some sort of mental powers. He also showed some sort of teleportation powers in Season 2, as he appears to Shannon right before she dies. But a growth spurt exiled Walt from the series and the disappointing answer for his mysterious powers was that he was "special.”

6.   Revived Locke was Actually the Man in Black

Locke dies midway through Season 5, but we were briefly led to believe that he was revived after returning to the island. Of course, Locke remained dead, and the Man in Black was simply using his corpse to have a corporeal form to split the Others from Jacob so he could try to escape the Island. Of course, a paralyzed Locke crash landing on the island can walk, run and hunt like an Outback warrior, but his remains stay dead without resurrection even though Jack’s dad wanders around it at will?

5.  The Confusing Numbers

The numbers were another major mystery, and they were a part of LOST from the very beginning. In the end, we found out that the numbers correlated to Jacob's numbering system for the candidates to replace him. Why would an island god need to be replaced by a mortal?  As if that wasn't lame enough, it also doesn't answer anything else: Why were they broadcasting from the tower? Why do they bring people bad luck? Why are they seemingly cursed? Why do they constantly recur both on and off the island?

4.  The Smoke Monster’s origins

There were countless theories regarding the Smoke Monster, and it remained one of the most prevalent questions throughout all six years of the show. And then we found out it was just the result of some magical reaction after Jacob’s brother (the Man in Black) fell in the magical glowing light cave.


3. Jacob and The Man in Black

For that matter, Jacob and the Man in Black  remain extremely divisive and controversial figures. "Jacob" was mentioned as far back as Season 3, and while there are various "hints" of their existence throughout the first couple seasons,  most people found their existence a total blindside that ruined the show. The show pivoted abruptly to a supernatural fantasy show with no reason. All the mysteries, questions and Easter eggs were washed away by two god-boys playing with humans (spirits) as pawns. There origin story episode was very good but it should have been shown early in Season 1 if that is the true mythology of the show’s creators (which most people believe was not - - - because they wrote themselves into too many dead ends to rationally explain.)

2.  Magic Island

Perhaps the biggest question of all contained the most disappointing answer of all. "What is the island?" It's a question that permeated LOST throughout all six seasons, as it was clearly evident that it wasn't just a regular island. There were scientific facts thrown at us to analyze, research and theorize. From an alien ship, to a parallel universe time portal to a secret military base, there were viable alternatives to the explanation that the island was just “magical.”  

1.  The Magic Light

But why was the island magical? The explanation was that the island containing some sort of “magical light” that does magical things and keeps evil at bay from doing what exactly? What is the magic light exactly? Was the magic light the cause for all the crazy island stuff?  Locke's sudden ability to walk?  Smoke Monster's origins?  The ability for the island to literally move through space and time?. Electromagnetic properties of the island? The ability to disappear? Magic as being the answer to all the unanswered questions is a cop-out of epic proportions.

THREE AND OUT

Yahoo News reported on LOST's back story from one of its co-creators.

LOST launched a television phenomenon by creating mysteries and Easter egg hunts like the numbers, the hatch, and The Others.  It had high ratings from the 2004 pilot right up until the finale in 2010.

A common debate has been when the series jumped the rails to go out into filler tangents and story line dead ends. Some believe the middle seasons were merely filler episodes which distracted from the original intent of the show.

Co-creator Damon Lindelof  all but admitted it when he recently said the original outline for the ABC series was a three-season run.

“There were all of these compelling mysteries and so we were saying, ‘We wanna have this stuff answered by the end of Season 1, this stuff answered by the end of Season 2, and then the show basically ends after about three years,’” Lindelof told Collider. “That was the initial pitch.”

“[ABC] were not even hearing it… they were just like, ‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show? So why would we end it? You don’t end shows that people are watching.’”

Eventually, ABC allegedly agreed to set an end date for the show – but on its own terms: 10 seasons.

That never came to pass, as Lindelof eventually reached a compromise during negotiations around Lost’s third season.

Lindelof was set on a longer fourth season to wrap the story up which still involved “a number of the characters” getting off the island and later returning for the final run. When ABC offered just nine episodes, the two parties settled on slightly shorter seasons up to season six, a marked departure compared to the 20-plus episode seasons we got in the show’s first two years.

Despite the apparent directional conflict with the network, LOST moved forward, with all its flaws, to the controversial finale. Would have a concentrated LOST series have been better? Would more mysteries been solved? Would the End be different?

 Let's look back at the first three seasons as a guide with the help of lostpedia:

Season 1 concentrated on the middle-section survivors and their fight for survival and rescue. This was the modern update of the Robinson Caruso shipwreck story. It is a classic premise to hook viewers with a familiar story told in a new way.

Major plot points included:

Finding a suitable camp location.
Half the survivors, including Kate, Sawyer, and Sayid settled on a beach near the crash site.
The rest, led by Jack, chose to live in the caves which are located in the jungle, near a source of fresh water.
Investigating the Island (searching for food and water, discovering the caves, and learning about the Black Rock).
Confrontations with The Monster.
Getting to know and trust each other (see especially Kate, Locke, Sawyer, and Jin).
There is a relatively long-standing animosity between Michael and Jin: the latter attacked the former in order to get his watch back, which Michael had found in the wreckage of the plane.
The survivors (especially Jack and Shannon) begin to question Locke's intentions due to his lie about Boone's injury and consequent death.
Trying to leave the island.
Building and launching the raft.
Hunting for Claire, after she was taken by the Others.
Opening the Hatch found by Locke and Boone.
Started to tell the survivors' story by introducing and using Flashbacks.

The early story was basic survival: food, shelter and water. Also, a means of rescue.
But the survival group was not unified so individuals personal instincts were more important than uniting around  common leader. This was the early character conflict between those who thought they would lead.

The mysteries were unusual: the Black Rock ship found in the middle of the island; the Smoke Monster, the Others and the Hatch.  The story pivoted from basic survival to danger from Monster, the Others and the Island itself.




Season 1 Finale: As the castaways brace themselves for an attack, Claire's baby is kidnapped, leading Charlie and Sayid on a dangerous chase into the jungle. While the threat of the Others bears down on the castaways, the raft crew continues their flight from the island - but when the hope of rescue appears on the horizon, they will soon learn that appearances can be deceiving. Charlie and Sayid stumble into a trap as they race to confront the kidnapper. Jack and Locke argue as they prepare to blow open the hatch. The raft crew is overjoyed to be discovered by a passing ship, but their elation is short-lived when they realize things are not what they appear. The hatch is opened, and what is inside it stuns the survivors.
 

Season Two focused on the Hatch. To find something scientific and out of the ordinary on the Island filled the castaways with hope (and food and protection) but also doubt (what was its purpose on the island). The writers were praised for effectively using flashbacks to flesh out the secrets of the characters.

Major plot points included:

The Swan, the Numbers, and pressing the button, all of which appeared to have been resolved by the end of the season.
The tail-section survivors, whose stories began and ended in the season, with the exception of Eko and Bernard.
The Others, including Tom, Goodwin, Klugh, and the fake Henry Gale (Ben).
The DHARMA Initiative stations/
Continued to tell the survivors' story by using flashbacks

Finale: Live Together, Die Alone: After discovering something odd just offshore, Jack and Sayid come up with a plan to confront "The Others" and hopefully get Walt back. Meanwhile, Eko and Locke come to blows as Locke makes a potentially cataclysmic decision regarding the "button" and the Hatch.

Season 3 mainly focused on the Others who had become the biggest danger to the castaways survival.

Major plot points included:

The Others (including Juliet Burke, Tom Friendly, Ben Linus and Richard Alpert), who they are, why they are on the Island, the way they live their lives and who leads them.
Contact with the outside world, including Penny; the Flame and Galaga being destroyed.
Desmond's future-telling powers, going back in time and Charlie's imminent death, and to a lesser extent, time.
The mysteries of the island, mainly pregnancy issues and the healing properties (see Mikhail).
The arrival of Naomi and the freighter.
Continued to use Flashbacks and during the final episode of the Season 3 they first introduced the Flash-forward idea that was used throughout all of Season 4.

Finale: Through the Looking Glass:  Jack and the castaways begin their efforts to make contact with Naomi's rescue ship.

"Through the Looking Glass" means where nothing is quite what it seems. In Lewis Carroll's book, it can mean clocks that work backwards or "... a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed, including logic (e.g. running helps you remain stationary, walking away from something brings you towards it, chessmen are alive, nursery rhyme characters exist, etc.).

At the end of Season 3, current reflection shows series turned to pure fantasy and not reality.


But by the end of Season 3, LOST could have wrapped up its main stories without jumping the shark (literally and figuratively) with the entire Jacob Temple worship story which attempted to merge ancient religions with an old Greek surreal tale of sibling rivalry.


A three season run would have boiled the LOST story universe into easily absorbed plots:

1. The conflict and tension in the 815 survivors camp on leadership and direction for survival. A passenger class struggle between the middle section and the tail section who had more contact and suspicions about the Others.
2. The external conflict and combat with the Others who claim the Island and its magical properties as their own. The story would have concentrated more on the science cult's obsession with time, pregnancy and mental experiments (which could have easily explained the Monster as being the physical manifestation of mentally ill minds through the Island's unique electromagnetic fields). In other words, the Smoke Monster would have been the island Frankenstein, roaming the island after breaking out of its captivity.
3. The realization that the only way to leave the Island was through the Others assets (boats, communications, etc.) or through rebellion (the freighter coming back to dethrone Ben as the island leader.) It could have been an interesting dynamic on whether Widmore would be as evil as Ben or whether he would have rescued the 815ers then restore the "real" original research of the Island. This would have been a cleaner and more logical ending to the series as it avoids the pitfalls of supernatural beings and clear evidence of a purgatory premise. The main characters would be given an opportunity to "go home" on the freighter or "stay" to live a new life on the Island.

TEN YEARS AFTER

As Yahoo UK recently published:

"In the end, it was a Shephard — two of them, actually — who led the lost flock home. Ten years ago this week, the hit ABC series, Lost, brought it’s time-and-reality hopping narrative to a conclusion in the super-sized series finale, appropriately titled “The End.”

The final moments of the final episode feature the show’s hero, Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), reuniting with his fellow Oceanic Flight 815 castaways in a heavenly dimension as they prepare to move on to whatever realm lies beyond death. “Where are we going?” Jack asks his father, Christian Shephard (John Terry), whose specter had haunted him throughout Lost’s six-season run.

“Let’s go find out,” Papa Shephard replies. At that point, father and son take their place in pews surrounded by the entire cast — even those who died early in the show’s run — and they collectively step into the light.

That may sound final, but “The End” turned out to be just the beginning of the debate over Lost’s place in the pantheon of all-time TV greats. Certainly, the show’s 2004 premiere was a seismic pop culture event, with action that rivalled big-screen blockbusters and ratings to match."

The first takeaway is that LOST was the first epic series that had a complicated mythology and Easter egg fan service to make it the pioneering show for the internet commentary community. Fan sites devoured each episode like an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Fan theories became more complex than the LOST writers best imagination. It was the first interactive television program, some of it in real time chat rooms. Today, some YouTubers live stream commentary during k-dramas, but that pales in comparison to the national media dedicating columnists for weekly recaps.

It was a critical and viewer juggernaut. But as the seasons progressed and the tangential story lines got more convoluted, the show runners hubris took the series down split road to a dead end. The biggest complaint was the land fill sized pile of unanswered questions. When one weaves an elegant story, with mysteries, viewers expected show worthy answers. Rambling into the series finale, Cuse and Lindelof acknowledged there was no way they’d be able to craft an ending that paid off every plot thread and satisfied every viewer.


“We have to have the answers to the mysteries so that there is something to work towards, but what we don't have are the stories,” Lindof said in a 2010 Wired interview.  “J.K. Rowling can sit down and say, ‘Here's how Harry Potter's parents were killed, and here's who killed them,’ but how am I going to reveal that information to the audience in the most emotionally impactful way? So we know what we want to do, but we have very little idea of how and when we're going to do it.”

Second, this confirmed in some people's minds that at a certain point, the writers were making things up on the fly. There was no concrete ending from the beginning. The show drifted on the ocean of fan support. In the end, the show runners confessed they decided to do was to design a finale that emphasized "character over mystery."

 But when you base six years of story on mysteries, many fans thought that was a cop-out. Especially true when the show's producers vehemently denied during the first season that the show was set in purgatory. But the End showed a mixed religious message that main characters had died in the past and the island was some other dimension (further complicated by another universe of the sideways world).

Third, LOST did get into the surreal story writing genre by not only having character flash backs but also "flash sideways," a different  timeline where apparently Jack and the rest of the castaways were back in the real world, albeit leading different lives than what we saw in the flashback sequences that were a major part of previous seasons.

But these did not add a layer of mystery more than one of confusion. A few critics thought this was mere annoying filler episodes. Others thought the writers "stumped" themselves in their original time frame ("painted themselves into a corner") so they tried to "re-boot" the series with another time line.

The evolution of the Man in Black as the personification of dead Locke really did not answer the confinement of Jacob and the Smoke Monster to an island where human beings were used as chess pieces in a sadistic game. But if you look to the religious elements, especially ancient Egyptian culture, one could find a potential answer that the island was the underworld which a soul would have to navigate dangerous tests in order to be judged by the gods in the afterlife.

But the show runners did not want LOST to fall into that realm. They wanted LOST to stand on its own mythology as pure fantasy. They decided that they did not have to answer all the questions or defend their creative choices because enough fans were fully invested (with their own ideas) it did not really matter.

Fourth, there was a sour taste of being hustled by a three card monte boardwalk shark. The End did not tie up loose ends. It made them more tangled as we see Jack "die" on the island while  Hurley and  Ben Linus remain on the island as "new protectors" only to "shut it down" in a hasty DVD epilogue. It did not explain why pilot Frank Lapidus miraculously gets everyone else — including Kate, Sawyer, and Claire off the island. Why were these characters "saved?" What did they do when they returned "home?" How did some find their way to Christian Shephard's church?

In the final scene, Christian opens the church doors to engulf the inside with a bright white light, symbolizing the moment between death and the after life. In the real world, “The End” wasn’t exactly the end that a lot of viewers were waiting for with half the fans found it a comfortable, happy ending while half felt it was a disappointing conclusion in a Hollywood trope way. It did bring to the forefront the debate on whether  the “Flash sideways” universe functioned as a kind of purgatory between life and death — the same theory that was advanced about the island itself when the show first launched. As one commentator put it: “I think the overall lesson is that we're all going to die eventually, so we may as well surround ourselves with as many attractive people as we can.”

Fifth, the LOST legacy may truly be the backtracking by the show runners.  Lindelof heard the criticisms loud and clear, and responded to them in public. “There was a very early perception… that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying, 'It's not purgatory, this is real, we're not going to Sixth Sense you,’”


But three years later, he said  “Lost was all about mystery and questions and answers and [I wanted] to try to answer a mystery the show hadn't even asked up until that point… A portion of the audience was like, 'Oh, that wasn’t on my list, I'm not interested in that.' But we were.” Even as he stood by “The End,” the online reaction clearly took its toll.

Despite its still-divisive ending, the early success of LOST remains something that TV networks would love to emulate in an increasingly fractured TV landscape. In 2019, ABC hinted that it would not be adverse to rebooting the series.  But do not expect any of the original creative team to return for a potential revival. "I, personally, am not going to be involved with other versions of Lost because we told the most complete version," Lindelof said last year.  "I feel like I spent four years of my life begging them to end it and when they finally said yes, the ending that we did probably should stand as our ending."

LOST was highly entertaining, addictive and mentally stimulating but with all first loves, it had its bad points, questionable choices and nasty arguments.  As a series of intertwined and related episodes, LOST could never handle syndication re-runs because viewers missing episodes would themselves become lost. Syndicated viewers demand self-contained episodes like Star Trek.

It is hard to believe that it has been TEN YEARS since LOST concluded its run. There are very few blogs or sites that still contribute new content to the LOST community. But there are occasional posts of nostalgia about the series. And that is one of the hope's of any television production - - - a nostalgic memory.

CRACKED UP

Cracked had an article trying to answer the great unsolved mysteries of television.

Of course, LOST was one of those TV enigmas.

This is how it summed up the series and its ending:

What The Hell, Lost?

It begins with the basic premise question:  were the characters time-travelers, incompetent aliens, sexy magicians or spirits in the afterlife? Was everyone on the show dead? Was it all the dream of an autistic child?

Their  Explanation:

It's not the afterlife, and the island is magic. As for every other question, some were answered in an epilogue on the Season 6 DVD set, though they too can easily be summed as everything was an experiment by DHARMA.

Some DVD question and answers were referenced as support of their argument:

"What's with that giant bird from Seasons 1 and 2?" DHARMA experimented on animals!

"Why do women have pregnancy problems on the Island?" It's the electromagnetism!

"What was that weird thing in Room 23 that looked like a brainwashing video?" A brainwashing video! DHARMA used it to erase memories!

"Where did the food drops come from?" A warehouse in Guam!

"Why polar bears?" They were good candidates for testing!

>>>> Except, what about the elements not tied to the Dharma folks. Namely, all the island inhabitants, including the immortal guardians Crazy Mom and Jacob?  Does the island magic come from these immortals trapped on the island (for what reason?)? See, the question within the question madness?!

Sure, one can logically state that something out of the ordinary would seem to be "magic" to a primitive culture. For example, an isolated  island tribe with no contact with modern, western civilization could consider a helicopter as "magic" since they have never seen aircraft. But the pilot could "explain" to the tribe the basic principles of flight. In LOST, the explanation of "magic" has no basic principle in which viewers could believe. It is purely used in this context as a broad brush for a fantasy story (which intentionally did not want to explain its elements).

SCIENCE FAILS WHAT WE TRULY KNOW

"What do we know about the universe?" asked astronomer Bob Berman to a crowded room at IdeaFestival 2015 in Louisville, Kentucky. "Why aren't the answers satisfying? Where do they go wrong?"

There's a lot of hard and fast data, he says, but it doesn't always give us the right answers. "It's important to know when science is working," said Berman, "and when it's not."

Berman offered four reasons that our scientific approach to understanding the universe doesn't work, and what we can do about it, according to a Yahoo article:

1. Limited data--Most of the universe is dark energy and the rest is dark matter--and we don't know what that is, said Berman. "We only know what's in our vicinity."

2. Limits to our dualistic logic system--There are two ways we get information, Berman said. Directly and indirectly. In science, the indirect method can work sometimes. But not for everything. "Unless you experience love," Berman said, "you won't know what it is. If you're blind, you won't know the color blue. You need experience. And when it comes to the universe, we run out of symbols." The universe is growing larger, he said, "but what does that mean? We can't picture infinity."

3. Space/time framework--"Space actually is not real," said Berman. "We all have an image of space and time, a framework, but when we look, that space and time may have a questionable reality." Of time, Berman said it's also not real. It's merely "an ordering system that we animals created. And it changes."

4. Consciousness--"Consciousness is the greatest unsolved problem in all of science," said Berman. "In every experiment, we're seeing, thinking, concluding--and it happens in our consciousness. Experiments go differently if we measure them and how we measure them. Where we measure makes a difference. It depends on us as observers." And while we "continue to study the brain and how it works, this doesn't answer the question of human experience," said Berman.

Berman believes that science is not approaching the universe from the right angle. We continue to study the Big Bang, he said, but it "doesn't compute with us. In our everyday lives we don't see puppies and lawn furniture popping out of nothingness. A universe out of nothingness? How could that be? How could we possibly know what things were like before the universe was the size of a grapenut?" And even if we pin down the Big Bang, we still can't comprehend the infiniteness of the universe, he said. "We are representatives of the universe. We have the universe inside of us."

"We are representatives of the universe. We have the universe inside of us. We're working on the assumption that studying the parts will give us the whole," Berman said. "That may not be true."

So what's the answer? "If our thought process doesn't work with the macro-universe," Berman said, "the answers don't make sense. It means we're asking the wrong questions."

In terms of what we can ever know about the universe, "we're not really making progress," Berman said. "We're not knowing more and more."

The secret, he said, might lie in recognizing that the thing we are looking for is obvious rather than hidden; present rather than absent.

BLINDSPOT

NBC fall schedule includes a Big Mystery show with a dangerous premise.

Blindspot is billed as a vast international plot explodes when a beautiful Jane Doe, completely covered in mysterious, intricate tattoos, is discovered naked in Times Square with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The FBI quickly realize that each mark on her body is a crime to solve, leading them closer to the truth about her identity and the mysteries to be revealed.

Now, one would think that this is a unique and intriguing premise to a television series. A lead actress who does not know about her past must unravel the clues while dangerous people are chasing her. It sounds a little like Orphan Black.

But it really sounds more like East of Eden, a Japanese anime series. In East of Eden, ten missiles strike Japan, but cause no casualties. This apparent terrorist act is referred to as "Careless Monday" and is eventually forgotten by the populace. The series begins three months later when a young student named Saki visits the White House in Washington DC as part of her graduation trip. When she gets into trouble, a mysterious young Japanese man appears completely naked except for a gun and a cell phone, and rescues her. The man has lost his memory, but learns that he has a bunch of fake passports at his apartment; he chooses the Japanese one which names him Akira. While he and Saki return to Japan, they learn that a new missile has hit.

Akira discovers that his phone carries 8.2 billion yen  in digital money, and that he is part of a game, where twelve individuals are given 10 billion yen to "save" Japan in some way.

Whether Blindspot is going to run the course of mystery-terrorism drama to weird amnesia game show is unknown. But here is why a show creator needs to have a detailed, fixed story line to drop a huge mystery as the beginning point to a series: it has to be believable and have answers be the story engine to move the plot to a satisfactory conclusion.

In LOST, the big premise, the mysterious island, was the hook to get viewers into the show, but despite what was promised in Season One, the creators did not have a set story fleshed out to the conclusion. That is why a shotgun approach to adding new mysteries and twists and turns to tangential science fiction issues to fill each weekly hour did not hit a home run the fans expected from LOST.

THE STATION UNDER THE CHURCH

In 2007, after Ben murdered Locke, he found his way to Eloise's church. In the basement was the Dharma location station, the Lamp Post.

This has always been an odd set.

Eloise's church was also the same church found in the sideways world conclusion. Open question: whether they are one in the same, meaning in the afterlife time period. If so, then would not Locke been the only one to get to the Dharma location station since he was the only one "dead." Unless of course, death is nebulous concept that we don't fully understand.

Meeting her one night at the church, Eloise urged Ben that he had only 70 hours to reunite them—else "Then God help us all."  Ben brought Jack, Sun and Desmond to the church,  whereupon Eloise escorted them down into the Lamp Post and explained that it was built as the DHARMA Initiative's means of locating the Island. Eloise then supplied them information about Ajira flight and the warning that they must be aboard that flight and must work to recreate the conditions of Oceanic Flight 815 as nearly as possible. She also gave Jack Locke's suicide note and explained that Locke's body would have to be aboard the flight as well, serving as a proxy for Jack's dead father, and would therefore have to carry something of Jack's father on him.

Now, in retrospect, none of that makes any sense. Jacob was the one power that could bring humans to the island, not some mythical, complex "recreation" of prior events. Even MIB confirmed that it was Jacob's power that brought people to corrupt the island. And at the Lighthouse, Jacob himself inferred to Hurley and Jack that he was the sole power on the island as it guardian; that he spied on all his potential candidates prior to bringing them to the island.

Why did everything have to be "re-created" in Ajira to get the castaways back to the island? Clearly, this was false because the passengers and pilot were different on Ajira. And there were "new" survivors of that crash landing.  Then also, how did Ben "know" about the "need" to build the runway on the Hydra Island "years" before the actual event?  Recall, when Ben had Kate and Sawyer in the bear cages, their work detail was scraping the jungle to create a runway.

No, Eloise "story" or "magic spell" elements does not make sense. Sure, it was a con-job to entice the O6 back to the island, but that did not work either considering Aaron never returned with the group. The "substitution" of Locke's body for Jack's deceased father also made no sense since there was no substitute on the plane for Locke.

So why would it be necessary to con the O6 people?

More importantly, when did the "con" start?  It may have started early on prior to the rescue of the helicopter crash survivors and the arrival on Penny's boat. If you try to tie Eloise's church and the sideways church as the same (in time and space), logic would conclude that the O6 never "survived" their helicopter crash. Penny's boat was an illusion - - - the ferryman to carry the lost souls to the after life (the sideways world). Because the Coast Guard, press conference and their "life" afterward (especially Kate's trial) were all messed up fantasy. If the O6 had died, they needed to be brought back to the island to be "reborn."   So the direction was coming from the sideways Eloise from the beginning.

Even today, some theologians are unsure whether heaven or hell exists; and some believe that people living on Earth are actually living in heaven or hell, depending on their circumstances. We just believe that this is Life, but in one respect we cannot prove it one way or the other.

The symbolism of using a church as the Lamp Post (itself symbolic of giving light in the darkness, death) and in the sideways reunion hall is a key clue. When Christian told Jack that some people lived and died well before and well after Jack (and Jack's island's death was still to come) that may mean that Jack died during the freighter story arc with the O6. The reason Eloise wanted Jack and the others to return to the island was simple: to make them "forget" about their deaths caused by the island - - - in order for her to keep up her sideways world illusions of life in the afterlife since she was desperate to keep her son, Daniel, from knowing the details of his own island death. In this theory, Eloise is the supreme puppet master, who created the mythology of the island, Dharma, an evil husband trope and the ability to suspend logic and intelligence in her subjects. But like all lab rats, the characters had retained enough free will to muck up Eloise's plans.

Another factor is that if the island could not be found without the Lamp Post, how did Widmore find it? Eloise must have told him about it since she controlled the station. It also goes to what the island really was: was it a cloaked space craft or a portal to a different dimension in time and space. More evidence seems to point to the latter, as in life and afterlife.

The island was a prison, but for characters that Eloise needed to keep at bay in order to keep her illusion with Daniel alive. That would mean that even Jacob and his brother were pawns in an elaborate scheme - - - tricked into becoming candidates and guardians for eternity. That could mean that everyone on the island had a connection to Daniel and his mother - - - like Dogen at music recitals because Daniel was into that. Or Jacob, Patchy and the Others were former teachers, students, colleagues in business that Daniel had met. The idea of erasing Daniel's past and implanting the perfect sideways memories in him was Eloise's ultimate goal. She turned time and space, physics and energy against the laws of nature and human evolution to make it happen.

THE ISLAND'S UNKNOWNS

On the blast door map and a few conversations, people were warned against travel in the Dark Territory.

The Dark Territory was an region that featured the Black Rock, Rousseau's camp, and the Temple. It was supposedly the area where the smoke monster was most active. It attacked the survivors on their mission to get dynamite to blow the hatch. The blast door map indicted that "primary nexus of Cerberus related activity" in close approximation to the Black Rock. 

Rousseau's crew was killed and taken by the smoke monster at the temple's outer wall. One of her crew said the Monster was security system that was guarding the Temple.

It was also the place were the "Hurley bird" made its first appearance. The bird was thought to be a warning device to Hurley that danger was present.

Warning devices, security guards, and danger in the Dark Territory should have allowed for more detailed stories instead of miscellaneous mission treks through the jungle.

Was the smoke monster a temple spirit? Or was the smoke monster created from the dead damned souls of the departed Black Rock crew? Or was the smoke monster more than just a thing, but a growing conglomeration of dead souls - - - which increase its knowledge base, but add more mental confusion and anguish with the emotional fears of the deceased's memories.  Then one could speculate that the smoke monster's existence could have been to absorb the minds of any island intruder, which in itself could have made a fascinating case study of a supernatural being.

Yes, the one true and great back story that was never shown on the series was that of the Smoke Monster.  The writers always claimed that they wanted to leave certain mysteries for the fans to figure out on their own, but this one is really too big to avoid. There were not enough clues for fans to connect any dots to determine what the monster was - - - and there is a high probability the writers had no idea either. It was merely a plot device, the dark shadow creek under the bed, to scare the childlike innocence in the viewers.

The slow reveal of the island mysteries should have included the smoke monster, who came to default prominence as Flocke in Season 6. We still don't know why the smoke monster had to take Locke's form (or have Locke's body on the island in order to do so). So was the monster merely a mechanical projection of the dead, or it is a spiritual evil construction of life force energy? Since we don't know if it was good, bad or malfunctioning, the smoke monster embodies the weakest link in the island mythology.

THE QUICK HIT

There are many new pilots making the television rounds like The Strain, The Leftovers and  Intruders which apparently quickly set the stage with a HUGE mystery as a means of locking in viewers' interest. When pitching these shows and discussing them with the media, the producers stress the mysteries and eventually concede that the series would not be another LOST.

Another LOST meaning that the new shows will fully explain the premise and mysteries set forth early on in the plots.

So one of the lasting legacies of LOST is the express promise to networks and viewers that a new show will not be another LOST.

It is one thing for the LOST creators-producers-writers to bristle at fans criticism of the ending of LOST, but to have people within the industry raise the question at the very beginning has to be a real blow to the stomach.

One of the tenets of Hollywood has always been to steal from successful films and shows. Success breeds imitation to outright copying. The sales pitch usually includes that the new show is "like" this one, or "has elements" of this other one . . . as a means of giving a network executive some context and level of comfort that a familiar story has a better level of success. In the early LOST materials, the creators used the same type of marketing technique to get their pilot green lit.

But to have a calling card that the quick hit opening show mystery is NOT going to be like LOST has to be the life preserver thrown to the network prior to the ship setting sail. It is ironic that a show that still finds its way into many critics Top Ten lists is now a moniker to television insiders of what is not going to happen.

STUBBORN NEGLECT

LOST's show runners continue to stonewall fans about even the simplest of story plot points. At the Paley Center reunion event, TPTB said the script showed who shot Sawyer in the time travel outrigger scene, but it was deleted from the actual filming. Asked what happened, TPTB said it was better to leave it a mystery than give the fans the answer.

Well, that is plain lame.

Why is this one plot point so important to keep it a mystery? It makes no sense, since Sawyer getting shot in the outrigger scene had no lasting effect or change in the rest of the story line (from what we can tell).

There can only be a few reasons for this stubborn stonewalling:

1) TPTB are lying when they said there was an explanation in the script.

2) If they tell us what they wrote, it would open them up to fan criticism over the scene and the whole time travel paradoxes that were also never explained by the show.

3) They neglected to fully think out the ramifications of the "action" sequences and red herrings to keep fan interest as to paint themselves into a writer's corner they could not get out of . . . which would confirm the criticism that the writers and producers did not have a coherent finished story when they started the series.

4) They have convinced themselves that unanswered mysteries are more important story telling than the standard mystery series which solves the issues with clues, deduction, and reasonable explanations. It goes along the line that they perceive themselves as the smartest guys in the room and we, the public, don't get their genius.

5) They cannot explain the outrigger event without triggering a cascade of questions about other plot points which had little to no bearing on the finale. If fans were told that the writers were merely throwing strange, unrelated but shocking twists into scripts willy-nilly, then the "greatest" show on television would be a fraud, a bait and switch, a major disappointment.

STILL LOST AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

After ten years, LOST's management team continues to avoid answering the tough questions about their own series. At the Paley Center Television convention, several members of the LOST cast and the show runners appeared on a panel discussion. According to Yahoo.tv, there were several statements made by the creative team (and my commentary):

Were they dead the entire time?

"No. They were not dead the entire time," Carlton Cuse said. 

He said that theory may have been exacerbated by the closing shot of the show. (A screen shot is at the bottom of this blog's home page). An ABC executive had suggested they include a buffer between the last scene and the commercial break, so the producers found some footage of the plane fuselage sitting on the beach. That footage incited the theories that everyone aboard had actually perished.

The characters definitely survived the plane crash and really were on a very real island. Damon Lindelof added of the incorrect purgatory theory: "For us, one of the ongoing conversations with the audience and there was a very early perception, was that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying, 'It's not purgatory, this is real, we're not going to Sixth Sense you.'"

But that scene of everyone in the church? Yeah, they’re all dead there.

And there lies the problem with the creators-writers position. There is no bridge between their constant denials about there being no purgatory, and the fact that the show's climax is set in the after life. And TPTB do not explain how the characters got to the sideways world, living a separate but parallel lives from their mortal island lives. And to blame ABC for the final debris field scene is also absurd since it was the show's producers who had final cut on the finale.

How the characters evolved:

Lindelof admitted that when they cast the show, there was no script. Kim read for the part of Kate. "There was no Sun in the 'Lost' script — because there was no 'Lost' script," he said. "Jorge read for Sawyer, because Hurley didn't exist."

And how did they decide Locke had been in a wheelchair? Lindelof revealed that while shooting the pilot, Terry O'Quinn would go down the beach and listen to his iPod during breaks. Co-creator J.J. Abrams pointed at O'Quinn and told Lindelof, "That guy's got a secret." What secret? "You figure it out."

The bravado needs to stop; the series did have a script by Jeffery Lieber that was greenlit by ABC to start production. No television network starts a production without one. When JJ Abrams got on board, the script was reworked but the essence of the pilot remained, as an arbitration panel found for Lieber in a subsequent creator dispute.

But what this one story does tell us is a bit of confirmation that the writers were creating characters, scenes, information by the seat of their pants. It seems to tout their self-stated genius, but it also questions on whether there was a clear plan for the show from the very beginning.

 Killing off characters:
As many "Lost" fans know by now, the initial plan had been to kill off Jack in the pilot episode. Luckily, ABC executives questioned that move, and the show's producers changed their minds. Instead, the first major character they killed off was Boone, played by Ian Somerhalder, who took the decision so well that Lindelof joked, "We gotta kill more of these guys!"

In the original Writer's Guide, Boone was going to have a bigger role in the series. But that did not happen. As previous posts showed, the writer's guide was quickly dismissed by the show runners, which again is evidence that there was no clear plan for the show.

The outrigger scene:
Lindelof and Cuse admitted that there is an answer to who shot at Sawyer on the outrigger. But the writers ultimately decided that it was "cooler" to keep it a mystery.
"The scene exists. It actually is on paper," Lindelof said. Years from now, they'll auction it off for charity.

This is another "cheat" on the fans/viewers. It is not "cooler" to fool fans into wondering, speculating or arguing over points of the show, when the writers and producers intentionally keep that information from the fans/viewers. The idea of writing a mystery story and NOT solving the mysteries is illogical. Some believe that the producers really did not have a reasonable explanation for this time traveling paradox, so keeping it a secret was better than getting flamed on community fan boards.


 Easter eggs that were never laid:
An audience member asked about the Easter eggs that "Lost" became famous for, and Lindelof said the one he was proudest of was an egg that was never meant to be an egg.

He recounted that someone sent him a screencap from the pilot of Walt standing in front of the fuselage. There was a burn mark on the fuselage that looked like the Dharma Initiative logo — but this was before the writers had even conceived the Dharma Initiative. "Whoa, this is an Easter egg that we did not hide," Lindelof said, jokingly adding, "And I lost all faith in religion."

Again, this a tactic admission that the story producers had no real clue where their episodes would take them. Not knowing about the Dharma Initiative means that half the series was mere inconsequential filler. Such admissions further dilute the integrity of the show's original story line and further calls into the question the plot of the ending.

Hating Nikki and Paulo:

As they've said before, the writers introduced Nikki and Paulo as a reaction to fan discussion about the background characters. But even before the backlash to those characters began, the writers themselves started hating Nikki and Paulo. So they decided to acknowledge their "horrible mistake" in the episode "Expose."

This is another odd turnabout by the producers to deflect criticisms against them. "The fans asked for it," should not be an overriding concern to a creative team that knows what it is doing.

 

How the ending came to be:

As Cuse said, "The show was about people who were lost in their lives." And as he and Lindelof discussed the ending of the series, they agreed it should be spiritual.

Lindelof added that they decided to "solve a mystery we never asked: What's the meaning of life, and what happens when you die?"

Except, they never answered that grand question!  The murderers, con men, cheaters, liars and psychopaths all wound up in a happy fantasy after life (sideways world) with absolutely no punishment for their mortal crimes, sins, transgressions, etc. There was no redemption. In fact, the ending is less spiritual in the context of who these people really were - - - how they lived their lives should have put them through a gauntlet of pain and suffering (i.e. the purgatory angle). But there was no bona fide moral to the LOST story. If anything, it stated it does not matter what bad things you did in life, you will get to heaven with your friends and co-conspirators. And, the final unanswered question remains unanswered: what happened to the characters when the doors opened and the church was engulfed in white light?

The more TPTB speak of LOST, the less cohesive their vision for the series comes to the forefront. The less answers, even now 10 years removed, will be forthcoming.  It gets a twinge of a con-man's victim after a while; "what happened to me?"

SMOKING SOMETHING

The Smoke Monster a/k/a Smokey was a fascinating character.

We really do not know how it was created; what it is made of; how it manifests itself in time and space; or why it is the island's "security system."  We know it is capable of being a shape shifting pillar of smoke with the memories of dead people.

The earliest we see the smoke monster (in island time) is after Jacob kills his brother and the body is thrown into the stream to float into the light cave. A howling smoke monster flies out of the cave opening. Now, do we believe that the fact that Jacob's brother's body "awakened" the smoke monster and its ire, or that Jacob's brother turned into a smoke monster? Well, the latter is probably not true because Jacob buried his brother in a cave with Crazy Mother (whom Locke called Adam and Eve.) So Jacob's brother's body was not transformed into a smoke monster.

We believe that Crazy Mother was a smoke monster. We saw that she destroyed the Roman camp in the same after math as the smoke monster destroying the Barracks when Widmore's soldiers returned to the island. And there are ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs at the temple depicting the smoke monster. So the evidence shows that a smoke monster was on the island prior to Jacob's brother's death.

Since Crazy Mother was a smoke monster, we know that she was killed only after she passed on her "guardianship" of the island to Jacob in a ceremony near the light cave. Once she did that, Jacob's brother stabbed her with a special knife. It is unclear whether she allowed the fatal blow or was defenseless, considering that Sayid's attempt to kill MIB was thwarted by mere words with Flocke.

And was Crazy Mother's ceremony to grant Jacob the knowledge of the island also a transformation of Jacob himself into a smoke monster? It is possible since Jacob did not know about the island's properties - - - just as Jacob transferred his authority to Jack at the last camp fire. But then, Jack would have become a smoke monster. And if Crazy Mother's rules were correct, that smoke beings could not kill each other, then Jack's turning over the guardianship to Hurley (unknown to Flocke) plus Kate's bullet could have killed Flocke.

If one sees the evidence that a smoke monster's shape shifting and memory stealing abilities is tied to engulfing a dead body, then there are more issues to explain. The series does point to the abilities to talk to the dead or read their last memories (Hurley and Miles). The smoke monster must have those same abilities in order to transform itself into dead people.

But there is one problem with the first incarnation. Christian's body was not on Flight 815. The coffin was empty. In the sideways arc, the body arrives weeks later. So if Christian's body was not deposited on the island, then where did the smoke monster get the information to create a Christian body double?  The only logical means would be to read Jack's mind.

But this leads to an uncomfortable detour for some fans. If the smoke monster can only shape shift based upon reading the memories of the dead, then that would mean that Jack was dead on the island. He did not survive the plane crash. Jack was not the only example of a memory swipe to create an illusion on the island. Kate saw her horse in the jungle, but her horse was not on the plane. Then we have Hurley interacting physically with Dave, his imaginary friend. Was Dave on the island another smoke monster manifestation, urging Hurley to kill himself (because he was a candidate)?

We also have the situation of Mr. Eko talking directly to his dead brother Yemi. Yemi was the priest who was captured by the drug smugglers at the airport during a firefight with police. Eko assumed his brother's life. On the island, the smuggler's plane was found - - - with the body of Yemi. Now, it impossible for a small plane to fly from Africa to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Most people believe that the plane crash and Yemi's body were manufactured by the smoke monster. If that is true, then the smoke monster would have had to read Eko's memories - - - again, meaning that Eko died in the plane crash.

The same holds true for Richard Alpert, when he sees his dead wife, Isabella on the island. The first time was when he was in the hold of the Black Rock, as the smoke monster was killing the survivors. The second time was near the end, when he saw her with Hurley near Alpert's special spot (where he buried her jewelry).

If the smoke monster was re-creating persons from the island inhabitants past, what was the reason?

The simple answer is that the smoke monster wanted the people to do something. Ghost Walt stood over the purge grave telling a bleeding Locke to get up because he still "had work to do." Ghost Alex confronted Ben in the temple, scolding him with guilt, to follow everything Flocke (MIB) told him to do (which led to the killing of Jacob.) Ghost Horace told Locke about Jacob's cabin and foreshadowed the danger that island leaders encounter on the island.

The one oddity is that in all the creations of dead people, the smoke monster had the most freedom, interaction and interpretation as Jacob's brother, MIB. In that form, MIB seemed to be an equal with Jacob. MIB called Jacob "the devil." However, in MIB's form, the smoke monster must have fused in Jacob's brother's last strong emotions: to leave the island. MIB's quest for centuries thereafter was to leave the island.  But for no apparent reason, MIB or the smoke monster could not.

Which leads to another problem. When Jack returned to the mainland as an O6 survivor, he found Ghost Christian in the lobby of the medical building. The smoke detector went off, and Jack went to investigate. If this was a shape shifting smoke monster, but not MIB (who could not leave the island), then it had to be Jacob. That would mean Jacob himself was a smoke monster.

The grant of immortality to people on the island by Jacob may have been a ruse of a truth. With Alpert, being dead was itself being immortal. But Alpert did not know his fate so he could be conned into the service of Jacob.

So in all the smoke monsters manifestations, it is not perfectly clear who or what the smoke monster was in every situation. In one sense, the smoke monster was an information gathering machine. In another sense, it was an angry amalgamation of dead souls trapped in an island purgatory. No one can say for sure whether the smoke monster was good, evil or merely confused. It killed both good people, bad people, sinners and followers.

What we can say is that the smoke monster by definition is the visible suspension of carbon or other particles in air, typically one emitted from a burning substance, which some theorists minds would represent carbon (the basis of human life) being burnt in hell.


It could also mean to fumigate, cleanse, or purify by exposure to smoke, which also fits into the underworld judgment theme. It could also mean to  force someone to make something known: as the press smokes him out on other human rights issues, he will be revealed as a social conservative. If this is a character study, then putting the characters under stressful situations to make them change would be a story alternative.

A monster is an imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening. This would fit into the illusion themes of the series. It can also be used to describe an inhumanly cruel or wicked person. There were many cruel and evil characters on the show who did not repress their cruelty onto others.

If you put both definitions together, smoke is an description of the main word. One could say the smoke monster is a purifying imaginary creature forcing characters to make something known to themselves. Whether that something is overcoming an inner fear, regrets about relationships or acknowledging their own demise, that could have been the smoke monster's role.

COVER STORY

In 2010, LOST's showrunners made the following comment in regard to the mysteries of the series:

I think there’s this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. But there is no unified field theory for Lost, nor do we think there should be. Philosophically we don’t buy into that. The great mysteries of life fundamentally can’t be addressed. We just have to tell a good story and let the chips fall where they may. We don’t know whether the resolution between the two timelines is going to make people say, “Oh, that’s cool” or “Oh, fuck those guys, they belly-flopped at the end.” But the fact that we’re nervous about it and that we’re actually attempting it — that is what we had to do. We had to try to make the dive. - - - Carlton Cuse

Fans who support the final conclusion to the series have jumped on this philosophy. They claim that    the producers having to provide a basis for every mystery is not only bad writing, it’s not true to life. 

They believe that even though the mysteries shown in LOST should have a plausibility within the universe of the story, the mysteries do not need to be “tied together.” The concept is that there is no unified theory to anything. They think scientists will conclude that in life and our universe, there is no grand unified theory. It is futile to think otherwise. 

If one accepts this philosophy that LOST mirrors life in that there is never going to be a unified theory to explain the mysteries of life (or the show), fans are only left with the vague, unfilled vision.  The TPTB that hyped and worked on the story lines abandon the show's viewers to their own devices;  to wonder and philosophize and speculate to what they had invested six years in watching the story when the show's creators tell us that mysteries, as in life, cannot be addressed. 

I have to reject TPTB's premise. It is an excuse. It is a cover story. It is a con.

The art of writing a narrative or epic tale is based on a time-tested formula: a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the beginning, we have characters who are confronted with problematic situations (conflicts). In the middle, we have those characters trying to come to terms with those conflicts. In the end, we have those characters have those conflicts resolved, for good or ill.  

In 1972, sociolinguist William Labov isolated the historical elements of storytelling that applied to all cultures throughout time: 

1. Abstract - How does it begin?
2. Orientation - Who/what does it involve, and when/where?
3. Complicating Action - Then what happened?
4. Resolution - What finally happened?
5. Evaluation - So what?
6. Coda - What does it all mean? 


The LOST's creators gave us a weak resolution, nothing to evaluate and no coded principles to find out what it all meant. In some respects, it would be like Jules Verne writing his novel, Around the World in 80 Days, in one sentence: After accepting the wager that he could not make it around the world in 80 days time, Phineas Fogg left for the train station to begin his journey. The End.


LOST began with the riveting tale of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island. A diverse group of people would need to band together in order to survive and to be rescued. The complication was that they were not alone - - - people were spying on them, kidnapping some of the survivors, played mind games, and killed many people. The survivors had to confront the hostiles in order to live, but many died in the process. The initial story could have concluded whether any of the survivors were rescued in a Robinson Caruso way. But instead, in order to pad the story line, TPTB added layer upon layer of secondary backstories and more conflicts (Others v. Dharma; Ben v. Widmore; Jacob v. MIB). TPTB also brought in not only the big question of "where was the island?" but "what is the island?" If you are going to add smoke monsters, Egyptian temples, reincarnation, and time travel, people will want a reasonable explanation for those elements in the conclusion of the story. 

TPTB wanted to make LOST a grand, epic, "different" adventure story. But to believe at the beginning they needed no unified theory to any of the story elements that they would film defies common sense in the writing craft or common courtesy to the viewers. They were more engrossed in wild plot twists than the actual premise of the show. The sideways world was just another twist they used as an escape hatch to give viewers a "happy" ending with no answers. It is like a child going out Trick or Treating to be given instead of candy, a travel bottle of mouth wash. Yes, it could be worse: a razor blade in an apple. It is all a matter of perspective, which itself was lost at the end of the series (apparently by design).

May 25, 2010

From a fascinating discussion between LOST producers Cuse and Lindelof and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here:

Carlton Cuse: I think there’s this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. But there is no unified field theory for Lost, nor do we think there should be. Philosophically we don’t buy into that. The great mysteries of life fundamentally can’t be addressed. We just have to tell a good story and let the chips fall where they may. We don’t know whether the resolution between the two timelines is going to make people say, “Oh, that’s cool” or “Oh, fuck those guys, they belly-flopped at the end.” But the fact that we’re nervous about it and that we’re actually attempting it — that is what we had to do. We had to try to make the dive.

This is similar to the point I was trying to make in my pre-finale essay “Why LOST Doesn’t Need to Answer Every Question.” To provide a basis for every mystery is not only bad writing, it’s not true to life. The mysteries should have a plausibility within the universe of the story, but they do not need to all “tie together.” There is no unified theory of everything. Indeed, an increasing number of scientists are beginning to think that the search for a grand unified theory is futile.
So what are we LOST fans left with then? A gift that is the same as one of the greatest gifts we have as humans: the capacity to wonder and philosophize and speculate. Some of us need to get over our anger that LOST abandoned any attempt at a “theory of everything” (if that was ever the goal) and embrace the gift, a gift that will live in our discussions for years to come.
- See more at: http://foolishsage.com/2010/05/25/lost-producer-cuse-no-unified-theory/#sthash.lrjvILoT.dpuf

May 25, 2010

From a fascinating discussion between LOST producers Cuse and Lindelof and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here:

Carlton Cuse: I think there’s this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. But there is no unified field theory for Lost, nor do we think there should be. Philosophically we don’t buy into that. The great mysteries of life fundamentally can’t be addressed. We just have to tell a good story and let the chips fall where they may. We don’t know whether the resolution between the two timelines is going to make people say, “Oh, that’s cool” or “Oh, fuck those guys, they belly-flopped at the end.” But the fact that we’re nervous about it and that we’re actually attempting it — that is what we had to do. We had to try to make the dive.

This is similar to the point I was trying to make in my pre-finale essay “Why LOST Doesn’t Need to Answer Every Question.” To provide a basis for every mystery is not only bad writing, it’s not true to life. The mysteries should have a plausibility within the universe of the story, but they do not need to all “tie together.” There is no unified theory of everything. Indeed, an increasing number of scientists are beginning to think that the search for a grand unified theory is futile.
So what are we LOST fans left with then? A gift that is the same as one of the greatest gifts we have as humans: the capacity to wonder and philosophize and speculate. Some of us need to get over our anger that LOST abandoned any attempt at a “theory of everything” (if that was ever the goal) and embrace the gift, a gift that will live in our discussions for years to come.
- See more at: http://foolishsage.com/2010/05/25/lost-producer-cuse-no-unified-theory/#sthash.yZyUefSJ.dpuf

May 25, 2010

From a fascinating discussion between LOST producers Cuse and Lindelof and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here:

Carlton Cuse: I think there’s this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. But there is no unified field theory for Lost, nor do we think there should be. Philosophically we don’t buy into that. The great mysteries of life fundamentally can’t be addressed. We just have to tell a good story and let the chips fall where they may. We don’t know whether the resolution between the two timelines is going to make people say, “Oh, that’s cool” or “Oh, fuck those guys, they belly-flopped at the end.” But the fact that we’re nervous about it and that we’re actually attempting it — that is what we had to do. We had to try to make the dive.

This is similar to the point I was trying to make in my pre-finale essay “Why LOST Doesn’t Need to Answer Every Question.” To provide a basis for every mystery is not only bad writing, it’s not true to life. The mysteries should have a plausibility within the universe of the story, but they do not need to all “tie together.” There is no unified theory of everything. Indeed, an increasing number of scientists are beginning to think that the search for a grand unified theory is futile.
So what are we LOST fans left with then? A gift that is the same as one of the greatest gifts we have as humans: the capacity to wonder and philosophize and speculate. Some of us need to get over our anger that LOST abandoned any attempt at a “theory of everything” (if that was ever the goal) and embrace the gift, a gift that will live in our discussions for years to come.
- See more at: http://foolishsage.com/2010/05/25/lost-producer-cuse-no-unified-theory/#sthash.lrjvILoT.dpuf

THE DUST SETTLES

“ An old error is always more popular than a new truth. ”
— German Proverb 

Dust is the accumulation of eroded, ground, atomized, broken down and dispersed elements of dirt. As we have ground through the full rerun cycle of Lost, what has been settled?

Not much. Subjectivity of the subject matter is still a personal opinion.

What were the major themes from season to season?
First, it was all about the crash survival and rescue.
Second, it turned into survival against a smoke monster.
Third, it turned into a cat and mouse game of combat with the Others.
Fourth, it turned into the survivors re-living their secret pasts and distrusting each other.
Fifth, it centered around a mysterious overlord named Jacob.
Sixth, it concerned "saving the world" from the invasion by Widmore's men.
Lastly, it was a battle between Jacob and MIB over the guardianship of the island powers. 

Did the 815ers survive the crash? Two schools of thought on that one: yes and no.
Did the 815ers find rescue? It depends if one thinks figuratively or literally.
Did the 815ers survive the smoke monster? It depends on what you believe the smoke monster(s) represent.
Did the 815ers survive the game with the Others? It was kind of a bloody draw.
Did the 815ers learn to trust each other again? In the final island season, the answer was no - - - deep seeded personality conflicts remained as tension between characters.
Did the 815ers find out about who and what Jacob was/is? Besides the short candidate's campfire in the final episode, no one really knows what Jacob is/was or represents.
Did the 815ers "save the world?" There is no evidence that anything that happened on the island had any bearing in the real world.
Did the 815ers have any significant role in the battle between Jacob and MIB? Since both Jacob and MIB were immortal beings, their own demise was of their own choosing . . . the characters actions were manipulations by the island gods.

DEJA VU: SEASON 5 PREVIEW

Some critics believe that Season 6 was so off-the-beaten-story-path that the entire sideways world arc and The Ending should be erased from LOST memory. They believe that the show basically ended in Season 5.  It harks back to the paramount of theory speculation of trying to fit the conflicting puzzle pieces (clues) into some kind of rational, workable solution to the LOST world(s).


Prior to the Season 5 opener, I posted on a fan blog the following comments as my view of what could be happening in the future:

Pondering such a mud puddle existence, a flash of irrational thought hit me that makes sense: Richard Alpert, Mr. Eyeliner, is Egyptian! An ancient Egyptian. Painting on a pyramid wall looking Egyptian. We made fun of his appearance, but never asked why he looked that way.

Add to that image the fact that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are seen at the two great island mystery places, it made we wonder whether these are the big clues.

We have debated whether there are clones, body doubles, multiple lives, duplicates, ghosts, or zombies as part of the story line. I found this interesting:

In Ancient Egypt, they believed you would use your body in the afterlife. When you died your soul or ba would fly out of your body and spark your double (ka) which would then travel to the otherworld. However, it would need to return to your body, since without the physical body, the ka would die. People would be buried with possession that they would need in the afterlife.

If you were a pharaoh, destined to join the other gods -- not only would you need your body, but all the other accoutrements of status, from gold to slaves. Pyramids served to house this paraphernalia of eternity.

What if the show is not about earth science but the ritual beliefs of a LOST ancient religion? While not purgatory as the TPTB infer, it could be an Egyptian "otherworld" were your spirit body, ka, needs to prepare itself in a spiritual world (that does not follow the rules of time, space, science and physics we know of) to return to the human body it left on Earth. 

93 mph island moving away from freighter in Faraday 31 minute time lapse experiment.

Polar Bears in Tunisia, to plane crash site near Bali, to the island vanishing off Fiji, to the launch point in Portland . . .  the mechanism is a large CLOCK: the pendulum  the island is actually anchored by magnetic center of earth and the island is the end weight so to speak; and the pendulum arch runs from Tunisia to Portland, crossing the equator in such a fashion that the rotation of the earth (our 24 hour earth clock) is different on the island.  The Hatch release every 108 minutes is the EM “tension” on the normal tethered string of the pendulum.  The monkey wheel is the chain or distance of the tether.  Changing the tether’s space coordinate would make it appear to vanish.  Focal point at the bottom of a grandfather clock, you only see the disc when it reaches the bottom arch.  If you suddenly move the chain up, on the next pass the disc would be “gone.”

Now for the island to criss cross the earth’s Time rotation means the island has its own time and space dimensions.

Ancient technology may have been as advanced as modern technology (but merely “lost”).  All the elements of the industrial revolution were in the great library in Alexandria before it was sacked and burned.  What if the ancient Egyptians used advanced science and created a mechanical representation of their king’s afterlife?  Or if the Egyptian afterlife is the truth, and the island is the temple where the Pharaohs must prove themselves in order for their soul to be reincarnated with their body in the next life span.