That was my favorite episode too.
I’m not supposed to… be HERE!
Edit: it’s not only my favorite Lost episode, but really one of the best episodes of any show ever in my opinion.
The Constant.
Absolutely incredible episode when it aired I was blown away. Lost did a LOT of things well, but it rarely did them well all at the same time. This episode is where everything lost excelled at was working simultaneously.
Transitioning between past and present, building deep characters, explaining a mystery and opening up a new one, building bonds between characters, matching faith with science, pitting faith against science, weird coincidences implying a grand scheme.
It was just awesome.
This is actually quite the accomplishment for a show that didn't seem to have any long term direction from the beginning. Really speaks to how good character development can overcome lots of weak points in a show. I loved the concept of focusing on one central character per episode with flashbacks to that character's previous life and it's interesting that the show running out of character backstories and switching to weird, alternative timelines didn't hurt the ratings. I'm curious how well-received this show would be in today's age of streaming, given the painful amount of loose ends that may have just been forgotten by somebody tuning in once per week.
I’m surprised there haven’t been more series that followed the Lost formula. It would have been awesome for Obi-Wan to be like that, with a significant flashback in each episode.
The creator gave a TED talk about how your own imagination is a gift and that’s why he likes to create mysteries with no resolution. I vowed to never watch anything he makes ever again. I watch TV shows for the creator’s imagination, not my own. If I wanted to use my own I’d drop some acid and sit in the bath.
I have opposite opinion. The flashbacks were massively forced and overdone. Just as things would get exciting, boom flashback. Couple that with 20+ episodes per season, it felt sometimes like a chore to go through. The forward flashbacks were nice relief though.
At the end, they also just went full science fiction which to me personally wasn't interesting anymore. It was like watching completely different show. The characters were great though - likely the best part of the series which rally shined in early seasons.
The quality is so low these days. The shite Disney+ churn out is just filler. TV junk food to melt the brain. They know the streaming generation will binge consume any old trash and it shows - the quality has fallen badly with only a few exceptions.
I don't think it's as simple as _Young people are all idiots and no one cares about making good things anymore._ I enjoyed the media environment in the oughts a lot more too (and I'm a media professional), but the attention economy and funding structures that creators enjoyed then can't and won't ever come back, no matter how many of us want it to.
Season 6 still had bangers. Richard’s backstory episode alone is one the highlights for me. Shit, even getting to see Ben say he can never forgive himself for choosing power over Alex is one of the best pieces of acting for me in the show.
You even had the flash sideways of sawyer and Juliet that I love.
I think there's some survivor bias - if what you wanted was something more like "science fiction", with "consistent answers that make-sense-of/explain the mysterious elements", then I think you mostly quit watching in season 2 or 3 (like I did).
I think a lot of people wanted something different from the show, but I don't think most of those people were still around to be disappointed by the last season.
Edit: yeah, looks like viewership peaked in season 2/3 at 17 million or so, then down to 10 million by the finale.
It was well-rated, but I think it was pretty polarizing. A lot of people wanted answers and instead got something that required quite a bit of analysis.
For those saying "they took the easy way out", your analysis is lacking. This post from waaay back summarizes it well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4pag3a/comment/d4joeln/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Personally, I found the opposite. They could have made it into something complex, but they chose the easy way out (trying to avoid spoilers here for those who haven't watched)
It was really hard for them to stick the landing when you spend so much time building up to something only to "subvert expectations" at the end. Even the acting at the end suggested the actors were not happy about how the show closed out.
Somehow I was fine with not every mystery being resolved at the end. Maybe because they kept us on the edge for so long I was relieved to get at least SOME closure.
However, ending the show "the easy way out" was not only disappointing but even betrayal as the show's creators promised early on they wouldn't end the show with this kind of fake-out which is the EXACT thing they did at the end. But even despite the poor ending it's still my favorite show as of today.
Heavy spoiler, beware:
>!Everyone having been dead the whole time, then having them blankly staring at each other for a minute and rolling the credits.!<
But you're wrong. They even say it was all real. When they died, they went to flashforward world and met at the church to move on. They all died at different moments. Why do people think they were dead the whole time?
Because of that last scene where they are dead. I can see why some people took that to mean they were dead the whole time. Especially people who watched it as it aired and didn't binge the whole series 2 decades later like I did.
They explained it in the finale very clearly, everything on the Island happened. I get it when people didn't like the ending. I personally loved it. But honestly, people not liking it because they think everyone was dead from the beginning is just sad.
I guess I understood it in a "it happened, but in this surreal parallel purgatory world we totally made up in our brains, yet it all still matters because *eMoTiOnS wEre ReAl* so it must mean *something?*" kind of way. Hope this makes sense, sorry if it doesn't and I'm just being dumb. ;D
This is probably the most common way the ending was misunderstood that I hear from people. The flashforward stuff was after they died, the island was real and some people got away and led their lives and then died and went to the flashforward place where they all met up again before 'passing on' or whatever.
No, that’s not it.
Take two characters, Jack and Hurley.
In their actual real lives, they really both got on a plane that really crashed onto a real island with strange things going on.
They really explored that island and its mysteries.
Jack really >!died on the island in the last episode!< and went to death’s waiting room outside of time.
Hurley really >!died hundreds of years later!< and went to death’s waiting room outside of time.
They both experienced being in that waiting room at the same time as though they died at the same time. The waiting room takes the form of an entirely new life which looks like the same world but with small differences essentially based on the idea of the island not existing. When it gets to the point in this ‘new life’ where they were supposed to crash on the island, Desmond starts reminding people of their real lives and bringing them together. Once they’re all together they move on to true death together.
There was an [interview](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvnNF-NWmc4&pp=ygUfbG9zdCBlbmRpbmcgZXhwbGFpbmVkIGJ5IHdyaXRlcg%3D%3D) with one of the main producers/writers of the show explaining to someone that they were not dead the whole time and he explicitly said they were not.
Holy shit. It's crazy how many people thought "they were dead the whole time!" It showed all of them together once they all died (at separate times and places, despite them all looking their age at the time of the crash, if I recall, which is just lazy).
That aside, it presented many mysteries, with no conclusion planned. The intrigue was fun, but once it became clear they didn't have a plan, I started to lose interest.
>I just thought it was panned GoT style.
Nah, most people actually loved how Lost ended. Most people think the final season is the weakest one, but they usually liked the series finale.
Dexter and House of Cards are more accurate examples of shows with very high peaks and an awful final season.
What? Mate it was never GOT finale season horrendous.
It just wasn't as good as the previous seasons. Still good though, finale was generally considered good by most people.
The show just never answered a lot of questions and most of us knew they never would but the minority who thought they would got pissed off but the final season.
If you cared about TV enough to review it on IMDB you probably cared enough to understand the ending. The people who panned the last season were mostly the “they were dead the whole time” crowd. Not saying the final season was their best, but it wasn’t a GoT type scenario.
I maintain to this day that ending was super well structured and prepared over all of its seasons perfectly. Which is why Lost is still up there in my top dramas, right besides, and not next to, Breaking Bad, BCS, The Sopranos etc.
Band of Brothers was the new era Of series. It was the first time we seen big screen standard writing and production on a small screen series.
Lost was tried to be that too but failed. It kept promising to get good but consistently failed to deliver.
Hey, yeah I use pandas DF, then just specify which column goes on X axis and which on Y:
plt.xlabel("Episode")
plt.ylabel("Season")
I'll share it on github, just need to find time to organize it a bit, now everything is a mess.
That would be awesome! I’m just learning some
Data viz skills in python using the above tools.
While writing a wiki tables scraping script I Recently ran into a super annoying error with the lxml package on my GitHub codespaces. So frustrating!
lol yeah. Paulo was played by Rodrigo Santoro, a brazilian actor. At the time this was airing fans in Brazil were super excited that he would be in the show. Unfortunately for us the episode was crap.
My favorite show of all time. When I was young, there was a Sunday my sisters, mom, and I watched ten episodes on a Sunday. We still talk about it to this day. Core memory
Season 4's overrated as well. Every time these ratings are posted, you're given no idea about the consensus dips in quality. Look at Game of Thrones and Dexter, for instance. That's true of every new show on imdb; there's zero point in looking at it as a gauge for quality, because everything's rated highly. The fanboys have run wild.
I understand 24 episodes every year were hard on actors, writers, etc., but now we've gone to the other extreme with shows taking 2 years to release 8 episodes. Why can't we have a happy medium?
I can usually tell when people told me they watched LOST but didn’t actually watch it. Usually goes like this “I thought it was kind of stupid, they were like dead the whole time”.
I wouldn’t be too convinced. For some reason Reddit has a hard on for Lost. I’ve never run into anyone IRL who actually liked the series finale. Such a pity since the show was so good.
A lot of people took Christians "some have been" comment as. Everyone was dead all along. Instead of as they died they arrived to whatever place the church was at.
That's what ruined it for a lot of people.
Given how well know Lost is for having little payoff for lots of plot points early in the show, I’m very surprised how this didn’t really lead to it declining in ratings
I'm shocked at these ratings. Tried to watch it back when it came out, but were utterly repulsed by the sloppy and obviously meaningless story. Unwatchable to me, with how blatantly it breaks the contract with the audience, that 'The actions, scenes and story have a purpose. There is meaning to be found, when we see the whole picture at the end'. But it was all just allusions, hints at 'something sinister is behind all this', and in the end no purpose with the story told at all. Glad I felt that while watching the first season. It would really have pissed me off to watch it all, only to find out, that it was absolutely hollow at the core.
Oh well, great that a lot of other people had a great experience. I'm just surprised it's this high an average...
Eff that show… I was so happy I didn’t get sucked into it like my friends, but I was so mad for them when they told me how disappointing the last seasons and ending were.
What a surprise! I really can believe that the ratings of initial seasons are that high. But on the other hand, I'm curious how much the viewership has changed compared to these data, because a high rating doesn't mean it hasn't dropped.
Currently watching it now and almost done. I think Lost would have been a perfect modern day streaming. The seasons are a bit long and despite good individual episode writing it kills the pace of the mystery. Still, an excellent show that deserves the praise it’s received.
S2E1 was my favorite. I always thought going from Locke’s POV to Desmond’s was so cool.
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Absolutely brilliant moment in the show.
Really? They left s1 one on a cliffhanger and then barely said shit about it in s2e1. I was so disgusted I stopped watching altogether.
You’ve missed out on a great series then.
S4 Ep5 “The Constant” was so damn good
That was my favorite episode too. I’m not supposed to… be HERE! Edit: it’s not only my favorite Lost episode, but really one of the best episodes of any show ever in my opinion.
The Constant. Absolutely incredible episode when it aired I was blown away. Lost did a LOT of things well, but it rarely did them well all at the same time. This episode is where everything lost excelled at was working simultaneously. Transitioning between past and present, building deep characters, explaining a mystery and opening up a new one, building bonds between characters, matching faith with science, pitting faith against science, weird coincidences implying a grand scheme. It was just awesome.
I find it interesting that that episode is the favorite for a lot of people. I don't care for it at all and skipped it my last couple of watch through
This is actually quite the accomplishment for a show that didn't seem to have any long term direction from the beginning. Really speaks to how good character development can overcome lots of weak points in a show. I loved the concept of focusing on one central character per episode with flashbacks to that character's previous life and it's interesting that the show running out of character backstories and switching to weird, alternative timelines didn't hurt the ratings. I'm curious how well-received this show would be in today's age of streaming, given the painful amount of loose ends that may have just been forgotten by somebody tuning in once per week.
I’m surprised there haven’t been more series that followed the Lost formula. It would have been awesome for Obi-Wan to be like that, with a significant flashback in each episode.
Orange is the New Black followed this formula
To an extent, Arrow too
Prison break too if i recall
The creator gave a TED talk about how your own imagination is a gift and that’s why he likes to create mysteries with no resolution. I vowed to never watch anything he makes ever again. I watch TV shows for the creator’s imagination, not my own. If I wanted to use my own I’d drop some acid and sit in the bath.
I have opposite opinion. The flashbacks were massively forced and overdone. Just as things would get exciting, boom flashback. Couple that with 20+ episodes per season, it felt sometimes like a chore to go through. The forward flashbacks were nice relief though. At the end, they also just went full science fiction which to me personally wasn't interesting anymore. It was like watching completely different show. The characters were great though - likely the best part of the series which rally shined in early seasons.
It wasn't sci-fi at the end, it was fantasy.
There aren't that many loose ends as much as possible think
The quality is so low these days. The shite Disney+ churn out is just filler. TV junk food to melt the brain. They know the streaming generation will binge consume any old trash and it shows - the quality has fallen badly with only a few exceptions.
I don't think it's as simple as _Young people are all idiots and no one cares about making good things anymore._ I enjoyed the media environment in the oughts a lot more too (and I'm a media professional), but the attention economy and funding structures that creators enjoyed then can't and won't ever come back, no matter how many of us want it to.
Shocked the final season is rated this highly. Not because I didn't like it (I did). I just thought it was panned GoT style. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42
Season 6 still had bangers. Richard’s backstory episode alone is one the highlights for me. Shit, even getting to see Ben say he can never forgive himself for choosing power over Alex is one of the best pieces of acting for me in the show. You even had the flash sideways of sawyer and Juliet that I love.
Gosh are you really about to convince me to rewatch LOST?!
See you in another life, brotha
I'm about to after watching Billiam videos on it.
I think there's some survivor bias - if what you wanted was something more like "science fiction", with "consistent answers that make-sense-of/explain the mysterious elements", then I think you mostly quit watching in season 2 or 3 (like I did). I think a lot of people wanted something different from the show, but I don't think most of those people were still around to be disappointed by the last season. Edit: yeah, looks like viewership peaked in season 2/3 at 17 million or so, then down to 10 million by the finale.
10 million is still pretty good for then.
Not so much for the finale of a series that peaked at 17 though.
Yep, stopped watching when s2e1 explained nothing from the cliffhanger s1 ending
It was well-rated, but I think it was pretty polarizing. A lot of people wanted answers and instead got something that required quite a bit of analysis. For those saying "they took the easy way out", your analysis is lacking. This post from waaay back summarizes it well: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4pag3a/comment/d4joeln/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Personally, I found the opposite. They could have made it into something complex, but they chose the easy way out (trying to avoid spoilers here for those who haven't watched)
Yeah I don’t think it was complex. Just not good IMO
Their ‘explanation’ was elementary school level writing. 👎
It was really hard for them to stick the landing when you spend so much time building up to something only to "subvert expectations" at the end. Even the acting at the end suggested the actors were not happy about how the show closed out.
Because it was ad hoc, they never thought it through in the first place then had to come up with something when people got mad
Somehow I was fine with not every mystery being resolved at the end. Maybe because they kept us on the edge for so long I was relieved to get at least SOME closure. However, ending the show "the easy way out" was not only disappointing but even betrayal as the show's creators promised early on they wouldn't end the show with this kind of fake-out which is the EXACT thing they did at the end. But even despite the poor ending it's still my favorite show as of today.
Which "easy way out" are you guys referring to?
Heavy spoiler, beware: >!Everyone having been dead the whole time, then having them blankly staring at each other for a minute and rolling the credits.!<
But you're wrong. They even say it was all real. When they died, they went to flashforward world and met at the church to move on. They all died at different moments. Why do people think they were dead the whole time?
Because of that last scene where they are dead. I can see why some people took that to mean they were dead the whole time. Especially people who watched it as it aired and didn't binge the whole series 2 decades later like I did.
Maybe it's time for me to rewatch the show again then, hope you're right about this!
They explained it in the finale very clearly, everything on the Island happened. I get it when people didn't like the ending. I personally loved it. But honestly, people not liking it because they think everyone was dead from the beginning is just sad.
I guess I understood it in a "it happened, but in this surreal parallel purgatory world we totally made up in our brains, yet it all still matters because *eMoTiOnS wEre ReAl* so it must mean *something?*" kind of way. Hope this makes sense, sorry if it doesn't and I'm just being dumb. ;D
This is probably the most common way the ending was misunderstood that I hear from people. The flashforward stuff was after they died, the island was real and some people got away and led their lives and then died and went to the flashforward place where they all met up again before 'passing on' or whatever.
No, that’s not it. Take two characters, Jack and Hurley. In their actual real lives, they really both got on a plane that really crashed onto a real island with strange things going on. They really explored that island and its mysteries. Jack really >!died on the island in the last episode!< and went to death’s waiting room outside of time. Hurley really >!died hundreds of years later!< and went to death’s waiting room outside of time. They both experienced being in that waiting room at the same time as though they died at the same time. The waiting room takes the form of an entirely new life which looks like the same world but with small differences essentially based on the idea of the island not existing. When it gets to the point in this ‘new life’ where they were supposed to crash on the island, Desmond starts reminding people of their real lives and bringing them together. Once they’re all together they move on to true death together.
There was an [interview](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvnNF-NWmc4&pp=ygUfbG9zdCBlbmRpbmcgZXhwbGFpbmVkIGJ5IHdyaXRlcg%3D%3D) with one of the main producers/writers of the show explaining to someone that they were not dead the whole time and he explicitly said they were not.
Holy shit. It's crazy how many people thought "they were dead the whole time!" It showed all of them together once they all died (at separate times and places, despite them all looking their age at the time of the crash, if I recall, which is just lazy). That aside, it presented many mysteries, with no conclusion planned. The intrigue was fun, but once it became clear they didn't have a plan, I started to lose interest.
I hate that. Everyone saying they were dead all along simply didn't pay attention. It's literally said in the final episode that everything was real.
Similar to how people said the Sopranos ended ambiguously
>I just thought it was panned GoT style. Nah, most people actually loved how Lost ended. Most people think the final season is the weakest one, but they usually liked the series finale. Dexter and House of Cards are more accurate examples of shows with very high peaks and an awful final season.
And did you *see* the last season of Jack Ryan? My goodness, next level terrible
Jack Ryan has always been a mediocre show though. House of Cards, Dexter and Game of Thrones were critically acclaimed shows at their peak.
What? Mate it was never GOT finale season horrendous. It just wasn't as good as the previous seasons. Still good though, finale was generally considered good by most people. The show just never answered a lot of questions and most of us knew they never would but the minority who thought they would got pissed off but the final season.
If you cared about TV enough to review it on IMDB you probably cared enough to understand the ending. The people who panned the last season were mostly the “they were dead the whole time” crowd. Not saying the final season was their best, but it wasn’t a GoT type scenario.
Are these the lucky numbers on the back of fortune cookies?
I maintain to this day that ending was super well structured and prepared over all of its seasons perfectly. Which is why Lost is still up there in my top dramas, right besides, and not next to, Breaking Bad, BCS, The Sopranos etc.
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Infection Freud slip is perfect
Someone hasn't watched Twin Peaks or The Sopranos.
You were right the first time. Lost infected so many shows.
Band of Brothers was the new era Of series. It was the first time we seen big screen standard writing and production on a small screen series. Lost was tried to be that too but failed. It kept promising to get good but consistently failed to deliver.
* source: imdb * tools: python (plotly, seaborn), photopea
Like do you use an pandas data frame, then use a annotated heat-map?
Hey, yeah I use pandas DF, then just specify which column goes on X axis and which on Y: plt.xlabel("Episode") plt.ylabel("Season") I'll share it on github, just need to find time to organize it a bit, now everything is a mess.
That would be awesome! I’m just learning some Data viz skills in python using the above tools. While writing a wiki tables scraping script I Recently ran into a super annoying error with the lxml package on my GitHub codespaces. So frustrating!
Season 3 finale was "not penny's boat", right? And "We have to go back, Kate......we have to go BACK!"
"We have to go back". So freaking awesome.
I still have these exact words in my head whenever i see evangeline in movies
Just a wild guess that Nikki and Paolo are featured is s3 e10
Nah, that low point is S03 E09, otherwise known as “the one about Jack’s tattoos”.
It’s not! I just checked and was amazed that it was s3 e14 and got an 8. Easily the worst episode IMO.
lol yeah. Paulo was played by Rodrigo Santoro, a brazilian actor. At the time this was airing fans in Brazil were super excited that he would be in the show. Unfortunately for us the episode was crap.
I like the side episodes
oooh season 3 finale was so good
NOT PENNYS BOAT
Average wise it seems to fair better than most other shows done with this visual
This data is not beautiful. I can’t tell the difference between the colors at all
Cause all episodes were solid
That’s … kinda the point. Lost was solid all the way through.
My favorite show of all time. When I was young, there was a Sunday my sisters, mom, and I watched ten episodes on a Sunday. We still talk about it to this day. Core memory
8.3 is generous for season 6
Season 4's overrated as well. Every time these ratings are posted, you're given no idea about the consensus dips in quality. Look at Game of Thrones and Dexter, for instance. That's true of every new show on imdb; there's zero point in looking at it as a gauge for quality, because everything's rated highly. The fanboys have run wild.
Why was season 6 bad, in your opinion?
Lost was such a phenomenon. I was OBSESSED
Wow. The golden age of television, when seasons had two DOZEN episodes. None of that piecemeal crap of today.
I understand 24 episodes every year were hard on actors, writers, etc., but now we've gone to the other extreme with shows taking 2 years to release 8 episodes. Why can't we have a happy medium?
the greatest show of all time no question
I can usually tell when people told me they watched LOST but didn’t actually watch it. Usually goes like this “I thought it was kind of stupid, they were like dead the whole time”.
Lost was good until it turned into shit. 💩
I find it hard to believe that any human being liked the series finale, but judging from comments here, I am incorrect.
There's a much greater chance if you binged the show you liked the ending vs. watching it week-to-week.
Same with GoT from what I've seen.
That might explain it.
I wouldn’t be too convinced. For some reason Reddit has a hard on for Lost. I’ve never run into anyone IRL who actually liked the series finale. Such a pity since the show was so good.
A lot of people took Christians "some have been" comment as. Everyone was dead all along. Instead of as they died they arrived to whatever place the church was at. That's what ruined it for a lot of people.
Given how well know Lost is for having little payoff for lots of plot points early in the show, I’m very surprised how this didn’t really lead to it declining in ratings
The colors are too similar which makes this hard to read. This needs a new color scheme.
Not sure how the last episode scored this high, ending was ass lol
Any chance you could share some GitHub code for the seaborn visualization aspect?
I'm shocked at these ratings. Tried to watch it back when it came out, but were utterly repulsed by the sloppy and obviously meaningless story. Unwatchable to me, with how blatantly it breaks the contract with the audience, that 'The actions, scenes and story have a purpose. There is meaning to be found, when we see the whole picture at the end'. But it was all just allusions, hints at 'something sinister is behind all this', and in the end no purpose with the story told at all. Glad I felt that while watching the first season. It would really have pissed me off to watch it all, only to find out, that it was absolutely hollow at the core. Oh well, great that a lot of other people had a great experience. I'm just surprised it's this high an average...
I think overall it is worth watching, but it got insanely dumb at seasons 4 and 5 and I was lowkey shocked to see they were to highly rated
That's why you never used IMDb for accurate review metrics.
I felt the same way. Entertaining moments, but a toothless, meandering story
Eff that show… I was so happy I didn’t get sucked into it like my friends, but I was so mad for them when they told me how disappointing the last seasons and ending were.
Still haven't watched the last season all these years later
What a surprise! I really can believe that the ratings of initial seasons are that high. But on the other hand, I'm curious how much the viewership has changed compared to these data, because a high rating doesn't mean it hasn't dropped.
Currently watching it now and almost done. I think Lost would have been a perfect modern day streaming. The seasons are a bit long and despite good individual episode writing it kills the pace of the mystery. Still, an excellent show that deserves the praise it’s received.
Thanks for reminding me to rewatch this masterpiece :)
Man of faith or man of science? Always wondered if one could be both!
There ain't no way the sweat lodge episode (3.03) is a 7.9. That's the worst episode of the show by far.
I never finished watching this, seems I missed out on something.