The Problem of Lost and Being Too Clever by Half

TheAbridgenator
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Entil'Zha
A while ago, I was cruising Twitter on such and so time of day, when I saw that LittleKuriboh had run into some trouble regarding the series “Lost” and its finale. As a fan of his I decided to see what he had to say…and to be honest, it bugged the hell out of me.
 
LK basically defended Lost in the most anemic way he possibly could; saying that the numerous plot holes and dangling plot threads were okay because all TV is written with no real end goal in sight, and that expecting every question to be answered was silly. When the obvious responses to this - Babylon 5, Stargate SG1, most competently written anime - were brought up, he basically refused to address them, saying that these were the exceptions rather than the rule, and thus could not be used to argue that Lost had failed.
 
This drove me nuts for a while, and I could not figure out why it was…until I realized what LK had not.
 
See, LK was not entirely wrong in his assessment; TV IS for the most part written episodically. As was seen in Star Trek and Seinfeld, most problems existed only for the characters to solve them and develop as people. The overall plot was not about anything, but about the development of the characters, with that being the main “point” of the show.
 
Now, why does this not apply to Lost? Simple: it did not sell itself as an episodic story. It was not portrayed as an episodic story. It was not WRITTEN as an episodic story. If it was, people wouldn’t need to read plot outlines just to follow what the fuck was going on in the narrative.
 
Lost, to put it simply, carried itself as a myth arc show. It showed itself as “this is the Island, it is mysterious, and the mysteries of the island are very important to an overall narrative.” The character development was written in a similar long-form style; these were not people dealing with unrelated problems that showcased their characters. They were following the treasure map and developing in a slow burn fashion. It tantalized people with the mystery. And most of all, it made people think this mattered. The symbols, the codes, the time travel, the smoke monster? These things were lingered on. They SCREAMED Chekov’s Gun all over the place.
 
So why, then, must we pretend to be stupid and forget these things were made important? Why must we shake our heads and say, “Eh, it doesn’t mean anything” when these things were shown to be damn important?
 
J.J. Abrams wanted us to take the show seriously. Clearly. He wanted to be call brilliant, clever, and insightful. He wanted to walk with men like Moffat, Whedon, and Straczynski and have his name spoken with respect. That is what we were told.
 
But, in the grand tradition of parodies like Scorcher, Abrams went too far. He didn’t plan ahead; he didn’t recognize that you cannot write a myth arc like a sitcom or episodic drama. He wanted to write Babylon 5 like Star Trek, and wanted to fly by the seat of his pants. But it didn’t work. He had our interest, and now our attention, but he himself had nothing. He promised something interesting, and instead handwaved it away as magic. In other words, he could not deliver on what he promised, on what he said he would do, on what he WROTE FOR THE SHOW.
 
That is not the standard way TV is written. TV is written either episodically or mythically; you cannot pretend to write a myth arc and then hide behind “I didn’t plan anything solid for the end.” You can get away with that in an episodic series; not so with a myth arc.
 
Do you know what we call a show that sets up so much and delivers so little? We call it a failure.
 
That’s why we fought you on this, LK. And I know why you fought back. You didn’t want to admit a show you followed so long had failed, that you had backed it and had your hopes dashed. So you did what Abrams did: you judged a car by horse standards, rather than admit the car is slow. But Lost DID fail. It wanted us to take it seriously, and really think, but when we started thinking at an inconvenient time, it turtled and hid from criticism. And a clever show should never try and pretend to be a stupid show when it finds being clever too hard.
 
Your thoughts? Discuss!
Ebalosus
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I agree with where you’re coming from, and fully understand your frustration at both the show and those whom defend it with lame, condescending excuses.
 
Why? Because if you see me elsewhere on the internet, you’ll probably pick up that I fucking hate both Mass Effect 3 and how it ended.
 
Lost ended up frustrating me for the same reason as Mass Effect 3: lots of buildup for little or no payoff.
 
I tend to agree with this guy on lost…and the funny thing was, like Elric, I liked the show (up to a point)
TheAbridgenator
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Entil'Zha
@Ebalosus  
I think most people would share your opinion on ME3. XD
 
But yes, I think that, unlike you and Elric, what bugged me about LK’S response most of all was that he seemed…unwilling to acknowledge these issues. Chekov’s Gun exists for a reason.
Whatevo
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@TheAbridgenator  
Him I can understand LK’s reasoning.
 
And I can see yours.
 
I never saw List but I did play Mass Effect and rigged the hell out of it (I also digged the hell out of Tali with my reproductive organ hue hue hue) and I was upset by the ending.
 
And I would be lying if I said that it did kill my initiative to replay the series.  
I have a good memory so it just gets tedious and when I know the conclusion will blow my motivation shrivels.
 
So in short I suppose I agree with you abridgenator.
 
LK’s opinions aren’t godly. He was funny but also a bit of a hypocrit I have seen (he often says two things at once, that’s my interpretation)
Ebalosus
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Now that I think about it OP, I feel that Bioshock Infinite suffers from many of the same narrative problems as Lost…though I feel that Infinite handled them much better (no ambigious-for-ambiguous’-sake characterisation, for one).
 
Though I have many issues with Infinite, at least it’s narrative wasn’t total nonsense near the end like Lost’s was.
Ebalosus
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@sixtyfour215
 
You mentioned it yourself why people are confused about Infinite: “It seems like pretty basic alt universe/time travel plot shenanigans to me.” That’s what a lot of people are confused about.
 
The main thing I’m confused about is where the ontological inertia to begin the plot itself comes from (something the game is quite vague about, if I’m remembering correctly).
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