Lost...I'll be Lost without you.

The show is allright. It really stumbled from season 3, and though they have done a decent job of making it interesting again in season 5, it's still a lot of wasted potential. 
 
Watch Rome. Now THAT is the best series ever made.

"  Maybe it's time I give FlashForward a try. "

Just because an episode is heavy on action and kills off 4 main cast members, its not automatically awesome. 
 
Linky is quite right: With the exception of the last 10 minutes, "The Candidate" was ultra-lame and one of the most generic "lets threaten each other with guns instead of explaining why we have common interests!!!1" headless-chickens-running-through-the-jungle LOST episodes in the series history. I'm still mad. 
 
Its also a nice example of the LOST creators exhibiting their dislike of tied-up character arcs or subplots. Ilana? Pointless, blows up. Frank Lupidus? Pointless, gets hit by a door and drowns. Sun and her revenge on Widmore subplot? Pointless, lets just drop it.  The list goes on.
 
The last 2 Episodes of Breaking Bad show just how good TV writing, pacing and photography can be. "The Candidate" had none of these. Of course all of this will be forgiven after next week's episode (those in the know will agree), but still. 
 
LOST might just end even less satisfying than Babylon 5 and BGS combined.

" Just because an episode is heavy on action and kills off 4 main cast members, its not automatically awesome.   Linky is quite right: With the exception of the last 10 minutes, "The Candidate" was ultra-lame and one of the most generic "lets threaten each other with guns instead of explaining why we have common interests!!!1" headless-chickens-running-through-the-jungle LOST episodes in the series history. I'm still mad.   Its also a nice example of the LOST creators exhibiting their dislike of tied-up character arcs or subplots. Ilana? Pointless, blows up. Frank Lupidus? Pointless, gets hit by a door and drowns. Sun and her revenge on Widmore subplot? Pointless, lets just drop it.  The list goes on.   The last 2 Episodes of Breaking Bad show just how good TV writing, pacing and photography can be. "The Candidate" had none of these. Of course all of this will be forgiven after next week's episode (those in the know will agree), but still.   LOST might just end even less satisfying than Babylon 5 and BGS combined. "

" @Zenaxzd:  is Charlie/Merry/Whatever that actors name is a main character, or is he just a bit part? I keep seeing him looking at a Guy Fawkes mask and looking all mysterious. "

I don't know where this thread has gone, because I haven't read all of the pages, but I hate Lost a bit. In October I watched the first 4 seasons over the span of 2 or 3 weeks. After season 2 the show just got really fucked up and stupid. Anybody who enjoys Lost where it is now must find better shows, because you're contributing to this bullshit.

" Ilana? Pointless, blows up. Frank Lupidus? Pointless, gets hit by a door and drowns. Sun and her revenge on Widmore subplot? Pointless, lets just drop it.  The list goes on. "

1. Ilana was blown up because the Island was done with her, how did you miss that when there was a whole scene between Ben and the others reminding us all the Island is a douche that will let people die/kills people when it is done with them. Illana was a huge reminder of that since there hadn't been anything as prominent to remind us since Michael blew the fuck up on the boat.
2. Frank may or may not be dead, Sayid (obviously) blew up, it showed the corpses of Sun and Jin, but Frank who has become a fan favorite gets nothing more than being knocked out by a door? I don't buy it, I think he will return in the end. Probably came to and swam off or something.
3. Sun and her revenge on Widmore...? Sun and Widmore "teamed up" because they had a "common interest". She wanted Ben dead as she blamed him for Jin's "death". At what point in the entire series did Sun set out to get revenge on Widmore? 
   

Lost...I tried to like you but, you didn't appeal to me. I will be perfectly fine without you.

What a stupid, stupid, stupid episode of TV.   SPOILERS TO FOLLOW IF TAG DOESN'T WORK.
 
SPOILERS----
 

 
Sayid.  One of the most complex and interesting characters on TV.  After his amazing episode earlier this season...  That's it for his character.  He's just The Entities bitch, and he's infected...  Ok.  Infected by what?  What does it mean to be infected?  Is it something you can fight your way out of?  To fully understand the extent of Sayids drama and the choices that he's making, I need to understand the dramatic stakes.  Since I don't, then I'm just confused.  Was it impressive that Sayid did what he did?  Was that him defeating the infection AND his inner nature, a major theme this year for him?  Understanding the infection is probably one of those mysteries we don't come back to, and even if we do it's too late; The character who's arc was based on the infection is already dead. 
 
Also, Sayid looked something like Adam West trying to dispose of a bomb.  Not even a slow down, with some nice dramatic music to revel in his sacrifice?  Like Charlie? Also, seeing Sayid die in a kind of reverse suicide bomber way is kind of offensive imagery. 
 
Sun and Jin.  Emotionally effective in the way Sayid was not, sure.  But cheap.  These characters FINALLY have their whimper of a reunion after two whole seasons, and then they're cruelly killed off because the writers realized they're useless.  Jin, the selfish dick who became a true team player and friend, Sun, the wet noodle who became a strong business woman.   This scene was sad until I realized YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER BACK HOME.  Now I'm not a parent but from what I understand the instinct of having a child outweighs the importance of your spouse.  For them to not even bring up their now parent less daughter is RETARDED.
 
Frank the pilot.  I loved you in season 4 Frank but...  Why were you here again?  Yeah I thought so.  Also Miles and Richard and Ben are what? Still walking?
 
Illyana(Technically last time I know)  The shock was fun, but she's not killed in a way that's fresh and shocking, and she was introduced to us with some sense of importance.  The writers are clearly out of their league all of the sudden. 
 
How did the MiB know they were going to open the bag?  Kate was shot by one of Widmores men, presumably long before MiB put the bomb in Jacks pack?  How did he know Jack would open his pack within five minutes of going under water?  What if it clicked out harmlessly?  He didn't know Kate was going to get shot.  Why not convince those two men at the plane he killed to start shooting the Candidates?  Wouldn't it be easy for this master manipulator to turn the candidates against each other?  Why get all the birds with one stone, really?  I mean he claims that the Losties wouldn't trust him if the started dying one at a time, but if you do it right they wouldn't know all this death was caused by you?  Nicki Paulo them!   I think I get why you're still on this island, Mr. convoluted amazing it kind of worked plan.
 
We STILL don't know what Widmore wants, we STILL don't know the nature of the other dimension, we STILL don't know why MiB is this big danger, we STILL don't understand the basic conflict of the story, and without understanding the conflict, there's no reason to care about any of this!  In my opinion, this season should have been the strongest, with strong emotional through lines, events should be lead by our main ensemble for the whole season, instead of them reacting to other characters we barely know who are leading the show.
 
If I were writing, Ben would still be having his redemption arc, but he'd also still be a badass in charge plan maker.  It would be Ben rallying everyone, all of the off island others to arrive and declare war on Widmore, who would come back not only with scientists, but I dunno, KEAMY STYLE BADASSES.  Breathless action, tension, season 4 on crack.  We need to know what we're working towards, so we need to have at least a vauge understanding that if MiB leaves the Island, we need to know what will happen.  We also need to know what Widmore wants.  Our heroes have to be on neither  side, the excellent ensemble cast fighting for team FREE WILL.  Take CHARGE main cast members!  This is your show!   An ENTIRE episode will be focused specifically on the whispers, and it will be a character based emotional thrill ride, not a walk on cameo who spouts a throw away line.  The time for shielding information, cock teasing etc. is over.  Only organic story telling, with answers built into the story telling.  Even though it's nice that characters feel they can walk out of the jungle and actually have a conversation about things now, man is it dramatically unsatisfying.  Case in point, MiB is Christian.

One more point.   

"Everything we know right now, we don't know what it means. The reason why rules are so important for fantastical storytelling is that it allows us to understand the stakes and the dangers of a situation. It's why Superman keeps getting his powers scaled back - as the rules change for him and he can do more and more, his stories are less and less interesting.

With LOST the problem with the rules is that we don't know what they are and we don't know how they play out. We don't understand what loopholes MiB is trying to exploit. We don't understand what will or won't work, or what is or isn't a legit threat. But instead of making EVERYTHING threatening, this has made NOTHING threatening. As mentioned before in this thread it's bad drama when a character points a gun at another character and you believe there's no way the character will get shot - and not because you're hip to the way TV dramas go but because the show has established that guns will magically not work when needed to magically not work and for no other good reason.

The show has chosen mystery over drama. For some people that's enough, but it's not for me. By keeping everything in the shadows until this late in the game, the show has turned a lot of what has been happening this season into filler because it has no dramatic impact or meaning.

Let's put it this way: the Temple was introduced at the beginning of the season. What was the point of that whole mini storyline? Everything about it remains so shrouded in mystery that even now, seven episodes after it's over, you're not really sure what the point of Dogen was, or what the point of having Sayid die and come back to life was. And that means there's no drama to it; the show has already told us that it's just going to introduce wheels in order to keep them spinning so that the biggest wheel - the big mystery wheel - can also keep spinning for the rest of the series."

All of these posts were getting too long, I stopped reading, but please, let us all be united under one fact: 
 
Of everyone to die, Kate was not one of them, and this is the real tragedy.

I wish you wouldn't skip long posts, I like to think I have something to say, and it's always great to start a real conversation instead of  "I wish Kate had died!" single sentence stuff.

   At this point in the series, the main Losties need to be shown that all hope is Lost.  MiB has caused the death of some of their closest friends and the serious injury of two others.  Things are either going to keep spiraling downhill until all is gone, or everything will go right for our little Losties.  I personally do not see this show having a happy ending.  Especially after the deaths of Sun and Jin... "

I saw most of season 1 then broke off and stopped watching. I'm now waiting for the complete series Blu-ray package, which should be awesome.

It's no All In The Family, but eh...whatever.

I've watched a bit of it here and there, my girlfriend is one of those Lost fiends.  While I like some parts of it, I cant help but notice the plot holes and irrationality on an epic scale.

Time travel seems to have been a major sticking point for some people, the way all the magic is for me now. But part of my issue is that they went with both. Over the years, a big part of what made the mysteries fun was trying to figure out how all the strange stuff could fit together in a coherent fashion. For awhile, it seemed like maybe electromagnetism might tie all the strange phenomena together. Then it seemed like time travel (which was at least tied to the electromagnetic wonkiness) could account for a lot of it. And they did, but then we also have Jacob's touch solving some stuff, but his magic powers are different than MiB's magic power, and there's some other thing controlling how they interact with the candidates. And there's ghosts, which don't seem to have any of the same rules as the wizard or the smoke...

There wasn't an underlying rationale for all the various mysteries. It doesn't boil down to pseudoscience or mysticism, but some pseudoscience and several different flavors of mysticism operating simultaneously, which is so ludicrously convoluted that it almost seems like cheating. It's like the "everyone did it" ending to Clue, except Ms. White was also a witch the whole time, and Colonel Mustard was an alien, and Prof. Plum was only a manifestation of Ms. Scarlet's subconscious, and Mr. Green was a ghost, and Ms. Peacock was a man! Finkle is Einhorn! Einhorn is Finkle!

At least that's how this season has felt. If part of the fun of a mystery is getting the answer and slapping your forehead and wondering how you didn't put it together, that's just not possible with this kind of story. They didn't maintain the mystery through clever plotting and deft misdirection, but by having no internal consistency between the apparitions and the time travel and the smoke monster and the healing and the immortality and so forth. I'm sure next week will clarify a lot of these things and hopefully simplify things. But taking this season's revelations at face value and as they come, it all seems incredibly convoluted, and, well, cheap."

I'll definitely miss the show, I've been following it closely for awhile now. Why did...
 

Because they no longer served a purpose outside of the alt dimension.

I hope Desmond gains the power to absorb other people's powers so he can lose control of his powers in the season finale and disappoint us all. 
 
Edit:  POWERS.

Lost, using magic, pseudoscience, mysticism AND time travel to completely cop out.  Pick  one dammit!

Here are some of the ideas I've been having with my cousins...and some of these are still in play. 
 
this was from March 30th.
 
 What do you mean to explain my theory about the island being on the bottom of the ocean? They showed it to us in the premiere.  They haven't told us how it got there, but the theory is out there that when 
Jack through Jughead down the hatch that in the sideways storyline that detonation caused the Island to sink.  And because the island is not a factor think of all the lives that have changed because the 
island was destroyed in the late 70s. Ben's dad told us that joining Dharma was a good experience and did not regret it.

As far as Richard goes. There will be more I hope explaining more of his relationship with Jacob. We saw very little between the two characters.

And the sideways being a future...Think of it like this.

MIB told Sayid that if Sayid helps him leave the island he would get what he wants the most...more time with Nadia.

And with him off the island... him being the evil incarnate. the island would not have to be, because the way it was explained the islands sole purpose is to keep the evil incarnate at bay.

In the sideways like i said above the island is on the ocean floor...so what happened to the smoke...it was released upon the population.

That goes back to the old philosophy of for all the good in the universe there is a nessecary evil to match it. "If God exists then so does the Devil"

That reminds me of a great movie line, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist."

I like the show, and will miss it. Maybe I'm reading too far into the "The Candidate" episode but it seems to me like... 
 

So happy Lost is ending/is over? So people can shut the fuck up about that horrid show. 

That reminds me of a great movie line, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist."  
 
 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
 
I'm a MUCH bigger Supernatural fan than Lost at this point.  Season 5 of Supernatural has been ten buckets of fun compared to the sloppiness of Lost...

Meh show is meh.

It's not meh.  You'd be hard pressed to find a smarter show that forms such powerful emotional connections and reactions from the audience.  Even this year has some amazing stuff.  Particularly the episode with Jack and his son really hit me hard.  Sayids episode, Hurley and Libby was sweet, Ben had that incredibly moving episode, and of course Terry as John Locke.  This last episode had some really great stuff, personally the best bit wasn't the death scene, but the scene between alt Jack and John.
 
The thing that makes Lost meh these days, or the thing that threatens it to become meh is the fact that the show isn't smart anymore.  It's stupid. Really stupid about internal convoluted rules and bullshit.  Characters don't act and sit passive despite being main characters.  They until very recently wouldn't just ask each other simple damn questions and answer them.  The show has totally shit the bed in that regard.

An interesting thought.  I saw a post refuting the point that if the MiB was so smart and capable, why not have the candidates all trying to kill each other MUCH earlier on?  The answer is, he did.  Jack chasing his(father) and nearly falling off a cliff.  The hatch explosion that nearly killed a bunch of folks.  Hurley's friend Dave(really smokey) trying to convince him to kill himself.  Christian on the freighter trying to time it just perfectly, so that Micheal accidentally kills all of his friends as they arrive on a small, secluded boat...  He's been trying to do his submarine plan for the entire series!  Something I hadn't considered, and it fits given what we know...
 
I just hope that Jacob and the MiB aren't explained as wizards.  I hope there's at least an attempt to explain them within some kind of pseudo science dimensional rift.  Putting in the effort to clearly define your universes rules is something any nerd can appreciate.  But if your effort is literal pure magic?  Well...  Fail.