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The Begin­ning

As I write this, a single-purpose robot is stamp­ing a high-definition disc. That robot will pass his disc onto another robot who will stamp a label into that disc. That robot unto another unto another: a robot that bends boxes, a robot that folds papers, a robot that assem­bles. These robots, unaware though they are, are actu­ally part of a plan, a sin­gle vision: the LOST Com­plete Sea­son Blu-ray disc col­lec­tion headed for my door­way.

In cel­e­bra­tion, I feel com­pelled to share my first LOST expe­ri­ence. I’d been ver­ily nagged by my friend, Tony, to watch this show he was in love with. The show was inex­plic­a­bly called “LOST”, and it was awe­some and kinda scary. This was all I knew, as I sat in a recliner in my parent’s main floor liv­ing room, the lights off, prepar­ing to watch The Pilot.

Then, the eye.

My first thoughts cen­tered around how cin­e­matic it all was. I was cer­tainly no stranger to cin­e­matic tele­vi­sion, being a huge fan of West Wing, but this was cin­e­matic action, not cin­e­matic dia­logue. The two have very dif­fer­ent emo­tional responses. The emo­tional response I had to LOST was, explic­itly, “Holy ship.”

The Mid­dle

I can’t say that my reac­tion strayed much dur­ing the marathon view­ing ses­sions that were to come. Whether it was David, Holli, and I crammed into Holli’s dorm room or the three of us sit­ting around my apart­ment, I never felt far away from that first gut reac­tion. Speak­ing for Holli and I, our enjoy­ment led to affec­tion which even­tu­ally led to love.

We became evan­ge­lists, shar­ing the show with every­one we could. We bought the DVDS, we lent those DVDs, we archived those DVDs. We orga­nized LOST par­ties, with bev­er­ages and food items branded with ele­ments from the show. When we dropped cable, our only real con­cern was “What about LOST?”

Our fanati­cism for this TV show reached such heights that we actu­ally woke up the morn­ing after new LOST episodes early enough to watch them before work. This rit­ual fur­ther required that one of us (usu­ally Holli) wake up an addi­tional hour ear­lier to ensure that the episode was downloaded.

We began our jour­ney with the show on DVD, tran­si­tioned into cable, and ended with dig­i­tal down­loads, never miss­ing an episode, if we could help it. We learned the names of pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, direc­tor, and cre­ators. We lis­tened to the Offi­cial LOST Podcast.

All of this is by way of show­ing just how invested we were. We had devoted a lot of time, energy, and thought to the char­ac­ters, mythol­ogy, and plot of LOST. It all led to a sin­gle, two hour finale that would be the final expres­sion of this show that we loved so much. It was an episode affec­tion­ately titled “The End”.

The End

The arti­sans behind the show had an impos­si­ble goal ahead of them: craft a final episode to a fright­en­ingly beloved show that will leave fans sat­is­fied. Since it was an impos­si­ble goal, they inevitably failed. I’ve read and heard any num­ber of frus­tra­tions and dis­ap­point­ments. I’ve done plenty of “explain­ing” the var­i­ous ele­ments of the final episode, even the final sea­son in gen­eral. The peo­ple who are dis­sat­is­fied remain so, despite my best efforts.

The arti­sans behind the show had a sec­ond impos­si­ble goal ahead of them: craft a final episode to a intri­cately com­plex show that will tie up the loose ends fans care about. In this, they also failed. They also had to be care­ful not to fall into the “midi-chlorians” trap, whereby a plau­si­ble, but con­crete, expla­na­tion of a pre­vi­ously super­nat­ural force infu­ri­ates a fan rather than quelling the fan. Thank­fully, LOST didn’t cross that line. They came close, but they stayed on the proper side. Some­times telling some­one what they want to know is the worst course of action.

The arti­sans behind the show had a third (much less impos­si­ble) goal ahead of them: craft a final episode to one of the most orig­i­nal shows on tele­vi­sion in a way that main­tains that spirit of cre­ativ­ity. In this, they most cer­tainly suc­ceeded. I feel that their final “twist” in this series was appro­pri­ately per­spec­tive chang­ing and yet obvious-in-hindsight. It was true to the series and per­fect for the ending.

In all, I thought “The End” could not have been done any bet­ter. Sure, it leaves doors open, ques­tions unan­swered, and plot lines to unravel alone, but what show (espe­cially this com­plex) doesn’t? I’m sure there are plenty of unan­swered ques­tions on “Two and a Half Men”, but no one on the Inter­net com­plains nearly so loud about that. You can’t write an end­ing that every­one likes, so you have to write to be true to the show and its staff, and I believe that’s what they did.

Reflect­ing, these months later, I really do feel a sense of loss. I loved those char­ac­ters, and they lit­er­ally died in front of my eyes. How­ever, “The End” gave me a sense of clo­sure; it made it okay to move on and enjoy other pro­grams. Yet, like all LOST episodes, it leaves behind the same unan­swered ques­tion: will there ever be another show this good?

Final(e) Thoughts

WARNING: Here come the spoil­ers. Stop read­ing now if you hate read­ing awe­some spoilers.

The “Flash Sideways”

I thought the “flash side­ways” reveal was pretty good. It didn’t blow my mind like the first time they did a “flash for­ward”, but it was both an inter­est­ing new con­cept and an hon­est move. For those who didn’t catch it, Jack’s con­ver­sa­tion with Chris­t­ian in the church brings us to the con­clu­sion that the “flash side­ways” has actu­ally taken place in a sort of Limbo or pre-Heaven. Of course, you can’t have pre-Heaven with­out hav­ing post-Earth, which is where I’ve fielded some frus­trated fan ques­tions. Let me reit­er­ate: they were not dead the whole time. What Hap­pened (on the Island), Hap­pened, to use the show’s ver­nac­u­lar. Chris­t­ian is very clear in stat­ing that every­thing that hap­pened on the Island was real. So, if you hated the finale because you thought it implied that the pre­vi­ous episodes all took place in death, you can feel very ashamed and relieved, because you are very wrong.

Why the “Flash Sideways”?

What made the “flash side­ways” most inter­est­ing is that now it’s a con­struct of the char­ac­ters’ mak­ing. Though we’re not party to how this is true, we can assume that, in some way, every cir­cum­stance and event is the result of a character’s sub­con­scious deci­sion. Instead of the typ­i­cal “flash” ques­tion of “How did that hap­pen?” one must ask “Why did that hap­pen?” So, it’s not “How did Jack and Juliet get together?”; it’s “Why would Jack and Juliet get mar­ried and then divorced?” I don’t think every­thing in the “flash side­ways” can be con­sid­ered the result of a con­scious or sub­con­scious char­ac­ter deci­sion, but cer­tainly many of the dif­fer­ences reflect how char­ac­ters wish things had been.

Whither Ben?

As every­one is gath­er­ing in the church, a final step before mov­ing on, Ben remains out­side. When ques­tioned, he states that he has some unfin­ished busi­ness. While it’s never made clear, I believe that Ben’s unfin­ished busi­ness is to make amends with his daugh­ter and Danielle. There’s cer­tainly a lot there that he has to apol­o­gize for (or make up for). Alter­na­tively (or addi­tion­ally), his inten­tion might be to enlighten them, to help them move on with him.

James and Juliet

I had hoped, hoped, hoped that James and Juliet would get back together. I was really drawn to their rela­tion­ship. I thought they made great com­ple­ments, and, best yet, they both seemed to happy. That’s why the roman­tic in me was thrilled when they recon­nected in the “flash side­ways”. I don’t really have any insights on this, I just wanted to bring it up.

The New Man in Charge

I wasn’t at all sur­prised when the final can­di­date ended up being Hur­ley. He was my vote for a while, and they fore­shad­owed this even­tu­al­ity in a cou­ple dif­fer­ent places. What wasn’t fore­cast was his deci­sion to have a Vice Can­di­date. Ben essen­tially gives Hur­ley a blank check, telling him that things don’t need to be run how Jacob ran them. This allows for pretty excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for our imag­i­na­tions and fan-fic writ­ers. Our first glimpse into this “new man in charge” is Hur­ley mak­ing his Vice Can­di­date some­one who wasn’t a can­di­date at all, some­one Jacob had all but dis­carded. Jacob, like every­one else, was not per­fect, despite the impor­tant job he held, and Hur­ley, in a lot of ways, is an improve­ment on Jacob and his flaws.

Poll Results

Some time ago, I put a poll in the field, ask­ing what peo­ple thought of the finale. The results of the 41 par­tic­i­pants were mostly pos­i­tive or indif­fer­ent. So, I guess that’s a win. Here’s the breakdown:

• I loved it. 29%
• I meh-ed it. 22%
• I liked it. 22%
• I dis­liked it. 11%
• Other 9%
• I hated it. 7%

For other answers I got:

• I didn’t watch it.
• I bittersweet-ed it.
• Waste of a sea­son island side
• lost, lol

Kudos to who­ever said “lost, lol” for at least iden­ti­fy­ing the topic of the poll. What did you think of the finale? What do you think of the show? Leave your reviews, thoughts, and eulo­gies in the comments.

LOST In Peace.

On Mon­day, with any luck, we’ll be enjoy­ing our com­plete LOST collection.

YouTube — Lost polar bear plays Life And Death on accor­dion.

YouTube — Arrested Devel­op­ment Trib­ute.

It’s beau­ti­ful.

Top­less Robot — Rube Gold­berg Is Weep­ing at Its Beauty.