Very cool, if true

I'm bored of it. Because I was only interested in the first place because they kept saying "Here's an interesting mystery!" and I wanted to know what was going on.

Having told me that they're never going to explain what's going on, it';s just a bunch of random stuff happening.

From:

dapperscavenger.livejournal.com

"it's just a bunch of random stuff happening"

Sounds like life.

From:

Hmm. Lindeloff has repeatedly said elsewhere there is an arc and it culminates in (quote) "the survivors getting off the island if it is an island".

On one of the commentary tracks he compared the series arc to a journey around the world: they have a start and end and several things they will do along the way but the rest isn't set in stone. They *have* an arc.

From:

Yeah, but I can do life without the assistance of a TV :->

From:

But at least one of the creators has said that this is bullshit, and they've been making stuff up as they've gone along.

If they do pull it all together and turn it into a coherent story then I'll pick it up on video. But at the moment I have no faith whatsoever.

From:

Where do they say this?

From:

Agh! Can't remember. It was one of the co-creators, I suspect Jeffrey Lieber, who in an interview laughed about JJ Abrams claims that it was all worked out, saying that they had lots of ideas for things they could do, but were throwing stuff in left and right if it made things more fun.

And when one of the exec producers says:
"How can you ever possibly think that 'Lost' will end in a satisfying way? Carlton and I can almost guarantee you that it will not."

you have to admit he might have a point.

From:

it's just a bunch of random stuff happening.

How much of the show have you seen, mate?

From:

The Lost creators have often claimed they know where the show is going and that everything will ultimately add up. Well, the current creators, anyway. "There was absolutely no master plan on Lost," insists David Fury, a co-executive producer last season who wrote the series' two best episodes and is now a writer-producer on 24. "Anybody who said that was lying.” "On a show like Lost, it becomes a great big shaggy-dog story," he continues cheerily. "They keep saying there's meaning in everything, and I'm here to tell you no -- a lot of things are just arbitrary. What I always tried to do was connect these random elements, to create the illusion that it was all adding up to something." Many plot elements were concocted on the fly, Fury says; for example, they didn't know Hurley won the lottery until it came time to write his episode. "I don't like to talk about when we come up with ideas," Lindelof demurs. "It's a magic trick. But we planned that plot: We seeded references to it in earlier episodes." Fury disagrees. He says scenes with those references were filmed much later and inserted into earlier yet-to-air episodes: "It's a brilliant trick to make us look smart. But doing that created a huge budget problem."

From:

About 10 episodes.

From:

dapperscavenger.livejournal.com

Well, you CAN, but, its there. Its like the net, it can be pretty dull and unsatisfying sometimes too, but I still use it.

From:

I totally agree: it probably won't end in a satisfying way. But very few TV shows do. Babylon 5 certainly didn't: the fifth year was *awful*.

From:

Oh, agreed. But that as largely because they shoe-horned most of the plot for it into season 4 when they thought they wouldn't be renewed. I at least had faith that JMS knew what his 5-year-plan was.

If JJ Abrams steps up and says "We have a three/four/seven year plan with this, and know where it's going." then fair enough. But at the moment it does look like, while they're being careful to keep it all coherent, they're just adding new plot over the old plot as they go along.

If I hadn't already been through 17 seasons of The X Files I might be tempted to be more forgiving, of course :->

From:

the-magician.livejournal.com

... David Fury could be wrong/lying/part of a bigger plot!

I'm sure that in any series like this you will find things being added in as characters develop and you go "ah, this actor can sing, so let's add some backstory about how they were a singer" or you get actors who leave the series (and/or die) and have to be written out/replaced ... it doesn't mean there isn't an underlying story with a beginning, a *lot* of middle and an end that will only be shown once the series is cancelled and they start making TV movies/direct to DVD/direct to download episodes!

Wasn't David Fury involved in the Buffy-verse?

And anyway, Lost is just an x-files remake of Gilligan's Island anyway, so even once they all leave the "island", there will be a reunion flight and they'll all end up back there 10 years later! :-)

From:

abigail-n.livejournal.com

You know, I got well and truly steamed when I first saw that article, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's just sad.

Lindelof and Cuse come off as clueless, or possibly simply as liars - how can they possibly think they can successfully spin Lost as a character-based show after a season and a half of mysteries? How can they argue that people watch the show for the characters when every message board on the net is debating the plot? How can they try to convince us that they're writing for casual viewers two days before Lost airs an episode with details that can only be viewed by people with a TiVo? They come off as cowardly - perfectly willing to watch their creation be destroyed rather than fight for its quality, not to mention that there's a huge difference between walking into the network president's office and saying 'we want to end Lost now' and advancing the show's plot, characters and relationships (but then, it seems that Lindelof and Cuse have, like a significant portion of their audience, bought into the fallacy that Lost is only a mystery and that once that mystery is 'solved' - and why would there be one definitive solution that answers all questions - there would be nothing left to do with the story).

Saddest of all, though, is that Lindelof and Cuse come off as immature artists. There's a definite sense in the interview that Lindelof and Cuse are afraid of fans - those devoted, knowledgeable, demanding people who claim a beloved universe for their own. Lindelof and Cuse don't want fans - they want consumers, people who will be told not only what happens on the show but how they ought to watch it - this week's we're a mystery, next week we're character driven; this week Kate loves Jack, next week she loves Sawyer; we have always been at war with Eurasia. Lindelof and Cuse want to be able to say 'if you don't like my show, you're watching it wrong' or even 'this is the wrong audience'. They don't understand, as all mature artists must, that once a work has left their hands it no longer belongs to them. That reality scares them, and the result of that fear is articles such as this, in which they come off as petulant children.

Like I said, sad.

From:

Appart from Lindeloff calling Davvid Fury a liar, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, one one the other writer/ producers took threw a huge strop at David Fury's comments on his livejournal. Unfortunately he took his entry down a day after he posted it (details here. His response effectively said there *is* a certain amount of reverse engineering on the show and, (like I said before) a great deal of flexibility in the overall pacing of the story. But there is an overall story arc and he cited B5 as a comparison.

Who to believe? Well, having watched 30-odd episodes there is absolutely no way they are making everything up on the fly. I don't want to cite specific second season examples (unless you want me to mail you some over).

The main problem I have with the show is that, having realised they are in it for the long haul, the pacing of the show has become very very slow. The flashbacks are increasingly coming across as padding rather than illuminating information and there was a good three or four episodes this season where *nothing* happened.

Personally, I prefer Galactica but there's so much facinating detail in Lost that I find is hard not to obsess over...

From:

Isn't this another interesting eample of control freakery cf alcohol post? I can enjoy the journey without needing to know the end :-)

I suspect actually you just don't fancy enough of the cast.

From:

communicator.livejournal.com

Yes, they should be more courageous as artists. Wind it up, bring it to a massive, satisfying crescendo, and then stop working on it. Everyone will know it's done. If ABC want to commission other series then - well, Terminator 3 doesn't detract from 1 and 2 IMHO.

From:

thadrin.livejournal.com

Still better than Buffy - rounding everything up nicely at the end of season 5...and then producing two more seasons. I refuse to watch season 7. Season six was - with one exception - complete drivel.

From:

Isn't this another interesting eample of control freakery cf alcohol post?

I actually find that a tad offensive. There isn't any control freakery _in_ the alcohol post. I very clearly said:

Now, I've got nothing against people engaging in mind-altering substances as an occasional thing - but when your life begins to revolve around them there is a problem.

Because that's exactly how I feel - I've got nothing against people using alcohol, cannabis, whatever to enjoy themselves, I just disapprove of it becoming habituated.

I can enjoy the journey without needing to know the end :-)

Oh, me too. But when the producer tells me "the end will be shite" then that takes a lot of the fun out of the journey.

From:

Yeah, but *what* an exception!

I liked some of series 6. I had some respect for what they were trying to do it's just the execution was lacking.

Series 7...some people I know liked it and it had a handful of good episodes. However, tying things nicely into this thread, it was very clear they were making it up as they went along. And the new characters they introduced (the potential slayers) were very *very* punchable.

From:

octopoid-horror.livejournal.com

I view people who watch TV shows or films, or "like" films and TV shows based purely or indeed primarily on that (when that isn't the whole remit of the show ie Babecast programming etc) as worthy of nothing but contempt. If a show has to have a pretty cast to hold interest, then it's not worth watching.

From:

Yeah. I saw all of the first series apart from three eps in the middle, but I've been getting steadily more bored with it, and the finale the other day? Just sucked. There were a couple of good scenes, but they solved *nothing* and added about ten more "mysteries", which does make you start to think that they don't have a clue what they're doing, and they're just going to keep throwing more random elements at it, going "It doesn't have to make sense! It's ART! You just DON'T GET IT!".

From:

I can enjoy the journey without needing to know the end :-)

Sure, if the story is telling you about the journey. But this one isn't, it's just throwing up mysteries which imply answers exist, and then not only not giving answers, but laughing at the audience by hinting that the answers are things that've been fanwanked online a lot (They're dead! They're being punished!), then pulling the rug away again. There's very little ongoing plot, really, just a collection of weird shit.

From:

Yep. Lost has a whole crew of people I think are pretty, and I'm still bored as hell by it.

From:

Wasn't David Fury involved in the Buffy-verse?

Yeah, he was a top writer/ producer on Buffy and Angel. And he sang the Mustard song in Once More With Feeling :o)

From:

khbrown.livejournal.com

IMO TV in general doesn't want fans - it wants consumers (or fans as consumers, not producers) and specifically consumers that fit the right advertiser demographics.

Maybe the work no longer belongs to the creator, but I think it's more likely to end up beloinging to the TV network than it is to those who care about something beyond how much $$$ it can make.

I should probably point out that I've never seen Lost and don't watch TV; the last thing I watched regularly was series 3 of Buffy, which I felt was the natural end point for it.

From:

I think you have a lot of contempt to spread around.

From:

I've watched Lost without reading any fanwank about it at all - you might enjoy it more that way. I'm simply letting it unfold, I watch it when I remember to and/or the video works. I don't think it's high art but it's enjoyable tosh acted with some vigour, much as ER used to be. (ER really IS boring these days..) If you expect it be the Next Great Stage in Scientifictional Drama then yes, you are letting yourself in for something of a let down methinks ..

From:

Sorry should probably extrapolate on that - it's hard to think of a modern US drama/cop/sf/soap-ish series that isn't wholly inhabited by extraordinarily pretty actors - Smallville, CSI, Bones, X Files, Frienmds shall i go on? - and for which that doesn't form a major part of the audeince appeal. This is life in Hollywoodland - live with it (or be British and watch ugly people in Eastenders :-)

In fact the only recent successful US series I can think of featuring ugly people is Seinfeld - even in Frasier they're all pretty cute really.

From:

Maybe the end won't be shite after all - after all by your evidence they haven't thought it up yet!

From:

abigail-n.livejournal.com

IMO TV in general doesn't want fans - it wants consumers

A good observation. I guess I'm biased, being primarily a genre fan. Whether or not the writers and creators of these shows want them, the inevitable byproduct of success is a rabid fanbase who treat the show as their own. I can easily see how this attitude can rankle and frustrate, but savvy and mature creators also know that their fanbase can have tremendous power (see Serenity, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, the new Doctor Who and even Star Trek: The Next Generation) and that it ought to be treated with respect.

I suspect that Lindelof and Cuse's lack of respect for their fans - their generic TV attitude, as you put it - is one of the reasons why a lot of the dissenting voices about Lost are coming from within genre. These are people who are used to being intimately involved with a show, and they can sense that they're not wanted.

From:

a-pawson.livejournal.com

The new version of Battlestar Galactica. A lot of the characters/actors in that are far from pretty, and even if there are some pretty ones, the plot is so gripping that I haven't noticed.

From:

I like Galactica too but under the grittines most the actors are still fairly pretty.. I do like the fact they use older actors tho and I love the President to bits.

From:

I haven't gone looking for fanwank - I only know what I've seen on LJ, really. But maybe I should avoid it more assiduously.

I'm not expecting it to be anything except a good story, and that's about the one thing it isn't. But the rest of it's good - some of the ideas, a lot of the scripts and actors, the cinematography and set dressing - so it seems a real shame for it to be let down by a complete lack of a coherent or satisfying story. Some of the ideas are so good that you long for them to be brought to some sort of clarity, even if the show's too arty to actually *resolve* anything.

From:

I lived and breathed Buffy - read the news groups, haunted the news feeds. Lost isn't in that kind of class and watching series 1 on C4, I've had no desire to "get ahead" and so have avoided spoilers and most the chat. Taking it simply as enjoyable tosh, as I said above, I haven't found it deficient in plot - I'm certainly involved enough with the plot to want to watch the next ep. The character development is where it falls down I think, actually - they're interesting and very easy on the eye but just not very real. The nearest to a real person is probably Hurley, and he's comic relief - everyone else is "good" "bad" or "mysterious" pretty much.

Quite why this has been the latest Big Phenomenon is a mystery to me though. Desperate Housewives is cleverer, 6 Feet Under was deeper, Smallville is more nostalgically escapist skiffy. Lost is just good entertainment.

From:

I have maintained before that you could re-cut Series 7 into a good 5-part arc. The problem largely seemed to be about 10 episodes where nothing happened except for people standing around staring at each other, saying _again_ "So, we're all going to die."

From:

nameandnature

Lost is not for you.

Personally, I've never seen it, and it sounds like that was a sound decision. I'll stick to Battlestar Galactica.

From:

laserboy.livejournal.com

Like a whole lot of people here, I'm wanting a lot more from the show that it seems prepared to give. I watched the first series perhaps drawn in by the shiny high budget programming and promise of the pilot episode, but I've no real interest in keeping up with it now the first series is finished. It's painfully obvious it's all mouth and no trousers.

From:

My biggest problem with season 7 is pretty much indicative of the problems of the year as a whole: the bit where they decide its possible that Giles is The First.

They set it up with Giles acting out of character for no reason and their suspicion is based around the fact that noone had touched Giles since he reappeared or saw him touching anything else.

They find out Giles isn't The First. He's just been behaving oddly for no reason. And not touching things. For no reason.

Wha?

From:

laserboy.livejournal.com

Heh. Yeah, the not touching thing was just.. weird. Far too stupid to be taken seriously.

From: