Lost revisited: Locke's group

[cop...@yahoo.com]

Spoilers if you haven't finished the series.

I'm rewatching Lost and on S4, just past the part were the Losties
split into two groups, Jack's and Locke's. Since Locke said "If you
want to live, come with me", I started wondering which group had more
survivors. (not counting the whole "everybody dies" part).

Jack's group: Kate, Desmond, Rose, Bernard

Locke's group: Hugo, Ben, Sawyer, Claire, Aaron (and Vincent, if you
want to count him).

Given that Locke's group was slightly smaller, you had a better chance
of surviving going by totals and percentage.

Worth noting neither group leader made it ;)

Brandon

[Remysun]

Maybe we were looking at the request wrong. Rose wanted to die with
dignity. Bernard wanted to die with her. Desmond was pretty loopy.l
Maybe it was about having a death wish.

[Hunter]

In article <6050719c-1506-4a69...@s27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
cop...@yahoo.com says...

----
Actually of what you refer to as Jack's group none died, not even Desmond. Kate
got back to civilaization Rose & Bernard stayed on the island.

With Locke's group everyone lived and all but Hugo made it back to
civilization, with Hugo eventually replacing Jacob.

And yes as you point out niether Jack or Locke survived, but Jack kill Locke
and chose not to replace Jacob and live, giving it to Hugo.
--
----->Hunter

"No man in the wrong can stand up against
a fellow that's in the right and keeps on acomin'."

-----William J. McDonald
Captain, Texas Rangers from 1891 to 1907

[Remysun]

On Mar 16, 4:42 pm, Hunter <buffhun...@my-deja.com> wrote:

> Actually of what you refer to as Jack's group none died, not even Desmond. Kate
> got back to civilaization Rose & Bernard stayed on the island.

He was listing the survivors, not the entire grouping. Who were all
the redshirts?

[Darren Delgado]

On Mar 15, 11:40 pm, "cop...@yahoo.com" <cop...@yahoo.com> wrote:

It's probably a mistake to think that any thought went into these
groupings that later culminated in something meaningful.

At that point in the show, they still didn't even know who the main
protagonist and antagonist were going to be (they were still wrapping
the show around Ben and Widmore).

It's just as likely as anything, that they threw darts at a dartboard
to figure out who went into what group.

[cop...@yahoo.com]

On Mar 17, 1:44 pm, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 15, 11:40 pm, "cop...@yahoo.com" <cop...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Spoilers if you haven't finished the series.
>
> > I'm rewatching Lost and on S4, just past the part were the Losties
> > split into two groups, Jack's and Locke's. Since Locke said "If you
> > want to live, come with me", I started wondering which group had more
> > survivors. (not counting the whole "everybody dies" part).
>
> > Jack's group: Kate, Desmond, Rose, Bernard
>
> > Locke's group: Hugo, Ben, Sawyer, Claire, Aaron (and Vincent, if you
> > want to count him).
>
> > Given that Locke's group was slightly smaller, you had a better chance
> > of surviving going by totals and percentage.
>
> > Worth noting neither group leader made it ;)
>
> It's probably a mistake to think that any thought went into these
> groupings that later culminated in something meaningful.

I'm fairly sure that at the time they knew who was right between Jack
(get off the island) and Locke (stay on the island).

Brandon

[cop...@yahoo.com]

On Mar 16, 3:42 pm, Hunter <buffhun...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <6050719c-1506-4a69-928b-be4f4e720...@s27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,

> cop...@yahoo.com says...
>
>
>
> > Spoilers if you haven't finished the series.
>
> > I'm rewatching Lost and on S4, just past the part were the Losties
> > split into two groups, Jack's and Locke's. Since Locke said "If you
> > want to live, come with me", I started wondering which group had more
> > survivors. (not counting the whole "everybody dies" part).
>
> > Jack's group: Kate, Desmond, Rose, Bernard
>
> > Locke's group: Hugo, Ben, Sawyer, Claire, Aaron (and Vincent, if you
> > want to count him).
>
> > Given that Locke's group was slightly smaller, you had a better chance
> > of surviving going by totals and percentage.
>
> > Worth noting neither group leader made it ;)
>
> > Brandon
>
> ----
> Actually of what you refer to as Jack's group none died, not even Desmond. Kate
> got back to civilaization Rose & Bernard stayed on the island.

Most of Jack's group died, IIRC, when the freighter exploded with them
on it.

> With Locke's group everyone lived and all but Hugo made it back to
> civilization, with Hugo eventually replacing Jacob.

Most of Locke's group was killed when Keamy and his team attacked the
Barracks looking for Ben.

> And yes as you point out niether Jack or Locke survived, but Jack kill Locke
> and chose not to replace Jacob and live, giving it to Hugo.

Jack did replace Jacob, but was fatally wounded in his fight with MiB.
He managed to pass the torch to Hugo before he died.

Brandon

[Darren Delgado]

But neither one of them was right, really. Jack was wrong for wanting
to leave the Island (if he left, and didn't kill Un-Locke, the world
blows up). But, the reasons Locke thought he needed to stay on the
Island all turned out to be bogus bullshit, fed to him by Un-locke.

Which is one of the great cheats and disappointments of the final
season: all the great Locke moments, the mystery and the wonder in his
whole character arc, were reduced to rubble by revealing that he was
indeed just a gullible sucker and that he actually died pathetically
in a hotel room, just like Jack always said. Jack's character
assassination against Locke is proved 100% right, but then Jack
abruptly shifts from "I don't care about anything anymore" to "Locke's
biggest apostle" with no warning; shitty writing IMO.

Also: Why would MIB even want to convince Locke to stay on the
Island? Who knows. MIB should have been happy to let them leave,
since they were the only way he could actually be killed. But he goes
through this Rube Goldberg scenario in order to try to trick them and
keep them there on the Island, THEN convinces Locke to go and try to
BRING THEM BACK -- so he could kill them. Yeah, makes perfect sense,
bring them back and put yourself in jeopardy of suffering your one
true weakness, instead of just being rid of them completely and
thwarting Jacob's plan of rounding them up in the first place.

The legacy of Lost is five words: Great show, stupid fucking ending.

[Bill Taylor]

On Mar 22, 10:40 pm, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> shitty writing IMO.

NOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo!! Really??

> The legacy of Lost is five words: Great show, stupid fucking ending.

Every Ponzi scheme ends disastrously.

It's hard to see where they started going wrong.
Someone noted that we, the audience, should have KNOWN
it was gonna go badly wrong the moment Roman Mama
said "Every answer only leads to another question."
In other words, "Don't ask!"

That was a clear-cut signal that they didn't know WHAT
they were doing. About 5 episodes from the end.

But I think they were doomed well before that - possibly
the moment when they had the bright idea (dramatically),
but disaster-inducing idea (narratively) of ending a series
with an unknown coffin. As it turned out, they just
couldn't recover from that.

But IMHO, the franchise went wrong in the space
between series one and two. Ending the first series
with the tunnel blown up and a ladder going nowhere
was a master stroke, dramatically! But, realizing they
had a great franchise on their hands, and, having a great
choice of ways to go, they went badly off-beam by
introducing the nutty storyline of Dharma. They made
strong attempts to meld this into what went before,
but just couldn't do it. And so the Ponzi scheme started,
and slowly built up borrowing credibility from the future,
based on past investments, until it all started crumbling down.

Along the way there were some great investment spin-offs -
Desmond, Daniel's experiments, Widmore, the mercenaries,
the Hume romance, Hurley's romance, the hut, the Russian,
Naomi, Abadon, Walt, the smugglers, Rousseau, time travel...
all were introduced with flair, then eventually paid off with
bad grace and bad writing.

Has there ever been such a waste of such potential before?

As I recall, when it ended, there were a few people here
who said "No, it was a great ending!", even some (I think)
who said it made them weep with involvement and
identification, catharsis and satisfaction.

Are there any such people still around?

Maybe we could hear from you again?

-- Betrayed Bill

[Darren Delgado]

On Mar 25, 1:27 am, Bill Taylor <wfc.tay...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 22, 10:40 pm, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> But IMHO, the franchise went wrong in the space
> between series one and two.  Ending the first series
> with the tunnel blown up and a ladder going nowhere
> was a master stroke, dramatically!  But, realizing they
> had a great franchise on their hands, and, having a great
> choice of ways to go, they went badly off-beam by
> introducing the nutty storyline of Dharma. They made
> strong attempts to meld this into what went before,
> but just couldn't do it.  And so the Ponzi scheme started,
> and slowly built up borrowing credibility from the future,
> based on past investments, until it all started crumbling down.

I agree this was the point when they started throwing shit at the wall
and seeing what stuck. However, I think the point of no return was
much, much later. They still could have resolved the labyrinthine,
complicated, seemingly contradictory plot by the end of Season 5. In
fact, after the shot of the Two Unlikable Asshole Brothers on the
beach, there were a ton of great potential endings written by fans all
over the Internet. Almost all of them better that the mess shat out
by the actual producers.

Also, to put another thumbtack on the timeline that is Lost, I think
another big red flag was the complete paradigm shift from Season 4 to
Season 5. Here's the major thematic threads *introduced in* Season 4:

- Ben and Widmore are locked in a mortal struggle for the Island but
can't harm each other.
- The Island is sentient and won't let you kill yourself or let you
die until it's done with you -- even if you live off the Island.
- The Island needs to "move" to be hidden from Widmore.

Compare this to things introduced in Seasons 5 and 6 that are
completely contradictory:

- Ben doesn't really know fuck-all what's going on any more than any
of the other characters. His feud with Widmore and their "rules" and
all that drama is almost non-existent by the end.
- All the "destiny" stuff about the Island was BS. It's just an
island, with weird and volatile electromagnetic properties.
Everything Locke thought "The Island" was telling him was a long con
by MIB. All the incidents where people wanted to kill themselves
(like Michael) where we thought the Island was intervening -- just
coincidences, I guess. (By extension, DHARMA, cast in the role of
bumbling idiot scientists who truly didn't understand the Island,
turned out to actually be right.)
- The Island "moves" all the time on its own, so much that you need
ridiculously complicated scientific equipment to even have a prayer of
finding it (although this was contradicted again later when Widmore,
needed by the writers at the end of Season 6, conveniently just rolls
up in a submarine).

You couldn't write a Season 5 and 6 that contradicted Seasons 3 and 4
any more if you sat down and methodically tried to do it.

...

> As I recall, when it ended, there were a few people here
> who said "No, it was a great ending!", even some (I think)
> who said it made them weep with involvement and
> identification, catharsis and satisfaction.
>
> Are there any such people still around?
>
> Maybe we could hear from you again?

Those people are probably really absorbed in the Twilight Saga right
now.

[Bill Taylor]

On Mar 25, 8:06 pm, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 25, 1:27 am, Bill Taylor <wfc.tay...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 22, 10:40 pm, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But IMHO, the franchise went wrong in the space
> > between series one and two.  Ending the first series
> > with the tunnel blown up and a ladder going nowhere
> > was a master stroke, dramatically!  But, realizing they
> > had a great franchise on their hands, and, having a great
> > choice of ways to go, they went badly off-beam by
> > introducing the nutty storyline of Dharma. They made
> > strong attempts to meld this into what went before,
> > but just couldn't do it.  And so the Ponzi scheme started,
> > and slowly built up borrowing credibility from the future,
> > based on past investments, until it all started crumbling down.
>
> I agree this was the point when they started throwing shit at the wall
> and seeing what stuck.

Thanks for your support. (I shall wear it always. ;-) )

>  They still could have resolved the labyrinthine,
> complicated, seemingly contradictory plot by the end of Season 5.  In
> fact, after the shot of the Two Unlikable Asshole Brothers on the
> beach, there were a ton of great potential endings written by fans all
> over the Internet.

How, in your opinion, could it best have been resolved?
Is it possible to summarize in a paragraph or two?

-- Wondering Willy

[number6]

On Mar 26, 3:18 am, Bill Taylor <wfc.tay...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> >  They still could have resolved the labyrinthine,
> > complicated, seemingly contradictory plot by the end of Season 5.  In
> > fact, after the shot of the Two Unlikable Asshole Brothers on the
> > beach, there were a ton of great potential endings written by fans all
> > over the Internet.
>
> How, in your opinion, could it best have been resolved?
> Is it possible to summarize in a paragraph or two?

IMO quite easily ... Keep John Locke alive ... or resurrect him as
John Locke ... Have the Man of Science- Man of Faith battle on two
levels ... one with the two unlikeable asshole brothers ... and the
other with Locke/Shephard ... Throw in a final Linus/Widmore
confrontation ...
With all this going on ... connect Dharma to it ... connect why Walt
is special to it ... connect all the other Island mysteries ...
Then make it work out somehow ... Jack saves the Earth ... Locke saves
the Island ... the Unlikeable asshole brothers are destroyed ... and
their destruction allows the Jack/Locke endings to occur ...

[Darren Delgado]

I think the single most important thing in your post was keeping Locke
alive. The revelation in Season 6 that he was just a gullible sucker
who was really murdered in a dingy hotel room, the end, was probably
the single most disappointing things about the shitty end of Lost.

Through the first half of Season 6, even though it was fairly obvious
things were going down the toilet, I still held out hope that Locke
would be validated somehow eventually. But, nope.

[Darren Delgado]

Go to 4815162342 and read some of the fan fiction written after Season
5. Or even in this group. Hell, I like the "everyone is a star"
theory better than what happened on the actual show. Even Rob's
ridiculous crap about doubles would have been more satisfying, just
for the sheer train wreck aspect.

But to answer your question directly, specifics don't matter. Any
ending that took care with the continuity of the plot and made sense,
and didn't come across as having been scribbled on the back of a
napkin, would have been fine with me. The reason Lost has become a
dusty old pop culture chestnut about unsatisfying payoffs, is because
they didn't put in the minimal effort to have it make sense in the
three-year window they were given to close the show.

[number6]

On Mar 26, 1:33 pm, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> I think the single most important thing in your post was keeping Locke
> alive.  The revelation in Season 6 that he was just a gullible sucker
> who was really murdered in a dingy hotel room, the end, was probably
> the single most disappointing things about the shitty end of Lost.
>
> Through the first half of Season 6, even though it was fairly obvious
> things were going down the toilet, I still held out hope that Locke

> would be validated somehow eventually.  But, nope.-

During their rambling through the jungle there was a scene where MIB
as Locke told Sun that he was every bit the John Locke that she
knew ... That gave me false hope ... and I feel another middle finger
from the writers ...

[doc...@gmail.com]

On Monday, March 26, 2012 1:41:53 PM UTC-4, Darren Delgado wrote:

> Even Rob's
> ridiculous crap about doubles would have been more satisfying, just
> for the sheer train wreck aspect.

Heh, heh..."train wreck"...heh. Chose that phrase on purpose?

[clau...@webtv.net]

I can't believe you guys are having the exact same argument that
you had last year and maybe the year before. You guys were having these
same arguments throughout the whole show as you are now long after the
show has ended.
I shouldn't be surprised though. If you go in a Buffy the Vampire
Slayer group, they are still having the same arguments over and over too
that they had during that show's run.
I guess some people just like to argue or are desperate to be right
about something.....anything. I've been in non tv show specific groups
where the same thing happens. They don't even have anything to discuss
or argue about so they drag up ancient history where one person said
something to another person 5 years ago and just throw insults. Flame
wars?....Uh,whatever. Lame wars. My gay friend thought a flamer was just
a flamboyant queen and couldn't understand what they were arguing about.
He thought they were all just PMSing, lol
Oops, now I might get flamed. Oh well....have at it.

[Bill Taylor]

On Mar 27, 6:41 am, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> But to answer your question directly, specifics don't matter.

Well, yes, I think they do.

The old saying "the devil is in the details" really applies here;
and there were a devil of a lot of details, and *anyone* would
have had a devil of a time cohering them all, at the end of ssn 5.

>  Any ending that took care with the continuity of the plot and made sense,

But that's just the point; by the end of season 5 I doubt there was
ANY way to maintain continuity and sense. Too much incoherent
stuff had already appeared, to make it remotely possible to
glue it all together, even with the most lax s-f principles!

That was really the point of my initial question.

-- Baffled Bill

[Bill Taylor]

Goodbye Claudi. Have a nice life.

[Darren Delgado]

On Mar 26, 11:39 pm, claudi...@webtv.net wrote:
>      I can't believe you guys are having the exact same argument that
> you had last year and maybe the year before.  You guys were having these
> same arguments throughout the whole show as you are now long after the
> show has ended.

I can't believe you are still arguing over what other people argue
about.

Although, did you notice something? You're really the only one
arguing. Everyone else is having a pretty friendly, polite
discussion, because we are all in agreement that the end of Lost
sucked hairy monkey balls.

>     I guess some people just like to argue or are desperate to be right
> about something.....anything.

Who's arguing? Besides you?

I've been in non tv show specific groups
> where the same thing happens. They don't even have anything to discuss
> or argue about so they drag up ancient history where one person said
> something to another person 5 years ago and just throw insults.

Who's flaming? Besides you?

[Darren Delgado]

On Mar 27, 8:11 am, Bill Taylor <wfc.tay...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 27, 6:41 am, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But to answer your question directly, specifics don't matter.
>
> Well, yes, I think they do.

Except that you took my sentence and snipped out any context, and made
it into something completely different.

Of course the details matter, but specifics didn't matter to the point
I was making. Which was, I didn't have any personal parameters for
how Lost ended; it could have been purely magic, hard SF, religious,
or any other theme they wanted, as long as it all made sense.

> The old saying "the devil is in the details" really applies here;
> and there were a devil of a lot of details, and *anyone* would
> have had a devil of a time cohering them all, at the end of ssn 5.

I disagree, I think you can untangle any mess with 20+ episodes worth
of TV time. They just didn't care to do it or think that it was
something important that needed doing.

[Bill Taylor]

On Mar 30, 8:34 am, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Of course the details matter, but specifics didn't matter to the point
> I was making.  Which was, I didn't have any personal parameters for
> how Lost ended; it could have been purely magic, hard SF, religious,
> or any other theme they wanted, as long as it all made sense.
>
> > The old saying "the devil is in the details" really applies here;
> > and there were a devil of a lot of details, and *anyone* would
> > have had a devil of a time cohering them all, at the end of ssn 5.
>
> I disagree, I think you can untangle any mess with 20+ episodes worth
> of TV time.  They just didn't care to do it or think that it was
> something important that needed doing.

I bow to your superior understanding.

-- Withdrawing William