Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

The Lost writers decided that most things were going to be open ended. People hated that.

If you always thought they were in Purgatory and interpreted the ending as Purgatory you'd be mad.

There are some of us that are fans, Season 6 was below average for me, and thought they delivered with the ending. There are a few blogs that have an interpretation that I agree with, and show the greatness of the show.

But again, most things are open ended so each person can go either way.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Oh yeah, and the two phrases that most Lost haters detest:

- It's all about the journey.
- Whatever happened, happened.

;)

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

All I can say about Lost is that at least it wasn't a floating alien island like that one poster swore it would be.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Holly crap, you people actually made it past Lost season 3? ;)

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Lost did for my TV viewing what The Wheel of Time did for my reading. Taught me I should've trusted my "give up on this" instinct, and soured me on a whole host of things to follow.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

I never watched the Sopranos, but from what I've heard, the last season was pretty good, and the final scene of the finale is what cheesed people off. The wheels on the Lost bus fell off at the beginning of the last season and it was one slow motion fall off the mountain pass into the volcano all season long.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Very good description. I could not believe episode after episode that nothing was happening. It was obvious before the end that it was going nowhere.

I don't know why but I think only religious people would have liked the ending.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

I remember watching the Lost finale and my comment to friends afterwards was that I felt satisfied on an emotional level, but not on an intellectual one. I don't think it deserves nearly the amount of hate that it gets. Anyone who thought/expected every little loose end was going to be tied up is crazy. Also, the whole "We knew it was purgatory all along and the writers lied to us!" is stupid. I agree that the whole "flash-sideways" thing was stupid and a needless red-herring, but the island was not purgatory and nothing in the finale suggested that was the case. All that said, I hated the direction the show took in the final season. I could not have cared less about Jacob and the MIB. I hated that they killed Locke and made him the bad guy. I could go on and on. It was obvious by the midway point of the season that the finale was not going to deliver on 6 years of build-up. I was just glad to see all the old characters back together and happy.

As far as the Sopranos finale goes, I'm not really a huge fan of the show and didn't see it until well after the fact, but I thought the blackout ending was perfect.

The "every little loose end" argument is brought up frequently with regards to Lost. I did not expect they would tie all these up. I did however expect them to actually deliver on the core mysteries of the show, and they never did. It was never "all or nothing" on the answers.

That whole 1st season, which made the show the hit it became, was sold on the progressively weirder stuff happening on the island. It was never about "tune in to see who Kate has a relationship with next!". After the S1 finale, people didn't tune in to see what new relationships there would be - they wanted to know what was down in the hatch.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

What was so special about the Lost island?

That's the root problem right there. Lost was six years of building up a mysteryious mythology that they never paid off on.

You have a group of people living on the island, The Others, who will kill and die to defend the island. Why? They don't seem to know themselves.

You have a two hundred year old man living on the island. He doesn't know what the hell is going on.

You have a guy, Jacob, who is two thousand years old who seems to know everything and they kill him off an hour after he's introduced.

You have a "smoke monster" that terrorizes the island, and it turns out that it's just the (ghost of?) the brother of Jacob who was killed and turned into this thing.

Lost spent a good four to five seasons building an interesting mystery and mythology that they never paid off. The sixth and final season should have spent time showing what everything meant and why it was happening. Instead they dragged out that stupid (and ultimately pointless) "flash-sideways" gimmick.

The final episode of Lost, in and of itself, wasn't bad. It's that the entire final season never paid off on the promise.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Josh-da-man clearly and concisely covered half of my argument. So there's that. The other half is that the finale of Lost was a really nice, emotional ending. But it could've been the ending for ANY ensemble drama show. "You were close in life, you move on together in death." What the ending didn't do was fulfill on the promise of this grand mystery show. Or, as rocket1312 put it so succinctly, it was fulfilling emotionally but not intellectually.

I didn't love The Sopranos as much as most, but I thought the finale was fine. 6 out of 10.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

The Lost Finale wasn't great but I accepted it.

The Sopranos' end scene definitely caught everyone by surprise. One of the biggest wtf moments I ever experienced as a viewer. After a second viewing I was more at peace with it. I chose to believe Tony lived, at least for that particular evening :)

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

As did I. But that's what so great about that last scene, it's open-ended enough to allow viewers to believe that Tony lived, but filled with enough visual hints to imply that he didn't. It's really brilliant and not at all a cop-out. Meanwhile, LOST tries to tie everything up and it FEELS like a cop-out. :)

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

I voted Lost, because that entire last season was a mess. Such a shame, but I can still enjoy the show for the first 5 seasons.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Both shows had disintegrated in the final seasons. Both ending were bad, but The Sopranos' ending should go down as the most disgraceful ending in TV history. Plus Journey--yuck.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Come now, we're only debating Lost VS Sopranos. If we're going to open this up to all TV shows, then my vote will always be Battlestar Galactica for worst finale ever.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

The biggest problem with the Sopranos ending was that everyone thought their cable went out while they were watching it. Kind of spoiled the finale when the screen just goes black for ten seconds and everyone is cursing the cable/satellite provider.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

Very funny but completely accurate. My wife and I were watching and were pissed as hell that our DVR cut off the last bit of the show.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

I'm speechless, I'm without speech.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

That was my initial reaction. Pretty frustrating at the time. "What happened to my feed?"

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

I still stand by my original interpretation that the screen going black was the audience getting "whacked." So when looked at in that light, the "What happened to my feed?" reaction is exactly what the creators wanted, and succeeded brilliantly at. We see that Tony is forever looking over his shoulder now, but our time as observers is over.

Of course that is totally IMHO, and I won't argue if someone has a different interpretation. But for me it makes the finale completely satisfying.

Re: Finales: Lost VS Sopranos
 

What pissed me off about the finale of The Sopranos is that even half a dozen years later there is still question about the way it ended. The debate on whether he's dead or alive still rages on, with each side trying to be as condescending to the other as possible. This IS the internet after all. The way I see it is that there is no answer. If Chase and Gandolfini tomorrow decided to do a Sopranos movie for HBO or theaters, then you can be sure Tony would turn up alive. Sorry for being simple minded, but I wanted to see an end, I wanted closure. Does Chase owe that to us? Damn straight he does. We paid to watch the show and sat through long hiatuses, one was almost two effing years.

For the first several seasons of Lost, it was an amazing show. Then it became obvious that they had no idea what to do and the plots just went nuts. The last season was a total mess, as was the finale. Manipulative claptrap.