I liked the background characters; I found myself making up little stories about who they were; why they were on the plane etc. The flaming-arrow massacre didn't suit me at all.

Wow, I didn't know it was that bad. It doesn't surprise me, though.

>As I said earlier, I'm just wondering why Locke…

"In short: be Hurley."

I really wanted that Claire flashback.

The lighthouse was magical, but not a distraction.

Problem is, LOST was a show for "ordinary people." Television in 2003-2004 was nowhere near as segmented as today.

I doubt Disney would put money into it at this point, considering that whenever a LOST article appears, even if it's not about the finale, the comments clearly show that it's all about the finale.

Sure, most of the principals were conventionally "hot," but to its credit, LOST also included a wide variety of ages, ethnicities, and physical types in its cast.

I don't watch Game of Thrones.

The strike in my view actually gave us a pretty tight and well-crafted fourth season of 14 episodes. One big problem with other seasons is that stretched-out stories were often based on teasing of various sorts (X-Files is an example.)

I don't think the creative team had much choice. It was a time of very long serial television (X-Files, Stargate SG-1.) From what I'd read, negotiating ABC down to six seasons was difficult; ABC at first wanted it to go on "forever." It was grabbing market share in ratings like nobody believed.

I liked Across the Sea too. It had a timeless quality, like mythology come to life.

There's an old movie with Sally Fields called Places in the Heart, about a widow struggling to keep her farm during the Great Depression. At the end they have a church scene mildly similar to that in LOST. It's very moving: LOST could have done that at the end without the long, often pointless FSW build-up.

Unfortunately true, especially if you watch Chronological LOST. Season 6 without the FSW just flies along its track with very few bumps. Even Jack's final moments still have a lot of punch without the church scenes.

I was convinced he'd do that too. That would be right out of Frank Capra's 1937 film Lost Horizon, which in my view strongly influenced LOST.

It doesn't make any sense for the horse to be MiB, I agree.

Yes, a "wizard did do it" because like the world of Harry Potter; like Stephen King's The Stand or Dark Tower, the world of LOST has magic built into it from the beginning. It had sci-fi trappings but at heart wasn't a sci-fi story.

The Island is magic.

That moment was well-done. It also gave you a glimpse of what it meant for someone to have the power to "bring [a ship] here."