The Lost Lowdown

Hey all, well we're close to the end of Lost and thus the LLD finale podcast. (Whew I'm already exhausted!)

Justin and I have some things planned, but I thought I'd open it up to suggestions. What do you guys want us to talk about, aside from the standard discussion?

They left a lot of mysteries unanswered. You guys could give your biggest unsolved mysteries and give your best theories about what the answers should be.

Also, it's been a long time since you guys have done a scene reenactment. Maybe you could do the Jack / Christian scene from the finale?

Yeah, as I indicated in the Unanswered Questions thread I think it would be a bunch of fun to pose theories on those remaining unanswered questions, the more ridiculous the better. :) (apologies if you guys did any of that in the last 50 minutes of the 'What They Died For' podcast - I still have to finish that one)

Along with that I had another idea but it might be more appropriate for a different podcast or a forum thread. Here's the idea: LOST REWRITES. The basic idea is a collective effort on how to improve the show as a whole. It could include: outlining stories (either scenes or episodes) to fill in the story gaps in a compelling way (Claude's idea of a Radzinski/Kelvin story fits perfectly into this concept); cuttting lines that went nowhere (Locke re/ Eko's last words "He said we're next." = cut it and things are less bewildering); changing lines that make no sense in retrospect (like "Shephard's not even on Jacob's list.") . Really it could be a whole website (lostrewrites.com) but I don't have the energy/time to make that happen so if you guys wanna run with it, it's yours. I would be proud for you guys to be The Keepers of such a thing.

Scene re-enactments are always fun.

I suppose you'll basically have to RIP everyone. I didn't see that mass burial coming...

definintely have to do an reenactment!

I love the Lost Rewrites idea. Combines fan fiction with, uh, fan editing. Attempting to make Lost tighter, while filling in the gaps. It's great!

Outside of your 30-hour general chat, what I would like to hear discussed is maybe just a debate on whether the writers did what they said they would do - or, maybe more concretely, what the actual content of the show led us to expect in terms of an ending, and whether or not that was fulfilled. As I think I wrote in the forum's initial reaction area, I loved the finale as I watched it (yes, I cried, and I mean that literally: I was invested in the characters of LOST like I haven't been since Six Feet Under), but now in thinking on the bigger picture I feel like they really just abandoned the entire idea of LOST (its mysteries and histories and promise of answers) in this last season. Let me try to articulate my thoughts: I understand D&C's situation: they are (and they represent) the writers of a fan-powered serialized TV show, and so they answer questions and do media related stuff to satiate us, while keeping in mind that ABC still wants the widest possible audience. I don't know...I just feel that they maybe have influenced our expectations by responding to our theories and questions, ultimately, dishonestly: they have intentionally misled us for the puspose of their "twists" - the biggest of which is the Flash Sideways. There insistence in interviews and podcasts that it be treated as an equal "reality" (their word) only to be exposed as a made-up-dead-world of the characters really irked me. In retrospect, they should have never said anything, and I wonder if in fact the show would have finished differently? (Ie, did they alter initial ideas just to continue to try to be unexpected?)

Ultimately, I've read how D&C say that they have had an ending from the start; yet I have also read MANY quotes from those involved which clearly show how the story evolved without any sense of where it was going, and I'm left wondering: What the f'n hell? Fine, they didn't know where it was going in those early (season 1 and 2) days - but certainly they could have looked back on all the episodes and made everything work in the end. My only hope now is that Disney (they "own" Lost, right?) releases books and other media that start to fill in the blanks that were left. If anything, I think the ending they provided, and the way they handled the show, leaves it open for a lot of backstoryfiller. I guess I see that ultimately there it's not that there are many inconsistencies, just that there are many unanswered 'mysteries' that can be answered outside of the show. And as for the "Flash Sideways After-Death-But-Before-Heaven-World", at least Jack got to get it on with Juliet for awhile before giving her over to Sawyer...though I feel bad for Nadia who is stuck in a loveless marriage because of Sayid, who at least had a fall-back plan with Shannon...

Claude wrote:I love the Lost Rewrites idea. Combines fan fiction with, uh, fan editing. Attempting to make Lost tighter, while filling in the gaps. It's great!

Yes, 'fan editing' - perfect. GF and I were discussing pacing. She would change all seasons to 18 eps. There's a question of whether you'd 'fix' things by cutting them or expanding upon them. Like 'Fire+Water' - damn that sucked but maybe not if you rewrote it so maybe Aaron was baptised in Island water from The Source and it activated some power which played a critical role later in the series...IDK. I'm sure it would endure accusations of sacreligiosity/heresy/blasphemy to tamper with the show but, damn, it could be made so much tighter.

Regardless, looking forward to The Big Finale Podcast!

I finally finished the last 25 minutes of the 'What They Died For' podcast and was greatly amused at hearing your finale predictions about who would survive, what would happen to The Island, etc. myself knowing te answers. I thought of a good idea for a podcast, finale or otherwise. It would be fun for you guys to revisit past predictions. There'd be some wrong ones, a bunch of ridiculous ones, and even some right ones. They would all be entertaining! You could pull audio clips from past podcasts (this would be sweet but involves a little work). Otherwise you could go back to old forum posts and comment with hindsight. :D

I would like to do that, but as much as we've podcasted, I don't know where to start.

I was listening to our "No Country..." podcast and at the beginning we talked about the Christian/Vincent mobisode and both agreed that Christian was smokey. I was surprised because I stopped thinking that at some point, but it turned out to be right. It was nice to hear us dead on before season 4.

Since the Flash-Sideways is ultimately "Pre-Heaven" and has no impact on the Island story (unless I'm missing something), maybe discuss how the season went without it. That is, if every episode simply did not have those Flash-Sideways this year, including the finale, what would the feeling be about the on Island stuff...

I'd like to hear what you had in mind for the final moments of Lost, respectively what you would 've preferred as an ending.

I had a dream that the finale podcast was only 4 hours, then I found out that we had to pay $10 each to download the entire thing, because the bandwidth was just so expensive, only to find out that the podcast was 22 hours long.

As far as dreams go, this one is pretty logical. Unlike a recent dream I had that Lost was written inside the White House and that cost them $90,000 an episode, so my friends were raising money so they could write a show in the White House. But then their camping supplies were stolen and they ended up fighting some guy in my childhood garage.

Stephen wrote:...then I found out that we had to pay $10 each to download the entire thing...

this isn't GSPN...