Lost season 3 finale (spoilers)

[Mister Andersen]

Watching 4+ years of Alias I've gotten thoroughly sick of JJ Abrams' criminal overuse of the flash-forward framing narrative. You know what I mean - he'll start in media res, stick Sydney in a cliffie then go back to however many hours or days ago when the story actually starts leaving the cliffie unresolved until the final act as a means of artificially generating tension the script otherwise lacks.

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While not JJ, here is a particularly egregious offender, where we get a flash-forward to 3 years and the dedication of the Bartlett Library, which reveals CJ & Danny together, and Toby a free man on good terms with Jed. This single scene effectively destroyed all the tension of the plot lines involving CJ's love life and Toby's treason. Who ever approved that script should have been shot.

And now with his flash-forward he's given Jack & Kate complete script immunity while at the same time completely gutted the significance of Charlie's death. Up until this point, Lost has been significantly different from virtually all other shows in that any character was fair game and their death could come at any moment. That sort of genuine dramatic tension is gold, and now he's just tossed it, at keast for me by granting immunity to the two characters I hate the most.

[Wolverine]

This is what you get for following a show that advances the plot 90 days over the course of three seasons.

[ThunderMonkey]

I liked the finale... it wasn't as good as the Locke and Bug-eye guy centric episodes, but it actually has me looking forward to next season.

I never watched Alias, so I wasn't too familiar with the Flashforward technique used by Abrams.

I didn't think Charlie's death was pointless. I like the fact that it looked as if he was going to live, but then he didn't.

With a smaller season and a definite end to the series... I think the next few seasons are going to be fun to watch.

[Crafty_Pat]

To be fair, J.J. had nothing to do with this year's Lost finale - it was all due to the showrunners, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. They're clearly in charge. J.J. directed and co-wrote the pilot and attaches his name for marketing purposes, but it's not his baby.

That said, the format was criminally over-utilized on Alias. It's not the reason I stopped watching - that would be turning the best plotline they had, Rambaldi- into a vehicle for Night of the Living Alias - but it contributed. Yet it's not the device's fault. Any storytelling contrivance can get tiring if it's overused, including the flashbacks in Lost.

The producers (Lindelof and Cuse, who have been the faces for the show since the beginning) were at Comic-Con and they were pretty open about the finale. They knew that the flashbacks would get stale after a while and would need to be retired for the sake of the show. They chose flash-forwards as the replacement because

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a lot of the action in the last couple/few seasons takes place after they get off the island.

Personally, I liked the finale, and still do weeks later, which is a sign that my initial reaction wasn't merely the reaction of a starving man thrown a piece of raw meat. I really hated the middle of Season 3 and wish the season were about 2/3 its size so they could focus on the good stuff. Fortunately, that appears to be exactly what will happen over the next three years (16 episodes per year, starting in January each year and running uninterrupted each time). Bully for them, I say! It's good to see networks realizing what's required to make a serialized show work and stepping up to the challenge.

As for Charlie's death... eh. The biggest problem I have with it is that we don't get to see more of him with Claire and that's debatable since they can do a lot with her on her own as a facet of that doomed relationship (Greatest Hits, anyone?). Even if the death was pointless - and I'm not in the camp that believes it was; he did, after all, complete his mission, even if it's not something the castaways may want in the long run - it was still well handled.

I'm looking forward, pardon the pun, to future seasons. So far, I'm not sniffing anything even remotely like the stink coming off Alias in its final three seasons. In fact, much the opposite.

EDIT: Watch my blog over the next day or two for a mega Comic-Con post - complete with pictures, and with more about Lost!

[Mister Andersen]

While Charlie wasn't my favourite character, his death was avoidable, and quite obviously a self-fulfilled prophecy. He had more than enough time to make it through the door and close it from the outside.

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The idea that they'll be moving the story off the island is a fairly interesting one, and which makes the flash-forward less irritating in hind sight than it was in initial application.

[Crafty_Pat]

I added a spoiler flag to your post, A. I don't want to ruin anything for folks who don't want to know.

[glimmerrat]

So can someone PM me and explain what in hell the big smokey cloud thingie was with the chains and the clanking? And did the guy with the tumour on his spine die?

I watched season one then got PO'd with it, and now i really can't motivate myself to buy two full seasons and watch them...

[Crafty_Pat]

So can someone PM me and explain what in hell the big smokey cloud thingie was with the chains and the clanking?

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They haven't said definitively yet, but it's a safe bet that it's a security system. Built by who? That's the question.

And did the guy with the tumour on his spine die?

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No, Ben's still around.

[Mister Andersen]

i really can't motivate myself to buy two full seasons and watch them...

Wikipedia is your friend.

[Crafty_Pat]

EDIT: Watch my blog over the next day or two for a mega Comic-Con post - complete with pictures, and with more about Lost!

So it wasn't quite a day, but here it is! Enjoy!