Austin Improv

interesting line to ponder from last night: Juliet's comment about the vending machine. re: "if you unplug it and plug it back in..." as is true with Apollo bars is also true with glowy oversoul pit.

majcher wrote:I'm just going to go with the theory that the entire six seasons of the show were a hallucination that Jack had as he lay dying in the bamboo after the original crash. That's why they showed the wreckage on the beach again at the end, there. I mean, if they're just going to be all, "psyche! we were just fucking with you - none of that stuff you just watched mattered at all" anyway, why not?

it felt more like "here's where we started all those years ago, guys. later!" i've been reading various weird theories about that footage all day..."oh, see, they never survived the crash in the first place!" "it's Ajira wreckage! Lapidus crashed the plane and that's why everyone's dead!" "the plane was a Transformer and they need the Allspark to reactivate it!"

honestly, i just thought it was stock footage to give some sense of nostalgia. lol!

the_reverend wrote:i've been reading various weird theories about that footage all day..."oh, see, they never survived the crash in the first place!" "it's Ajira wreckage! Lapidus crashed the plane and that's why everyone's dead!" "the plane was a Transformer and they need the Allspark to reactivate it!"

honestly, i just thought it was stock footage to give some sense of nostalgia. lol!

I think it also helps to establish that the Island really exists, and does not disappear like a figment of Jack's imagination when he dies.

Jeff wrote:

the_reverend wrote:i've been reading various weird theories about that footage all day..."oh, see, they never survived the crash in the first place!" "it's Ajira wreckage! Lapidus crashed the plane and that's why everyone's dead!" "the plane was a Transformer and they need the Allspark to reactivate it!"

honestly, i just thought it was stock footage to give some sense of nostalgia. lol!

I think it also helps to establish that the Island really exists, and does not disappear like a figment of Jack's imagination when he dies.

yeah, i read one comment from someone today that said "so they were all dead all along and it was all just an illusion? crap!" i just sat there scratching my head and had to wonder if they'd actually WATCHED the entire episode, or just walked through a room where the episode was playing a few times throughout the night to get snacks. :p

the_reverend wrote:yeah, i read one comment from someone today that said "so they were all dead all along and it was all just an illusion? crap!" i just sat there scratching my head and had to wonder if they'd actually WATCHED the entire episode, or just walked through a room where the episode was playing a few times throughout the night to get snacks. :p

In my experience, on the Internet, you can really find some stupids.

I've been dead this entire time

Now we have to wait mere months for ABC's newly announced fall sitcom, "Lapidus!"

the_reverend wrote:yeah, i read one comment from someone today that said "so they were all dead all along and it was all just an illusion? crap!" i just sat there scratching my head and had to wonder if they'd actually WATCHED the entire episode, or just walked through a room where the episode was playing a few times throughout the night to get snacks. :p

I don't actually think that's what they were doing, but I'd like to believe it, as it would be a more satisfying ending than what actually happened.

My biggest problem with the season is that I feel like we were lead to believe that there was actually something at stake, when there really didn't seem to be. (As I think someone else mentioned somewhere else, the only time I really felt any dramatic tension at all during the finale was when Locke threatened to kill Rose and Bernard.) I mean, remove the entire sideways universe thing from the season, and aside from Juliet's "it worked" misdirection and maybe Desmond getting a glimpse of the afterlife, did it affect the main storyline at all? And all the fiddle-faddle with Samuel getting off the island or not, or putting out the light or not, that didn't seem to really turn out to be as big a deal as they made it out to be the whole time. "Everything will end", "everyone you ever knew will die", "the light goes out, it goes out in everyone"... none of that seemed to have been true. I mean, sure, the island would sink or whatever - for whatever reason - but it didn't seem to have any effect beyond taking away the boys' superpowers. Which, eh. So, just plain normal Locke is going to escape the island and... do what? A crazy Smokey/SuperJack showdown at the end would have been a million times sweeter than a couple of old white dudes rolling around trying to punch each other to death. But, whatever, there are a hundred little nitpicky nerd details that can be picked at, but overall, I just felt like nothing mattered, and in the end, whatever happened, just happened.

Marc, I think you're saying you didn't like that it didn't matter, when you mean that you didn't like that the show didn't show that it mattered. They only said and implied that it mattered. People still have to guard the Island for all eternity. It does matter. They just didn't show much proof of that.

It wasn't a well-crafted story. It was a thrilling fun-house ride. You enjoy it or not, according to taste and expectations.

Personally, I was disappointed with all the red herrings, macguffins, loose ends and incongruities - e.g. if "sideways" showed their "better selves" converging in the afterlife, why was dear Charlie still so fucked up? Answer: because the writers needed to make it so, to create the "moment" they wanted with Claire. (Whereas, a good story is driven by the needs of its characters, not the writers, directors, DPs, etc.)

They had no obligation to create a brilliant, epic story (no matter how cool that might have been). They delivered the only thing that television promises: weekly entertainment. And that, they did very well.

Jeff wrote:Marc, I think you're saying you didn't like that it didn't matter, when you mean that you didn't like that the show didn't show that it mattered. They only said and implied that it mattered. People still have to guard the Island for all eternity. It does matter. They just didn't show much proof of that.

I guess that's what I'm saying. They didn't show that it mattered, so it didn't matter. They just said it did, but that doesn't mean anything. They're not telling me the story that makes me care about what happens, they're telling me there is a story in there somewhere, and I should care about it whether they tell it or not. That just seems lazy to me. Other people clearly felt differently about it, but I was disappointed.

Curious: what would have made it "matter"? Do all of the things that happened in the previous episodes now not "matter"? Why?

(I'm asking out of pure curiosity -- I just watched this last night and am still processing everything)

yeah, i really didn't need to see a montage of things going awry in the real world...i took them at the word that if the light goes out and the Island sinks, badness ensues. the fact that that was averted is, to my mind, a good thing. i didn't need to see the effects to believe that anymore than i'd need to see the initial stages of radioactive fallout to know that a character defusing a bomb is a GOOD thing.

as for Charlie and the flaws other faced in the Sideways world, i think it wasn't so much a matter of "this is where our fully realized better selves go and hang out" as "this is where we go when we die, and we get to work out some lingering issues and we get to be a little bit the same so we can still find each other, remember ourselves, let go of the past and move on to whatever's next." in that and in so many other ways, i thought it was a perfectly structured and executed story.

one lingering question that i hope to never have answered because i want to ponder it for eternity...if everyone in the Sideways world were the souls of the dead in OUR world, then who or what was David?

one lingering question that i hope to never have answered because i want to ponder it for eternity...if everyone in the Sideways world were the souls of the dead in OUR world, then who or what was David?

I'm still decompressing and haven't yet rewatched it, but my initial reaction was the sideways universe still remains, but the church (Lamppost station) and it's connection with the island, was a unique place in time and space (where everyone is dead, but those who were alive when they entered could still leave).

Desmond being the constant of folks he knew on the island (again haven't gone down the list, but maybe it includes people in the alternate world too) helped with an island gift of remembering both existences and a small reunion.

Definitely had a good time riding this wave (though I also compressed it into 6 months).

the_reverend wrote: one lingering question that i hope to never have answered because i want to ponder it for eternity...if everyone in the Sideways world were the souls of the dead in OUR world, then who or what was David?

If you keep with that faulty premise, you will surely ponder that question for all time. I don't believe it's so that everyone in Sideways are souls of our world's dead.
I think one of the things that makes the entire mythology of LOST interesting is that the Sideways world, like the Island, is a puzzle of sorts. The Sideways world is a puzzle because it's a fabrication created by the souls of our world. The purpose of that fabrication is to give souls the set pieces and the resources they need to come to terms with their lives and let go. David wasn't anybody. I mean, maybe he was some real kid who needed to find a father who would open up to him, but it's just as likely that he was a mental creation of Jack's just to help him come to terms with his own relationship with his father. ("Christian Shepard? Seriously?")
Remember, Side-Locke flat-out told Side-Jack, "You don't have a son."

So yeah, it's a game. LOST has been about games all along, from backgammon to golf to table tennis to I Never to Senet to the game of the Island. Sideways world was just another game with different rules than real-world rules or Island rules.

If that's Boone's ideal community in the afterlife, he must not have had much else going on.