When Did Lost, Lose It?

I’m not sure if the shark jumping was a discreet event like we see on many shows or if it was such a gradual process and I was WANTING to believe the show was going somewhere or that it would recover so that one day, I just woke up and realized that the jump was complete and the show was ruined.

Yes, I could not have rolled my eyes any further into my head than when libby walked in and got shot. Living here in Hawaii where anytime a Lost star has a bowel movement it makes the news and having heard for weeks all of the legal troubles these two were getting into, as soon as it happened and both of them were killed, it became glaringly obvious that this divine plan the writers claim to have was total BS and they were making it up as they went along and this was just to get rid of a couple “problem children.”

For me though, I think the downward spiral was gradual. I’ve said previously that the things that intrigued me about the show in season 1 was it had some interesting, complex character development and was attempting to be a smart TV show (the first one since the early years of the West Wing). The jump started when they began having established characters act in ways that were inconsistent with the character they had developed up to that point, just to chase a different storyline. Locke became the prime example…he was clearly my favorite character but that character now is not the same one they created throughout the first season.

So, as the story became less and less smart and the characters became less and less consistent, the death rattle just got louder and louder.

I’m down to 1 episode. They filmed a scene in the “premiere” in the lab where I work which I want to see. If the “premiere” doesn’t do something for me, I think I’m out.

Or maybe my stubborness will keep me tagging along.

Just noticed on jumptheshark.com that someone voted:
“when they changed Locke from Yoda to Loser”

THAT would definitely be my vote!!

Locke as Yoda…funny.

I read long ago (i.e. when LOST was new and good), a quite from the producers something to the effect of “we jump the shark every week”. Perhaps that was partly why we all found the show intriging early on, but it just flat wore out its welcome.

frankly, I liked AnaL and co. After the first season, adding new blood was a good idea. And that’s why I think killing off both AnaL AND Libby was the straw that broke my back.

After investing all season learning about their characters, seeing some interesting (possibly) backstories develop, they up and kill them off. BOTH of them!? I felt like I’d wasted 26 hours. Now that Eko is dead too, not many ‘tailies’ left (who gives a crap about Bernard?!?!).

I think it’s a good point about characters acting ‘odd’. b/c I agree. Particularly when you consider it’s only been 60 days!!!! how much different could they be!?!?!

but not all characters. In fact, I think what’s holding the show back now is that some characters are boring. Do we need to see an angst-ridden Jack again??? PLEASE, NO MORE JACKSTORIES!

First of all, I would like to thank Tyler for this great website. Now, for my comments on the “jumping of the shark”:
During Season One I used to get excited for each episode. Like many series, the first 10 episodes or so were extremely tight (not in the gangter “tight”, but in the sense that not much time is wasted per ep) I remember the scene when Locke was beating on the roof of the hatch. I believe this was episode 13 or 16. That scene was very moving and well acted. However, the show began its down hill slide right after that. In the episodes that followed it became very clear that the 15 producers of the show were going to drag the hatch plot for as long as possible. What we ended up finding in the hatch was frankly disappointing.
I tuned in for Season Two, but cared little about the new characters or the strange personality twists that did not fit.
As I watched Season Three (this time, changing the channel to other shows throughout). I realized that I no longer cared about any of this. Not because I am fickle, but simply because nothing made sense. Why would any sane person care about a plot arc starting two years ago and not resolved in the slightest? What is this? A cult where we MUST tune in week to week? How about a show that you can miss once and awhile and still come back to it and not feel like the producer is sodomizing you for bad behavior! Go to www.rogerebert.com and read his review of Star Trek: Nemesis. It is perhaps the best description of a series that has lost the ability to make a viewer care about the characters. Lost could have been much more, but the essential truth in the end, all else boiled down, is that THE SHOW WAS NOT PLANNED OUT AHEAD OF TIME. PERIOD.

See, I think Lost jumped the shark with Michael killing Ana Lucia. Not that I cared too much about her character, but the fact that Michael was the last character who seemed to have redeeming qualities and that he didn’t even attempt another way to go told me exactly what the writers intentions are with the series (and its proven to be true). They care about “surprising” the viewers, or giving us an “action packed” experience, instead of what they should be caring about, which is writing damn good stories and building strong characters regardless of what people think. Because the fact is they haven’t surprised me and for all the “packed in action” I get freakin’ bored watching the show week to week. Don’t even get me started on the stupid flashbacks. I want to eat my own eyeballs when the come on.

I think what bothers me most is similar to what others have said. Lost has so much potential. It could be amazing. But… its just not. It’s only sinking further and further into crapdom. I keep watching because i keep hoping they’ll change it around back to where it originally was headed. But I’ll likely be disappointed yet again.

well…I watched, but really found myself pretty apathetic towards the show. I flipped around, came back to LOST here and there, but really just found myself not caring one way or another about whatever happened (or didn’t).

On a different note, the local paper had an article about LOST’s return (otherwise, I would’ve forgotten!) and in it, some uber-fan prattled on and on about how ‘complex’ the show is and how it takes dedication to watch and follow. All of that really just made me laugh….complex…what a joke. I think I finally came around to where I seriously mock anyone who takes the show so seriously to think it’s complex. Or…that think you have to be ‘really really smart’ to follow the show. As soneone said above, it’s pretty shallow (John Locke? seriously…nice ‘Angel Heart’ reference though with Louis Cipher).

season 1: 24
season 2: 23
season 3 (to date): 7

- total of 54 episodes aired
- number of characters with flashbacks…
Jack
Sawyer
Kate
Sun
Jin
Hurley
Michael
Sayid
Charlie
Locke
Claire
Shannon - dead
Eko - dead
Walt
Boone - dead
Ana L - dead
Desmond
Juliet
Bernard & Rose (maybe not whole episode)

any others? Libby? She showed up in some…but didn’t have her own.

that’s 19 or 20 [’main’] characters to follow with backstories. Not that I’m incapable of following that much, but it’s like WORK! and watching TV shouldn’t be like work (unless it IS work).

while I’m at it, they made such a big deal of intentionally introducing two MORE new characters in the fall (Nikki and Paulo), where the F*!# were they?? Don’t waste my time bringing in new people if they aren’t relevant.

I agree that there are too many main characters and that they have changed too much. I liked Lost in the beginning when the number of back stories were manageable and it was still intriguing how the characters’ past lives seemed to overlap whether or not they realized it. I could convince myself at that point that there was some possible explanation behind it all, like those movies that start out with 5 different story lines that move toward each other until the climax where all of the characters meet at the end.

There were mystical things happening that I hoped would be explained: Locke’s regaining his mobility after the crash and Hurley’s misadventures with the cursed series of numbers on his lottery tickets are a couple of examples. Actually, that’s one of the things that disappointed me eventually about Lost, that it seems like the whole plot line about the cursed numbers has been totally forgotten. Same with Locke’s regained mobility. These are the kinds of things I would have thought would be resolved in the same season in which they were introduced. Instead, I feel like the mysterious parts of the plot have been thrust aside in favor of cheap action.

And what about the fact that Michael killing Libby was caught on tape? I thought for sure someone would see the security video in the other bunker that was found immediately after her death, but it’s a bit late for that to happen now. (Interesting that the actor who played Libby was killed off for business reasons also as pointed out above — I didn’t know that. It makes more sense now, since it didn’t seem to add anything to the story that she was murdered).

So for me, Lost “lost it” when too many threads of the story line were dropped. I feel like they were dropped purposely because in reality there’s no possible explanation for all of the weird coincidences and overlapping past lives with all of their individual mysteries. And now that I’ve given up on getting a true solution to any of the mysteries raised on the show, I’m just not interested anymore.

I want to add here also that the whole story line where Jack gets kidnapped to operate on Ben’s tumor is just ridiculous. If I were a surgeon who was a plane crash survivor and was stuck on an island with someone who needed surgery, I would do the surgery without them having to kidnap me and force me to do it. If “the Others” are not truly stuck, why not just go to the hospital and get the tumor removed? Or, if this is impossible for some reason, try asking the surgeon nicely first. I’m just saying.

I don’t think there was one moment in particular where I just abruptly thought “this show sucks now.” It was definitely a gradual thing, as the writers increasingly seemed to go on the cheap for the “ooooo….ahhhhh!!!” immediate thrill of introducing something “mysterious” and opening up the potential for more cliff hangers and questions without resolving any of the old ones. The story as it is now is just a mess. And I agree with what a lot of other people are saying about the contrary behaviors of the characters based on their earlier development. I don’t care how desperate a man is to get back his son, it just makes no bloody sense whatsoever that he’d plug two innocent people in the chest to do it, especially not a character like Michael who, up until that moment, had been a relatively likeable “nice guy” character. At this point, I can barely remember all the things about the show that bugged me, other than the writing had just become really crappy, as if the people responsible were spending all their extra time around sites like The Fuselage reading all the drooling fanboys talking about how great the show was to the point where they started to believe it and got lazy as a result.

Case in point: the character of Ana “BACK UP!!” Lucia. Far too often, actors are blamed for lack of talent when it’s really the *writing* that’s bad. I saw Michelle Rodriguez in that mindless but fun cop movie S.W.A.T. where she essentially played the exact same character as Ana Lucia without the whole ridiculously over-the-top tough chick routine. Meryl Streep couldn’t have played Ana Lucia without me climactically cheering when her laughably badly written character was offed.

Which brings me to my ultimate beef: the biggest problem I have is that it’s clear that the writers (and a lot of the remainig loyal viewers) think this stuff is smarter than it is and think we’re a lot dumber than we are. And they’ll keep it up and long as brainlessly devoted fans keep slabbering all over the show. That’s not to say the people that still like the show are wrong or dumb. These things are personally subjective and I can see how some people are still interested and on board to see how the ride ends, but I’m not. I’m sick of having my intelligence insulted week after week.

I hope the advertisers are taking note that so many of us start flipping around during commercials and forget to come back, or, as I found myself doing last week, put the tv on mute to do some reading during commercial and forget to look up and put the volume back on until way into the next segment. There was a time when I was riveted through the commercials waiting for that particular type of black screen that meant the show was coming on, because I didn’t want to miss a second.

When did it jump? I thought at first when the Tailies were introduced, but that storyline won me over, mostly because I’d already had some investment in wanting Bernard to return safely to Rose (who both go on to be wasted characters). The Others were still menacing ( = interesting), then, too, and were not yet riddled with inconsistencies and laughable dialogue. Sayid falling for Shannon stretched my credibility, but I hung in there; there weren’t a lot of major characters for him to choose from, so I suspended disbelief a little further. AnaLucia and Libby both shot without Michael even trying some other option–I’d have expected a reasonable story told by reasonable storytellers to have him tell the group about the ultimatum, then this “army” (remember that?) of people not suited to be in an army could rev up. Locke behaving ridiculously out of the character previously established for him. It’s hard to pinpoint a moment–it was a lot of drifting out to sea, drifting a little bit closer to shore, drifting farther out to se, all the while surrounded by sharks.

A show full of “clever” bits and questions and mysteries and that are never ever ever answered–it might be possible to make that work. IF the human elements make sense. If they are compelling, believable, and develop as people in the incomprehensible world around them. But the writers couldn’t even be bothered to write the same characters from week to week; even the three they seem most obsessed with are inconsistent.

And who is surprised that, after setting up a fairly diverse cast, no one but the white young-ish alpha males, and the chick who;s there to be battled over, can keep the writers’ attention?

My mother never believed the show knew where it was going, so for her it arrived on the other side of the shark. Every episode during first season I’d defend it to her (”The producers and writers say they definitely have a plan, we just have to follow the story for a bit”). During second season it was harder to defend it, and I’d even get a little mad when she’d give her weekly commentary of “they don’t know what they’re doing” (mad at her, though that was misdirected). Now, why bother to defend it? She reads the newspaper while it’s on and looks up at the screen a few more times per hour than I do.

“A show full of “clever” bits and questions and mysteries and that are never ever ever answered–it might be possible to make that work. IF the human elements make sense.”

That is a very interesting idea, I wonder if I would still watch then.

It seems that the writers like to cover a lot of the same ground.

I don’t need 10 back stories on 3 characters.

I’d say it jumped the shark when they introduce the tailes, only to kill all of them off but bernard who they cast aside anyways. Really I’ve never seen a show this non chalant about it’s storyline or characters. It’s like they knew after season one that they had a hit, with a glossy magazine and a rabid loyal fan base and then they said to themselves: so what the fuck should we do this week? hmm i don’t know how bout kill someone off and then they spun a freakin wheel. They brought Eko in who was a Locke knock off then tied Locke and Jack to that shitty hatch for a season, that’s using the ol noggin.

To me LOST should end up as a cautionary tale for would be writers. maybe a class title: When good ideas go horribly bad. or When plot hooks become plot anchors. or maybe Your character’s an you. a look into why you should care. But what really gets me are these adle brained LOST fans who seem to think they’re so special becuase they have the patience to be mentally ass raped for an hour then smile in their zen like way and describe how it gives their life meaning. If I have to hear one more LOST devotee explain how the show is just too complex for normal people and how everyone just doen’t have the patience to figure it out, i think I’ll scream. This must be what battered women act like. Someone should turn this show into the autorities soon…

Just now stumbled on this site while looking for a place to vent my angst about this week’s painfully horrid episode. Great work, I like it.

Now, when it did jump the shark? I honestly think that when the actual shark with the stupid Dharma logo on it swam by was the beginning of the end for me. I mean, that shark was presumably supposed to make me think “ooh, Dharma was into genetic engineering… or robotics… or training superintelligent sharks like in Deep Blue Sea” - but all it did was make me laugh. Hard. I couldn’t (and still can’t) believe the gall of a show actually providing its own shark to jump over. In retrospect, after suffering through the lametastic efforts of season 3, I kind of have to wonder if that shark wasn’t the writers warning us that the honeymoon was over. It’s so much like the decline of the X-Files (black eye oil, anyone?) that I’m having fits of deja-vu.

“When Did Lost, Lose It?”

Stop putting commas where they don’t, belong.