LOST finale = sitcom flashback episode meets Touched by an Angel
I wasted so many hours of my life on this...
Dear LOST writers’ room: What the fuck happened? Why did you feel it was necessary to only answer a couple of the questions brought up in Season 1? Why would you have an alternate timeline if it doesn’t (in any legitimate fucking way) tie into the main storyline? What’s with this afterlife bullshit? So the island wasn’t an afterlife (which would have at least made a little sense) but the alternate timeline was? Then WHAT WAS THE FUCKING ISLAND? The Jacob storyline was wicked cool, but it didn’t explain anything…and why did you rip off Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
Dead Splinter Addresses Turtles via campfire
Dead Jacob Addresses Candidates via Campfire
What’s with all of the melodramatic violin solos and flashback moments? I thought LOST had more class than that. What’s with the Jack vs John Locke on a cliff? Why did you feel the need to rip off the Lion King?
Jack vs Locke; very original
And why couldn’t they let Locke leave the island? Was there any point in stopping him? According to the story, he was just a guy who had been trying to leave the island for a very long time. He might have been brutal, but Jacob was the asshole who was blindly following C.J. from the West Wing. According to Ricardo’s dead wife, if Locke leaves the island, “we all go to hell.” Let’s explore that a little more. Oh wait, we can’t. Desmond uncorked some Deus ex machina style bullshit that showed up in episode 15 of the last season, and somehow (it won’t ever make sense) Locke became vulnerable to Jack’s wimpy pugilism. Yeah, it sucks. The light at the center of the island is a last minute cop-out, and it made me want to slap someone.
Oh, and P.S. – Ben Linus was your strongest character, and you turned him into a limp meat sack for the entirety of Season 6. Well done on systematically avoiding any and all interesting possibilities. You created a LOST reunion episode and you ruined my favorite series. Thanks.
Not liking the final episode of LOST doesn’t retroactively make you unlove all the episodes you loved before.
If it was your favorite series, then you must have had been enjoying it while you were watching it. Every hour you watched and enjoyed, I would argue, was not wasted.
Ugh, they made Bernard & Rose completely unbearable. Also, where was Mr. Eko, Michael, and Walt in the afterlife? Exclusive club. I also didn’t see the dog there, which possibly debunks All Dogs Go to Heaven. Also, why did Locke/Smoke Monster lead them to the light in the center of the island? I distinctly recall them saying that he didn’t know where it was. They could have easily had Jack lead the party in that scene, since he was now ‘like’ Jacob.
The cliff scene was boring and lazy too boot. Overall, surrealist drivel.
Word up at Fish. I think the finale was ultimately a nod to the people who watched the show because of a connection to (and between) the characters and the consistent hunger theorize and discuss different aspects of the over-arching mythology. Nothing Lindelof and Cuse could have done would have fully satisfied anyone who was watching the show as a series of events and explanations. I think that people were waiting for some kind of “pay-off” that was never coming.
The ideas behind the show were ultimately bigger than any of the plot twists or complex sci-fi elements; it was about human connection, and about a journey. Forgive me if I’m getting too philosophical here, but in that way I think it was sort of just a metaphor for life’s constant lack of organization or explanation. The characters were maneuvering through bizarre and inexplicable scenarios, and so were we. We were exploring these philosophical and theological ideas (and life, and death, and literary references) WITH the characters, not mention with our fellow followers of the show. Sure, there was a lot of faltering and messy story lines that didn’t tie up in the end, but that shit’s not always gonna come out cut and dry, you just sort of have to accept it for what it is moment to moment, and not as a means to an end.
The entire series was an adventure that the most dedicated of us were deeply and consistently affected by, and that we now have to accept as a sort of void, however small, in our everyday lives. The finale was a kind of closure, a manifestation of the characters coming to a quiet understanding that they were never REALLY going to completely understand what had happened to them, but only that it had happened, and that it was sort of fucking beautiful, and moving on.
Bah. The finale was mind-bogglingly disappointing. I thought scripted television had matured to a point that we didn’t have to stoop to the cheapest and easiest emotional triggers to try and tug at our audience’s heartstrings. I also thought that the show had plenty of possible badass conclusions that didn’t involve ambiguous inconsistency.