I feel though that its still quite a bit different to LOST in that, the mysterious event that occurred seems to be the primary influence for the majority characters and if not explained in a satisfactory way might end up affecting my liking for the show whereas LOST was really a hangout show in disguise.

I don't remember when I started really caring about the characters, but you're going to need to start caring about Kevin and Nora or you're not going to like the ending.  Whether there's a definitive explanation for the disappearances is, at least in my opinion, up to the discretion of the viewer.  So if you're needing that, I don't think you'll be satisfied.

But I'm glad you like it better in season two.  That was certainly my opinion.  I think season three is also really good.

I think this goes back to Slider_Quinn21's point: when a story leaves the audience satisfied with the characters' journeys, then it's alright for the Mystery Box content to be disjointed, contradictory, unresolved, and not even that interesting and often out of focus. The audience will forgive that. Or at least Slider_Quinn21 will. Again, I have not finished LOST, but my sense from Slider_Quinn21 is that even if the Island wasn't ever explained, the character arcs were satisfying.

I think this is a fair statement.

Were all of LOST's answers satisfying?  No.  Were all of them reasonable?  No.  Were some of them, after watching the show multiple times, confusing and/or dumb?  Absolutely.

But mysteries are hard.  You have to come up with a mystery that is interesting enough to keep an audience interested that is a) mysterious enough that the audience won't figure it out and b) simple enough that it's satisfying upon rewatch and c) with enough breadcrumbs that your audience won't quit because you aren't revealing anything.

LOST set up some simple mysteries.  What is up with this island?  What is this monster that keeps killing people?  Who are these "Others" on the Island?

The show couldn't really explain the first one since it was the primary question.  So it solved the question about the Others.  In season one, we knew one Other who died before he could reveal anything (Ethan).  In season two, we met another, but he kept his identity secret.  By the time he revealed who he was, his answers very vague and, well, mysterious.  But by season three, we were spending time with the Others.  By season 5, we basically knew everything we needed to know about them.

The writers knew this was difficult.  That's why they insisted the show end after six seasons - they didn't have enough ways to delay gratification.  You can answer the Others question but you have to open up other mysteries.

As far as what the Island ended up being...to me, it didn't matter.  The answer is still vague to me.  The Island has some sort of cosmic importance, but it's unknown what the Island being destroyed would mean for anyone.  It ends up becoming a McGuffin.  But by that point, the characters were so beloved (to me and others) that it didn't really matter to us.  The Island could've been a cosmic turtle or purgatory or the town from the Village and I wouldn't care.  It didn't magically make those answers more satisfying - it made the mysteries less important to me.

So that's why I understand why people get mad at LOST for the mystery aspect.  But that means that they never bought into the character aspect.  Which, again, is fine, but that means they essentially wasted half of every episode getting to know characters they didn't have any interest in getting to know.

It's funny.  LOST was a huge success primarily because of the mysteries.  WHY IS THERE A POLAR BEAR?  WHO IS THIS FRENCH WOMAN?  WHO ARE THE OTHERS?  ARE THEY DEAD?  WHAT IS THE MONSTER?

And to me, all of that was cool.  I desperately wanted to know who the Others were.  I loved learning about Danielle and other castaways on the Island.  I wanted to know what made it special and whether the world was still out there.

But Lindelof was very clear from the beginning through the structure of the show that this was about people.  It's why he devotes 50% his airtime *every week* to these people.  And not just Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Locke - to each of the main characters.  He didn't just want random nameless people going through something extraordinary (like, for example, The Walking Dead).  He wanted you to know each one of these characters and how they got to be the people they are now.  That when Jack or Boone or even Nikki made a decision, you understood how those decisions were forged.

It was plot-heavy but it was extremely character heavy.  You got to learn mysteries about the people every week, even if the Island plot was Hurley building a golf course on the Island or finding a Dharma van.

A point of intrigue for me: Damon Lindelof's writing is based on a technique explained by JJ Abrams as The Mystery Box technique.

Abrams explained that as a little boy, he bought a 'mystery magic box' from a magic store that continued some random magic trick. Abrams never opened the box; imagining what might be inside was far more compelling than actually finding out.

Lindelof never wrote for Abrams' ALIAS, but ALIAS seems to be founded on this formula as much as LOST. ALIAS, a spy-fi action show, is supposedly about the mysteries of Milo Rambaldi, a fifteenth century alchemist whose blueprints and scientific formulae add up to some unknown, world-changing endgame of cataclysmic or utopian promise. By the middle of Season 2, it becomes clear: the writers don't know what the Rambaldi endgame is and don't care. Rambaldi is a plot device to create MacGuffin plot devices. ALIAS wasn't about Rambaldi; ALIAS was about Sydney and Jack and their twisted and troubled daughter-father relationship as they chased down Rambaldi artifacts.

Abrams's Mystery Box seems to have been an inspiration to Lindelof.

That said, any storytelling tool can be misapplied. The Mystery Box was a serious problem on THE X-FILES where Chris Carter was obsessed with what was inside the Box and built his show around brief glimpses of what was within -- but Carter kept changing his mind as to what was inside. The alien colonization of Earth became the Spartan Virus depopulation of Earth which became the colonization of space which became a cloning project which became... something about Scully getting pregnant again. And THE X-FILES was just as incoherent with character arcs. Even in Season 11, THE X-FILES couldn't figure out if Mulder and Scully were a couple or not from episode to episode. THE X-FILES failed to satisfy with both its mysteries and its characters.

The Mystery Box approach has been both misused and well-used for SLIDERS fanfic. From 2000 to about 2005, numerous wonderful fans wrote heartfelt and passionate Season 6 stories, tearing open the Mystery Box of SLIDERS to finally explain and resolve all the mysteries of the series.

Rembrandt finds the original Professor who helps split the Quinns followed by retrieving Colin followed by rescuing Wade followed by revealing that the Earth Prime in "Genesis" was not the real home Earth followed by revealing that Colin is a clone with a sleeper personality programmed by the Kromaggs followed by defeating the Kromaggs followed by giving Maggie, Colin, Mallory and Diana a happy ending followed by the original sliders getting home.

The reaction to these stories was often mixed even though these stories boasted some wonderful scenes. The contrivances to make all of the above happen would be unconvincing. The contents of this version of SLIDERS' Mystery Box turned out to be... a set of plot convolutions so unwieldy and random that even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway would fail to wring a strong story from them. There's no shame in struggling to craft a tale out of these fragments.

Starting from 2009 or so, however, we started to see a Mystery Box approach to Season 6 fanfic where the authors clearly preferred to keep Box closed, to delay opening it for as long as possible, to keep the Box at a distance when it was finally opened.

These 2009 and onward fanfics start with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo already alive and well when the story begins. The Mystery Box holds an answer to the questions: how are they alive? How has the Kromagg invasion somehow been undone? How did they find each other again?

These latter-era fanfics present the opening of the SLIDERS Mystery Box as both tantalizing and unwanted. What if the contents of the Box are insufficent to answer our questions? What if there is a terrible price to be paid for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo coming back from the dead?

In many ways, withholding the explanation for how the sliders are alive is a tacit admission; the writers of these 2009-onward SLIDERS stories *know* that the explanation won't be that great. The Mystery Box contents can never live up to the speculation around what's inside.

But the true secret of the Mystery Box here might be: the fanfic readers and writers don't actually care how the original sliders are back. They just want to feel it and believe in it. They want to see Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo deal with the trauma of being merged-erased, sent to a rape camp, losing every friend, and dying; they want to see them survive and endure.

These 2009-onward writers frontload their stories with the reunion of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. By the time the Box gets opened, it's just a formality; it doesn't matter how the sliders came back. They are already back. And it's a good thing that it doesn't matter because the plot devices to bring the sliders back to life aren't any better than the ones in the pre-2009 fanfics.

This Season 6 Mystery Box for SLIDERS is actually more potent when unopened. Yes, SLIDERS fans may be very concerned with the Kromagg-Human War and the secrets of Colin Mallory and the fate of Logan St. Clair. But the story that will speak to these fans most deeply is the one where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are reunited and restored. SLIDERS fans on some level know that the Kromagg-Human War and Dr. Geiger and whatnot are only the bridge they have to cross in order to get back to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and if offered them a zipline to swing right over this bridge, the zipline is preferable.

If your fanfic focuses on the rationale for how Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo back, if you open the Mystery Box and lay it out piece by piece and point by point, the reader will only see the forced logic and strained contrivances; their disbelief will keep the story and characters at a remove.

But if you start your fanfic by making the reader happy to see Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo together again, if the characters and emotions feel real, then the reader will tolerate the rationale for the resurrections being strained and somewhat unconvincing and contrived.

I think this goes back to Slider_Quinn21's point: when a story leaves the audience satisfied with the characters' journeys, then it's alright for the Mystery Box content to be disjointed, contradictory, unresolved, and not even that interesting and often out of focus. The audience will forgive that. Or at least Slider_Quinn21 will. Again, I have not finished LOST, but my sense from Slider_Quinn21 is that even if the Island wasn't ever explained, the character arcs were satisfying.

There's a part where George Clooney's character snarls, "Do I have to explain everything? Can't you just be amazed and move on?"

That is, I feel, quite reflective of Lindeloff's approach to LOST if I understand Slider_Quinn21's summary correctly.

It's funny.  LOST was a huge success primarily because of the mysteries.  WHY IS THERE A POLAR BEAR?  WHO IS THIS FRENCH WOMAN?  WHO ARE THE OTHERS?  ARE THEY DEAD?  WHAT IS THE MONSTER?

And to me, all of that was cool.  I desperately wanted to know who the Others were.  I loved learning about Danielle and other castaways on the Island.  I wanted to know what made it special and whether the world was still out there.

But Lindelof was very clear from the beginning through the structure of the show that this was about people.  It's why he devotes 50% his airtime *every week* to these people.  And not just Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Locke - to each of the main characters.  He didn't just want random nameless people going through something extraordinary (like, for example, The Walking Dead).  He wanted you to know each one of these characters and how they got to be the people they are now.  That when Jack or Boone or even Nikki made a decision, you understood how those decisions were forged.

It was plot-heavy but it was extremely character heavy.  You got to learn mysteries about the people every week, even if the Island plot was Hurley building a golf course on the Island or finding a Dharma van.

So it's so strange to me that people could watch 3 years of flashbacks (the flashbacks stop then and expand into other forms of storytelling) and not think "huh, why are the mysteries so lame?" - if a teacher spends half the class talking about World War II, don't you think you should focus on World War II when you are studying for the test?

With The Leftovers, as I said in my previous response, Lindelof starts fresh.  People all over the world disappear.  But we don't spend time with the President of the United States (like in the Y: The Last Man adaptation or every disaster movie ever) or a scientist trying to figure out what happened.  We spend time with families in a small town that were affected in different ways.  There's no effort to explain what happened any more than explaining a hurricane.  In season two, Lindelof changes the theme song from a dour instrumental to a peppy folksy song called "Let the Mystery Be."

He's not going to explain it.  If that's why you're here, you're free to stay for as long as you want, but you need to love these characters and how they grow and change. 

(Slight spoiler but they do, on some level, dabble in explanations, but it's all dabbling).

I think Lindelof is great with characters and specifically three-dimensional characters that exist in a real world.  I think he's also great at coming up with cool stories.  I think his payoffs are sometimes not as great, but in my opinion, the characters can carry the lamest of explanations.  I'm sold.

I also think Carlton Cuse doesn't get enough credit or blame for LOST.  I think the work he's done after LOST has been hit or miss but mostly strong - I really liked Bates Motel, I thought the Strain was fun, Colony was pretty solid Sci-Fi, and Jack Ryan is...fine?  But I don't think anything he's done as been as solid as The Leftovers or Watchmen.  I can see that Lindelof might've been more about characters and Cuse might've been more about story.

Speaking of Lindelof, did you ever see The Leftovers? I started watching season 1 but wasn´t that drawn in by the characters, but I keep hearing a lot of good things about it so I will probably persist with it.

The Leftovers is *incredible*.  While LOST is my favorite show, the Leftovers has to be on my list of the *best* shows.  I think it's incredibly well done and one of the most emotionally-gripping shows I've ever seen.

Now you're right - season one is hit or miss.  I think mostly because the show is so depressing.  I've suffered at times with depression and it was hitting way too close to home at times.  But I think there was enough in season one to get me through - I think Two Boats and a Helicopter is amazing and the end of the episode nearly destroyed me (I think Matt Jamison is a spiritual successor to John Locke). 

Season two is where the show is reborn.  They add a bunch of characters, change the setting, change the theme song (appropriately to a song called "Let the Mystery Be") and moved the story along.  Season three does some really great things, changing the setting again and experimenting with some different story ideas.

And the finale is perfect.  They set something up that works both as an emotional closure and a narrative closure depending on how you interpret it.  And, really, it's all because of LOST that it works.  Lindelof clearly learned from both legitimate mistakes and the artificial mistakes that fans blamed on him.

I think it's just phenomenal.  If I were you, I'd start it over again.  If you get the urge to quit, skip to season two.

The only people to treat the 'maggs right were the people at inkworks.

agree!

I think the main criticism of TOMORROWLAND is that it's a lengthy rant about the pointlessness of dystopian fiction and the importance of maintaining a positive attitude -- and reviewers comment that a positive attitude doesn't end human trafficking, the climate emergency, global starvation, etc.. That's fair, but TOMORROWLAND is just a fun adventure movie with a streak of optimism and I don't think we should expect a work of fiction to cure cancer or anything. It's okay. I think Damon Lindeloff did fine.

Another point of criticism was that Britt Robertson was way, way, way, way, way too old at 25 years old to play 15 - 17. This is not unreasonable. The odd thing is, Robertson played a teenager in many 2010 - 2015 projects and played a teenager after TOMORROWLAND in the movie THE SPACE BETWEEN US. Robertson looked teenager-ish before TOMORROWLAND and teenager-ish again in THE SPACE BETWEEN US. But in TOMORROWLAND, Robertson has surprisingly deep lines in her skin and a rougher texture than she had in other films and TV shows of that period.

I suspect that probably, a lot of Robertson's previous roles as a twentysomething playing teens was from 2010 onward in TV and indie and low budget film projects that used inexpensive digital cameras and soft focus lenses. However, TOMORROWLAND was shot with maximum budget Sony lenses in a 4K digital format. Robertson with her slender build and rounded face looked somewhat teenagerish on lower budget lenses and in 1080p digital video creating a sheen over her features. But at 4K, she looked her actual age.

I guess that could happen to anybody. I've elected to accept and ignore it, but some people can't.

Another issue of contention was having 53 year old George Clooney in the movie partnered with a 12 year old Raffey Cassidy and a 25 year old Britt Robertson, but that's people seeing something that isn't there; there is not a hint of sexuality between them. The relationship is clearly Clooney as a disgruntled brother with his sisters, one manipulative and disdainful, one optimistic to the point of being obnoxious.

Anyway. Damon Lindeloff did a nice job with TOMORROWLAND, although I'm sure Disney doesn't agree since it was a $180 million loss. I still really like the movie.

Sometimes they look at what's wrong to the degree they don't see what's right.  Also, these critics can get unnecessarily stuck on stuff. 

If nobody knew who Britt Robertson was, they would have accepted she was a teenager.  They were completely overthinking it. 

Great movie.

Another point of criticism was that Britt Robertson was way, way, way, way, way too old at 25 years old to play 15 - 17. This is not unreasonable. The odd thing is, Robertson played a teenager in many 2010 - 2015 projects and played a teenager after TOMORROWLAND in the movie THE SPACE BETWEEN US. Robertson looked teenager-ish before TOMORROWLAND and teenager-ish again in THE SPACE BETWEEN US. But in TOMORROWLAND, Robertson has surprisingly deep lines in her skin and a rougher texture than she had in other films and TV shows of that period.

I suspect that probably, a lot of Robertson's previous roles as a twentysomething playing teens was from 2010 onward in TV and indie and low budget film projects that used inexpensive digital cameras and soft focus lenses. However, TOMORROWLAND was shot with maximum budget Sony lenses in a 4K digital format. Robertson with her slender build and rounded face looked somewhat teenagerish on lower budget lenses and in 1080p digital video creating a sheen over her features. But at 4K, she looked her actual age.

I guess that could happen to anybody. I've elected to accept and ignore it, but some people can't.

Another issue of contention was having 53 year old George Clooney in the movie partnered with a 12 year old Raffey Cassidy and a 25 year old Britt Robertson, but that's people seeing something that isn't there; there is not a hint of sexuality between them. The relationship is clearly Clooney as a disgruntled brother with his sisters, one manipulative and disdainful, one optimistic to the point of being obnoxious.

Anyway. Damon Lindeloff did a nice job with TOMORROWLAND, although I'm sure Disney doesn't agree since it was a $180 million loss. I still really like the movie.

One of my favourite movies is TOMORROWLAND, scripted by Damon Lindeloff. There's a part where George Clooney's character snarls, "Do I have to explain everything? Can't you just be amazed and move on?"

That is, I feel, quite reflective of Lindeloff's approach to LOST if I understand Slider_Quinn21's summary correctly.

(Note: TOMORROWLAND is probably nobody else's favourite movie.)

i really liked it.

was a bit surprised that it was criticized.

(but i felt the same way about After Earth)

That is, I feel, quite reflective of Lindeloff's approach to LOST if I understand Slider_Quinn21's summary correctly.

(Note: TOMORROWLAND is probably nobody else's favourite movie.)

I *love* LOST.  I know that people don't like the ending or whatever, but I think it's great.  I was a hardcore viewer from the very beginning (I read an article about it in the newspaper prior to its premiere) and loved it to the very end.  I watched the finale in a theatre and definitely got emotional at the ending.  I think it has the most well-rounded characters of any TV show ever, and it's my favorite show ever (not the best but my favorite).

Do all the mysteries get wrapped up, and do all the mysteries that get wrapped up feel earned?  Not necessarily.  But really the mysteries of the island stopped mattering to me once I fell in love with the characters.  Finding out what happened to Jack/Kate/Sawyer/etc was much more important to me than finding out why the Island was special.  Lindelof gets a lot of crap for the puzzle box stuff, but I love his work.  If it had all been a dream or the Island was in a snow globe or any of that, I would've been just as happy with the show.

Yeah very much the same reason, I got hooked on the show. They really hit lightning in a bottle with that cast. I wasn´t one of those hardcore fans from the very beginning though, I missed a few episodes in the first season and found myself disinterested. I ended up later giving it another shot via torrent sites and getting hooked that way. I think its probably my favourite show too.

I agree Lindelof copped a bit of unfair flack although I really hated the flash sideways stuff and thus S6 was very weak for me as a whole, not necessarily, the end though. Speaking of Lindelof, did you ever see The Leftovers? I started watching season 1 but wasn´t that drawn in by the characters, but I keep hearing a lot of good things about it so I will probably persist with it.