Will LOST Be Hollywooded?

I first read your post yesterday.  I was going to sit down last night and respond to it, and now I am glad I have not.  It gave me time to think about it, and after a day, I believe I have my opinions set forth (as much as they will ever be).

If you are to respond to my response, please do so in a mindset prior to watching the shows this evening [LOST S06 E01-02].

No doubt you are a man who reads and watches for characters mostly; at least that’s my reasoning for your love of Stephen King, especially The Stand.

As you are well-aware, America is likes relationships and stories – proof is in the 20 seasons of Survivor.  Turning what America likes into a verb: Hollywooded.  The aspects of this show that are hollywooded are the love relationships between Kate and Jack/Sawyer, Sayid and Nadia(?), Charlie and Claire, and on and on and on.  Other hollywooded moments come in with some of the fighting and yelling, but I am too cautious to try to separate what is and what isn’t  In a sense, this is why so many people who don’t understand the show like it, and it is also why critics claim it is like a soap opera.

With that typed, the things you find important I believe are so.  The things you mentioned are not important I believe are important.  Your choosing to focus on the characters (though you intelligently put the island in your important category, because the island is the main character) I find as simply a matter of taste.  One may argue with you, claiming the events of the island are much more important than the characters.  Though I enjoy history, especially as it has unfolded with the DI stuff in this series, I too find the characters more important than the events and the history.  But I don’t believe the things we find more important need to be the things we need answered.

I mentioned America likes relationships.  It also likes answers.  Answers can come from anywhere, but they need answers.  Women, I find, enjoy answers more than men.  I would guess that some of the stupid questions (there are stupid questions) in that question list came from women.  Which is why, like many, many things in this world, Lost can be compared to The Road (here meant to be that book).

The Road

How many people wanted answers after reading The Road?  What caused this?  Why did his wife really kill herself?  Who was the man at the end of the story?  What did the wife look like?  If any one of those questions is answered, the book loses a few points.  I even think he went too far with the ending.  This doesn’t mean Lost should not answer any questions.  But so many people have different most important questions they need answered, so someone is always going to be unhappy.  What we need to do is what the last season with an open mind, thinking as we usually do about connections to previous and future shows.  Then, when it is all said and done, we can take each one of those questions from that list and decide whether it was answered or not.  Next, we decide whether the series was better or worse from it.

The endings you suggested are unacceptable I believe are as well, and there are many more.  But I have confidence in the writers; so much so that I believe there is a way they can land the plane in 2003 or 2004 or whatever it was and not become a post on failblog.com.

So let’s decide at the end whether they did a good job or not, not after the first few episodes.  I firmly believe that if most of America is upset at the ending and the insufficiency of the answers provided, you and I will love it even more.