I never watched LOST because I figured it'd either be canceled before the story ended, or the ending would suck. I was coming off of X-Files disappointment at the time, and frustration at Carnivale's cancellation, so I figured there was no way that LOST could pull it off. Everything I've read suggests that I was…

Yeah, I can see where, in hindsight, there are a lot of clues that they'd end it the way they did, but I also think that the show had so moved beyond what they'd originally envisioned that the ending…just didn't fit anymore.

Yeah, it was eventually taken down. I liked the Sagat voiceover work in the DVD version, and didn't really miss Downtown Train, but either way, alternate ending for me. Although, that still leaves you with the final season, and nobody's done a fan edit of that.

You may remember the fan-made "alternate ending" that circulated, like, 3 days after the finale aired (and almost perfectly mirrored the official "alternate ending" that was on the DVDs).

I think it depends on why an individual viewer watches the show.

That goes back to the "Ted isn't allowed to learn from his mistakes" angle that always felt really forced to me. It wasn't just that he'd learn the wrong lesson. It's that he'd learn NO lesson and would keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. And without even any sense of "Ah ha! A revelation which I will…

My sense is that he was of two minds. I think he respected what the writers had done, and he liked the pathos inherent in the finale, but I also think that he recognized that it would be controversial and probably was a bit disappointed at the backlash. I think that, as actors, the cast generally appreciated being…

That'd be a fair assumption except for the fact that they simultaneously made him the butt of so many jokes in the 2nd half of the show. So, like, ok, Ted's our lovable "lucky at cards" hero…but how do you square that with all of his super-pretentious "Ted is SUCH a douche" qualities that they regularly joke about? …

Be that as it may, the writers still committed hard to that relationship for basically 4 seasons, including a truly terrible final season…only to undo it within mere minutes of the start of the final hour of the show.

Victoria was great…until they brought her back and put her back together with Ted. But she was great in that "hazily remembered romance from my mid-20s" way, where you didn't have time to recognize and/or discover the dealbreakers.

There's a part of me that thinks that Jason Segal's comment about how "It's all a dream and Ted is recounting this to nobody after the apocalypse" was his sly way of telling the fans "You will be displeased with the finale…"

Meh. I think I'll just skip to the end where Skoll and Hati devour the sun and moon, and Surtr engulfs the world in flame.

What's Odin got to do with bunker-dwellers?

It was, when it was good. Obviously, I'm pretty passionate about the show, and in that sense, I'll give Bays and Thomas credit for having initially created a show that really grabbed me. But the ending…nah. Never gonna think that was a good way to end the show.

I think there were two major problems with the characterization of Ted as the show wore on.

So, first, they were clever enough, but they often seemed to want to do these "challenge" episodes purely to see if it could be done, and without a care towards what it did to the overall narrative. And the episodes they ended up pulling off…were never really that impressive in terms of the challenge. The rhyming…

So, basically, they replace "Sassy" Marshall and Lily with "Sassier" gay couple?

No, what the show really needed was an entire final season detailing the life that Ted had with Tracy, including her illness and death, and Ted recouperating from that over the course of several years.

Sorry, Jake. Best we could do on short notice was a couple of non-verbal spies, and some guy named Freenbeen.

"How are all the dogs supposed to deal with their unfinished business?"