![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chicafrom3This has nothing to do with the show itself, but for the most part the DVDs are really well designed. My only complaint is that the multilayered menu screens for the bonus features get deeply tedious, especially when you're looking for something specific (in this case, deleted scenes) and don't know which option leads where. But other than that, they're very well done; the different images used for each menu on each disc are always well chosen, and the graphic design is really nice. The packaging is also really well done with some great graphic design; plus I have the Dharma Initiative Orientation Kit special edition of the season 5 set, and while it's kind of annoying to use as a DVD set (the discs are in envelopes at the back of a binder) it's so cool in so many other ways that it makes up for it.
And then there's the bonus content. I did not watch all of the bonus content, just the deleted scenes, "lost flashbacks", and a few other things that I wanted to rewatch.
The best of these random other things is the conspiracy theory video from the season 4 DVDs. It's so great, and I unambiguously accept it as Lostverse canon. There are definitely people in the Lostverse who believe everything in that video. It's such a fantastic example of drawing all the wrong conclusions from all the right evidence!
With most of the deleted scenes, I understand why they were deleted; they generally don't give much new information and would just slow things down. That said, I don't understand why a few of them were cut -- Shannon taking the au pair job in Abandoned, Claire asking Sayid if Charlie knew the Mary statues contained heroin, Nikki reacting to the hatch blowing up and breaking down on Paulo's shoulder.
I get why the scene with Libby telling Hurley she's a shrink followed by Hurley telling her he's incredibly wealthy was cut, but it's so cute I wish it wasn't.
AND ROSE'S DEAD DAUGHTER? That's a dropped plotline I want to know all about.
Oh, and the mobisodes. Do they count as deleted sscenes? Because they don't fit the traditional definition. But my favorites are the Room 23 mobisode - I wish we'd gotten a bit more of that in the aired show - and the one where Michael and Sun almost kiss after she confides in him about almost leaving Jin.
I fully understand why The New Man In Charge didn't have a place in the aired canon, but I'm incredibly glad it exists, even though Walt at Santa Rosa breaks my heart.
And now an actual roundup regarding the six seasons I watched in, what, three weeks? Just shy of three weeks?
In general, Walt has more of a presence post-season one than I remembered pre-rewatch. He's not a constant character anymore, but he comes back periodically and people keep mentioning him; he's still acknowledged, even if the writers were forced to drop their original plans for him (because who could've predicted that a twelve-year-old would go through growth spurts over the course of six years seriously Lost writers I love you but you were very dumb about that).
The low points (JACK'S TATTOOS. KATE'S STUPID HORSE.) are really really low, but for the most part the show holds up really well. It benefits a lot from being watched marathon-style, actually; the cliffhangers aren't so infuriating when you don't have to wait eight months for some kind of resolution. And things in general don't feel as dragged out.
Things Lost does really well: season finale cliffhangers and season opener gamechangers (EVERY SINGLE ONE); character deaths (SO MANY DEVASTATING DEATHS); scenery porn; really ambitious stylistic devices (is there any other show that could convince middle America to watch an hourlong episode that's mostly in subtitled Korean?); music (Michael Giacchino deserves all the awards for this show); tonal shifts (Lost season 1 is a completely different show than Lost season 6 in atmosphere, but the way it gets there makes perfect sense every step of the way).
Things Lost does not do so well: wigs (dear God so many terrible wigs); introducing new characters (this is more hit-and-miss than consistently bad, but there's a lot of failed starts at bringing in new characters); an understanding of what certain words mean (everyone keeps referring to the Swan Station as "the hatch" even after the hatch is blown off. Even Desmond, who has zero reason to call the station he's been living in for three years by a word that means "access point" and refers to an escape hatch he never personally used or even really interacted with).
And to elaborate a bit more on one of those because I said earlier that I would: It's weird, because you'd think "other group of survivors who were separated during the crash" would be easier to integrate with the main characters than "dude who crashed his boat three years ago and has secretly been living on the island since then", but for the most part the tailies failed to become an organic part of the show and Desmond becomes such a natural part of the group that it's difficult to remember when he wasn't part of the cast. Juliet works, Ben works, Richard works, most of the rest of the Others don't. The freighter crew works brilliant, but most of the 70s Dharmaville residents blur into a forgettable collection of people rather than individual characters. I adore Nikki and Paulo but they don't work as characters in the show; ditto Ilana. Zoe's pointless and forgettable and indeed I had forgotten all about her before this episode. It's very hit-and-miss, I guess is the only way to sum that up. They never quite figure out what makes some characters work and others completely fail.
The best episodes are:
1. The Constant
2. Ab Aeterno
3. Pilot
4. Happily Ever After
5. Greatest Hits
6. Catch-22
7. Flashes Before Your Eyes
8. The End
9. Tricia Tanaka Is Dead
10. Dave
I'm not convinced of the order, aside from the top two, but those are almost definitely all the best epsiodes.
The worst episodes are Stranger In A Strange Land, What Kate Did, Born To Run, and White Rabbit. They're all Jack or Kate-centric. This is probably not a coincidence.
And yes, despite the fact that it's been almost five years since "The End" aired and I have read accounts from countless people bitter about how the show ended, I'm still very happy with the ending. I think it worked as well as any ending possibly could have, and it was satisfying.
Also I watched the Building 23 featurette with Michael Emerson going around talking to the creative team, and mostly what it did was remind me that Lost action figures exist and back in the day I really wanted some of the McFarlane figures but they were hella expensive. And then I went to eBay and looked them up and they've actually got a lot of them for reasonable prices? (Like $15 - $30 a figure.)
Admittedly I'm dead broke and even reasonable prices are too expensive for me, but, man, if I ever have disposable income again that...might be a thing that happens.
There are also some cheaper action figures that are really terrible and don't look a thing like the characters they're meant to represent. I'll stick with dreaming about owning the McFarlanes.
And then there's the bonus content. I did not watch all of the bonus content, just the deleted scenes, "lost flashbacks", and a few other things that I wanted to rewatch.
The best of these random other things is the conspiracy theory video from the season 4 DVDs. It's so great, and I unambiguously accept it as Lostverse canon. There are definitely people in the Lostverse who believe everything in that video. It's such a fantastic example of drawing all the wrong conclusions from all the right evidence!
With most of the deleted scenes, I understand why they were deleted; they generally don't give much new information and would just slow things down. That said, I don't understand why a few of them were cut -- Shannon taking the au pair job in Abandoned, Claire asking Sayid if Charlie knew the Mary statues contained heroin, Nikki reacting to the hatch blowing up and breaking down on Paulo's shoulder.
I get why the scene with Libby telling Hurley she's a shrink followed by Hurley telling her he's incredibly wealthy was cut, but it's so cute I wish it wasn't.
AND ROSE'S DEAD DAUGHTER? That's a dropped plotline I want to know all about.
Oh, and the mobisodes. Do they count as deleted sscenes? Because they don't fit the traditional definition. But my favorites are the Room 23 mobisode - I wish we'd gotten a bit more of that in the aired show - and the one where Michael and Sun almost kiss after she confides in him about almost leaving Jin.
I fully understand why The New Man In Charge didn't have a place in the aired canon, but I'm incredibly glad it exists, even though Walt at Santa Rosa breaks my heart.
And now an actual roundup regarding the six seasons I watched in, what, three weeks? Just shy of three weeks?
In general, Walt has more of a presence post-season one than I remembered pre-rewatch. He's not a constant character anymore, but he comes back periodically and people keep mentioning him; he's still acknowledged, even if the writers were forced to drop their original plans for him (because who could've predicted that a twelve-year-old would go through growth spurts over the course of six years seriously Lost writers I love you but you were very dumb about that).
The low points (JACK'S TATTOOS. KATE'S STUPID HORSE.) are really really low, but for the most part the show holds up really well. It benefits a lot from being watched marathon-style, actually; the cliffhangers aren't so infuriating when you don't have to wait eight months for some kind of resolution. And things in general don't feel as dragged out.
Things Lost does really well: season finale cliffhangers and season opener gamechangers (EVERY SINGLE ONE); character deaths (SO MANY DEVASTATING DEATHS); scenery porn; really ambitious stylistic devices (is there any other show that could convince middle America to watch an hourlong episode that's mostly in subtitled Korean?); music (Michael Giacchino deserves all the awards for this show); tonal shifts (Lost season 1 is a completely different show than Lost season 6 in atmosphere, but the way it gets there makes perfect sense every step of the way).
Things Lost does not do so well: wigs (dear God so many terrible wigs); introducing new characters (this is more hit-and-miss than consistently bad, but there's a lot of failed starts at bringing in new characters); an understanding of what certain words mean (everyone keeps referring to the Swan Station as "the hatch" even after the hatch is blown off. Even Desmond, who has zero reason to call the station he's been living in for three years by a word that means "access point" and refers to an escape hatch he never personally used or even really interacted with).
And to elaborate a bit more on one of those because I said earlier that I would: It's weird, because you'd think "other group of survivors who were separated during the crash" would be easier to integrate with the main characters than "dude who crashed his boat three years ago and has secretly been living on the island since then", but for the most part the tailies failed to become an organic part of the show and Desmond becomes such a natural part of the group that it's difficult to remember when he wasn't part of the cast. Juliet works, Ben works, Richard works, most of the rest of the Others don't. The freighter crew works brilliant, but most of the 70s Dharmaville residents blur into a forgettable collection of people rather than individual characters. I adore Nikki and Paulo but they don't work as characters in the show; ditto Ilana. Zoe's pointless and forgettable and indeed I had forgotten all about her before this episode. It's very hit-and-miss, I guess is the only way to sum that up. They never quite figure out what makes some characters work and others completely fail.
The best episodes are:
1. The Constant
2. Ab Aeterno
3. Pilot
4. Happily Ever After
5. Greatest Hits
6. Catch-22
7. Flashes Before Your Eyes
8. The End
9. Tricia Tanaka Is Dead
10. Dave
I'm not convinced of the order, aside from the top two, but those are almost definitely all the best epsiodes.
The worst episodes are Stranger In A Strange Land, What Kate Did, Born To Run, and White Rabbit. They're all Jack or Kate-centric. This is probably not a coincidence.
And yes, despite the fact that it's been almost five years since "The End" aired and I have read accounts from countless people bitter about how the show ended, I'm still very happy with the ending. I think it worked as well as any ending possibly could have, and it was satisfying.
Also I watched the Building 23 featurette with Michael Emerson going around talking to the creative team, and mostly what it did was remind me that Lost action figures exist and back in the day I really wanted some of the McFarlane figures but they were hella expensive. And then I went to eBay and looked them up and they've actually got a lot of them for reasonable prices? (Like $15 - $30 a figure.)
Admittedly I'm dead broke and even reasonable prices are too expensive for me, but, man, if I ever have disposable income again that...might be a thing that happens.
There are also some cheaper action figures that are really terrible and don't look a thing like the characters they're meant to represent. I'll stick with dreaming about owning the McFarlanes.