The Guardian interviews JJ Abrams:

Do woebegone Losties give Abrams an earful about the finale?

“Oh my God, yes,” he groans. “For years, I had people praising Lost to death, and now they say: ‘I’m so pissed at you for the end of Lost.’ I think a lot of people who were upset with the ending, were just upset that it ended. And I’ve not yet heard the pitch of what the ending should have been. I’ve just heard: ‘That sucked.'”

WTF? He thinks we’re pissed off because the series ended? And no one has ever held his attention long enough to explain just what it was that really annoyed us so much about the whole last season? Seriously?

I’m not the one to explain it, but honestly, I don’t think it’s all that hard. We weren’t demanding that the whole series be wrapped up in a nice, neat bow, but we were hoping for at least most of the major plotlines to be resolved. We were hoping for at least most of the major mysteries to be explained. We were hoping that at least the whole thing didn’t turn out to be a St. Elsewhere style fantasy world. And we were sure as hell annoyed when they pretended they had run out of time to tie this stuff up after wasting the entire first half of the final season with a brand new plotline that came out of nowhere, went nowhere, never got resolved, and had no purpose at all.

I was sort of hoping never to hear about Lost again. The contempt the creators showed for their audience pissed me off, as did having to concede victory to all the critics who kept saying the show runners had no idea what they were doing. But this is just too much. Abrams has no clue why so many fans felt cheated by the whole thing? Spare me.

POSTSCRIPT: Here’s a question: has any show that generated such enormous buzz and such intense fan loyalty ever dropped out of sight so fast? About a week or two after the finale, it just disappeared and no one ever mentioned it again. I wonder what Abrams makes of that? Or is he still waiting for some fan to provide him with an ending to his own story?

POSTSCRIPT 2: On the other hand, I’m grateful for the chance to write about something other than the debt ceiling. Thanks, JJ!

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate