Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

General discussion on Twin Peaks not related to the series, film, books, music, photos, or collectors merchandise.

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axemblue4
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by axemblue4 »

I've actually created an account here solely to comment on this, but respectfully, I think you're all repugnant-ly off-base in your grasp of Lost. I've actually lurked on this forum before and assumed posters here would appreciate Lost's approach to the mythology, as it is similar to Twin Peaks'. I myself have even used Twin Peaks to defend the validity of Lost's approach. A lot of you take the time to analyze the deeper metaphors of Twin Peaks' mysteries and understand its underlying cohesive tissue where most casual audiences would just write it off as "weird, random nonsense". Some of you have even defended Fire Walk With Me as misunderstood on this basis.

I think you've all viewed Lost through, if I may say so, the shallow popular culture filter of perception, the same brand that turns some audiences off of Twin Peaks' mythology. I think you all miss the deeper meaning, underlying logic and coherence, and aesthetic symmetry of Lost's story (including its final season and ending). And I'm not solely speaking to the character aspect, but to the mythology and plot aspects as well.

By the way, I don't mean to come off as hostile in this post (if it is the case that I come off that way). I've put a lot of thought and analysis towards Lost, and I feel the need to stand up for the series. Normally I come to expect the sort of comments I've seen in this thread from more casual TV viewers, so I was surprised to see World of Blue's more analytic Twin Peaks viewers using the same sort of arguments and complaints that I find tired and cliché. I don't mean to make a personal attack, but I must stand up for Lost.

Now, I'll admit that at the moment, I don't have the time to specifically address every point that's been raised in this thread and the blog post, but I just wanted to get this post out here for the time being. The only point I will briefly acknowledge for now is that someone here said (paraphrasing) "the fans of Lost wanted the mysteries to lead into an ah-ha moment at the end of the series". That is what the casual audience wanted. It's certainly not what I nor many other fans wanted, and I think if you look to Lost's actual fanbase, you'll find that many of them understood and loved how the story wrapped up.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by TwinPeaksFanatic »

I can assure you that I was not a casual viewer of Lost. I was a die hard fan who took the ride whole heartedly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Lost did need that "ah ha" moment because of how layered its mythology was. The problem was Lost, lost its way.

There were some good moments in the final season, but it got convoluted in a way that disconnected it from the previous seasons. For five seasons it felt like Lost was building on something, but the final season wasted a lot of time on the sideways world, which turned out to not really be that relevant at all. Of course the characters were important, but the island was a character too and we never learned what made it such a special place.

Choosing not to answer that question was a cop out. I feel like I know more about the Black Lodge than the island and Twin Peaks only had a pilot & 29 episodes. I love the abstract aesthics of both Twin Peaks & Lost, but at least the bad plots in Twin Peaks didn't effect the overall mythology of the show. Lost is still one of my favorite shows of all time regardless of how I feel about season 6.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by N. Needleman »

I understand how you feel and I respect it. As I said, I may be in the minority - the larger public seems to adore the show and venerate it. I just feel how I feel. I gave it a more than fair shake, but it never coalesced for me.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by John Justice Wheeler »

I loved Lost while it was on and watched it from the beginning but I have to admit that I was deeply disappointed by the ending and it was obviously a show that needed to not disappoint on that level. Actually I was quite moved by the last episode and found it enormously satisfying in that respect but frankly that emotional pay off was just not enough for me. And it's not so much that the larger (or smaller) mysteries were not resolved (as many overly critical critics may attest) but rather that the resolutions provided just weren't adequate; they didn't mean enough; they weren't good enough. But I guess I was ultimately looking for something else from the show, I was looking for it to be something else. For me the best series of all time is still McGoohan's The Prisoner and it had what I would consider the perfect, ideal final episode for a show that pivoted on surreal mysteries. The big questions were all acknowledged and addressed, just not necessarily in the straightforward way many may have hoped. But the kind of answers we got respected the depths of the questions, even as they challenged our underlying assumptions about them. It re-oriented us toward the kind of questions these were. Lost, by contrast, revealed its underlying ideas to be of the prosaic and banal variety, at least if we're meant to regard the ultimate addressing of the various mysteries to be adequate to those mysteries and not sub-standard.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by axemblue4 »

The show did not and should not have had an "ah ha" moment because it already answered a lot of its mysteries individually, sometimes with their own individual "ah has". Like Twin Peaks, many mysteries were ends to resolve in themselves, but also helped to expand our understanding of the overarching mythology. The layers of the mythology were like branches on a tree. Many fans were not lost in their way of following the show because they understood the mythology and the direction it was taking.

If you are a core fan of Lost, then you should not still be confused as to what the Island is, as it was explained in the show. Across the Sea explained why it was such a special place when Mother told us that the heart of the Island was a light which was "life, death, and rebirth" and that "a little bit of this very same light is inside each man" and "if it goes out here, it goes out everywhere". The Island's light is what made it such a miraculous and paranormal place, and the fact that it was essential to sustaining all of humanity is what made it so important.

If you need a sci-fi interpretation, the show heavily alluded to one. In S.O.S., we saw flashbacks of Rose going to see a faith healer to heal her cancer. The faith healer told her that they were above a spot of great energy, one of many spots all over the world. He said, "perhaps it is geological, magnetic" and that when possible, he was able to harness the energy and give it to others. However, he was unable to do it for Rose, and told her "this is not the right place for you".

That same episode later concludes revealing to us that Rose's cancer was healed, which she told Bernard was because of the Island. And she had come to this conclusion because she knows Locke was similarly healed - this scene was interjected with a flashback of her seeing Locke in a wheelchair at the airport, showing us that she knew Locke was also healed by the Island. So this episode effectively told us why the Island healed Locke, why it healed Rose, and why it has medical effects on life in general. This concept is derived from the pseudoscience of magnetic therapy.

References to the electromagnetism of the Island continued repeatedly throughout the rest of the show, such as the ending of Live Together, Die Alone showing us that Penny was able to track the magnetic anomaly of Desmond igniting the Swan's pocket of electromagnetism. The show has been strongly suggesting and sometimes directly telling us that the Island is simply a naturally-existing, geologically unique, massive pocket of electromagnetism since Season 2. (The writers also themselves directly confirmed this in a podcast after the Season 2 finale, not that this was even necessary)

In There's No Place Like Home, we are told of another miniature pocket on the Island which contains negatively-charged exotic matter, as addressed in the Orchid Orientation film. The film suggests that the electromagnetic properties of the Island give rise to the exotic matter and a Casimir effect on the Island. And as such, this is why the Island travels through spacetime, and why harnessing this energy caused time jumps in early Season 5. In 316, Eloise Hawking also stated that there were multiple interconnected pockets of electromagnetism all over the world, and further referred to the Island as one of these pockets. Daniel Faraday also suggested in The Constant that electromagnetism or radiation is capable of causing Desmond's consciousness to travel through time.

The first DHARMA Orientation film we ever saw, the one for the Swan in the Orientation episode, also mentioned parapsychology as one of DHARMA's fields of interest. Although we admittedly never saw DHARMA itself experimenting with this, it nonetheless gives a pseudoscientific acknowledgement to the paranormal activity on the Island. Paranormal activity is a topic of parapsychology. The notion of a link between disembodied consciousness and electromagnetic fields is also a pseudoscientific concept used by real life ghost hunters.

So if you want a more sci-fi interpretation of the Island's light rather than the more supernatural presentation of Across the Sea, then there it all is. The light is electromagnetism. We saw this pretty clearly in The End when Desmond enters into the pool of it. It was mentioned more than once during Season 6 that his resistance to electromagnetism was what made him crucial to the conflict of Season 6.

The implications of Across the Sea's revelation that the light exists in all men and is sustained at the Source at the heart of the Island suggests that the Island's electromagnetism is sustaining all of human consciousness, and this is further supported by statements over the course of the season from other characters suggesting that the Man in Black's plot and the Island's destruction will result in the end of mankind.

The connection between man's soul or consciousness and the Island's light (which Mother had metaphorically described as "death" and "rebirth" in addition to "life") obviously implies a connection to the flash-sideways world. We saw that Desmond's consciousness was able to enter into the flash-sideways world after being blasted by electromagnetism in Happily Ever After, and that Juliet's consciousness also started to cross between the two worlds in her dying moments in LA X.

At the end of the show, we're told that the flash-sideways world is a place they all made together. The idea here being that their consciousnesses or souls are all interacting during death to subconsciously create this sort of illusory or dream-like alternate Los Angeles.

The scene of the characters moving on in the church also obviously has a couple of connotations to the Island. Although the choice of the church and the light is obviously spiritual in nature due to said things' association with religious concepts, this scene can of course have multiple meanings at once. This church is the flash-sideways world's iteration of the real church above the Lamp Post Station that was built over an electromagnetic pocket. The light that the characters move on through can also obviously have implications for the Island's light. From everything we know in the show, including what we know about how the Island's light works, then it's fair to say that the Island light and church light can be interpreted as one and the same. The light sustains the disembodied consciousnesses of the characters and the illusory Los Angeles world they've created. As they let go and move on, the illusion begins to fade into the true form of the light. In a sense, it's as though the souls of the characters and the soul of the Island are all coming together in this scene. This is a possible but very fair interpretation implied by the logic, rules, and concepts from the show.

Also, light is a symbol of both faith and science. Light is often-used imagery in spirituality and religion (such as in the opening verses in the Bible, "God said let there be light, and there was light") and it's a symbol of science and technology (think of the lightbulb). Also, light itself is electromagnetic radiation.

I don't think the Island is unanswered at all. It's certainly a lot more concretely explained than a lot of the stuff in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Lost's story was building towards the story of Season 6. Over the course of the series, we were repeatedly shown conflicts and battles between characters over the nature of the Island. We had various factions that were after the Island's power in order to exploit it, such as DHARMA and Widmore. There is the faction of the Others which treated the Island's power with a religious devotion, seeking to live with it harmoniously in nature and defend it. We saw divides in the survivors as well obviously, such as between Jack and Locke. There is often a contrasting notion of the Island being a benevolent place (often represented through things like Locke's miraculous healing) and the Island being a malevolent place (often represented through both the appearance and behavior of the Monster). There is a theme going back as early as the pilot episode about the duality of light and dark. There is an implication, a belief firmly held by Locke, that there is a higher power at work on the Island that brought all of the survivors to it for some yet-to-be-revealed purpose. As stated in Exodus, "We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason, all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason."

All of this builds into the conflict between Jacob and the MIB. We are told in Ab Aeterno that Jacob has brought or permitted the entry of people to the Island over the course of history in a test of good and evil to prove mankind's redeemability, thus explaining the history of combative factions over the course of the series. Jacob also explains that he tries to stay as withdrawn as possible so as to not influence man's natural ability to distinguish right from wrong.

Jacob brought specifically the 815 survivors to the Island to replace him as its protector and defend it from its destruction by the Man in Black. In Lighthouse, Jacob also told Hurley that he let them discover their own purpose on the Island, alluding to why he never appeared to them upfront in the beginning.

Jacob believed in the importance of the Island for mankind's survival, so he wanted replacements to take over his role after his eventual death. He wanted to find people who were like himself - alone, flawed, and in need of the Island, as he stated in What They Died For. We saw his flaws characterized in Across the Sea. We also saw that Jacob was manipulated into taking the job of protector, hence why Jacob was motivated to let the characters find their purpose for themselves and have a free choice in taking the job or not. Also, The MIB wanted to escape the Island as he has been trapped and manipulated into staying on it against his will since birth, as also seen in Across the Sea.

We also see Jacob determined in his quest to prove the MIB wrong about mankind's nature as a personal quest, in response to how their experiences of Across the Sea shaped both men's views of mankind. They both discuss perceptions they see in the Roman people on the Island. We also see the conflict manifested through their own relationship. Jacob brutally beat the MIB and transformed him into the Monster in anger, giving further personal incentive to the MIB's cynical view of mankind as well as further personal incentive to Jacob's desire to prove mankind's redeemability.

So, the battle over the Island's light and the battle of the inherent nature of mankind intertwined and manifested over the course of the series and ultimately led up to the final conflict between Jacob and his candidates versus the Man in Black in the final season. This season is the culmination of everything built up in the first five seasons.

The two characters represent the duality of philosophical themes we saw over the series. Jacob represents faith (through his belief in the Island's significance), free will (through his insistence on giving characters a choice), and redemption (through his quest to prove mankind's redeemability). In contrast, the Man in Black represents science (through his skepticism of the Island and belief that it holds no higher meaning), fate (through his view that the characters were brought to the Island as pawns against their will), and destruction and corruption (his view of mankind's inherent corruptibility, his own destructive and corrupting nature).

These same themes clearly defined the major storylines of the first five seasons:

-Jack and Locke's rivalry revolved around science and faith, with Jack's skepticism of a higher meaning to the Island and Locke's faith in it. Locke's views often drove him to try to keep the survivors from escaping the Island, and using destructive methods to keep them there.

-Minor conflicts between the survivors often revolved around issues of personal redemption, corruption, destruction, etc. Too many examples to name, just look at any episode from the first two seasons. The issue of whether to kill the federal marshal, the conflict between Jin and Michael, Ana Lucia's foil to Jack, Sayid's struggle with whether or not to torture Sawyer, the conflict over the stash of guns, Hurley's struggle with his curse (fate), etc.

-Both the opening of the hatch and the pushing of the button were issues rooted in science and faith. The question of whether the Island was leading the characters into the hatch for a higher purpose. The question of whether the button fulfilled the higher purpose of preventing destruction or was just a psychological experiment.

-The conflict between the survivors and the Others dealt with peace and destruction, as well as science and faith through the Others' belief in staying on the Island to fulfill a higher purpose.

-The rivalry between Locke and Ben was rooted in which was destined to lead, whether to live life out in nature or through modern technologies, and whether Ben was corrupt in his power, Ben's destructive and morally corrupt methods, etc.

-The conflict between the survivors and the freighter was rooted in whether the freighter had destructive intentions towards them or not.

-The conflict between Ben and Widmore was rooted in the question of which of the two was morally corrupt and had destructive intentions. Widmore also wanted to exploit the miraculous power of the Island according to Ben, which has faith and science connotations.

-The conflict between the Others and DHARMA was rooted in multiple themes. The disagreement over protecting the Island versus exploiting it for scientific advancement is obviously a representation of science and faith. The two sides were also destructive in their conflict, with one side ultimately being completely destroyed.

-Desmond's struggle to save Charlie from the course-correction of time was rooted in fate versus free will.

-The characters' repeated attempts in Season 5 to change the past (killing Ben, blowing up the hydrogen bomb) were rooted in the struggle of fate and free will, peace and destruction, etc.

-The issue of the Oceanic Six going back to the Island was rooted in whether the characters were meant to stay by a higher power, whether they were fated to be pulled back, etc.

These were the major themes on which the first five seasons' storylines were founded and upon which the final season's storyline was founded.


Also, even if the flash-sideways world was not connected to the Island mythologically, to say that it's a waste of time and not relevant at all betrays a lack of understanding of the bigger picture of Lost. Regardless of what personally interested you, the fact of the matter is that the story is at its core is driven by the characters. Pick any episode from Season 1. By far and largely, these episodes revolve around the characters' relationships and conflicts within their own group. Episodes are revolved around the transformation and redemption of characters, contrasted between their flashbacks and their on-Island actions and relationships. This point is essentially continued through the rest of the series, even when the mythology becomes more involved and other storytelling devices are used. To suggest that a character-centric ending is irrelevant is absurd. Given the centrality of the layered character arcs since the first season, it is only fitting that the show concluded through similarly layered character arcs. The flash-sideways gives an epilogue for the characters.

It strongly mirrors Season 1 as a whole. In addition to giving a new, mysterious world to unravel akin to the Island, it also gives a new way of exploring who the characters are. The setting of post-flight Los Angeles is an obvious mirror to the pre-flight flashbacks of Season 1. The flash-sideways world is no more irrelevant than the flashbacks were. The world serves more of an opposite role to the flashbacks. Rather than establishing the core of who the characters are in the beginning from which they psychologically/spiritually evolve on the Island, it shows who they have psychologically/spiritually evolved into as a result of their experiences on the Island. The changes in their sideways counterparts' lives tend to reflect the changes they personally made on the Island. Hurley is a philanthropist as a result of years of his work on the Island as protector, Sawyer is a cop as a result of his years as head of DHARMA security, etc. The sideways world gives them a place to release their emotions pertinent to their deepest pains, which is largely made possible by the personal evolution, strengths, and wisdom they received on the Island and with one another.

The important themes of the characters lain over the series since Season 1 are directly dealt with via the flash-sideways world. There are moments in Tabula Rasa and ...In Translation when Jack and Locke state that the characters metaphorically died in the plane crash, and were reborn into a new life on the Island from their past life. They are given a blank slate from which they can redeem themselves and move on from the past. (This was also Jacob's purpose for bringing people to the Island, mind you). Also, as Jack stated in White Rabbit, the characters had to learn to "live together" or else they would "die alone". The characters frequently found their personal survival and redemption through their connections they made with one another.

The sideways mirrors this. They die and are "reborn" through new "lives" in the sideways world. They find the same people who they needed during life to learn to let go of their pasts. As such, reconnecting with them helps them to remember their lives on the Island and to let go of their lives, accepting their deaths which they move on into. Since they learned to live together, they essentially meet death together as well, rather than alone. The character arcs and deeper themes over the series are clearly building up to essentially what is portrayed through the flash-sideways and the ending.

Season 6 is very clearly built on everything that happened in the first 5 seasons, and to suggest that the "true" ending is the Season 5 finale is ridiculous. There's much more that can be said of course, but I shall leave it at this.

So what I've fleshed out in this post are facts from the show, even naming quotes, characters, and episodes from which they are derived. These are common knowledge things understood by the core fanbase. I take major issue with the notion that fans of the ending just love it purely on the basis of emotions. It is certainly emotionally moving, but there is an intellectual framework underneath it as well, connecting it to the series as a whole.

I think it's a lot like Twin Peaks in several ways. Twin Peaks also favors focusing on its characters' lives more so than unraveling the mythology. Twin Peaks also gradually gives answers to individual mysteries, rather than leaving them all to be tied up in some big "aha" moment at the end (no one is still asking how Laura Palmer was murdered!) Twin Peaks also has a lot of ambiguity to its answers, with a widely open door of possible interpretations (BOB is concretely established as a demonic spirit, but one could also alternatively interpret him as a hallucination of a crazed Leland, or a representation of "the evil that men do", etc.) Twin Peaks also has a lot of layers and components to its mythology, with all the supernatural figures and forces at work, and even a little time travel, and some uncertainty among the characters as to how real or imagined these forces all are.

I'm not here to convince anyone to like Lost. If you just don't like how it panned out, then you just don't and that's that. You are entitled to your opinion just as I am to mine. But what I take issue with is portraying statements in a factual manner which are factually incorrect, like "the Island is not answered", "Season 6's story has no build-up from the first five seasons", "the mythology is more important than the characters", and "Season 5 is the true ending", among other things. Again, it's completely your right to not personally like the show and what it was about. You don't have to like it at all. But if you make erroneous objective statements about what the show is about and what happened in the story, then I am going to tell you that you're mistaken and will explain how so if I must.
Last edited by axemblue4 on Fri Sep 25, 2015 5:52 am, edited 12 times in total.
axemblue4
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by axemblue4 »

N. Needleman wrote:I understand how you feel and I respect it. As I said, I may be in the minority - the larger public seems to adore the show and venerate it. I just feel how I feel. I gave it a more than fair shake, but it never coalesced for me.
That's interesting. My experience with the larger public with respect to the show has been mainly the opposite, a lot more negative. It seems to just be a butt of jokes, a subject of mockery, a symbol of absurd failure. Some fans who defend the ending such as myself are even insulted as being "stupid", being "blinded by emotions", being "sheep", "secretly hating it but in denial", etc. There is a lot of harsh negativity towards the series and its fans in my own experience.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by MasterMastermind »

Axemblue, I totally agree with your take. Also that handle is familiar, do you post on the "Lost (2004)" imdb board? I've written and talked about these things there many times and was just too lazy to go into detail again! At it's core Lost is quintessentially postmodern, a story about how society's philosophical, religious, and fictional/mythological constructs fail to explain the sui generis nature of existence. Nearly every choice the writers made stems from that core. A checklist of answers at the end wouldn't be in keeping with the series' intent, and it's to be applauded that they gave us as much as they did. Like I say, sometimes it was blunt (Hurley's "hay guys it's ok I know what the whispers are!" line), but usually it was brilliant (why the Swan station gave off radiation readings, etc).
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by axemblue4 »

Yeah, I tend get lazy myself with trying to defend the series. There are so many pervasive misconceptions about the story and the production floating around in popular culture. Most of the time, I don't even bother. But I guess seeing this on a Twin Peaks forum compelled me to say something. Coincidentally, a few days ago, I had been using Twin Peaks as a comparison to Lost to convey to someone the validity of Lost's approach to answering its questions.

I posted on the IMDb Lost Board a little bit years in the past, but it was under a different alias. But I do normally use the "axemblue4" alias on the majority of sites I go to. Most of my activity has been on IGN Boards.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by Ajax Rules »

I am honestly surprised that people can be fan of both Twin Peaks and Lost (although I only saw the first five episodes of the first season of Lost).

Although I think that Twin Peaks never fulfilled its huge potential and has serious flaws and many mediocre scenes, it is essentially a (top) quality show. Lost, however, is a Hollywood spectacle aimed at mass audiences, filled with cliches, bad acting and bad writing. It's obvious within five minutes of the pilot episode. I can see that some (younger) people might enjoy it as pure entertainment (and there is nothing wrong with mindless relaxing in front in the tv), but we should all agree that Lost is not a quality-show.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by TwinPeaksFanatic »

axemblue4 there is nothing erroneous about anything I wrote. If that is your opinion, that is fine and I do respect your take on Lost and honestly agree with a lot of it. However I think you misunderstood where I am coming from. 1st of all, if I didn't love Lost why would I take the time to write such a lengthy post about it? Being a fan of something doesn't mean you can never disagree with the plots, writing, acting, etc.

You wrote "If you are a core fan of Lost, then you should not still be confused as to what the Island is, as it was explained in the show. Across the Sea explained why it was such a special place when Mother told us that the heart of the Island was a light which was "life, death, and rebirth" and that "a little bit of this very same light is inside each man" and "if it goes out here, it goes out everywhere". The Island's light is what made it such a miraculous and paranormal place, and the fact that it was essential to sustaining all of humanity is what made it so important."

To me this explanation of the island is extremely weak. I fully understand what happened on Lost, but what I've been saying all along is the answers that were provided didn't do the show justice. What is the "light"? Life, death and rebirth doesn't explain much. The light in is every person, but what does that mean, exactly? I fully understand what the writer's were going for, but it still didn't satisfy. Believe me the last thing I wanted was for the writer's to say outright was that the island was purgatory, but at least that would have been a definitive answer. So after six seasons all we really knew about the island for sure was that it was a special place with light in it's core, the same light that's in everyone and it needs to be protected or everyone dies. But it's not purgatory, it's not god, it's not the center of universe, it's not in a different dimension or mount Olympus or any other definitive answer. It just is and you're arguing that I should accept that? Why? And why would you?

I do agree with a lot of the conclusions you noted about the characters, but in "the end" most of the satisfaction was emotional and not intellectual. I agree that there was thinking behind it, but for you to say it didn't get obtuse and convoluted is like saying Little Nicky was a good subplot in Twin Peaks. Humorous maybe, but good...no. Across the Sea, in my opinion, was the worst episode Lost ever aired and arguably the most cliche' of the series. They went extremely biblical and I didn't find that to be nearly as original as the material that aired in seasons 1-5.

You're portraying your opinions as facts, much more than I am. I wrote an opinion based blog post and stated that many times throughout, but I don't think I'm wrong at all. I tried to write with some humor and honestly I think I paid the series a lot of compliments. I took a lot of issue with the ending and season 6 yes, but that's not because I'm not a "real" fan or don't "understand" it. The reason I feel that way is because it wasn't mind blowing to me. It felt like much ado about nothing and it killed me that I did feel that way.

Despite that I do have those issues with the series, I still love Lost. I feel the same way about Twin Peaks, it has it's flaws but it's my favorite show of all time.

I truly respect your viewpoint and there is no need to feel defensive. Lost is one of the all time great shows and I think we can agree on that. If it wasn't, I doubt we'd bother to comment about it at all now.
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

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TwinPeaksFanatic wrote:To me this explanation of the island is extremely weak.
I want to highlight this quote specifically to make a point about how you've done something here that many don't when criticizing the show, which is actually accept Lost as it is, and I applaud you for that. No tv show is perfect, but I don't think I've ever seen another show where critics so often misstate what the show actually did or was even about like they do Lost. I've read a lot from people who invent criticisms out of whole cloth because they refuse to look at the show in any way other than how their expectations differed, or didn't like the way a certain thing turned out so they pretend there literally was no resolution whatsoever. Again, you haven't done this, it's just something your actual good-faith post called to mind. It's just weird to see people pretend things that literally happened in the show didn't happen so they can see their view as having more objective weight than "I just didn't like it," you know?
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Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by MasterMastermind »

MasterMastermind wrote:
TwinPeaksFanatic wrote:To me this explanation of the island is extremely weak.
I want to highlight this quote specifically to make a point about how you've done something here that many don't when criticizing the show, which is actually accept Lost as it is, and I applaud you for that. No tv show is perfect, but I don't think I've ever seen another show where critics so often misstate what the show actually did or was even about like they do Lost. I've read a lot from people who invent criticisms out of whole cloth because they refuse to look at the show in any way other than how their expectations differed, or didn't like the way a certain thing turned out so they pretend there literally was no resolution whatsoever. Again, you haven't done this, it's just something your good-faith argument called to mind. It's just weird to see people pretend things that literally happened in the show didn't happen so they can see their view as having more objective weight than "I just didn't like it," you know?
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Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2015 11:41 pm

Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by squealy »

In both shows, there is an uncomfortable tension between the structuring of the series as a tantalizing mystery (which implies a solution), and the desire on the part of the creators to deal in abstraction and surrealism and fantastical elements that can't be rationally explained. The audience is presented with a number of puzzle pieces and led along with the promise that they'll fit together, but at the end you have the Black Lodge and that cave in the middle of the island. And it leaves the writers open to accusations of bad faith from the audience.
axemblue4
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Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2015 6:45 pm

Re: Lost vs. Twin Peaks - A Comparison

Post by axemblue4 »

TwinPeaksFanatic, the majority of what I wrote, I corroborated with references that can be fact-checked. And I actually already answered a couple of the questions you just asked me. I'm not here to debate the quality of a specific episode like Across the Sea. I just explained the series' story. And I believe I corrected things that fall into the category of factual inaccuracies, not differing opinions. There's nothing more I can do here.

I've said my piece. I did my best. I'm leaving it at this.
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