Long Rambley *Unedited Stream of Consciousness* Stuff on Genre Stories, Endings, and Answers
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Warning: Spoilers for BSG finale, very vague but possibly spoilerish LOST finale, Spoilers for Star Wars, and, oh hell, Buffy, Angel, Farscape, and the BtVS comics too
So I've been thinking about the Lost finale (I know. But... I can't help it. Actually, I think it's a good sign that it's continued to intrigue me) and I've popped over to TWOP where they've got some fast and furious discussions about answers and what was or wasn't satisfying and whether or not it held true to the rest of the story...and much like when reading BtVS stuff, sometimes you walk away thinking that we really did watch different shows!
One of the discussions that struck me was some guy saying. Oh heck, I'm not going to paraphrase. It's easier just to hunt it down and quote it as it's what
Star Wars did right what LOST did wrong. Lucas did not leave us with nagging mysteries left over from the first trilogy. He knew the story would not be satisfying unless he carefully explained how The Force works (midichlorians), the sociopolitical and economic conditions precipitating the Clone Wars, the inner workings of the Jedi council, and the specific points of differentiation between the dark and light sides. Explanations make stories more better.
Oh my! Let's ignore Lost for a moment. Let's talk about Star Wars for a bit...
Good God! Talk about opposing world views! The second trilogy did something other than tarnish memories from my childhood?! I really wonder about the age of the guy posting because in my experience people who have a lot of love for the second trilogy tend to be people who grew up with it. People who grew up with the first trilogy tend to be less affectionate of the second set of stories.
I will say that if the second trilogy was the 'answer' then I damn well wish that Lucas had kept his 'answers' to himself!
First off, I didn't know that there was all that much that was important that I didn't get with the first trilogy. I went along happily for many decades without those answers. I mean, sure there were things left out there that we could think upon, read tie-in novels abour or, if we were inclined, dream up fanficcy scenarios for -- the fall of the Jedis, the fall of Anakin Skywalker, etc. But I can also say that the answers in my head were a damn sight more satisfying to me than the ones that Lucas provided. And, I'm sorry, but midichlorians were non-sensical CRAP!! I hated it. I really hated it. I hated it so much I was re-writing Episode 1 in my head while I was still in the theater watching the damn thing! (This has only happened twice in my life. Episode 1 of Star Wars was so damn boring and I don't know. It was just so bad that, whenever I wasn't thinking about the poor bastards left sitting at computers having to run a render program for the endless number of marble floors and walls on prominent display, I kept re-editing the story in my head as I watched, thinking "It would've been so much better had they just done this or that or that or even that instead.) The only other movie that ever did that to me was Alien: Resurrection (that I didn't discover until years later was largely a Joss Whedon script. I know he doesn't lay claim to it and says they changed it, but somewhere, sometime I read what he considers "his" part of it and... yep. That's the part that I hated. (And no, I don't remember the details of what it was that I hated so badly. I've only watched the movie once since, and I still hated it. One issue I had basically had to do with the depiction of the mad scientist character. I thought the writing had gone the most trite way possible. But that wasn't my only issue. I just no longer remember what they were).
Anyway, back to midichlorines and why I hated them. It's a two-fold reason why I hated it.
First, they made no damn sense. See, the problem is if you're going to float an answer as faux science-y 'realistic' answer then you really, really have to make stuff logical. There are hard science fiction writers. And I can enjoy them. I like science. A lot. But to make it 'scientific' then it really needs some logic to it. I consider things like 'The Adromeda Strain' to be science fiction. It's jumping off point is actual science that is then extrapolated into a story. It stretches the premise, but it's starting with an investigation of the science. And it usually requires that the writer either have a technical background (for example, Michael Crichton who wrote "The Andromeda Strain" actually graduated med school) or be someone who is actually very interested in science. It requires some level of knowledge to do very well. Things that use sci-fi simply as a setting I put in the category of either soft sci-fi or Science Fantasy. Star Wars is very, very much Science Fantasy. It was really a fantasy book placed in space and given flashy special effects. Actually, though far closer to science fiction than Star Wars ever was, I consider Farscape To be science fantasy as well. I say that because so much of Farscape was darn near just 'magic' (see the episode about Maldus. There was no effort at science there. And none at Aeryn's resurrection in Season of Death. It is essentially... magic). Yes, Farscape has John Crichton running around talking about wormholes... but most of the time it may as well be Narnia's Wardrobe. The science in Farscape was to facilitate the story, not to ponder actual bits of science (exception: the episode Unrealized Reality which actually did have some interesting points about the nature of time). Doctor Who is also science fantasy. I do actually somewhat agree with the current headwriter that Doctor Who has more to do with fairy tales than with science fiction. And let me say this loud and clear, there is not a darn thing wrong with soft science fiction or science fantasy. I love them both.
However (back to midichlorines), technobabble/technojagon does not a real answer make. Midichlorines wasn't an answer for anything. It didn't make a damn bit of sense genetically. It didn't explain the ability to mind-warp people, levitate things, or saber fight while blindfolded. Another person in the TWOP thread in question said that Trek had faster than light warp drives but they explained that with dilithium crystals and... WHAT?! I do consider Trek to, more often than not, be science fiction. TNG did often like to take science tidbits and extrapolate them into stories. But, faster than warp drives were not explained by dilithium crystals. It didn't explain it. No, it really, really didn't. And if you think it did, you don't fully comprehend what faster than light entails. For that matter, 'red matter' didn't explain wormhole opening or black holes created in place of Vulcan, either. Red Matter = something JJ Abrams made up out of thin air that had as much to do with science as Harry Potter's wizard wand) It actually sort of reminds me of the infamous "serial killer lover" incident with David Fury over on The Bronze. The gist of the argument (that I never felt that Fury understood) was that the 'soul' was just a way for the show to make Angel 'okay' for Buffy. It was a fictional construct. It was how they could have Angel go evil and bring him back. It was a MacGuffin. It only meant what the writers of the show wanted it to mean and if they could do that with a soul they could do the same thing with a chip or a home-grown conscience with Spike. It was like I was screaming heresy at the top of my lungs (I don't know. Maybe Fury is religious so he took the soul thing really seriously as something other than a made-up plot device). The point being "soul" was a name they gave to accomplish a purpose in a story. Technobabble or Technojargon is often the same thing. If it's meaningless technojargon, it's the writers holding up a shiny object somewhere to your left to distract you from the fact that was is going on is essentially... magic.
Unlike the poster quoted above. I didn't consider "midichlorines" to be an answer for anything. I considered it meaningless twaddle. What's worse, it was meaningless twaddle that actually made "The Force" less interesting. Unlike the quoted poster, I thought it was better with the question mark. "The Force" could be interpreted as perhaps having to do with the physical universe. Perhaps it was physics... or perhaps it was philosophy... or perhaps it was theology. And, "The Force" being potentially any or all of the three gave it... mystery. It gave it narrative power. Slapping a quasi-genetic component to it didn't make that any better, and I'm not sure it didn't make it seem less interesting and less powerful. Because sitting in the theater then, I stopped wondering about "The Force" in a big way and started analyzing it under a mental microscope about "how in the fucking hell does that work?!" I stopped looking at it on a big scale and started looking at it as a small one. And seriously, ameoba of the body isn't nearly as satisfying as a philosophical/quantum physics/indecipherable force. It's taken from something to ponder to a quantifiable number of little micro-organisms. It rendered it... mundane. Might as well be dust-mites now.
Now, I know what the guy was arguing. He was not happy with where and how Lost ended. And I know that there are those who reacted quite negatively. I followed a link yesterday to an LJ which flat-out said "Fuck you, LOST!" over the finale. Most of my own flist was far less critical ranging from having liked only parts of it and to others having really liked where it. And I can understand many of the reservation of those that didn't like it.
I can understand feeling betrayed by a story. Let's take Season 8 comics for example. I still have a difficult time (in fact I refuse) to accept the change in mythology that happened there. On the TV show we were given a story about how vampires were created by the last Old One out the door infecting a human, creating a hybrid that are vampires. And we were freaking shown that Slayers were infected with an aspect of the demons. And were explicitly told by Whistler that the powers had never seen Bangel coming... and then in Season 8 it's suddenly a sentient universe planning for Buffy/Angel to be a perfected intelligently designed evolution and they were meant in big letters of FATE... and, I'm sorry. That's just throwing out their own mythology and replacing it wholesale.
I know that there are some people running around screaming that the ending of LOST was "not the show they were watching" (And reading some of the rants, it really really wasn't). And, in some small way I can even sympathize. After all, LOST wasn't presented by ABC in the early years as a genre show. I remember back in Season 1, there being some interview by someone about LOST trying to always have a pragmatic answer as well as a unscientific on. So, I do sympathize that there were some mainstream non-genre fans who got suckered into a very, very genre show. That said...um... it had a MONSTER in the premiere episode! No matter what they said it was kind clear from inception that we weren't talking realism here. I don't know how in the hell someone could've gotten six years into with the show where it became ever more increasingly obvious that they were nowhere NEAR Kansas anymore and still some people thought that somehow, someway there was going to be a practical answer to what was going on. LOST departed the 'normal world' on day one. And though I grant that ABC tried its best to launch LOST as not being a genre show, I can't help but think you'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to have caught on ages ago that it WAS genre. Also, technojargon isn't really an 'answer' either. If Lost said that LOSTEES were infected by midichlorines and that's why they were on the island... that's not really an answer either. It would be just as much of a MacGuffin as anything else.
Which isn't to imply in any way that even genre fans couldn't have big issues or couldn't be dissatisfied with the answers and non-answers given. It's perfectly possible to love genre fiction and to dislike the final twist. But those criticisms are slightly different. Disliking something in a writing sense or a philosophical sense or due to its execution or for it just not being adequate is a slightly different than wanting it to be rational (even if 'rational' is just meaningless techonbabble. Apparently quasi-science gibberish is more valuable than touchy-feely crap... and okay, maybe I took offense at the dude who said that only women who liked lollipops and unicorns and were crazy-cat-ladies could like it because, dude, whether you know it or not, that's some sexist shit you said. Also, meaningless technobabble is not, simply by right of sounding vaguely sciencey, superior to touchy-feely characterization 'crap.' It's like the BSG guys that obsessed about military stuff or the trekkies to have exact plans for the decks of the enterprise. These are not 'more rational' ways of watching a television show ... just because it feels reassuringly unemotional and vaguely male).
I digress.
Let me stress that I am NOT saying that people couldn't have wanted more or different or different kinds of answers. All of that is perfectly valid and I can definitely see where people can feel that way. I was just somewhat taken aback by a TWOP poster or two who insisted that they wanted 'hard' answers and categorize midichlorines as being an example of both a rational and satisfying answer while stressing that they hadn't been watching a show that had all this mythology and philosophy in it. Did they really not notice significant number of characters named after philosophers?! And how one misses a HUGE HONKING STATUE OF AN EGYPTIAN GODDESS standing (or ruined) on the island, I honestly don't know. I guess it's possible to have ignored those things to concentrate on the mechanics of the island if you didn't like them, but I find it somewhat mindblowing to see rage-filled rants claiming that that philosophical crap hadn't been part of the show they were watching. Um...yes it was.
Look, I can understand having issues with the ending. I truly, honestly do. So I'm not criticizing that reaction. I'm not. You don't have to like the ending. You can take issue with it in a number of ways. And I can understand either feeling that there were things unanswered, or just straight-up disliking the answers that were given or the kind of answers given. The twist could be a disappointment or a twist too far and I can see feeling that it was all too sentimental.
I just don't quite understand the fraction who say that they were never watching a show that was dealing with philosophy and mythology and wanted a scientific (or at least faux-scientific) answer. Honestly, I don't think a real quantum physicist could cook up a scientific answer that would sound plausible, much less understandable. And a bunch of writers sure as hell weren't going to be able to invent a scientific explanation for everything that was going on. Science is great. Science is awesome. Science can encompass some mind-blowing things that exceed our imaginations. But it wasn't going to adequately cover all the bases of a 6 year TV show without also having some huge honking plot holes in it also. I can understand not liking the nature of the answer or wanting more and/or different answers. But I also don't think that of technobabble as qualitatively better than Harry Potter or Harry Dresden claiming "Magic!" Even if a glowhole was described as midichlorines, we'd still be talking about a glowhole.
That said, I also speak as one of the few -- the very few -- that wasn't much bothered by the BSG finale. I mean, I had issues Starbuck, Six, and Baltar being freaking angels being the most prominent of them. Seriously, THESE FOLKS, where angels?! Oh good grief. I can't buy it. I just can't buy it. {pause} Nope. Still don't buy it. But the two things that seemed to most wig everyone out, honestly didn't bother me much, if at all.
The whole mitochondrial Eve thing really flipped people out, and I've never quite understood why. Mitochondrial Eve =/= Genesis Eve. It didn't and never did mean that people didn't already exist. Nor did it mean that mitochondrial Eve had to hook up with mitochondrial Adam. In fact -- she didn't. So no one was sentencing the tot to marry a cave man. That's not what the term even meant. Mitochondrial Eve really boils down to being a mathematical equation. MtDNA is a string of DNA that is passed on unchanged along a maternal lineage. It had a distinct sequence and isn't changed via reproduction any changes are spontaneous substitutions/mutations. And they happen at a certain rate (approximately one ever 3500 years)... which means it's possible to calculate backwards to the statistical mitochondrial Eve. It also means that at some point in history there was either a near-extinction or (more likely) a population pinch-point occurred. It never meant she was the "first" human. It also never meant that she had kids with Y-chromosomal "Adam"... who is determined by a similar mathematical equation. In fact, based on calculations mitochondrial Eve is somewhere between 150,000 - 200,000 years ago. Y-Chromosomal "Adam" is only 50,000 - 80,000 years ago. And, honestly, I never got what the big problem was in saying that Hera was the mitochondrial Eve. At least not when you have Angel Starbuck running around and Baltar -- BALTAR! -- as a freaking angel. That was a far greater WTF?
The other big flip-out point in the BSG finale seemed to be the bucolic nature of it. It was the whole "technology bad" thing. And, I can understand why people dislike that. But, again, I was unbothered because I considered it a necessary by-product of the chosen ending... and I didn't blame them for the ending. Let me mention at this point that I was not an enthusiastic fan of BSG. I found the show as a whole to be quite nihilistic in a way that wasn't to my taste (Hell, I'm writing a post-apocalyptic WIP and had feedback once about how my post-apocalyptic world isn't hopeless. I actually quite liked that feedback. The fic might be post-apocalyptic, but I don't want it to be nihilistic. (I think this is why I liked the City of Ember book series. It was a weirdly optimistic post-apocalyptic world).
Anyway, as a series, I thought the BSG reboot was quite nihilistic. The thing started with blowing up humanity and then pointedly told us that there were not enough surviving humans for adequate genetic diversity for the human race to survive. And that was the premise. Then they proceeded to make their humans so horrible and unlikable (to me) that I reached a point where I would've been okay had their human race completely died out. (Seriously, I felt BSG became very misanthropic. It was a show that had a very, very dark view of human nature.
By the time they reached earth and found that it had been blown up real good, I was basically prepared for a "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending. To me, by that point there was no point. In anything in that fictional universe. They hadn't had enough genetic diversity to save mankind at the beginning and they'd killed a shit load of humans since then. And even if the Cylons kicked in their genetic diversity, there was only a hand ful of willing models, and all the models combined wouldn't have been enough. From the point of finding destroyed Earth, there was no further point (So long, Dee! I could understand the suicide even as I thought it was a waste.) Technology dies. They were on a death ship in a death fleet. They had limited fuel, limited food. Sooner or later they were going to run out of metaphorical gas or starve to death. Fun. So, at that point BSG had two choices, they could go the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending (which, given the tone of the show is what I was expecting.) Or they could do what they did. Having chosen there being an Earth II...well, at least there'd be a continuation of mankind. I guess that might be good? Sorta. But that meant, as a premise that technology had to be jetisonned. If our earth was Earth II then there couldn't be evidence of BSG. Sooner or later its orbit would degrade and it would crash on earth. And given the premise, you couldn't be discovering space ships in pre-historic earth. So by choosing the 'new earth' ending, they pretty much sealed "must jettison technology." And, given the mitochondrial DNA explanation above, it didn't matter if there were people on earth already. Hera as Eve didn't preclude that.
So the big "I hated it stuff" that most people point to didn't bother me too much. Only the whole "God did it and Starbuck, Six, and Baltar were ANGELS! really annoyed and seemed rather silly in the context of such a misanthropic show. But, still, shrug. I wasn't that bothered.
All of which is to say, that even if a show gives answers, that doesn't mean that folks will be happy with the answers they are given. BSG fans pretty much feel that the answer was awful (and inasmuch as it involved Starbuck and Baltar angels, I agree. But the whole mitochondrial Eve part of it actually was a quasi-science answer... and it was hated by a big slew of fans.
Buffy's finale "Chosen" had answers of a sort. I mean, yeah, the whole eye of Botox thing several episode earlier was never addressed again. And we had deus ex machina glow champion amulet. But it was all pretty transparent. That didn't necesarily make it good either. Frankly side by side, I vastly prefer the vague, open-ended AtS finale of "Not Fade Away" with the characters going into the fight because that's what they do as opposed to the BtVS ending which, quite frankly, just left me depressed. (On the other hand, I would have been quite happy with "The Gift" as a finale, so... I don't even have a point.)
So, point, point. I need to have a point. I guess it's that what satisfies us, satisfies us, and what doesn't... doesn't. (Hey, I didn't say that the point would be deep!) One person can find midichlorines an adequate, fulfilling answer and another can find it to be a crock of shit. I can understand hating the AtS finale (even though I don't), and I can see why there are people who love "Chosen" (though, I admit, that I still kind of hate huge chunks of it.) What people need to feel that a fictional journey was adequately nourishing varies greatly from person to person.
And, wow, this got way, way, way longer than I had intended, so I put it behind a cut. Sadly... I don't even think I'm through. I actually have some more to say. But I'll do that later.
Warning: Spoilers for BSG finale, very vague but possibly spoilerish LOST finale, Spoilers for Star Wars, and, oh hell, Buffy, Angel, Farscape, and the BtVS comics too
So I've been thinking about the Lost finale (I know. But... I can't help it. Actually, I think it's a good sign that it's continued to intrigue me) and I've popped over to TWOP where they've got some fast and furious discussions about answers and what was or wasn't satisfying and whether or not it held true to the rest of the story...and much like when reading BtVS stuff, sometimes you walk away thinking that we really did watch different shows!
One of the discussions that struck me was some guy saying. Oh heck, I'm not going to paraphrase. It's easier just to hunt it down and quote it as it's what
Star Wars did right what LOST did wrong. Lucas did not leave us with nagging mysteries left over from the first trilogy. He knew the story would not be satisfying unless he carefully explained how The Force works (midichlorians), the sociopolitical and economic conditions precipitating the Clone Wars, the inner workings of the Jedi council, and the specific points of differentiation between the dark and light sides. Explanations make stories more better.
Oh my! Let's ignore Lost for a moment. Let's talk about Star Wars for a bit...
Good God! Talk about opposing world views! The second trilogy did something other than tarnish memories from my childhood?! I really wonder about the age of the guy posting because in my experience people who have a lot of love for the second trilogy tend to be people who grew up with it. People who grew up with the first trilogy tend to be less affectionate of the second set of stories.
I will say that if the second trilogy was the 'answer' then I damn well wish that Lucas had kept his 'answers' to himself!
First off, I didn't know that there was all that much that was important that I didn't get with the first trilogy. I went along happily for many decades without those answers. I mean, sure there were things left out there that we could think upon, read tie-in novels abour or, if we were inclined, dream up fanficcy scenarios for -- the fall of the Jedis, the fall of Anakin Skywalker, etc. But I can also say that the answers in my head were a damn sight more satisfying to me than the ones that Lucas provided. And, I'm sorry, but midichlorians were non-sensical CRAP!! I hated it. I really hated it. I hated it so much I was re-writing Episode 1 in my head while I was still in the theater watching the damn thing! (This has only happened twice in my life. Episode 1 of Star Wars was so damn boring and I don't know. It was just so bad that, whenever I wasn't thinking about the poor bastards left sitting at computers having to run a render program for the endless number of marble floors and walls on prominent display, I kept re-editing the story in my head as I watched, thinking "It would've been so much better had they just done this or that or that or even that instead.) The only other movie that ever did that to me was Alien: Resurrection (that I didn't discover until years later was largely a Joss Whedon script. I know he doesn't lay claim to it and says they changed it, but somewhere, sometime I read what he considers "his" part of it and... yep. That's the part that I hated. (And no, I don't remember the details of what it was that I hated so badly. I've only watched the movie once since, and I still hated it. One issue I had basically had to do with the depiction of the mad scientist character. I thought the writing had gone the most trite way possible. But that wasn't my only issue. I just no longer remember what they were).
Anyway, back to midichlorines and why I hated them. It's a two-fold reason why I hated it.
First, they made no damn sense. See, the problem is if you're going to float an answer as faux science-y 'realistic' answer then you really, really have to make stuff logical. There are hard science fiction writers. And I can enjoy them. I like science. A lot. But to make it 'scientific' then it really needs some logic to it. I consider things like 'The Adromeda Strain' to be science fiction. It's jumping off point is actual science that is then extrapolated into a story. It stretches the premise, but it's starting with an investigation of the science. And it usually requires that the writer either have a technical background (for example, Michael Crichton who wrote "The Andromeda Strain" actually graduated med school) or be someone who is actually very interested in science. It requires some level of knowledge to do very well. Things that use sci-fi simply as a setting I put in the category of either soft sci-fi or Science Fantasy. Star Wars is very, very much Science Fantasy. It was really a fantasy book placed in space and given flashy special effects. Actually, though far closer to science fiction than Star Wars ever was, I consider Farscape To be science fantasy as well. I say that because so much of Farscape was darn near just 'magic' (see the episode about Maldus. There was no effort at science there. And none at Aeryn's resurrection in Season of Death. It is essentially... magic). Yes, Farscape has John Crichton running around talking about wormholes... but most of the time it may as well be Narnia's Wardrobe. The science in Farscape was to facilitate the story, not to ponder actual bits of science (exception: the episode Unrealized Reality which actually did have some interesting points about the nature of time). Doctor Who is also science fantasy. I do actually somewhat agree with the current headwriter that Doctor Who has more to do with fairy tales than with science fiction. And let me say this loud and clear, there is not a darn thing wrong with soft science fiction or science fantasy. I love them both.
However (back to midichlorines), technobabble/technojagon does not a real answer make. Midichlorines wasn't an answer for anything. It didn't make a damn bit of sense genetically. It didn't explain the ability to mind-warp people, levitate things, or saber fight while blindfolded. Another person in the TWOP thread in question said that Trek had faster than light warp drives but they explained that with dilithium crystals and... WHAT?! I do consider Trek to, more often than not, be science fiction. TNG did often like to take science tidbits and extrapolate them into stories. But, faster than warp drives were not explained by dilithium crystals. It didn't explain it. No, it really, really didn't. And if you think it did, you don't fully comprehend what faster than light entails. For that matter, 'red matter' didn't explain wormhole opening or black holes created in place of Vulcan, either. Red Matter = something JJ Abrams made up out of thin air that had as much to do with science as Harry Potter's wizard wand) It actually sort of reminds me of the infamous "serial killer lover" incident with David Fury over on The Bronze. The gist of the argument (that I never felt that Fury understood) was that the 'soul' was just a way for the show to make Angel 'okay' for Buffy. It was a fictional construct. It was how they could have Angel go evil and bring him back. It was a MacGuffin. It only meant what the writers of the show wanted it to mean and if they could do that with a soul they could do the same thing with a chip or a home-grown conscience with Spike. It was like I was screaming heresy at the top of my lungs (I don't know. Maybe Fury is religious so he took the soul thing really seriously as something other than a made-up plot device). The point being "soul" was a name they gave to accomplish a purpose in a story. Technobabble or Technojargon is often the same thing. If it's meaningless technojargon, it's the writers holding up a shiny object somewhere to your left to distract you from the fact that was is going on is essentially... magic.
Unlike the poster quoted above. I didn't consider "midichlorines" to be an answer for anything. I considered it meaningless twaddle. What's worse, it was meaningless twaddle that actually made "The Force" less interesting. Unlike the quoted poster, I thought it was better with the question mark. "The Force" could be interpreted as perhaps having to do with the physical universe. Perhaps it was physics... or perhaps it was philosophy... or perhaps it was theology. And, "The Force" being potentially any or all of the three gave it... mystery. It gave it narrative power. Slapping a quasi-genetic component to it didn't make that any better, and I'm not sure it didn't make it seem less interesting and less powerful. Because sitting in the theater then, I stopped wondering about "The Force" in a big way and started analyzing it under a mental microscope about "how in the fucking hell does that work?!" I stopped looking at it on a big scale and started looking at it as a small one. And seriously, ameoba of the body isn't nearly as satisfying as a philosophical/quantum physics/indecipherable force. It's taken from something to ponder to a quantifiable number of little micro-organisms. It rendered it... mundane. Might as well be dust-mites now.
Now, I know what the guy was arguing. He was not happy with where and how Lost ended. And I know that there are those who reacted quite negatively. I followed a link yesterday to an LJ which flat-out said "Fuck you, LOST!" over the finale. Most of my own flist was far less critical ranging from having liked only parts of it and to others having really liked where it. And I can understand many of the reservation of those that didn't like it.
I can understand feeling betrayed by a story. Let's take Season 8 comics for example. I still have a difficult time (in fact I refuse) to accept the change in mythology that happened there. On the TV show we were given a story about how vampires were created by the last Old One out the door infecting a human, creating a hybrid that are vampires. And we were freaking shown that Slayers were infected with an aspect of the demons. And were explicitly told by Whistler that the powers had never seen Bangel coming... and then in Season 8 it's suddenly a sentient universe planning for Buffy/Angel to be a perfected intelligently designed evolution and they were meant in big letters of FATE... and, I'm sorry. That's just throwing out their own mythology and replacing it wholesale.
I know that there are some people running around screaming that the ending of LOST was "not the show they were watching" (And reading some of the rants, it really really wasn't). And, in some small way I can even sympathize. After all, LOST wasn't presented by ABC in the early years as a genre show. I remember back in Season 1, there being some interview by someone about LOST trying to always have a pragmatic answer as well as a unscientific on. So, I do sympathize that there were some mainstream non-genre fans who got suckered into a very, very genre show. That said...um... it had a MONSTER in the premiere episode! No matter what they said it was kind clear from inception that we weren't talking realism here. I don't know how in the hell someone could've gotten six years into with the show where it became ever more increasingly obvious that they were nowhere NEAR Kansas anymore and still some people thought that somehow, someway there was going to be a practical answer to what was going on. LOST departed the 'normal world' on day one. And though I grant that ABC tried its best to launch LOST as not being a genre show, I can't help but think you'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to have caught on ages ago that it WAS genre. Also, technojargon isn't really an 'answer' either. If Lost said that LOSTEES were infected by midichlorines and that's why they were on the island... that's not really an answer either. It would be just as much of a MacGuffin as anything else.
Which isn't to imply in any way that even genre fans couldn't have big issues or couldn't be dissatisfied with the answers and non-answers given. It's perfectly possible to love genre fiction and to dislike the final twist. But those criticisms are slightly different. Disliking something in a writing sense or a philosophical sense or due to its execution or for it just not being adequate is a slightly different than wanting it to be rational (even if 'rational' is just meaningless techonbabble. Apparently quasi-science gibberish is more valuable than touchy-feely crap... and okay, maybe I took offense at the dude who said that only women who liked lollipops and unicorns and were crazy-cat-ladies could like it because, dude, whether you know it or not, that's some sexist shit you said. Also, meaningless technobabble is not, simply by right of sounding vaguely sciencey, superior to touchy-feely characterization 'crap.' It's like the BSG guys that obsessed about military stuff or the trekkies to have exact plans for the decks of the enterprise. These are not 'more rational' ways of watching a television show ... just because it feels reassuringly unemotional and vaguely male).
I digress.
Let me stress that I am NOT saying that people couldn't have wanted more or different or different kinds of answers. All of that is perfectly valid and I can definitely see where people can feel that way. I was just somewhat taken aback by a TWOP poster or two who insisted that they wanted 'hard' answers and categorize midichlorines as being an example of both a rational and satisfying answer while stressing that they hadn't been watching a show that had all this mythology and philosophy in it. Did they really not notice significant number of characters named after philosophers?! And how one misses a HUGE HONKING STATUE OF AN EGYPTIAN GODDESS standing (or ruined) on the island, I honestly don't know. I guess it's possible to have ignored those things to concentrate on the mechanics of the island if you didn't like them, but I find it somewhat mindblowing to see rage-filled rants claiming that that philosophical crap hadn't been part of the show they were watching. Um...yes it was.
Look, I can understand having issues with the ending. I truly, honestly do. So I'm not criticizing that reaction. I'm not. You don't have to like the ending. You can take issue with it in a number of ways. And I can understand either feeling that there were things unanswered, or just straight-up disliking the answers that were given or the kind of answers given. The twist could be a disappointment or a twist too far and I can see feeling that it was all too sentimental.
I just don't quite understand the fraction who say that they were never watching a show that was dealing with philosophy and mythology and wanted a scientific (or at least faux-scientific) answer. Honestly, I don't think a real quantum physicist could cook up a scientific answer that would sound plausible, much less understandable. And a bunch of writers sure as hell weren't going to be able to invent a scientific explanation for everything that was going on. Science is great. Science is awesome. Science can encompass some mind-blowing things that exceed our imaginations. But it wasn't going to adequately cover all the bases of a 6 year TV show without also having some huge honking plot holes in it also. I can understand not liking the nature of the answer or wanting more and/or different answers. But I also don't think that of technobabble as qualitatively better than Harry Potter or Harry Dresden claiming "Magic!" Even if a glowhole was described as midichlorines, we'd still be talking about a glowhole.
That said, I also speak as one of the few -- the very few -- that wasn't much bothered by the BSG finale. I mean, I had issues Starbuck, Six, and Baltar being freaking angels being the most prominent of them. Seriously, THESE FOLKS, where angels?! Oh good grief. I can't buy it. I just can't buy it. {pause} Nope. Still don't buy it. But the two things that seemed to most wig everyone out, honestly didn't bother me much, if at all.
The whole mitochondrial Eve thing really flipped people out, and I've never quite understood why. Mitochondrial Eve =/= Genesis Eve. It didn't and never did mean that people didn't already exist. Nor did it mean that mitochondrial Eve had to hook up with mitochondrial Adam. In fact -- she didn't. So no one was sentencing the tot to marry a cave man. That's not what the term even meant. Mitochondrial Eve really boils down to being a mathematical equation. MtDNA is a string of DNA that is passed on unchanged along a maternal lineage. It had a distinct sequence and isn't changed via reproduction any changes are spontaneous substitutions/mutations. And they happen at a certain rate (approximately one ever 3500 years)... which means it's possible to calculate backwards to the statistical mitochondrial Eve. It also means that at some point in history there was either a near-extinction or (more likely) a population pinch-point occurred. It never meant she was the "first" human. It also never meant that she had kids with Y-chromosomal "Adam"... who is determined by a similar mathematical equation. In fact, based on calculations mitochondrial Eve is somewhere between 150,000 - 200,000 years ago. Y-Chromosomal "Adam" is only 50,000 - 80,000 years ago. And, honestly, I never got what the big problem was in saying that Hera was the mitochondrial Eve. At least not when you have Angel Starbuck running around and Baltar -- BALTAR! -- as a freaking angel. That was a far greater WTF?
The other big flip-out point in the BSG finale seemed to be the bucolic nature of it. It was the whole "technology bad" thing. And, I can understand why people dislike that. But, again, I was unbothered because I considered it a necessary by-product of the chosen ending... and I didn't blame them for the ending. Let me mention at this point that I was not an enthusiastic fan of BSG. I found the show as a whole to be quite nihilistic in a way that wasn't to my taste (Hell, I'm writing a post-apocalyptic WIP and had feedback once about how my post-apocalyptic world isn't hopeless. I actually quite liked that feedback. The fic might be post-apocalyptic, but I don't want it to be nihilistic. (I think this is why I liked the City of Ember book series. It was a weirdly optimistic post-apocalyptic world).
Anyway, as a series, I thought the BSG reboot was quite nihilistic. The thing started with blowing up humanity and then pointedly told us that there were not enough surviving humans for adequate genetic diversity for the human race to survive. And that was the premise. Then they proceeded to make their humans so horrible and unlikable (to me) that I reached a point where I would've been okay had their human race completely died out. (Seriously, I felt BSG became very misanthropic. It was a show that had a very, very dark view of human nature.
By the time they reached earth and found that it had been blown up real good, I was basically prepared for a "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending. To me, by that point there was no point. In anything in that fictional universe. They hadn't had enough genetic diversity to save mankind at the beginning and they'd killed a shit load of humans since then. And even if the Cylons kicked in their genetic diversity, there was only a hand ful of willing models, and all the models combined wouldn't have been enough. From the point of finding destroyed Earth, there was no further point (So long, Dee! I could understand the suicide even as I thought it was a waste.) Technology dies. They were on a death ship in a death fleet. They had limited fuel, limited food. Sooner or later they were going to run out of metaphorical gas or starve to death. Fun. So, at that point BSG had two choices, they could go the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending (which, given the tone of the show is what I was expecting.) Or they could do what they did. Having chosen there being an Earth II...well, at least there'd be a continuation of mankind. I guess that might be good? Sorta. But that meant, as a premise that technology had to be jetisonned. If our earth was Earth II then there couldn't be evidence of BSG. Sooner or later its orbit would degrade and it would crash on earth. And given the premise, you couldn't be discovering space ships in pre-historic earth. So by choosing the 'new earth' ending, they pretty much sealed "must jettison technology." And, given the mitochondrial DNA explanation above, it didn't matter if there were people on earth already. Hera as Eve didn't preclude that.
So the big "I hated it stuff" that most people point to didn't bother me too much. Only the whole "God did it and Starbuck, Six, and Baltar were ANGELS! really annoyed and seemed rather silly in the context of such a misanthropic show. But, still, shrug. I wasn't that bothered.
All of which is to say, that even if a show gives answers, that doesn't mean that folks will be happy with the answers they are given. BSG fans pretty much feel that the answer was awful (and inasmuch as it involved Starbuck and Baltar angels, I agree. But the whole mitochondrial Eve part of it actually was a quasi-science answer... and it was hated by a big slew of fans.
Buffy's finale "Chosen" had answers of a sort. I mean, yeah, the whole eye of Botox thing several episode earlier was never addressed again. And we had deus ex machina glow champion amulet. But it was all pretty transparent. That didn't necesarily make it good either. Frankly side by side, I vastly prefer the vague, open-ended AtS finale of "Not Fade Away" with the characters going into the fight because that's what they do as opposed to the BtVS ending which, quite frankly, just left me depressed. (On the other hand, I would have been quite happy with "The Gift" as a finale, so... I don't even have a point.)
So, point, point. I need to have a point. I guess it's that what satisfies us, satisfies us, and what doesn't... doesn't. (Hey, I didn't say that the point would be deep!) One person can find midichlorines an adequate, fulfilling answer and another can find it to be a crock of shit. I can understand hating the AtS finale (even though I don't), and I can see why there are people who love "Chosen" (though, I admit, that I still kind of hate huge chunks of it.) What people need to feel that a fictional journey was adequately nourishing varies greatly from person to person.
And, wow, this got way, way, way longer than I had intended, so I put it behind a cut. Sadly... I don't even think I'm through. I actually have some more to say. But I'll do that later.