• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Reetae reviews the ending of LOST by comprehensively reviewing the series.

Arta

Arta

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,445
So there's this 8 part youtube review of a tv show called Lost from a few years ago. This sprawling interconnected 10 hour review attempts to unpackage the reasoning behind the endi... Hey wait, hold up! Come back! Come back!

Seriously, so someone on youtube did for Lost what RedLetterMedia for Star Wars: make a long form video essay on why they thought part of it didn't work in the end. I'm not promising it will be of that level, but it attempts to explain the possible reasoning for the critical disappointment with season 6 and the last episode.

What's interesting about this review is that it in itself is formatted like a tv serial. The first 7 videos are basically episodes that build up conclusions that are used as points in the 8th episode when he finally tackles the final episode, to show that the letdown didn't come out of nowhere, but a culmination of failings in the show.

If you're wondering about the tone of this review (endless fawning or bitter fanboy rant), it's someone who loves the 1st 4 seasons of Lost despite the problems, likes the 5th if mixed about the finale, and REALLY angry at season 6. However he goes through problems with all the seasons, that he professes as a fan that he rolled with until the series was over.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR-Yx2zNLl3m4R42-Z4fwybpdUwb4u-KI



 
GMM

GMM

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,480
Absolutely one of the worst endings to a show I have ever seen, they just made up stuff as they kept making the seasons, they never intended on giving the viewers any real answers.
 
TheGhost

TheGhost

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
28,137
Long Island
I liked the ending, it was a good moment. When Vincent lays down next to jack....forget it, that was my kryptonite to expose my feelings...bastards
 

Vault

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,592
I thought the ending was fine, season six was just terrible in general though they had no ideas left after season 5.
 
Walter White Walker

Walter White Walker

Member
Oct 27, 2017
21,508
One of the best endings to a series ever. It brought the whole thing full circle with Jack laying there. The last little bit with them all going on to the afterlife was great.
 
Just_a_Mouse

Just_a_Mouse

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,030
LOST really let me down in the latter seasons. Almost as much as Dexter. I was such a huge fan for the first few seasons, but at some point it hit that they just weren't going to explain any of it. So disappointing.

I'll give this a watch later, I'm curious of the take.
 
Last edited:
Smurf

Smurf

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,529
10hour review?

Like, LOST is one of my favorite shows of all time, but damn..

Maybe if I ever do another rewatch I'll check this out.
 
OP
OP
Arta

Arta

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,445
Border said:
What's the total runtime on this?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think around 10 hours. The 1st episode is 15 minutes, and each grows in length until the final video is 3 hours. I binged it by listening while doing housework on a couple of weekends the first time, but he does a lot of video editing to connect scenes for people that either didn't see the show or are fuzzy on details, so it helps to view the video now and then. View in bite sized chunks if you can't do the whole thing.

And if you're wondering why episode titles are so specific (like "Remember Walt"), it all comes full circle when he tackles the ending and the final scene in the 8th video, and his guesses as to why they were constructed a certain way.
 

AndreGX

GameXplain
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,815
San Francisco
I watched the entire thing a while ago, and I'm glad to see it getting more attention. The videos deserve far more views for the amount of effort that went into them.

A fantastic watch (well, listen in my case) that explains the trainwreck the series turned into.
 
Plinko

Plinko

Member
Oct 28, 2017
18,558
I actually enjoyed the ending even though I hated the last season or two and thought the writers blew every possible chance to make it a great show.

That said, the absolute worst thing about the ending was the quiet picture of the crashed plane shown during the credits. Made no sense overall, and made so many people just assume that everything was fake and they all had died in the crash. Just a mind-numbingly stupid decision.
 
Stoney Mason

Stoney Mason

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,918
I like Lost because there were some great moments and great episodes and great individual arcs. I never thought it was going to all make sense at the end. I thought anybody who did was deluding themselves.

Like many, I didn't care much for the last season nor the ending but that's generally not what I remember as I think back on the show. Although I understand the disappointment that comes when producers and network executives spend all their time hyping up mysteries to their salivating audience who are foolish enough to believe what they say.

That being said, nothing wrong with a post mortem takedown of where they went right and where they went wrong with the show because there is plenty of material for both camps.
 
OP
OP
Arta

Arta

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,445
AndreGX said:
I watched the entire thing a while ago, and I'm glad to see it getting more attention. The videos deserve far more views for the amount of effort that went into them.

A fantastic watch (well, listen in my case) that explains the trainwreck the series turned into.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My favourite part is when he get into the
hydrogen bomb
in season 5.

Plinko said:
I actually enjoyed the ending even though I hated the last season or two and thought the writers blew every possible chance to make it a great show.

That said, the absolute worst thing about the ending was the quiet picture of the crashed plane shown during the credits. Made no sense overall, and made so many people just assume that everything was fake and they all had died in the crash. Just a mind-numbingly stupid decision.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh he gets into that too, believe me.
 
master15

master15

Member
Nov 28, 2017
1,207
I watched this a few months ago and I thought it really it accurately summed up why I hated the last few seasons but particular the last season and how it miserably failed to live up to the promise and story threads when the show first started.

It's long but worth it.
 
MarkMcLovin

MarkMcLovin

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
670
The ending was ok at best.

It was the show that was garbage after season 3.
 
Border

Border

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,859
I haven't watched Lost since it originally aired...will I still appreciate this? Or should the series be more fresh in my mind?
 
Dweebo

Dweebo

Member
Oct 26, 2017
83
Loved the last season and ending and a 9+ hour analysis to explain why it's bad is cracking me up.
 

Deleted member 10737

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
49,774
they've put more effort into this review than what lost's writers put into that fucking ending. seriously lost's ending was so bad it retroactively ruined the entire series and any good memories i had of watching it all those years. such wasted potential for the series to go down in history as one of the greatest but it turns out not every one can take the "make shit up as you go along" approach and get to a satisfying ending
 
Carfo

Carfo

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,857
Reetae is awesome. His review is comprehensive and long and it's great. I've watched it about 3 times now. I love Lost, it's in my top3 favorite shows of all time, but I agree with his thesis that the writers had no idea where they were going with the show and wrote it on an episode by episode basis.
 
Stoney Mason

Stoney Mason

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,918
Like I said for me that the show didn't have perfect plotting and execution and answers to it mysteries wasn't really my big issue. I mean it was an issue. But that's mainly because Lost itself become obsessed with its mysteries and lying/teasing its audience that it effected the actual show.

But I was never the type of fan who had this bizarre notion that it would all make sense. It was so patently obvious relatively early on that it couldn't. And I didn't even want that. A show needs to have mystery and answers but I'm also a firm believer that not every mystery you present in your entertainment needs some clear cut logical explanation or answer. Some mysteries work just because they are cool. Or mysterious. And trying to get all logical answers from a show that is clearly quasi-science/part faith/part magic doesn't make sense.

The problem is Lost abused this relationship with its audience. It pretended it did have all the answers. It pretended it was worthwhile to try to answer every thing that was ever in the show. It put in weird plot machinations to try to solve some of them to placate the audience which ended up neither pleasing them nor pleasing me who would have been fine if the smaller stuff was never addressed.

And ultimately a lot of us just didn't find the later direction the show went in very compelling. The show was always this battle between faith and science but ultimately it becomes just so plainly obvious with its metaphor that it just seems way too on the nose and silly. If you had told me in the middle of the run that is how it was going to end, I would have said that ain't gonna work and that betrays what my actual interest in watching the show was about. Ultimately its their creative work so they can take whatever approach they want but that ending and final season were just not satisfactory for me.

Now that all sounds very negative and most of it is but honestly overall I have fond memories of the show. There was a lot of great stuff in there that was fascinating. I could make an even longer post talking about that stuff and all the genuinely cool things. I'm very glad I experienced Lost. Just most of what I think about is not that last season and definitely not the ending.
 
pewpewtora

pewpewtora

Member
Nov 23, 2017
2,224
Connecticut
I've never watched lost, but I remember my uncle being angry about the ending, so the show itself fascinates me. it's like watching a trainwreck.
 
hank_tree

hank_tree

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
2,596
The last season was poor but the final episode was great. Season 4 was god tier though.
 
AoM

AoM

Member
Oct 31, 2017
7,287
It took me a while to accept it. It went like:

- This is the greatest TV show ever made. And nothing will surpass it.
- Ok, something will surpass it, but it's still the greatest for now.
- Eh, maybe not the greatest anymore for me.
- Fuck. This doesn't make sense. That didn't make sense. This was pointless. That... why?!

But I still love the characters, their development, and that emotional ending. And S1 will probably be my favorite season of TV ever made.
 
nevercomehome

nevercomehome

Member
Oct 25, 2017
390
So i'm watching the first episode and he's talking about how Walt was built up to be something mysterious and special but then written off again and never mentioned. But the part that's bothering me is that he's falling into that "nothing was explained trap." (Walt is
basically another "Jacob"

LOST is an extremely flawed show dont get me wrong, but I feel like the "nothing was ever solved" is a bit overblown. Although to be fair, Walt's mystery was solved on a season 6 DVD extra. Now the fact that LOST constantly had extras/ARG reveal important details should be critiqued for various reasons.
 

AndreGX

GameXplain
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,815
San Francisco
nevercomehome said:
So i'm watching the first episode and he's talking about how Walt was built up to be something mysterious and special but then written off again and never mentioned. But the part that's bothering me is that he's falling into that "nothing was explained trap." (Walt is
basically another "Jacob"

LOST is an extremely flawed show dont get me wrong, but I feel like the "nothing was ever solved" is a bit overblown. Although to be fair, Walt's mystery was solved on a season 6 DVD extra. Now the fact that LOST constantly had extras/ARG reveal important details should be critiqued for various reasons.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Rest assured, he addresses ALL of these points (and many, many more).
 
Stoney Mason

Stoney Mason

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,918
nevercomehome said:
So i'm watching the first episode and he's talking about how Walt was built up to be something mysterious and special but then written off again and never mentioned. But the part that's bothering me is that he's falling into that "nothing was explained trap." (Walt is
basically another "Jacob"

LOST is an extremely flawed show dont get me wrong, but I feel like the "nothing was ever solved" is a bit overblown. Although to be fair, Walt's mystery was solved on a season 6 DVD extra. Now the fact that LOST constantly had extras/ARG reveal important details should be critiqued for various reasons.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think Walt is always the perfect example that the planned and plotted nature of the show was bullshit.

The point of the video is that most of this stuff was retro-fitted after the fact. To use a bad analogy, that instead of buying a pre-made jig saw puzzle you basically have someone start a puzzle and make and jury rig puzzle pieces later from a 3-d printer to try to fit it all together. And that its very noticeable and obvious that this has happened.

Now maybe this would be fine with most people. But he argues its not cool nor ethical when the producers and powers that be lie about this. And pretend that the jigsaw puzzle was always planned to be that way and comes with the original pieces. They were making it up as they went along instead of the master plan idea they always touted.

That's to not even talk about the quality of the puzzle once you've frankensteined it together.

I'm not saying you have to agree with his ultimate conclusion because in some parts I don't either but then like I said in other posts, I already come from the position that many of the mysteries in the show were bullshit and unsolvable by their very nature.

edit: I used a similar jig saw puzzle analogy without having seen his video where he uses it lol.
 
Last edited:
moondoggerr

moondoggerr

Member
Oct 28, 2017
114
I reject the premise that LOST became a "trainwreck." I think LOST ended well. So do lots of people. Treating it as a given that a majority felt it jumped the (dharma) shark is misguided.

To me, LOST is analogous to The Last Jedi. An extremely vocal minority who hate it have hijacked the conversation.
 
moondoggerr

moondoggerr

Member
Oct 28, 2017
114
Here's a salient point: the Breaking Bad writers had no idea what was going to happen with the
Hidden content
You need to reply to this thread in order to see this content.
They threw it out there and wrote the "answers" on the fly. BECAUSE THATS HOW TV IS MADE.
 
Stoney Mason

Stoney Mason

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,918
moondoggerr said:
I reject the premise that LOST became a "trainwreck." I think LOST ended well. So do lots of people. Treating it as a given that a majority felt it jumped the (dharma) shark is misguided.

To me, LOST is analogous to The Last Jedi. An extremely vocal minority who hate it have hijacked the conversation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't think most people are saying the majority of people think anything. I think people are saying within enthusiast circles the reaction to Lost was polarized and is still polarized and I think that's a fair statement especially with the last season and the finale. I think the conversation on the Last Jedi is way too early to make a comparison between the two since one just came out a month ago.

Not to mention the discussion tends to be more nuanced than I hate or love Lost since many people including myself hopefully tend to have a more thoughtful take on the show as a whole than just it was brilliant or it was the worst thing ever.

Which is similar to my own opinion on the Last Jedi btw. It was neither as good as the reviews for me nor as bad as the Luke deserved better crowd or what a massive disappointment crowd. It was somewhere in the middle for me.
 

AndreGX

GameXplain
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,815
San Francisco
moondoggerr said:
Here's a salient point: the Breaking Bad writers had no idea what was going to happen with the
Hidden content
You need to reply to this thread in order to see this content.
They threw it out there and wrote the "answers" on the fly. BECAUSE THATS HOW TV IS MADE.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And no one cared, because it worked. The key difference being that they didn't tease bullshit mysterious and then lie to their audience for the show's entire duration.
 
FunkyMonkey

FunkyMonkey

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,419
from my anecdotal experience, the differences in opinions of this show are often tied to those who watched it as it aired (disappointed) vs those that binged it when it was done airing (enjoyed it). i fall into the latter group, but i do understand arguments from those who thought it fell flat
 
Stoney Mason

Stoney Mason

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,918
moondoggerr said:
Here's a salient point: the Breaking Bad writers had no idea what was going to happen with the
Hidden content
You need to reply to this thread in order to see this content.
They threw it out there and wrote the "answers" on the fly. BECAUSE THATS HOW TV IS MADE.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

He brings up that very point with that very show and is fine with it. That being said, I think the producers of Lost brought some of that backlash on themselves by the way they presented the story they told and some of the chest thumping they did.

I think BSG has the same disappointment crowd from its show because of how it promoted itself but I always felt Ron Moore himself was a bit more honest about how things really went down by comparison to the Lost guys.
 

jackdoe

Member
Oct 27, 2017
670
moondoggerr said:
I reject the premise that LOST became a "trainwreck." I think LOST ended well. So do lots of people. Treating it as a given that a majority felt it jumped the (dharma) shark is misguided.

To me, LOST is analogous to The Last Jedi. An extremely vocal minority who hate it have hijacked the conversation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No matter what you thought about the series finale (I actually liked it), you absolutely cannot deny that Lost Season 6 gave us one of the worst hours of television in "Across the Sea". Holy moly at all the poor decisions made in that episode (like speaking Latin and sloppy exposition info dumps). Shit, any episode that makes Allison Janney look like a terrible actress isn't good.
 
Stoney Mason

Stoney Mason

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,918
I will say that when discussion of a show from the past exists there can sometimes be too much talk about the finale or whatever element that disappointed people.

I think it increasingly happens now since shows switched to serial format. When shows were just episodic you would ignore shitty episodes and all that was kind of left was the good stuff that stood the test of time. Kind of how we tend to remember the best episodes of Star Trek and block out all those shitty episodes.

With serial shows, though there is this idea that its all building to something. And some people have this idea that if what it all built to as a finale wasn't great then the whole thing automatically sucked. I don't buy that. The journey is most of the trip. Not the last 10% of the trip. A show can be a good show and still fuck up on the last leg and be a good show in my opinion because a lot of great stuff can happen on that journey.

Lost is a show that lends itself to analysis. Both the good and the bad.
 

Theduce22

Banned
Nov 14, 2017
168
AndreGX said:
And no one cared, because it worked. The key difference being that they didn't tease bullshit mysterious and then lie to their audience for the show's entire duration.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I never felt lied to and they did resolve pretty much everything. Sure some of the resolutions were dumb and didn't go anywhere but it's not like lost left a bunch of answered questions. In the mean time you got an amazing character drama that pretty much changed the way tv is made.
 

AndreGX

GameXplain
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,815
San Francisco
Last edited:
Cipher Peon

Cipher Peon

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,787
I want to watch this since I want more insight asto Lost's infamy and pop culture significance and don't want to invest seasons into a show that I instantly didn't like from the first episode.

But he dissed Eva's anime ending, which is bananas to me since Eva's ending is the only part of the show I actually enjoyed!!

Oh well, still watching it all anyway :>
 
dmoe

dmoe

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,290
Best show ever. Best ending ever.
They werent dead the whole time, deal with it.

bookmarked, will watch
 
You must log in or register to reply here.