All Good Things... Episode 06: Red Dwarf

[Atticus]

Sopranos proving to be an offer we can refuse as we move on to:

I already shared my Sopranos views. Initially I thought the recording had been clipped. Then I thought

->Open Spoiler<-

Tony is living the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, this is the life he chose

... and watching it again a couple of years later I thought

->Open Spoiler<-

Tony was murdered. 100%

The sequence of events in that last 10 mins is brilliant. The way it closed was hinted at many eps earlier too. Very bold and classy finale ... one the show deserved.

[charlesr]

I'm on ep 5 of Twin Peaks now. It leaps between being an intriguing chore and some of the best things I've ever seen. Certainly would not recommend it to anyone that didn't like the original 😂

So, Fringe. It was going to be difficult to wrap everything up in one episode, but somehow they achieved it. Fantastic TV

[Dogg Thang]

I'm on ep 5 of Twin Peaks now. It leaps between being an intriguing chore and some of the best things I've ever seen. Certainly would not recommend it to anyone that didn't like the original ��

So, Fringe. It was going to be difficult to wrap everything up in one episode, but somehow they achieved it. Fantastic TV

Ha! Yep, that series of Twin Peaks is like that. There is one episode you haven’t reached yet and I honestly think it’s the best TV I’ve ever watched even though I had zero idea what was going on in the first watch. And then other parts of other episodes I just thought were so painfully dull or self-indulgent to the point of annoyance. But it’s certainly interesting and ultimately rewarding.

[Neon Ignition]

Lost
It only makes sense to tackle one of the most contentious endings to a TV show, the culmination of multiple storylines that had reached a point where everything could no longer tie perfectly and also where the shows design as a mystery box meant that fans had speculated every possible outcome to the nth degree ensuring that pleasing many would be a mountainous task. Lost's answer was to give multiple outcomes, several of the speculated outcomes being integrated to some extent whilst also emphasising a focus on the characters over the island as had become more common in its latter seasons.

Seventeen years since its debut, how much did you take to the ending of the show or did it leave you feeling... Lost?

[charlesr]

Lost was garbage that followed its namesake shortly after the first season ended. I watched it through to the end, constantly hoping for some reward / explanation and was horribly disappointed. It was basically the writers saying "Yeah, we winged almost all of that and couldn't even be arsed trying to wrap it up, so here's massive FU".

[MartyG]

Lost made lots of promises and kept none of them - the series was like a desert air disaster survivor, trying to find its way out with a broken compass and a single bottle of water, leading to mindless wandering in all directions, stretching out the limited amount of water you have to the bitter end.

I did quite like the episode "Exposé" with the diamonds and spiders with paralyzing venom though.

[wakka]

I was in school when Lost was first on, and it was proper event TV. Everyone watching it and talking about it the next day etc. I was absolutely gripped by it at first, but gradually lost interest, I think towards the end of the second or perhaps into the third series. It meandered and had huge amounts of padding. And the mysteries just kept on building up with no resolution in sight.

I have since read up on how it ends out of curiosity. To be honest I couldn't make head nor tail of it. Classic Abrams really. Good at starting stuff, not at finishing stuff.

I suspect if I watched it again now I wouldn't rate it at all. Teenage me also loved The OC, so, ya know...

[Dogg Thang]

It became very clear to me that the show was going nowhere early on in the second season and I abandoned it. A real shame as the pilot was incredible.

[Dogg Thang]

Sorry, just taking this back to Battlestar Galactica, I was reading the initial series bible and this jumped out at me: "We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mindcontrol, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other cliches of the genre."

Oh, Battlestar, what happened?

Edit: I've also just opened up the Lost series document and it's absolute nonsense. Like, the document itself is all over the place.

[QualityChimp]

Lost has had some of the best and worst television I've ever watched, but you can't take away those highs.
Talking about it with my friends was amazing. We had one mate who'd stay up late, torrent it and watch it straight away!

Personally, I loved some of the sci-fi elements like the hatch and the time wheel.
Some great moments. The Others, tail section, not Penny's boat, argh so many!

I think someone mentioned a distilled list of episodes to watch to make it a more streamlined experience.

Maybe it was the writer's strike, but it felt like it was really popular, so the execs made them pad it out.
Now I'd be more inclined to watch a single, complete series (Godless), or maybe 2 or 3 (Life on Mars), rather than stretch out a story with lots of pointless flashback episodes.

I hope they wind up Stranger Things with one more season, not because I dislike it, but I fear the Lost Effect will kick in.

[Dogg Thang]

I can't know if Stranger Things will go down the toilet but I can be pretty certain it won't be due to similar lows that Lost had. Stranger Things has had pretty good A to B to C storytelling. Even when I enjoyed Lost, it didn't have that. The hatch is actually a great example because I remember that shot at the end of the episode and then waiting for the next episode only to find that whoever saw the hatch didn't mention it anyone. For no reason. I was waiting for the consequences attached to that hatch and didn't get them. So it just dragged out the story. That reached comic proportions at the start of season 2 as the first few episodes covered the same timeline, not moving the story on in any way. The elements were great, like the hatch reveal. I maintain that the actual storytelling was poor. That's not to say it's a bad show - if you're gripped by each new element, it's going to work for you as a show.

[Neon Ignition]

Lost can be dissected several ways. The first was that it was both aided and hindered by its weekly network delivery. It added to suspense but also gave viewers so much time to stew that it really added to the sense that things went on too long. I recall the cages sequences in Season 3 went on for an ice age but in reality it was for about 4-5 episodes, trouble is that in live broadcast that's about a month of viewing. In many ways Lost would have benefitted from modern binge watch releases where entire seasons are dropped in a day.

It's also Season 3 where it's first mentioned in slight passing that Ben isn't the one in charge on the island and it's interesting that that is explained albeit several seasons later. My personal affection for the show is that part of the direction of the later three seasons was to increase the focus on the characters and their resolutions and in most cases the show nails the landing on them often in heart wrenching ways. Whilst the mystery box explanations aren't complete all of the big questions get answered, it's mostly a list of smaller details that go without reasoning later on so whilst there are issues with its ending it delivers on most of what it needs to to pull it back even if sadly it was after a significant number of the audience was gone.

It'd be interested to see a kind of limited event sequel series be made that used the unresolved plot points.

[QualityChimp]

It was a while ago, so my memory is hazy but Locke got the use of his legs back and knew the island was special and thought he was too. Jack just thought it was an island he had to escape from. Locke kept the hatch secret so that he could open it, then show the rest of the survivors what he had found and why the island is special.

As for opening the hatch, I thought it was brilliantly done.
The whole first episode of the second season made you think it was set in the past, then you hear the explosion and you realise it's actually from the perspective of the person inside the hatch.

[Dogg Thang]

It was a while ago, so my memory is hazy but Locke got the use of his legs back and knew the island was special and thought he was too. Jack just thought it was an island he had to escape from. Locke kept the hatch secret so that he could open it, then show the rest of the survivors what he had found and why the island is special.

I didn't buy it. At the time, it was one of many things that happened to characters that they conveniently didn't mention to any other character and I just didn't buy it. And the hatch was probably the first clear instance that struck me where they did not pay off the end of an episode and, once I spotted that, I kept seeing it happen so my patience started to wear thin bit by bit after that.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, it was far from perfect.
For me, it was the constant picking up of great ideas, then just dropping them.
Sharks with the logo on, polar bears, time travel wheels, mysterious blue light maps and so on.
Really cool ideas that just ended up getting resolved really quickly with no fanfare or just dropped.

That last season was ridiculous though, using ideas that the writers had dismissed in the first season.
I was really emotional at the end of the 10 year journey, but 2 minutes later, like the people watching at the end of the Truman Show, I was like "what else is on?"

Can't think of a TV show since that has captured that "watercooler" moment since, though.