Unraveling the Mysteries of "Lost": Was it Worth It?

By: Adam Quigley Posted: May 30, 2010

Yes, it was worth it.

It was worth it in the sense that, if you've been watching and enjoying the show for the past six years, you were part of an experience that engaged the audience in a way that no other TV show has done before. The sixth season may have been the one to show viewers the light (literally), but that doesn't negate the thrill and intrigue that came with watching the story unfold in seasons prior.

But asking "Was it worth it?" is different than asking "Is it a good show?"

I fear the answer to that question isn't nearly as encouraging.

Some may not believe this to be the case. Some may believe the series finale was a brave, bold move by the creators, and that it was a graceful end to a terrific show. Some may argue that even if the sixth season was weak, the journey getting there was still satisfying, and one misstep cannot in any way diminish the quality of the previous seasons.

Alas, denial is only the first stage in the grief cycle. You will need to experience all five before coming to terms with the realization that Lost is, and always will be, a stupid show.

Denial.

Lost is not like other TV shows. This is an important distinction to make, since the way a mystery operates and the way other serialized drama operates is very different.

When it comes to TV and film, audiences are always quick to question anything that breaks suspension of disbelief. In order to avoid this problem in TV shows, the writers use the first few episodes to present a consistent internal logic that will act as the foundation for any fantastical events that follow. If the show or movie is unable to come up with a sound explanation to justify the introduction of newly introduced fantastical elements, audiences tend to lose interest (see: Heroes).

Lost, though, is unique in that it managed to retain its popularity without ever establishing a consistent internal logic. The show was so convincing in the gradual way it unveiled aspects of its presumably fully realized mythology, viewers immediately accepted that there was a consistent internal logic, and that it simply hadn't been revealed to us yet. We accepted this because the appeal of the show was built largely around the mystery, and the very nature of mystery requires deliberately not giving audiences details necessary to fully understand the story. So we put our trust in the show, patiently waiting for all these mysterious happenings to be put in a context that actually made sense.

Fast forward six years, and the reality becomes clear: There was no logic to this show, consistent or otherwise. The writers had no limits to where they were willing to take the story, and their lack of foresight resulted in a show consisting largely of crazy plot twists that served no purpose other than to trick the viewers into thinking that those plot twists would eventually serve a purpose. And then when it came time to pay off on that six years of investment, the writers decided to flip things around at the last minute and say, "See? It was actually about this the whole time! Pay attention to this now! That other stuff didn't matter!"

Actually, it does matter, and the only reason people are buying into the idea that it didn't matter is because we tend to forget things when they're dispersed over the course of six years and 80-plus hours. But try going back and watching the show again, and then tell me that the mysteries didn't matter. Because they sure as hell mattered then.

To say that the sixth season of the show retroactively ruined everything that came before it may seem harsh, but the writers were taking that risk by building an entire show around mystery. As with any story, it's important to judge Lost in the context that it's been given.

And what is that context, exactly?

Here it is - the mystery behind Lost revealed:

The island is home to a glowy cave with a cork in the ground that holds in bad stuff. By drinking magic wine or water (or any sort of magic fluid, really), you become protector of the glowy cave, and gain the mystical ability to make up your own set of unbreakable rules and travel into people's lives through mirrors and never age and so on. One such protector, named Jacob, pushes his brother in the glowy cave, and the guy tranforms into a mechanical-sounding smoke entity that can take the form of dead people and is capable of seeing into your soul. The smoke thing wants to kill his brother, but he can't, because one of Jacob's rules is that they can't kill each other. The smoke thing declares that he will find a loophole, while Jacob inexplicably brings people to the island in an effort to prove him wrong about humans always corrupting and destroying. Many years later, Jacob starts taking the loophole dealio seriously, and instead of maybe coming up with some more foolproof rules to prevent him dying at the hands of Smokey, he decides to round up hundreds of candidates, chosen so that, in the event of his death, one of them would take over as protector of the island and make sure that the cork in the ground is safe. He enacts this elaborate plan by finding people off the island who are flawed in some way, and using his island-protector abilities to meet with them at an exact point in their lives where he could influence them with his touch so that they would be on a plane many years later that would crash on the island when a guy named Desmond didn't press a button in a hatch.

How anybody can continue to defend Lost's storyline after the sixth season is beyond me. Perhaps people's perception of the show will change in a year or two, once they've had a chance to experience it straight through. In much the same way it took time for people to collectively accept the awfulness of the Star Wars prequels, I expect that it will take time for audiences to realize just how inane the final season of Lost really is, and how actively it detracts from the show as a whole.

Anger.

My primary frustration with Lost isn't that it introduced numerous mysteries and subplots and then abandoned them (which it did), or that the explanations behind many of those mysteries were silly and underwhelming (which they were). What bothers me more than anything is that all those mysteries and subplots never mattered to begin with. Almost nothing the show focused on in its six season run was relevant to the story that the series ultimately tried to tell. The three biggest factors in each of its seasons--the Others, The Dharma Initiative, and the threat of Charles Widmore--didn't amount to anything in the story beyond just being inconsequential "stuff" that happened in relation to the island.

In other words, Seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 were filler seasons. They existed solely so that the characters had something to do until reaching the end of the show. And all of those mysteries and twists inbetween? Meaningless. The extent of their value to show was (a.) they were cool, and (b.) they maintained intrigue.

College Humor has already done a pretty thorough takedown of the mysteries that the show introduced without bothering to explain, but that's only the half of it.

I don't expect writers of a TV show to plan every single detail ahead of time, but there is no excuse for presenting a mystery without working out a few basic details, such as: the explanation behind it, its relevance to the story, and a way in which it can be satisfyingly resolved.

Creators/writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse did none of these things. They had no idea what the answers to these questions were, and made no effort to supply them with meaning in the story. As a result, we ended up getting scenes like this (paraphrased only slightly):

*whisper sounds*

HURLEY: "Wait, it's cool, I think I know what this is."

*runs out into jungle*

HURLEY: "Dead people, right?"

GHOST MICHAEL: "Yup."

HURLEY: "'Kay."

I can just imagine the writers after forcefully inserting this scene in the script, dusting off their hands with a satisfied smirk across their faces. "Well, took care of that one! Another mystery solved!"

Here's another one, explaining the nature of the donkey wheel that allows the island to skip through time:

MOTHER: What is that?

MAN IN BLACK: It’s a wheel... We're going to make an opening, one much bigger than this one. And then, I’m going to attach that wheel to a system we’re building -- a system that channels the water and the light. And then I’m gonna turn it. And when I do... I'll finally be able to leave this place.

MOTHER: How do you know all this? How do you know it will work?

MAN IN BLACK: I'm special... Mother.

Maybe others feel differently, but I didn't merely want answers to these questions -- I didn't want a bunch of half-assed explanations to poorly thought out mysteries. I wanted an actual story. I wanted these mysteries to have some significance or relevance to anything in the narrative. I wanted the show to fulfill the basic tenets of good storytelling.

But Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are not good storytellers.

They are, however, excellent bullshitters.

These guys used mystery as a way to hide that nothing in the story made any fucking sense, and so that they wouldn't have to waste time coming up with identifiable explanations or justifications behind many of the plot developments. And even now, when that fact is so blatantly evident, people are still coming up with excuses to defend their sloppy plotting. Why, guys? Why are you defending them? I'm not trying to suggest that you shouldn't like the show, but are you not even a little annoyed that the framework of this show turned out to be as shoddy as it is?

Let's review:

Q: Why can't Jacob or the Man in Black kill each other?
A: Because it goes against the rules that Jacob made. He gets to make these rules because he's protector of the island. How exactly these rules work isn't known. The only hint we get regarding the nature of the rules is a scene where Jacob/MiB's mother stops in her tracks, looks at them, and says, "I've made it so that you can never hurt each other."

Why it's stupid: The entire foundation of the show hinges on the audience's ability to buy into these mystical rules that don't have any sort of logical backing. Without the rules, the conflict of the show wouldn't exist. That's the only reason the writers included them. Aside from that, they're not important, and the writers spend about ten seconds total dealing with their inclusion. In any other show, viewers would flip off their TV screen if writers tried to justify a plotline with unexplained "magic rules". In Lost, it's considered par for the course.

Q: If the losties created the alternate reality in the afterlife as a way to remember and to let go, why does Desmond's consciousness jump there? Why was that necessary to make them remember? What would have happened had his consciousness not triggered in the afterlife?
A: Who knows. I assume that all of the losties would have eventually remembered anyway, seeing as how that's the only reason the alternate reality existed in the first place.

Why it's stupid: By making the alternate reality the afterlife, Desmond's significance in the story is nullified. He's been built up since the second season as a man displaced from time and space, but that subplot hadn't yet served a purpose in the overall narrative. With the series finale, Desmond's journey is rendered irrelevant. The only point to his consciousness-altering state was so that the writers would have something cool for his character to do.

Q: What point were the writers trying to make with the show's central themes (fate vs. free will, science vs. faith)?
A: They weren't.

Why it's stupid: Generally, themes are supposed to have some sort of purpose. Otherwise, what's the use in having them? This is the question I find myself asking over and over when thinking about Lost's themes, and the answer I keep coming back to is: there is no point. The writers assumed simply having them was enough. They never bothered to figure out what they were trying to say, or if they even had anything to say.

Q: Why does the smoke monster get stuck looking like John Locke?
A: Because Jacob died. Apparently, if the protector of the island dies, any smoke monsters on the island are no longer able to change form. (Unless of course it's to revert back to their smoke state, in which case it's totally fine.)

Why it's stupid: The writers needed an excuse for why the Man in Black would stay looking like Locke, so they came up with a throwaway line to facilitate it.

Q: Why does Ben not recognize any of the losties from when he was a kid?
A: Because he gets amnesia after Richard heals him.

Why it's stupid: When in doubt, give your characters amnesia. (24 taught me that!)

Q: If Christian was actually the smoke monster, how was he able to appear off the island? Why did he get Vincent to wake up Jack in the bamboo forest? Why did he lead Jack to water? Why did he say he could speak on Jacob's behalf?
A: Maybe Jack was hallucinating! Maybe the Man in Black was bored! Maybe he was lying! Maybe it all part of his plan to get Jack to trust him, and he just never got a chance to take advtange of all his hard work!

Why it's stupid: Maybe--just maybe--the writers were making it all up as they went along.

Q: Why does falling into "The Source" turn you into a smoke monster that sounds like a machine and judges the lives that people have lead?
A: It just does, ok?

Q: Why did the writers keep Sun & Jin separated for multiple seasons, only to kill them off almost immediately after they were reunited?
A: Because they're dicks, and they had nothing else for them to do.

Q: Why can't Ben kill Widmore? What are "the rules" he refers to?
A: Oh wait, he can kill Widmore, and he does. "The rules" only mattered before, when the writers needed them to.

Q: What's up with Walt?
A: He's special. End of story.

Q: If the reason the Others dressed in rags was to fool the losties (for some reason), then why did they bring kids along with them?
A: Because the writers had no idea who the Others were until later, and hoped that nobody would notice.

Q: Wasn't it awesome when the Black Rock rode on that giant tidal wave and crashed through the four-toed statue and ended up in the middle of the island?
A: ...

Q: OK, you've made your point. Can you stop now?
A: No, fuck you.

Now here's a brief sampling of things in Lost that seemed like they were significant in some way, only to subsequently be revealed as having no substantial bearing on the narrative:

The entirety of Season 5. They left the island, came back to the island, skipped through time, lived with the Dharma Initiative, and for what? So you'd be mislead when the writers introduced the alternate timeline in Season 6.

The entirety of Season 4. An excuse to throw some new characters into the mix, none of whom mattered.

Widmore. Built up since Season 2 as being this mysterious villain, only to show up randomly in the final season and then get killed off without actually doing anything. Apparently Jacob talked to him at some point and he changed his mind and came to help protect the island. M'kay.

Eloise Hawking. Built up since Season 3 as this mysterious figure who knows a lot about the island, has a complex understanding of the fates of the characters (particularly Desmond), and is portrayed in a manner that would suggest she has some grand importance in the story. Nope, nope, and nope.

Illana, Caesar, Dogen, and Abbadon. Four mysterious new characters who were built up and then killed off when the writers didn't know what to do with them.

The Temple. Built up for several episodes during the beginning of the sixth season. Nothing comes of it.

The Numbers. They were cursed. Dharma used them. Jacob identified the candidates with them. Why? Don't ask, they're not important.

The Sickness. I still have no idea. Rousseau may or may not have been infected with it. Claire may or may not have been infected with it. Sayid may or may not have been infected with it, but then Desmond gave a speech about love, and then he may or may not have been infected with it anymore.

The bird that said Hurley's name. Guys, seriously. A bird. Said Hurley's name. Twice.

But don't let any of this convince you that the writers had no idea what they were doing with the story. After all, the Adam & Eve resolution sure panned out, huh?

There were certain things we knew from the very beginning. Independent of ever knowing when the end was going to be, we knew what it was going to be, and we wanted to start setting it up as early as season 1, or else people would think that we were making it up as we were going along. So the skeletons are the living — or, I guess, slowly decomposing — proof of that. When all is said and done, people are going to point to the skeletons and say, "That is proof that from the very beginning, they always knew that they were going to do this."

SOURCE: Entertainment Weekly

Three years later, here's their response in an interview with Alan Sepinwall from Hitfix.

You've said many times that when people find out who Adam and Eve are, we'll all realize just how long you've been planning the mythology. Well, I went back and watched the "House of the Rising Sun" scene, and Jack says that the clothing looks like it's 50 years old. Is he just not very good at calculating the rate of decay on fabric?

CUSE: Jack is not really an expert in carbon dating.

LINDELOF: He's not really a forensic anthropologist. We need to bring in Bones.

CUSE: Or Charlotte. She's an anthropolgist.

LINDELOF: The other theory that I would like to throw out there is that Jacob and his mother were just expert craftsmen. They made those clothes on that loom so well, it would appear that they were only 50 years old in decomposition, when in fact it's several thousand.

CUSE: Or perhaps the fabric is magic. A lot of theories there, Alan.

Like I said: Poor storytellers, excellent bullshitters.

Bargaining.

No more than a few weeks before the series finale, I recall hearing the exact same argument from Lost fans that I've been hearing since the end of Season 1.

"The mysteries will be revealed when they're revealed! They know exactly what they're doing, you just have to be patient!"

Cut to after the series finale has aired, and Lost fans began singing a different tune.

"Way to completely miss the point! It's not about the mysteries, it's about the characters!"

How quickly things change.

It's easy for the creators to say now, with the series finale, that the mystery has always been ancillary to the characters, but that sentiment is not remotely supported by the 80-plus hours that came before it. The only time Lost's exploration of character was equal to its emphasis on mystery was in the first season, when we had no idea who these people were, what they were capable of, and what it was that made them tick. Even then though, the appeal of the characters was based around an element of mystery. Once that mystery had been revealed, the characters rapidly devolved into caricatures of themselves, and spent the next five seasons annoyingly repeating the same actions with little to no growth (e.g. Jack always needs something to fix, Kate always runs, Sawyer always cons, etc.).

Establishing "mysteries", it seems, was Lost's only trick. The show was great at introducing things, but horrible at actually doing anything with them. This is also why the writers kept introducing new characters in every season, and why those characters were killed off when the writers ran out of stuff for them to do.

This is not the format of a show that values character over intrigue. This is the format of a soap opera.

With each progressive season, Lost accommodated these new characters by shifting the focus ever so slightly away from our main cast, and as a result, it lost sight of their place in the story. By Season 6, the characters had nothing to do except repeatedly switch sides between groups of people who were equally as in the dark as they were. You can say the show is about "character" all you want, but if that were really the case, the writers wouldn't have gone so far our of their way to keep everything in the final season so shrouded in ambiguity, thus making it impossible to apply any value to the character's actions.

This is what our main losties did this season:

Sawyer made alliances, broke alliances, lied about breaking alliances, lied about making alliances, and broke alliances that he lied about making.

Kate followed around hunky male characters like a puppy, as usual.

Sayid became a zombie, and then decided he didn't want to be a zombie anymore, and then exploded.

Sun couldn't speak English for a bit. Then she could.

Jin looked for Sun. Then they both died.

Hurley acted like Hurley.

Claire wanted to kill Kate, but then she didn't anymore.

Desmond thought he knew what was going on, but didn't.

Ben lied, killed, acted sad about killing, and then decided to go kill some more.

And then there's Jack.

Jack actually did experience a little growth over the last few seasons, in one very simple way: he went from a man of science to a man of faith. This development culminated in the series finale, when he sat in a glowy cave while Desmond pulled a rock out of the ground. Then bad stuff happened. So Jack went down there, and put the rock back in the ground. Then he died.

The appeal of the series finale was not that it reminded us that the characters were more important than the answers to the mystery. Its appeal was that it seized an opportunity for cheap manipulation and executed it incredibly well. It's no surprise that people cried during the finale. That's what's bound to happen when characters who were killed off several seasons ago become reunited once again, in slow-motion, with emotional music underscoring the drama. But that sentimentality is only a temporary distraction from the on-island silliness that made up the majority of the show.

In a way, the series finale was the writer's final act of bullshitting the audience. They knew nothing they could come up with would satisfy those wanting answers, since they had no idea what those answers were when they introduced the questions. Instead of facing the wrath of the fans, they played it smart: make the audience cry. Give them some sappy send-off of all their favorite characters smiling in a church while white light engulfs them, and end the show with Jack quietly dying as an adorable dog lays faithfully beside him.

Sorry folks, that doesn't undo everything that came before it. That doesn't suddenly make the show a "character study". It makes it cheap, and for a variety of other reasons, pretty damn stupid.

Depression.

Lost's legacy has been ruined. What I once considered to be one of the greatest television shows in history, I now hesitate to recommend to anybody. Knowing what I know now, I might argue that Lost still succeeds as exceedingly fun trashy entertainment, but that would be an insult to shows like True Blood (another series that's good at introducing elements without actually doing anything with them, but one doesn't suffer from the pretension of being sophisticated and thoughtful).

To contrast the mishandling of Lost's resolution and the dismaying way in which it sucks out all the greatness of the show's earlier seasons, take a look at Veronica Mars. This was another series built around mystery, but each of its seasons was largely self-contained. Instead of waiting until the end of the show's run to provide the audience with the context necessary to make sense of the story, it did so at the end of each season. As such, it didn't matter that the third season was lousy; I can still happily rewatch the first and second seasons, and pretend the third doesn't exist. Sadly, that's something I'm unable to do with Lost. The brilliance of the first season doesn't stand on its own. It, along with seasons two through five, will always have to contend with the idiocy of the sixth season.

In many ways, the experience of watching Lost is similar to being in a long-term relationship.

First year: The best. Sweet, passionate baby-making love.
Second year: Things start to get a little rocky, but the love endures.
Third year: Some frustration. Take a break. Come back stronger and more in love than ever.
Fourth year: Spices things up a bit, but you wonder if there's a future.
Fifth year: Not sure what's happening anymore.
Sixth year: Everything falls apart.

"Across the Sea", the Jacob/Man in Black flashback episode, is the break-up.

For some, I suspect the series finale was the make-up sex.

For me, the series finale was like being forced to watch my six-year lover blow another guy.

But, as time passes, so too does the emotional attachment. Looking back on the relationship now, it becomes clear what a disaster it was. There were some great times, but those have been overshadowed by the realization that she was a manipulative cunt, and I was the sucker that fell for her bullshit.

Acceptance.

A mystery is only as good as its reveal. And Lost's reveal sucked.

And yet, I don't at all regret the time I spent with the series. It may have taken me six years to acknowledge what type of show I was really watching--a soap opera about daddy issues, with an almost entirely superficial level of depth and narrative coherence--but the enjoyment I experienced in those six years can never be taken away.

My only regret: double-dipping on the fucking Blu-rays.