Flashsideways-free or flashsideways end

[Joe Washington]

Would you prefer Lost Season 6 had no flashsideways and completely focused on the present or would you prefer the flashsideways were pushed into a two or three-hour finale following the events that led up to Jack's death and most of the remaining survivors leaving by plane?

 

[Mr Light]

I wouldn't have minded them if they were just pushed into the 3 part finale. As is, I feel like they wasted half the screen-time of the final season.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

They wouldn't have made sense outside of the episode because they usually mirrored what was happening in the episode.

 

[startrekwatcher]

THe FSW were boring. I thought if placed in proper context they would go down better in hindsight but they are just as bland as they were originally. I don't know what I would do--drop them or keep them but make them more compelling.

 

[Warp Coil]

The flash-sideways would bear no weight or significance if they didn't use them all season. When season 6 begins, we are introduced to this new universe which many assume is a new timeline created by the detonation of the nuclear bomb in "The Incident." The audience doesn't really know the significance of this new universe but we are fascinated by it, and we're curious to see where it's going. It is a little slow, at first. The relevance of the sideways universe is unclear. But then, things become to pick up. We see Desmond rounding up the castaways. We see a lot of deja vu moments. It seems like it's going somewhere. Are the two timelines going to converge? Will the "original" timeline on the island get destroyed so that this new timeline can be preserved? A lot of questions and theories are raised and it gets people guessing.

It isn't until the finale that the rug is pulled out from under us. The flash sideways isn't an alternate timeline at all. It's all been clever mis-direction from the writers. The sideways universe is something else entirely. If they introduced them in the finale, we wouldn't be as invested in it.

I agree that the flash-sideways became a little irritating after a while (at least, in the early episodes), but I think it's mostly because we didn't know the relevance. Hopefully in re-watching season 6, they come across better.

 

[McCoy]

^ This. And they were no more annoying then any other season-long mystery arc.

 

[startrekwatcher]

^ This. And they were no more annoying then any other season-long mystery arc.

Yeah but LOST's other season-long mysteries(S3-5) were intriguing as they unfolded each week and once it played out and you could take everything in under a new light it was that much better.

The FSW, on the otherhand, were uninteresting as they unfolded and didn't add up to a whole lot in hindsight. Rather they come across as contrived attempts at misdirection and as a result a lot of it doesn't hold up to much logic or insight.

 

[Mr Light]

I think it's a shame to waste half the screen time of the final season on one huge "gotcha" moment, though. Could you imagine if every "flash-back" of Season Three was really the flash-forward from the finale and you didn't know that until the finale?

 

[Warp Coil]

I think it's a shame to waste half the screen time of the final season on one huge "gotcha" moment, though. Could you imagine if every "flash-back" of Season Three was really the flash-forward from the finale and you didn't know that until the finale?

If they'd done something like that, I think everyone would have gone back and re-watched the season to pick up on all of the subtle things that they missed because they were mis-interpreting what they were seeing. I wonder if the same can be said for the flash sideways? I haven't re-watched season 6 yet so I dunno.

 

[McCoy]

^ This. And they were no more annoying then any other season-long mystery arc.

Yeah but LOST's other season-long mysteries(S3-5) were intriguing as they unfolded each week and once it played out and you could take everything in under a new light it was that much better.

That didn't make them any less frustrating.

The FSW, on the otherhand, were uninteresting as they unfolded and didn't add up to a whole lot in hindsight. Rather they come across as contrived attempts at misdirection and as a result a lot of it doesn't hold up to much logic or insight.

YMMV - I liked the FSW, as did a lot of other viewers.

 

[RoJoHen]

My main frustration with the FSW was that there was absolutely no context for them.

Flashbacks? Pretty self-explanatory.

Flashforwards? Mysterious and strange, but at least we knew when they fit, even if we didn't know exactly how they fit together.

Flashsideways? Absolutely no idea. Alternate universe? Heaven? Hell? A result of the nuke going off? Some crazy future where MiB erased everybody's memory?

As it turned out, I really loved how the FSW story ended, and they really couldn't have given us more information earlier in the season without ruining the surprise in the finale. They will certainly be interesting to re-watch when Season 6 comes out on DVD.

 

[startrekwatcher]

^ This. And they were no more annoying then any other season-long mystery arc.

Yeah but LOST's other season-long mysteries(S3-5) were intriguing as they unfolded each week and once it played out and you could take everything in under a new light it was that much better.

That didn't make them any less frustrating.

But it was a good kind of frustrating. You could have fun enjoying the impact of a revelation had on you or enjoy an isolated puzzle piece or scene on its own without a yet established proper context.

The FSW on their own were just contrived bores with no interesting revelations or twists leaving them to stand as character-driven storylines that weren't the least bit interesting as character studies--they reminded me of the very kind of pseudo-intellectual high-minded BS nBSG would often attempt. It also served as a forced way to bring back all the dead faces as a sort of nostalgic callback believing it befitting of a final season.

 

[Mr Light]

It felt like an artificial attempt to bring back Season One viewer numbers by bringing the show back to non-supernatural character storylines and essentially rerun the Season One flashbacks. You could argue the same thing for the Island story as well, it got a lot less complicated and interesting and just became about one thing.

 

[startrekwatcher]

It felt like an artificial attempt to bring back Season One viewer numbers by bringing the show back to non-supernatural character storylines and essentially rerun the Season One flashbacks. You could argue the same thing for the Island story as well, it got a lot less complicated and interesting and just became about one thing.

It also felt like the writers forgot that their show was a unique animal because they just shifted gears away from the mythology back to the characters thinking that other shows in their final seasons get all nostalgic and focus on the characters. But LOST was more about the mythology--the characters weren't as interesting when not caught up in the exciting mythology backdrop.

It also felt like S3 when they were dragging their feet focusing on all the things viewers didn't like in S3.

 

[Mr Light]

S3 was my favorite season! Are you talking about the first six? The only complaint I have about that set is that the escape should have happened in the first batch, so basically they just needed to move 307 up to the first group of episodes. Well, that and "Glass Ballerina". And the Kate flashbacks in "I Do". But aside from that great episodes!

 

[startrekwatcher]

S3 was my favorite season! Are you talking about the first six? The only complaint I have about that set is that the escape should have happened in the first batch, so basically they just needed to move 307 up to the first group of episodes. Well, that and "Glass Ballerina". And the Kate flashbacks in "I Do". But aside from that great episodes!

Yes I was referring to the problems that plague it in the first 9 or so episodes of S3. After that it does become quite good and consistent.

I still hold S4 and S5 higher than S3(S1 I sort of group off to itself since it has that new car feel where you get to know the characters and sets up the series) because S4/5 were fun from beginning to end with none of the aggravating aspects of S3 that hurt it--don't get me wrong it is a good season but problematic whereas the other two were just pretty much flawless with no stalling, no filler, lots of bombshells, lots of surprising revelations, and more effective at their set-up.

 

[sidious618]

I liked the flash-sideways and I like them even more in retrospect. The only one I didn't care for was Sawyer's. I actually liked Kate's more than I liked the on-Island stuff in her episode which shocked me as I detest the character.

 

[Nardpuncher]

They certainly wasted too much time on them even though the parts where characters "met" each other again were well acted and touching, but it was a cop-out as we all know that it wasn't real.

 

[McCoy]

It was real. Just not in the way we thought.

 

[Nardpuncher]

A pre-afterlife realm is not real.

It's definitely not real when it just gets used as a way to create anything the writers wanted because anything really was possible in that celestial waiting room.