merij

Very funny exchange about the trailing boat. I love it!

The sad thing is that she "got" Lost better than just about anyone I know, up until the end. She went into radio silence the last few episodes, figuring that there was little point to adding her voice to the chorus of Cassandras. Her finale critique just came out and is pretty devastating. As Firesign Theatre once said, "Don't read it if you can!" Or maybe that was someone else. Yes. The fact that it was aged was used by many to counter that initial reaction some people had that they died in the original 815 crash.

Fishbiscuit recaps are very long, even though they are half pictures. And I can't recommend that anyone read her recap on the finale. It will kill your motivation to talk about Lost. She was very disillusioned and is highly persuasive that the writers took us for a ride. Which is sad, because she was one of the most intellectually interesting persons I used to read regarding this show. Doc is fun, but he goes so far sideways I find him more amusing than accurate. But I will read his latest piece after work. I felt so empty last week. It is a very odd thing.

Not alone after all! Did any of you used to read fishbiscuitland's recaps? I didn't agree with her a lot of the time, but she was reliably brilliant. She was especially hard on Jack, but always with at least a grain of truth. And she was a very persuasive skater -- combining acid wit with screencaps and java doohickeys to make her case. She certainly convinced me. If you're still interested in Lost, check out any of her recaps. They will definitely stimulate your Lost brain. Each is a visual feast, pulling images from all six seasons and whatever else she could find to make her points. The one below came near the end. She is beginning to suspect the worst. The images on the first few screens alone are worth the trip. http://fishbiscuitlandblog.blogspot.com/20...fe-must-be.html Anyhow, I'm embarrassed to admit that I always assumed she was a guy. In my mind, she writes like a guy. But apparently her name is Fiona. So I am proved an idiot, once again. Reading her long-awaited take on the finale, I learned that she has major bad blood with Andy Page, aka Dark UFO. She and her friends apparently caught him in numerous petty lies, involving rigged polls and such. I have to say I never liked the vibe of that place. Really depressing, in fact. But it had so much stuff, I often visited anyway. At least on Tuesday nights, since my Washington Post site was not available till mid-day Wednesday.

NYT Times Talk Here are excerpts from one person’s notes on that NYT event just before the finale. Bear in mind that it’s just one person’s memory of what was said. Perhaps by now there is an actual transcript. I got this version here: http://darkufo.blogspot.com/2010/05/ny-times-talk-lost-live-event-writeup.html Not my words from here on: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A really good question asked from the audience: “if MIB knew he couldn’t kill a candidate, why was he trying to do so by dragging Locke underground in season 1?” to which Damon replied: “ahh yes, but was he trying to kill him? You have to remember that Locke had just seen “the face of the island, and it was beautiful” and he was planning on going and giving a big speech to the castaways to give them hope and courage. MIB didn’t like this and was preventing him from doing so.” How much was planned out? They had the end-game in mind during season 1. They know how they wanted it to end. Between the hiatus of season 1-2, they sat down and had time to write out the core mythology. But also, when each season started up in the writing bootcamp, they might change or modify or add things, knowing ultimately where they still had to go. The end-game has never changed in theme or purpose, but may have changed in small details and content. Damon pointed out that the #1 and #2 questions most asked by fans is: 1) Was everything planned out? 2) how much input does the audience have on the show? Damon said you can’t have it both ways. Because if they planned EVERYTHING out and locked it away in some “LOST binder”, then obviously fans would not be allowed any input or effect on the show. An immediate response to the audience: people kept asking why Hurley wasn’t losing any weight… so they wrote in that he was stashing Dharma ranch dressing (and other things). An anticipated audience reaction dealt with pre-emptively: Nicki and Paulo. Why Nicki and Paulo? Because in the third season they realized they were punting along and had to do something. Their rule was to introduce new characters at the beginning of each season, and as they saw they were introducing the Others characters at the cages (Juliet, etc.) they wanted to introduce new characters back at the beach camp. Thus, Nicki and Paulo. They admit it was a mistake and tried to be cruel in how they got rid of Nicki and Paulo to make the fans feel somewhat satisfied. When Damon realized Walt was getting too tall (taller than Damon isn’t very tall, btw), they basically said “lets get Walt on that raft, pronto!” and remarked how you can notice during season 1’s arc that Walt’s voice cracks a bit ala Peter Brady on the Brady Bunch. They way they wrote this into the show was that Walt was so special that even he was freaking out the Others, and Ben wanted him off the island. They listed a good rule for Widmore (and others). “If a character tells you something, you can doubt it. Like Widmore. He suddenly has this change of heart and says Jacob visited him? Did Jacob really visit him? On the other hand, if you SEE something happening, then it’s true and real. We witnessed Jacob visiting Ilana at the hospital, her all bandaged up. But all we know is Widmore relayed a story. So it might be false. You have to remember to not listen to what characters on LOST say, but what they actually DO. Keep this in mind when wondering if what Widmore said was true.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to me. The actual broadcast is available on YouTube, for example, here: http://spoilerslost.blogspot.com/2010/05/video-from-times-talks-live-lost-event.html But I'm too impatient to sit through it! However I can brag that I was in Andy Borowitz's very first video back in junior HS. Back then, people recorded on this thing called "tape." I remember him splicing it by hand and thinking how cool that was.

I won't bother quoting, since we may be the only two left standing! It's almost weird to still be talking about Lost. So many people have argued convincingly that it all turned out to be meaningless -- the great recapper Fiona at Fishbisquitland being the latest I've read -- that I question why I bother. But, even so, I do bother. 1. Surely "Dave on the island" was MIB, no? Telling Hurley "this is not real, jump off the cliff, you'll see." 2. I like the idea that Hurley was never mentally ill. I'll have to ponder that. 3. Damon has made a number of comments to suggest that that Widmore was lying about having seen the error of his ways or having been contacted by Jacob. I'll repost one of my comments from the Washingpost. It's long, and mostly a cut & paste of someone else's summary of the NYT broadcast. But read the last snippet about Widmore.

That’s a big leap, logic-wise. I figured Dave represented true mental illness in Hurley’s real-world but was MIB on the island. I wondered why MIB’s use of Dave didn’t break the rules about suicide or killing candidates. It illustrated to me just how easily one could parse the rules to find loopholes: If Hurley had jumped off the cliff it would not have been a suicide, exactly, since Dave was telling him the island was not real. And it would not have been a direct kill by MIB either . . . something in between. Like when MIB tried to trick Jack into chasing his father off a cliff the day he found the cave. Since Dave was never a real person, that episode clarifies to me that it wasn't dead people specifically -- buried or not, physically on the island or not -- that MIB was inhabiting, but rather characters' recollections of significant others (and horses) from their past. But I do wonder if Jacob sent the original horse to save Kate's bacon... Did you all discuss whether MIB could project his illusions off-island? Was that MIB as Christian at the freighter and in Jack's hospital lobby, as Charlie in the mental hospital in 2007, as Claire in Kate's bedroom, etc? For some reason, I don't think they were Jacob. But maybe they were real ghosts bleeding in from LA X? I want to rewatch the last two seasons, or at least read the Lostpedia episode recaps. That's as far back as I can easily buy that the writers had fleshed out the Jacob-MIB mythology. If everything that happened in those two seasons was a part of the larger Jacob-MIB struggle, I feel a need to map out which actions were likely put in play by the one or the other. Both of them seemed to want the Oceanic Six to return to the island, for example. But if Widmore was not on team Jacob anyhow, why did MIB want Ben to kill all his operatives? Or were those not Widmore's people, after all? Were they Illana's? What about Abbadon? I don't see a clear pattern yet.

On tgreg, I heard from some of you privately as well, so I retract the question. And restate my gratitude to tgreg. Thanks, dude. What I realize from the older posts is that tgreg made a point of not sharing inside information -- which was the classy call to make. All the more credit to him.

Why do you guys think tgreg99 worked for Bad Robot? Yeah, I know. This should get me kicked out of here real fast. I looked back at your old threads. The first thing I noticed was that this was a truly happening place to discuss Lost. Having a smaller, sophisticated group that stuck together over the years was definitely a great way to experience the show. I tip my hat to you all. But the things that I see tgreg posting don't strongly support the Bad Robot claim. For one thing, he was wrong more often than I would expect. (No more wrong than any devoted fan at the time, but oddly so for an insider.) Then there's what he's said about himself. Way back in February 2005 he said: “I'm a wannabe screenwriter (read: broke), so I pay attention to all the industry stuff. I have made friends with a couple screenwriters and producers who keep me up on all the inside stuff.” “I don't know anyone on LOST though, I just have seen Abrams Bible for Felicity so I know how detailed that guy is with his character arcs and such.” “Basically I'm a nerd when it comes to learning as much as possible about the industry" So five years ago he hadn't started working there yet. Then, last September he said he'd worked as a writer on the Super Dave Osbourne show’s 4-run 2009 season on Spike. But Bad Robot has nothing to do with that show. Still, you know, scripts sometimes lay about for years before getting to the screen; so maybe his work on that preceded the job at Bad Robot. Or maybe Bad Robot is a part-time gig. Mostly I just see UConn James referring to Greg as a Bad Robot insider and Greg implying insider knowlege. However, I realize that tgreg's deleted a lot of his posts. Did he ever actually say that himself? It's funny that I should even care. I was pretty ticked off reading that ABC told DarkUFo he had been an intern with them but had been released three years ago. I figured the scumbag suits were slandering him by rumor. Then I started seeing claims that Bad Robot was calling his post a fake and was investigating it. But we all know how the Internet is -- someone reads the ABC slander at DarkUFo and summarizes it somewhere else as Bad Robot disavowing him. And then it become fact in the collective mind. Given his long relationship with you all and your backing of his claim, I have chosen to believe him. But I do feel the ticklings of doubt. Caveat Emptor: It goes almost without saying that anything you post in response to this will end up being quoted elsewhere. Greg's finale post attracted a huge amount of Internet attention.

I'm watching the SciFi series Firefly via instant view on Netflix. You may have seen the movie version, Serenity. It's well written and well acted with a great ensemble, plus the lead actor is that policeman that Kate Austen married and then abandoned in Florida. Best of all, Neil Frogurt is in the pilot and is killed off with relish. Poor guy must be typecast to play "unlikeable dweebs that we wish to see die." It's not Lost, but for coping, it's working out better than the Scotch was.

When humans don’t understand a natural phenomenon, we perceive it as mystical. When we do, we explain it as science. Jacob as a child didn’t even know what a magnet was. He perceived the light as a soft glow filled with goodness. Dr. Chang perceived the same light as exotic matter with extraordinary EM properties. I liked the way the show flipped back and forth on that. However, the afterlife stuff is just plain spiritual. Personally, I don’t expect an afterlife, but I still felt comforted by the way they imagined it on Lost.

Thanks for the welcome, UConn_James! As for my old stomping grounds, we all knew it would be ending soon. But this was different. The way it worked at the Post was that we’d wait until the columnists wrote their Wednesday morning analysis and then we’d talk to one another via the comments section. Normally the dialogue would go on strong for the next six days, until a new episode aired. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsa...tral/index.html This time there was a blitzkrieg of newcomer posts for the first two days, basically saying they had this novel theory that the characters weren’t dead on the island after all (only in LA X). Then almost nothing since, at least from the longstanding community of commentators. In the first two days, quite a few oldtimers posted something to the effect that they were too disgusted with the writers to even discuss the show, and then they were just gone. Poof. They thought the “LA X as purgatory” ending proved that the writers had been pulling a long con on fans who bothered to pay attention to the details -– that in fact, they never any clue where they were going and just threw something together to get out alive. No goodbyes, no heartful thank-you’s to the two columnists who had spent so many years giving us this space to hang out together. Normally, off-base first impressions would be resolved over the following week. This time, the overall sense was pure outrage that people had devoted six years to a total mirage. If they had been strangers, I’d say to hell with them – they didn’t get it. But these were people I respected – fans who really did get the show and had spent many hundreds of hours researching and debating its meaning. Personally, I loved the finale and thought it was clear as crystal. I re-watched it the other night and loved it even more. As it happens, I prefer enduring mysteries to getting answers on every detail, so focusing on closure with the characters felt just right to my taste. What bothers me is not having closure with my own community. I wish they’d seen tgreg99’s post before they gave up hope. Yeah, I know. Absurdly melodramatic… I guess I feel like Locke right now. Damn that Jacob for not speaking up!

Hi, I’m one of those who read tgreg’s post elsewhere and came here to see if he was legit. Luckily I came before all his subsequent posts had been deleted. I wish to say thanks to Greg. I hope you didn’t get in trouble over this. But even if you did, I think you should know that a great many fans who felt betrayed by the finale -- and the entire last season -- felt differently after reading your post. Many, of course, are inconsolable at this point and are determined to hold onto their pain/anger/bitterness. But I’ve read quite a few posts all over the Internet where bitterly disappointed fans felt redeemed in their faith after reading your comments. Darlton’s choice not to talk about the show was a brave one, but I think it has turned out to be a mistake. The conversations most people are having are the wrong ones, initially due to mass confusion about what happened, and then their belief that the ending made meaningless everything that had happened previously. (The discussion group where I've beem hanging out all this time at the Washington Post emptied out soon after the finale. It was shocking to me to have all my buddies suddenly disappear.) Your post counters that misunderstanding in a way that only the writers could have addressed. Yes, I know you weren’t a writer on Lost, and may not have gotten every detail correct, but you spoke for them on the key fact that had to be said: People need to know that everything that happened mattered -- to paraphrase Jack’s response to Des outside the cave. That even the ultimately clueless Dharma Initiative mattered. The idea that the writers really did know where they were going is revelatory. It makes me want to rewatch every episode with new eyes. My point being: you did those guys a huge favor. So thanks, dude!

>Well, I think the toothpaste is already out of the tube anyway.... Not quite sure why it was deleted. I would be pretty proud to have written that and be able to deliver some answers to people who are having trouble connecting the dots.