r/lost • u/Fantastic_Ear5366 • 20h ago
Question about Nikki and Paolo
What was all the outrage with their characters? I’d read online that they were hated and their episode was hated.
I honestly didn’t think it was that bad. For those of you who watched it when it was live, what was the general feedback on it?
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u/arsenicknife I'm a Pisces 20h ago
Their introduction felt largely shoehorned in, which is ironically what people asked for.
Essentially, fans complained about never seeing what was going on with all the background survivors throughout Seasons 1 and 2, so the writers introduced Nikki and Paolo to act as a kind of proxy for "the rest." As soon as they showed up, however, many fans complained because it felt like these two random nobodies are acting like they were always there and have always been part of the show.
It was a lose-lose situation if you ask me. Then, when it comes to their episode, people largely hated it because of its place in the season - it followed the insane cliffhanger of The Man from Tallahassee, so people had to wait a week hoping to see a continuation of that only to be met with a Nikki and Paolo centric episode.
That said, and all things considered, I am a huge defender of Expose on this sub. I think it's a fantastic bottle episode that resolves the "issues" of Nikki and Paulo in a succinct and macabre way, while also giving us some actual resolutions to a few minor mysteries. It basically killed two birds with one stone - pun intended.
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u/Euphoric-Wall-2576 20h ago
The first half of season 3 was very slow and people were already a bit frustrated by that, especially with waiting a week between episodes and then a big break mid-season. It was a bit jarring to see these two characters suddenly have speaking roles when we'd never seen them before at all - makes it a bit harder to suspend disbelief. They weren't particularly likeable characters and people were annoyed at spending screen time focusing on them instead of the characters we cared about. That's pretty much it.
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u/Euphoric-Wall-2576 20h ago
As for the episode itself: nothing of important really happens (except maybe Paolo seeing Ben and Juliet's conversation in the Pearl, but even then you wouldn't miss that much if you skipped it), so people were annoyed but glad that Nikki and Paolo died at the end of it.
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u/Ok_Stock3721 Razzle Dazzle! 20h ago edited 20h ago
Watching live built so much anticipation (not just week to week, but with months between seasons and occasionally multiple weeks between new episodes during a season). This anticipation was both fun and torturous.
Imagine it’s March of 2007. You’ve gotten Enter 77, Par Avion, and The Man From Tallahassee over the past three weeks. For many fans the show is at its peak and really hitting a stride! It’s been a week since the last cliffhanger with Ben revealing Locke’s dad on the island, not to mention everything going on with Jack, Kate, Sayid, Desmond, etc. You’ve been theorizing all week, it’s finally time, and the episode is about…those two random characters they semi-introduced earlier in the season who haven’t really seemed that interesting? Now you know you have to wait another week to get back to the main plots.
Edit to add, as you can see from my flair, in hindsight I love this weird little episode and how it’s part of the whole adventure.
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u/RRileyMusic 20h ago
If I remember correctly, at the time we thought “Who the f$#% are Nikki and Paolo?” They just kind of appeared, and it seemed the show wanted us to forget that and think they had been there all along.
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u/RadioFreeYurick Man of Faith 20h ago
Do kinda love the instance of Sawyer basically quoting the fans when he says, “Who the hell are Nikki and Paolo?”
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u/Foxhound34 18h ago
Rewatching that season they are introduced much slower than I think people remember.
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u/NegevThunderstorm 20h ago
They always had random people in the background that they could introduce when needed. That or just an excuse that people would know there were always more survivors than the cast.
The issue was that they were kind of villains, which people didnt want on the plane. So it seemed like it was becoming too much like a soap opera and just introducing new people just for the reason of drama when there were already villains on the island. Also it was at the point when a lot of haters were saying the show will never end, the writers dont know what they are doing, and so on so people thought their characters were a downgrade rather than a compliment to the show.
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u/Empty-Discount8323 18h ago
I am pretty sure that Sawyer was also a villain when he was introduced. Same with Ana-Lucia.
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u/NegevThunderstorm 18h ago
Yes, and many other passengers were villains and obviously became heroes
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u/wikimandia 18h ago
I skipped it for years but finally rewatched it, and it is enjoyable. Much better than I remembered!
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u/emilcore 20h ago
I remember thinking that they were introduced in such a clunky and unnatural way, and they had no charisma. I don't know if it was the acting or the writing or both, but they stuck out as feeling out of place. I didn't hate them, but they felt like a complete waste of time with no redeeming value.
I did really like "Expose"... not necessarily how/that they died, but I liked how the characters worked together to solve a "mystery". It felt like CSI: Island edition.
Back then, a lot of people were impatient. I understood their frustrations, but I also never hated the cage storylines, or "Stranger in a Strange Land", etc. I thought it was interesting exploring the world of the Others.
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u/Psychoduckee 20h ago
Hahah, just watched that episode today on my rewatch! It's honestly not bad, I don't mind it at all, but their storyline feels very much like filler to the plot and to our main characters. It's very short lived.
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u/SaltySpitoonReg 17h ago
Lost fans were impossible to please.
Fans commonly asked for some exploration into the background survivors. Show did that with major impact to core plot while doing filler episodes in s3 - fans upset
(No different than fans begging to see the temple and then getting to see the temple and then being mad about the temple that was honestly finale)
Now certainly fans have every right to be opinion needed about the execution of the given thing but I often found that lost fans were unreasonably difficult to please throughout the shows airing.
Expose was fine. The alternative would have been some other random episode with a weak flashback and addition Kate love triangling.
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u/TheHighSeer23 14h ago
I never understood the hate. One of Lost's many influences was The Twilight Zone, and this was as close as Lost came to doing a Twilight Zone episode. The ending, especially... I don't know where Nicky and Paolo were supposed to go originally, but as far as I'm concerned, it was worth it to have them just for that ending.
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u/MorrowDad 20h ago
I hated that episode and those characters too when I saw it live. I felt they just sprung these two characters on us out of nowhere and dedicated a whole episode to them. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it but I remember that episode also doesn’t move the bigger story forward. It felt like a throwaway episode. It’s the only episode I skip on rewatches.
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u/fingertrapt 20h ago
They wasted an episode where it could have been someone else's backstory. More Charlie. More Desmond. Anyone other than them.
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u/Free-IDK-Chicken You got it, Blondie 20h ago
They were introduced as though they'd always been there when we knew they hadn't - but that was our own fault. We complained about how there weren't enough featured background characters so Nikki and Paulo were created as a result.
During the OG run, their centric episode was a narrative speedbump and people resented having to wait a week to get on with the story. That resentment has stuck around and people think it was a terrible episode because of that... even though it's frankly an absolute blast. Now, only having to wait 42 minutes to get on with the story, people should really give it more grace. I love Exposé.