Lost: Season Six

[Drake Tungsten]

It's his own accent turned up to eleven; if he didn't take it to an extreme, Americans might confuse him for English and no Scot wants that. That's also probably why Gerard Butler is almost impossible to understand whenever he appears on American chat shows.

[MikeH]

I thought he was pretending to be Irish. Definitely not Scottish.

[MikeH]

Don't most Americans think Scotland is in England anyway?

[Drake Tungsten]

I thought he was pretending to be Irish. Definitely not Scottish.

I thought he was Irish at first, as well, but the actor claims he's playing Scottish and the producers claim Desmond is Scottish, so I guess I'm wrong. Took me a couple seasons to fully accept that.

Don't most Americans think Scotland is in England anyway?

Yes, but we also think that the Scots run things in England.

[MikeH]

Not since the election. Keep up.

[MikeH]

I thought he was pretending to be Irish. Definitely not Scottish.

I thought he was Irish at first, as well, but the actor claims he's playing Scottish and the producers claim Desmond is Scottish, so I guess I'm wrong. Took me a couple seasons to fully accept that.

That makes his accent even worse than I thought.

[Drake Tungsten]

I think this is also fair...

Like the happy ending of Haroun, the Sideways conceit of Lost does some important things for the story, even if it can't completely dodge the charge of being ''contrived.'' (In fact, I might argue that by citing Haroun, Lost might have been acknowledging and embracing the charge.) The Sideways device allowed Lost to embellish its core themes (redemption; introspection; letting go of the past), express a spiritual worldview, and forge some undeniably powerful dramatic moments. It was a means to an emotionally rich conclusion that felt true and organic to the series.

And yet, I can't say the Sideways device totally worked for me. I wanted to get lost in Lost during its last 18 hours. But the Sideways conceit often left me standing outside of it, trying to figure out what it was all about. It's kinda hard to emotionally connect with people when wondering if they're also, like, ''real.'' In the end, I think it was asking too much of us to buy into a creatively uneven season-long storyline whose purpose only revealed itself in the last moments of the finale. The Sixth Sense was awesome. The Sixth Sense stretched over 18 hours? A much tougher magic trick, and Lost didn't quite pull it off.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20313460_20388269_5,00.html

[Drake Tungsten]

He died sometime in the future; everyone appeared as they did during the most important time in the their lives; ie, their adventures on Craphole Island.

I'm coming around to the idea that this isn't true. Frankly, it doesn't make much sense for the Island to have been the most important time in Aaron's life; I doubt he even remembers any of it. It was the most important time in Jack's life, however, which makes me think the Sideways world was centered around Jack in some important way. Did Jack's consciousness/soul/whatever decide who would be allowed to join the group that passed on together (and determine how they appeared)? Or was the whole Sideways world just an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge-like hallucination/dream that Jack experienced as he was dying on the Island?

Either way, the Sideways world sure was a stupid waste of time.

edit: I also think it might be more accurate to look at the Sideways world as something similar to a Buddhist pure land rather than the Christian purgatory. Doc Jensen talked a little about pure lands in his column last month and, while it didn't make much sense at the time, I think he might have chanced upon an insight into the Sideways world long before we actually knew what was really happening in it.

[MikeH]

Aaron wasn't in the church.

x

[Drake Tungsten]

Wrong.

spoilertv.iimmgg.com/image/309161acb120297d279ff6bd521f67d0

You're going to have to copy and paste the address, since the stupid site won't even allow me to link with [url] tags.

[Guynemer]

Still disagree. The Sideways let characters work out the issues they couldn't or wouldn't work out while they were alive.

[Dinner]

I saw half of the final episode after not watching the series for two years. It was dumb.

[Drake Tungsten]

Still disagree. The Sideways let characters work out the issues they couldn't or wouldn't work out while they were alive.

I really don't see how most of the characters worked out anything; they just hung around in a illusory world until sudden enlightenment hit them and they let go and moved on. It was all very Zen.

[Guynemer]

They were all living in their past, letting their past define and control them. They couldn't "let go," and live in the now, man.

[Dinner]

Boo Hoo! I'm dead!