Two hour & a half hour finale starts in about an hour & 20 minutes.
LOST backlash began weeks ago, with the airing of "Across the Sea" and showed up in a major way during the NY Times' lead-up coverage to the finale!
I think there's a lot to criticize about LOST: the sexism, the hetero-normativity, the way a diverse & fascinating cast got winnowed down to mostly white people, and the way it deploys references in place of nuance or answers.
At the same time, the Times' dismissive attitude to the show that seems partially rooted in the participatory nature of the fanbase seems a little wrong-headed. Have they not noticed the way many modern/contemporary novels, rely on a similar level of audience investigation & analysis to really work. For example, most of the work of Thomas Pynchon.
And the aesthetic judgements they make about the show's "pacing, structure, camerawork, and acting" aren't really backed up, except so far as they say that Locke & Desmond are good. It's hard to tell if NYT's problems with these aspects of LOST are rooted in reasonable aesthetic disagreements or completely different aesthetic expectations of what "good" TV is. On the most basic level, where is the problem with pacing? On the seasonal level? On an episode-by-episode level? Over the course of the whole series?
Ironically, just like the producers of LOST are frequently accused of doing, Mike Hale doesn't answer the questions he raises.
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