Lost: The Finale

[retsuko]

My viewing experience was somewhat colored by the fact that I had an entire 20-oz. Coke around 7:00. I hadn't drunk that much caffeine and sugar in about four months, and the effect (at least, at first) was a laser-like precision focus on the show. (This is the effect that I imagine Ritalin has.) Later, though, the high wore off and I felt myself crashing in slow motion, getting cranky as yebisu9 grew increasingly dissatisfied with the overall plot of the show and feeling like I had to defend it. This lead to a sugar hangover this morning, coupled with the flat-out weirdest dreams I've had in a while. (When the Daleks started attacking the apartment next to mine that inexplicably had an ocean in it, I knew that trouble lay ahead.)

Needless to say, I'm laying off the caffeine for another five months, at the very least.

Anyway, as mentioned above, Yebisu was often unsatisfied with the entire thing, especially the ending. My thoughts were generally along the lines of "haters to the left" because I thought it was a fine ending--not as definitive in some areas, but entirely conclusive in the others that counted. I suspect there will be significant overlap between the people who didn't like this episode and those who didn't like the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. HPatDH's epilogue was widely criticized for being too neat, too happy, and failing to mention certain characters. The Lost finale, while it mentioned almost all characters, presented us with an ending that was (arguably) ambiguously happy and neat, too open for interpretation but resolving the characters' dilemmas with a zen-like calm. And I, for one, welcome our new zen-like overlords, like this sort of ending very, very much because I can ascribe whatever I want to it. (The ending of Stuart Little is a wonderful example of this. Stuart drives over the horizon, hoping to find his friend Margalo, but there's no definite ending, just the action of him pressing on.) And I'm going to imagine that the two realities blended back together seamlessly, that those who wanted to live were able to carve out lives that made them happy, and that those who were dead, or holding back, were able to move on, either to the afterlife, or to whatever awaited them. As far as I'm concerned, that's the ending and what it meant.

Things I loved about this episode:

* All the parallels to first season. Locke's toe in the hospital--that was the shot that first hooked me on the series, and here it was again! Boone and Shannon (the latter with the ugliest hairstyle on the planet)! Vincent the dog! The irony of fixing a plane on the Island in the final episode after watching it implode in the first episode! The final shot of Jack's eye--surprisingly poignant and moving.

* For once, I didn't mind Jack, and I didn't mind when he cried. He may be bland, but his actions in this episode were truly heroic and above and beyond the call of duty.

* Ben's semi-redemption/ambiguous choice-making. I had thought that he was sliding back into Magnificent Bastardness after the last episode, but he proved me wrong by proclaiming that if the Island was going down, he'd be going with it. And the shot of him outside of the church in the Sideways!Universe... weirdly sad, because he was denying himself the calm that he knew he'd receive if he went inside.

* Hurley as the Guardian of the Island. I KNEW IT. Jack may be the Island's hero, but Hurley is the Island's soul, and it makes sense that he'd be the one to guard it in the end.

* Claire didn't die. Frank wasn't dead! Miles didn't die! And Richard can finally die! (I also wondered what Richard thought of his first airplane ride ever.)

* Rose and Bernard, living with Vincent the dog, both acting like Switzerland and refusing to get involved in Island conflicts. I loved that when Not!Locke threatened them to get to Desmond, Rose said without any hesitation that Desmond didn't have to do what he was being ordered to in order to save them. That sort of thing takes guts, especially since it seemed like Rose and Bernard were fully aware of what Not!Locke could do and his reasons for doing it.

* Everyone in the Sideways universe remembering, one by one, their time on the Island.

* All the location shots around the Island that we'd seen before. I've been there before! Hurley's golf course field! The pool where everyone had to dive for their luggage! Rose and Bernard's shack!

* Not!Locke's look of horror when he discovered that he'd been made mortal again.

Of course, it wouldn't be Lost without a few more questions:

* Who were the extra skeletons down in the pool/cave of light? We know that Man in Black's body was buried with his "mom" by Jacob, but who were these extra people?

* Was Michael in the crowd at the Sideways church? BECAUSE HE DAMN WELL BETTER HAVE BEEN.

* Did Jin, Sun, and Sayid remember their deaths on the Island when they regained their memories?

* Could Cop!Sawyer be any hotter? ;)

As for my lingering questions, I gave up on them all, except one: Why the hell did the Island kill off pregnant women? Of course, there was no real answer to this, and I wondered if the writers had forgotten about it. Yebisu and I speculated that the light energy was kind of like the well of souls and that it couldn't handle new souls borrowing from it... which only makes marginal sense. Oh, whatever.

Regarding the series as a whole, I realized about halfway through last night's episode that I had no desire to watch the whole thing over again now that the story was over. Maybe in ten years or so, or when I'm ordered by a doctor to have significant bed rest time (which is hopefully never.) (And I will either watch Lost again or finally get around to reading The Stand, which one of the book group guys swears is the best thing since sliced bread.) I feel like a second time around, the continuity errors would be more glaring, certain characters more annoying than ever, etc. etc.

I also wonder what the lasting impact of this show is going to be. I pointed at the Oceanic bottled water and said that it would make for a great Comic Con freebie; Yebisu snarked that by July, people will already have forgotten it. But I suspect it's not going to fade away as quickly as that, especially since I've heard several people say that they were waiting for all DVDs to come out before they started watching (and I honestly cannot say that I blame them for this strategy at all. Much easier on the viewing nerves!) I like that there was a show on non-cable TV that proved (yet again) that mainstream, largely character-driven sci-fi, could work and, for the most part, did not jump the shark. I also liked that there was no movement to sanitize this show for younger audiences; the marketing stayed firmly in adult viewing territory. I hope that one of the legacies of this show will be the realization that fans are willing to buy into a long-term program with a rich mythology/strong storytelling and the development of similar shows down the line.

EDIT to add: I forgot to mention one of the funniest parts of the show: right as the island started to shake, San Diego experienced a small tremor, an aftershock from the Easter earthquake. It was as if the forces of TV wanted us to have extra verisimilitude in our viewing experience! ;)

Comments

[rhiannon76.livejournal.com]

I loved Cop!Sawyer's reunion with Juliet. That and Jin/Sun's remembrance were the most satisfying for me, because they deserved their happy endings more than anyone else, I thought. That, and I just really liked Sawyer's and Juliet's dynamic together.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Me, too on both counts. Even though I liked the slow buildup to Jack's final memory trigger, I thought the others were just as meaningful, if not more poignant. :)