re: Lost, Fringe, and now Person of Interest- Abrams can really close out a series

quote:

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Now if some fan spent hours upon hours trying to figure out a show that's built on mystery. They themselves choose to waste endless hours of trying to figure out a show that was meant to keep you guessing the whole time. No one forced them to do all that!

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No one FORCED anyone to do that, but the show runners heavily encouraged doing that. And not just by false interpretation on the part of viewers, they - the showrunners and media team, spent a lot of time and effort in a concerted effort to goad people into trying to solve/investigate the mysteries. That was the whole marketing strategy of the show during its initial run! There were tons of Easter eggs, online scavenger hunts and games, the creators participated in forum discussions, told people that everything was based on science or pseudoscience, etc. To act like people just mistakenly decided to try to figure out the show when the writers never intended them to is totally disingenuous. It's historical revisionism. The people in charge of LOST stoked the fire of the mystery-seekers and so they are culpable for the feeling of disappointment when they did a 180 and crapped all over everyone who they'd lead on. After they got a lot of negative feedback, they decided to defensively adopt the posture that "it was always all just about the characters, silly". People who binge-watched it years later ate that up, because they weren't subject to the initial marketing and didn't participate in LOST as it originally came out, so they're not really aware of how it was presented.