The Smoke Monster was a Man who just wanted to get off the island the whole time. REALLY!?
LOST – The Man in Black – REALLY!?
The Smoke Monster was a Man who just wanted to get off the island the whole time. REALLY!?
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Thank you for this Phelous. Everything you said was 100% truth. F*** this show.
Good job Phelous. BTW how about a horror movie review that would be different…
….guess you could say it was a lost opportunity (ducks tomato).
Offtopic trivia: the Others’ Camp is actually a YMCA campground easily reached from the highway on Oahu. I had my picture taken in front of Hurley’s Dharma Van!
I just got done rewatching Lost about a week ago, and it still stands as one of my favorite shows ever. Your critiques with show, and with almost all of your reviews, are based on the idea that characters MUST stick to a certain archetype they are given. If the character strays from this then it must be bad writing or a nonsensical plot line. When in fact nobody in real life aholds to a narrow set of characteristics at all times.
Also the smoke monster could not leave the island until Jacob was dead. And it is also stated that the man in black cannot kill Jacob nor can Jacob kill him. So mutilating the pilot seemed more of act of rage and frustration rather than a poor plot. Anyway I stopped watching after that, but I still love your reviews despite my fandom of Lost.
Wow, late response.
There is a thing called character development, which needs to be established and shown or character motives stop making sense. I really don’t see why he would kill the pilot out of frustration, that would be dumb no matter what and at best terrible forced out of a plot perspective, same goes for most kills. As a writer, it is easy to spot that the writers of Lost wrote themselves into corners way too many times. At one point you should give up (as you should have thought this through from the beginning) or it will turn into muck, and it did, but unfortunatly they were writing on the fly with little planned ahead which I have done twice and know that it will end in disaster unless you know what you are trying to achieve (and they did not). Of course, if you enjoy it, you do, and nobody can take that from you but you have to admit that it relied on too many contrivances and nonsensical actions to get to it’s ending, which in my most humble opinion, was a dissatisfying wimper. It taught me a thing or two about how not to reveal mysteries and how to not do a narrative, so that’s good.
Now, all these years later, finish watching the video! Har har.
First of all, while I can understand why some of your fans may gripe as you explore reviewing different material, I hope they agree that your videos are still really entertaining. Also, fuck anyone who acts like an asshole about Lupa.
But to the point, this video was hilarious and vindicating. I had the dubious fortune of watching Lost entirely in DVD form, almost completely spoiler free. And the main thing that both my experience and your video shared was that the show was amazing and promising in first or even second season… and that by series’ end it was UTTERLY PLAIN that they were writing the show as they went along. There’s nothing wrong with that in theory, but it made for a finished product that was full of plot holes they wrote themselves into, wrote themselves out of unsatisfactorily, canned themes of good and evil and ostentatious hints of depth where there was only lack of coherence. In retrospect, yes, you can wave away the inconsistencies of THE SMOKE MONSTER with his rage or madness or isolation, but if we’re all being honest those are apologist explanations. It felt like the Clone Wars by series’ end, something intriguing and amazing when hinted at, but once explored in depth was BAD and poorly thought out, clearly planned retroactively.
I’d share this vid with more of my friends, but they’re all too diehard to watch this with anything but poor grace, and I would share it in amusement and not over being mean-spirited. Loved the ending skit as usual, hope you keep enjoying making these because I continue to enjoy watching them. Ugh why can I never format these properly into anything but tl;dr.
Lost is my favorite show. The missteps along the way (Nikki & Paolo, anyone?) and just plain desperation towards the end never destroyed my enjoyment of the series.
That said, the end scene of your video was CHILLING. 😉
Lost main conflict: Will these characters manage to survive after the plane crash?
How that conflict was solved: IT DOESEN’T MATTER BECAUSE AFTER YOU DIE THE AFTERLIFE IS PERFECT AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY FOREVER.
That hurts even more than plotholes. Everything that happened in the show is made irrelevant by its conclusion. It’s just there for people who base their lives on a stupid tv show and needed to feel better about their favourite characters dying.
Kudos to your title card artists; you look so expressive.
Man in Black huh? That reminds me of this movie I got tricked into renting; Men in Black: The Dark Watchers.
Great video Phelous. I look forward to more of your non horror reviews.
Yo phelous, listen me! Okay? Listen to me!
You should totally cover the plot holes in the starcraft 2 campaign next. I don’t care if it’s been done however many times, you should do it too, because you’re funny and an individual minded kinda guy and stuff.
Okay let’s say Lost were some kinda D&D campaign. What would appear in the GM’s notes?
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– There’s a guardian of light or something, I don’t care because it’s a mystery (I can write something in later; I’ll refer back to this, I promise! :P), and he’s probably guarding something but the players aren’t gonna ask about that, probably, because they’ll be distracted by the intrigue of my awesome setting and elaborate exotic, confusing descriptions of events unfolding.
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– Okay, so I can already tell one of the players is probably gonna get distracted staring at a rock, because I described it too well, so he thinks it’s significant to the plot or contains an item or something. And then, it did happen, so my prediction was right. Why? I dunno, he’s stupid.
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– The party’s completely split. I gotta salvage this somehow!
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– The man in black! That’s it. He’s gonna unite the players, because he’s way above the appropriate encounter level. Good way of trimming out the fat too.
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– So wait, now they’re wondering how to unmask the man in black. I better lead them about with confusing setting angles that lead to no where and are completely pointless.
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– Alright, so man in black is a man, of course he is. He’s really angry, because he wants to… to leave the island just like the players! Are the players going to become monsters too, or something? Maybe it’ll pull them back in.
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– Players are asking too many questions about the MIB and the guardian. A wizard did it, okay! Yeah, that’s right. They’re both wizards, okay? Dammit, my mouth is bleeding I think. I’ve answered too many questions for one day. I gotta go home. I told the guys we could start again next week.
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*the campaign was then aborted*
soooo am I lucky in NEVER having watched a single episode of Lost?
Oh goody..
I wouldn’t be one to mess up your rant, and i understand your point, but i kind of always thought that Jack’s Dad and Echo’s Brother were both actual ghosts that were there because of the island/the light along with John’s Dad. did they ever specifically state it was the man in the black for any of them?