Lost unanswered questions thread

[Jolie Rouge]

Lost: The Best Backstories

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com...ackstories.php

Lost is a great show for a lot of reasons: the gripping premise, the shocking twists, the fact that half of the cast members look like underwear models, etc. But the greatest thing Lost has going for it is backstories. Not only are we told what's happening to every major character -- and, starting in Season 4, what's going to happen -- we also get to see what has happened to them over the preceding years: where they've been, what kind of people they are and how they ended up on an ill-fated plane from Australia to the U.S. Sure, not every backstory is worth the 10, 20 or even 50 flashbacks it takes to explain it, but there are plenty of good ones -- enough to make a list of the ten best. Make it to the end, and you'll see the ones that should have stayed lost. - Zach Oat

10. Nikki Fernandez & Paulo

Yeah, that's right -- the two castaways who were granted name status and injected into the action in Season 3 before being summarily buried alive due to fan outrage. Sure, their attempts to interact with established characters like Jack and Locke were laughable, but their single-episode back-story was pure joy, and actually made us regret their abrupt deaths. After all, nobody else's backstory had them playing a stripper on an Australian soap opera and shouting "Razzle-dazzle!" before getting shot by Billy Dee Williams. Nikki did that, right before seducing the show's producer and teaming up with her boyfriend Paulo to poison him and steal his collection of diamonds -- diamonds they would eventually fight over, leading to their deaths. For showing us that you can't judge a book by its cover (and for snagging Williams for a cameo) this backstory kicks ass, thereby earning Nikki and Paolo a spot on the only "best of" list they'll ever be on.

Why It's Only #10: It's only one episode long, and it shows us another side of two characters who are immediately killed.

9. Mr. Eko

One of many violently tragic backstories on Lost (man, this show has a lot of them), Mr. Eko was a young boy in his Nigerian village when his brother was chosen by local guerrillas to execute a man. Eko selflessly took his brother's spot, popping his first cap and thereby allowing his still-innocent brother to grow up to be a priest while he joined the gang and grew up to be a drug runner. Asking for his brother's help to smuggle heroin out of the country on the church's plane, Eko ends up getting the priest killed by the police just as the plane takes off, leaving Eko behind to don the vestments and continue his brother's work. Talk about your just desserts! But the craziest part of this whole story is that the small plane, with his brother's corpse on board, somehow made it all the way from Nigeria to a small, magic and/or haunted island in the South Pacific, providing much-needed closure for Mr. Eko, a much needed leg-crushing for Boone and a much-needed fix for hopeless addict Charlie. For choosing not to make Eko a wholly sympathetic character, thereby explaining his quest for redemption, and for introducing the killer Beechcraft into continuity, this intense, action-packed backstory makes the list.

Why It's Only #9: The church investigation that brings him to Australia seems too convenient; also, Eko died before we found out how that tiny plane traveled thousands of miles to the Pacific.


8. Charlie Pace

How often have we wondered what happens to members of one-hit-wonder '90s bands? Well, thanks to Lost, now we know. Working his way up from street-performer status, Charlie's songs got the band Drive Shaft on the radio, but fame (and a rapid fall from fame) took a toll on his bandmate and brother Liam, who ended up selling Charlie's piano for a ticket to a rehab clinic in Australia -- because, you know, there aren't any in England. Charlie descended into drugs, even going so low as to date a rich girl for her money, and when he went to Australia to get Liam to re-form the band, the ungratefully sober Liam turned him down flat, after all Charlie had done for him. Not only did this backstory make Charlie's later heroism all the more moving, but Dominic Monaghan's performance as a heroin fiend was so inspired that it almost made us forget that he once played a Hobbit. Almost. That close.

Why It's Only #8: Okay, so Charlie's tale is a little too VH1: Behind the Music. A rock star with drug problems? Quelle surprise!

7. Jin Kwon

Jin and his wife Sun usually go hand-in-hand, but Sun's backstory of a pampered lifestyle, a controlling father and marital infidelity doesn't hold a candle to Jin's. Born to a prostitute mother and raised by a poor fisherman father, Jin works menial jobs until he meets Sun, the daughter of a major gangster. Agreeing to work for her father in exchange for her hand in marriage, Jin is forced to become, well, an enforcer, delivering boot-speak messages to people who have crossed Sun's dad. He even delivers a beat-down on a guy who gave him a dog, but only to save him from being killed. Wanting to protect Sun from the knowledge that her dad is a thug and an a-hole, Jin keeps his mouth shut, making him appear to be distant and uncaring and driving his wife into the arms of a bald man. Oh, yeah, and he's infertile, so they can't have a baby. (Jin, not the bald guy. The bald guy is apparently fine -- he even tries to give Sun a pearl necklace. No, the other kind.)

Why It's Only #7: Jin could have solved all of his problems by simply talking to his wife. Damn this rigid Korean culture!

6. Sayid Jarrah

When your role in the ensemble is "the torturer," you know you're gonna have a good backstory. Sayid's involves serving in the Iraqi Republican Guard, being forced by the U.S. Army to torture his commanding officer for information, and then taking a job in the Guard as an interrogator. But when his childhood sweetheart comes through his interrogation chamber as an insurgent prisoner, Sayid shoots his commanding officer -- if I was Sayid's boss, I would stay far, far away from him -- and then shoots himself to allow her to escape. Living anonymously in Paris, Sayid is taken prisoner by the family of a woman he tortured, who then forgives him, and then he travels to Australia to stop his old college roommate's terror cell. And the whole time, he's looking for his sweetheart... I'm sorry, I think I'm going to cry. I'd better go torture somebody.

Why It's Only #6: Sayid gets his orders from Kate's Army step-father, then gets trained in torture by Desmond's button-pushing predecessor? Talk about coincidences.

5. James "Sawyer" Ford

Remember that time your mom told you to hide under the bed and then your dad murdered her and shot himself? No? James Ford does. It happened because a con man got his mom to give him all their money, so James swore to bring the man a steaming plate of vengeance, borrowing his name until he found him. Of course, he got into the con game, too, pulling the same tricks on women the real Sawyer did -- even adding his own twist by accidentally getting one pregnant and becoming the father of a baby girl. Then, when a fellow con man told him exactly where to find Sawyer in Australia, James went there and shot him dead... but it wasn't the right guy. Sawyer had been conned. Oh, snap! Didn't see that one coming, did you, Sawyer! Now you have to live with the crippling guilt of having murdered an innocent man! Ha! Wait, that's not funny.

[i]Why It's Only #5: We're still really not sure why someone whose life was ruined by a con man would become a con man. But the human mind is a mysterious thing.[/b]

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[Jolie Rouge]

4. Hugo "Hurley" Reyes

While ostensibly the comic relief of the show, Hurley has some pretty dark stuff in his past. Developing an eating disorder after his father leaves, Hurley balloons in size, and is on a porch at a party when it collapses, killing two. Although it wasn't his fault, his depression leads him to a psychiatric hospital, where he meets a crazy guy who's obsessed with a string of numbers. Upon his release, Hurley plays them in the lottery, and wins the jackpot, becoming a millionaire. But when bad things start happening to the people around him (and a meteor destroys his chicken restaurant, he starts to think the numbers were cursed. That's when he investigates and finds out that the guy heard them being broadcast from somewhere in the South Pacific... THEY'RE FROM THE ISLAND! The numbers are one of the threads that wind through nearly every facet of this show, and Hurley's backstory is as close as we've ever gotten to an investigation of their source or their power.

Why It's Only #4: Nowhere in Hurley's backstory does it explain why he is completely unable to lose any weight, despite living on a tropical island with limited resources.

3. Benjamin Linus

Ah, the villain backstory -- is there anything better? Seeing a young Benjamin Linus traveling with his character-actor father to the island when it was a bustling Dharma Initiative research center is exciting. Seeing him follow the ghost of his dead mother is spooky. Seeing the young Ben meet the apparently never-aging Other named Richard Alpert is shocking. Seeing Ben and the Others gas the entire compound, including Ben's father, and take their places is mind-blowing. By the time you see Ben looking up at the falling Flight 815 and barking orders to his spies to infiltrate the survivors, you have to admire this man for his complete villainy -- or, depending on how you view his actions, his callous heroism. After all, he's one of the "good guys."

Why It's Only #3: Why did Ben kill the Dharma Initiative? Why did he see the ghost of his mother? Why does Richard Alpert not age? How did Ben come to adopt Alex? Who was he married to before Juliet got there? And how the &*$# is he a good guy? A great story, but one with a lot of unanswered questions.

2. Desmond Hume

Desmond cheats a little bit by actually spending time in his flashbacks through the mysteries of time travel, thereby making them a lot more engaging. So while he doesn't go back to the time when he was a monk, helping make wine and calling everyone "brother," he does get to go back to the time when he asked billionaire Charles Widmore for the hand of his daughter Penny in marriage, and was told that he wasn't good enough. Leaving Penny and joining the army, future Desmond takes over again, taking time off from his munitions disarmament studies to track down Daniel Faraday at Oxford and talk to him about time travel. Then he goes to military prison, for failing to follow orders. Not only does Desmond meet Daniel, Jack and Charlie in his flashbacks, he even meets tail sectioner Libby, who gives him a boat to win a boat race in. (A boat race!) The boat (of course) crashes on the island, where he's taken in by Kelvin, Sayid's torture teacher (now a Dharma Initiative worker), and taught to push the button in the Hatch. But when he leaves the Hatch for too long, he allows a burst of electromagnetic energy to knock Flight 815 out of the sky. That's right -- not only does his backstory have romance, time travel and a monastery, it also tells us exactly what caused the plane crash. Oh, brother, how awesome art thou?

Why It's Only #2: Despite the fact that Penny loves him, Des dumps her and throws the ring he bought into the river because he thinks he's not good enough. Then, when she's about to get married, Penny comes looking for him, and rather than simply convincing her to ditch the guy, Desmond continues training for his boat race, so he can -- what, prove to her that he's good enough for her? Desmond, you dope.

Dishonorable Mention: Kate and Jack

Before we tell you who's #1, let's tell you who's not #1: Kate and Jack.

Kate 's backstory is a ridiculous soap opera. Her mom's boyfriend is abusive, so she blows him up, not realizing that her mom might be upset about that, and not realizing that the guy is her real father. Kate escapes, and sets up a new life in Miami, where she keeps a low profile by dating a police officer, then when she finally realizes she can't marry him, she drugs him for no good reason and runs away. Later, when Kate's mother is dying, she gets her childhood friend to arrange a meeting, even though the police are everywhere and even though her mother told her she would call for help if she saw Kate again. Kate's friend gets accidentally shot and killed, so Kate stages a bank robbery in order to get, not money for a new identity, but her friend's toy plane. Why, Lord? Why is Kate so stupid?

And Jack's story is even soapier: His father is a surgeon and a drinker, so Jack hems and haws and finally turns him in when he botches a surgery. Then Jack helps a girl walk again, falls in love with her, marries her, and then the marriage fails for no real reason we can see. Then he meets Bai Ling, who gives him a magical tattoo. Ridiculous! Stop crying, Jack!

Drum roll please ...

1. John Locke

From the beginning, Locke's backstory has been incredibly engaging, a series of surprise reveals and sucker punches and horrible twists that made us feel for him, even as his present-day self became more and more assertive, bordering on jerkhood. Apparently, the ageless Other Richard Alpert has been interested in him since he was a foster child, but Locke's fascination with knives, cars and sports has apparently kept him from joining the Others, as well as causing him to turn his back on his true calling, science. Locke is intrigued when his real mother, who gave birth to him at the age of 16, comes to see him. Tracking down his real father, he finds out that the man needs a kidney transplant, so he volunteers. But the minute his dad has his kidney, he's abandoned at the hospital. Locke is devastated, and when he finds out later his dad is working another scam on a woman, he tells his dad to back off. And that's when his dad pushes him out an eighth-story window. Locke is confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed, and will never walk again. Working at a box company owned by Hurley, he becomes even more interested in knives and survivalism, and decides to go on a walkabout in Australia, only to be turned away when he touches down in Sydney due to his handicap. Seeing what a pathetic, helpless person he was makes us all the more impressed by the strong, boar-killing hunter/survivor he became on the island, and the fact that his father is the con man named Sawyer that James Ford is looking for is the best, most logical character connection out of the entire spiderweb. Also, that scar of his is just bad ass....

[Jolie Rouge]

Lost: The 10 Most Worthless Characters

The following Lost characters are overwhelmingly, for lack of a better word, worthless. They are the characters whose scenes we usually fast-forward through because they just don’t have a lot to offer. They’re not necessarily evil, most of them kick very little ass, their back-stories eat up precious screen time, and they require far too much hand-holding from the characters who are actually making themselves useful (or entertaining) on the island. We’re calling them out because we know Jack just doesn’t have the heart to. And besides, he’s busy doing important things, which is more than we can say for these guys. -- Mindy Monez

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com...thless_cha.php

10. Michael
“Oops! I killed Libby!” The photo says it all. When Michael’s not running around wildly screaming “My son!” at anything with ears (annoying, but a great drinking game rule nonetheless), he’s killing or betraying his fellow castaways for Walt’s benefit. Which is an odd way to go about things, considering Jack and Locke have solutions for everything, but Michael would rather take his chances with Ben and The Others than hash out a plan with the Losties -- at least, the ones who don’t actually want him dead because he’s just no damn good. While we’re on the subject of Walt, it should be noted that Michael is also the least fun dad ever. He wouldn’t let Walt learn how to throw knives, even though all the cool kids on the island were doing it, and he dragged him on his shoddy raft tour of doom and kidnapping, the island’s equivalent of a long and boring father-son fly fishing trip. Did we mention he’s just no damn good?

9. Christian Shephard

Wow, what a *******. When this guy was alive he liked to do things like perform surgeries whilst intoxicated, drunkenly botch them, and then try to guilt his son (Jack) into lying about it for him. This is the same son he spent a lifetime convincing that he was hopelessly inadequate by drilling the mantra “You just don’t have what it takes” into his head, by the way. And that’s just what he does to the kid he tells people about! He also has a secret family on another continent that he enjoyed violently threatening on rainy evenings from time to time. Now that he’s un-dead (half-dead? Half-alive? It’s anyone’s guess), he’s certainly become a much cooler character, but he haunts Jack for no good reason and he seems to have killed Claire, so he's still about a million miles away from sainthood in our book.

8. Kate

Kate’s biggest problem is that she just can’t follow instructions. Ignoring simple pleas like “Kate! Don’t touch that!” or “Kate! Don’t follow us!” have wound up causing a whole mess of problems, from getting her and Jack “caught in a net” once, to losing the Losties quite a few weapons to The Others back in Season 2, to, most recently, assuring a frantic wife, “Sun, you get the baby on the helicopter. I’ll get Jin.” -- moments later, Jin (ostensibly) blew up, and Kate was safe and sound in the air. Oh, and back on the mainland she got her cancer-curing, upstanding-citizen-minding-his-own-business of a childhood sweetheart shot to death when she stole his car with him in it to escape the fuzz. Short and simple, Kate ruins everything. She is an everything-ruiner. The only thing she does well is fuel the feud between Jack and Sawyer, and that soap opera got old before it even started.

7. Charlie

Admittedly, Charlie offered some great comic relief at times, and he did do cool things every once in a while (killing Ethan to avenge Claire, rescuing Sayid’s girlfriend from an alleyway robbery, drowning himself to save everyone, probably a couple other nice things we’re forgetting). The downside is that all of that was negated by his never-effing-ending struggle with heroin, freakish obsession with Aaron, and the thinly veiled Oasis: Behind the Music that was his back story, all of which just got in the way of much more interesting plotlines. And while we're at it, "You All Everybody" is a far cry from "Wonderwall." A really far cry.

6. Claire

Claire is representative of the problems common among all of Lost's least compelling characters. She can’t fight for herself, so she constantly needs to be protected and/or rescued, she can’t hunt for herself, so she constantly needs to be provided for, and she's guilty (though to a lesser degree) of Michael's "My son!" syndrome when it comes to all things Aaron, which is more than a little grating after four seasons. Basically, she’s the least kick-ass of any of the show’s remaining major characters, which is just inexcusable when even Bernard has proven handy with a gun at this point.

5. Shannon

Hey everyone, meet Shannon. She’s very pretty and very rich, but aside from possessing a half-assed French proficiency and the ability to whine about anything and everything, she has no skills whatsoever. How did her brother feel when some jungle peyote caused him to hallucinate her gory demise? "Relieved." That's right. This girl is such a soul-crushing burden that even her own brother was relieved when he thought she'd been killed. And so were we, when she was finally offed for real.

4. Aaron

Is it just us, or is this little guy really not pulling his weight around that island?

[Jolie Rouge]

3. Sarah Shephard

While the Happy Gilmore fan in me says Julie Bowen can do no wrong, Sarah Shephard is the most boring part of the most boring back story in Lost history. While Sayid and the love of his life were torn apart by political strife, warfare and ultimately, murder, for instance, Jack and Sarah just kind of...grew apart. Because of...Jack's busy work schedule. While that kind of thing is undoubtedly relatable to many viewers, this isn’t Thirtysomething, it's Lost. No one watches this show to see a bored rich housewife crying about being ignored. If that’s the biggest problem in your life, character, you belong on another show.

2. Achara (That Bai Ling Character)

We get it -- Jack is weird about girls. This is a fact we all knew long before this episode aired and wasted everyone's time. We’d endured his painfully boring divorce, watched almost three full seasons of him trying to steal Kate away from Sawyer (unsuccessfully, for the most part), and even enjoyed some chaste sexual tension with Ana Lucia and Juliet. Why, after all of that, did we have to sit through an entire flashback episode of him hooking up with a psychic Thai floozy on vacay? Because she gave him one of his tattoos? Yeah, because everyone was just dying to know where Jack's tattoos came from, especially over more pressing questions like, "WTF was that four-toed statue?!" or even, "Hey, what's all this time-traveling business Desmond did last week?" But, as pointless as this episode and Achara are, they are no match for...

1. Nikki and Paolo

These two are so worthless they don’t even deserve to be separate characters. A show like Lost should never, repeat, never have departure episodes. Not only do they halt much-needed exposition in the show's long story arcs, they also seriously mess with the viewers' collective sanities. Don't leave us with a cliffhanger like Ben seemingly teleporting Locke's dad to the island via an alleged "magic (fricking!) box" and then waste the entire next week on a cautionary tale against greed starring two characters (who die at the end of the episode, never to be heard from again) we've never heard of. It's just cruel.

[Jolie Rouge]

Did they ever address what happened to the children on the Flight ? They were kidnapped by the Others and at one point you see them marching thru the jungle.. one dragging a teddy bear ( very Peter Pan-esque ) ... but they never come back to the issue. Or did I jsut miss it?

[justme23]

I don't know, I don't remember... but I do know they released a previously unseen scene at comic con... I saw it on the perez hilton mobile site on my phone... but I can't seem to find it when I search now... but I didn't search hard either... I'm sure if you really wanna see it you can... it was supposedly from season one and was meant to show that they really knew how they were going to end the show all along... but I'm not quite sure I buy it.

[Jolie Rouge]

... it was supposedly from season one and was meant to show that they really knew how they were going to end the show all along... but I'm not quite sure I buy it.

Michael Emerson ( "Ben" ) was only contracted for a three episode arc ... but recieved such a response that they enlarged his role. COnsidering how pivotal "Ben" became in the storyline ... how can they say they "knew". Not to mention the deaths of Annalucia, Livie, and Echo .... immediately following their DUI arrests in Hawaii ... I don't think that was planned

[justme23]

It wasn't a video of Ben... but ok.

[Jolie Rouge]

LOL No I just meant they didn't seem to really have an idea where things were going ... I was using the developement of those charachters as an example.

[Jolie Rouge]

It's Lost Day: Hurley's Numbers Align on April 8
BuzzFeedEntmnt· 1 hour ago

In honor of 4.8.15, find out which #Lost mystery you are

http://www.buzzfeed.com/iramadison/w...you#.jvJX5gQ5M

I got: Hi Matthew Abaddon, who are you?

You work for Widmore, or with him, or something. But tell us more about you! There’s so few black people around, we’d really like to know your backstory and how you know so much about the island and how you knew Locke was going to end up on the island are you actually from the past are you from Fringe or are you #$##$!!#!#!#!@#13…


Other options appear to be :

The fuq did that bomb do?
Yeah, you can hurtle people through time and all, but like, did you actually do anything?

..

WTF is the island?
Yes, it’s perfectly fine that that you’re just ~mysterious~ but also, at what point do you stop being mysterious and start being a quirky first date that’s trying too hard?"

..

‘Sup with the statue?
You’re evidence that cultures have been coming to the island for centuries, obviously. Like some Egyptians. Who left no other artifacts except a big-ass statue.

..

What are these rules of which you speak, Charles Widmore?
You’re always talking about there are “rules” you can’t break, but you really just sound like a mom trying to keep her kids in line. These rules don’t exist at all, do they? It’s cool, the story was fun.

Why are pregnant women dying?