Television Rundown: Lost...For Words! (Spoilers)
In lieu of writing any kind of meaningful analysis of the Lost finale (which, I suspect, will come out in the next few days, and perhaps in a special four-blogger blog "roundtable" featuring me, Chris, Brigitte, and Sean some time this week), I'll just say this.
*SPOILER ALERT, OUT OF RESPECT FOR CHRIS, WHO HAS YET TO WATCH THE FINALE*
That was . . .
. . .
. . .
good.
Yes, I can say, with 110% confidence that the first 2 hours and 10 minutes of the series finale of Lost, "The End", was among the greatest pieces of television I have ever seen. Emotional payoffs for many of our central characters mixed with unbelievable action and cinematography (when the rain came after Desmond pulled the plug in the cave, when the camera got all shaky and the rain poured and they were all muddy...my jaw was pretty much on the floor the whole time) made for what was definitely an A++++ finale.
Then, the last 20 minutes...
Wow.
Just...wow.
I should preface that by saying that I started watching Lost a year ago, after long resisting the pressure to dig into it. I had too many shows to watch on my plate, and I wasn't ready to commit to what I originally deemed to be Survivor meets Jurassic Park (which, you must admit, based on the original promos back in 2004, is exactly what the show looked like!) So, by starting the show on DVD, and burning through seasons one through five in something like six months or so, I never was as interested in the show by the many mysteries of the island, of the mythology that was so intricately woven into the reason I assume people watched it for six straight seasons.
So, the final blow, that (seemingly) the entire series really, truly, was some kind of spiritual journey, to find Heaven, or Nirvana, or whatever comes after our physical lives...well, that smashed me in my emotional, and spiritual head.
It's gonna take me a while to process how it concluded that way, and I'm not entirely sure that if I watched it again, I'd be as blow away by it, but...
Wow.
I also am starting to realize that the whole "Group of people take spiritual journey, have lots of crazy stuff happen to them along the way, they (seemingly) die, but in some other reality, they come back together, oh and the main guy gets to the end of his quest to find that he has truly reached the end of his journey" thing is yet another similarity to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. But, somehow, so much more satisfying.
One last thing: Dear KSTP Channel 5 Eyewitness News: Eff you for constantly telling me about the severe thunderstorm warnings in northern Minnesota. Your loud beeping noise and constant reduction of the size of my screen that lasted through the entire 2 1/2 hour episode annoyed me infinitely more than that one episode where ABC had that V clock running. I don't care about the weather, and I know it's some kind of public safety thing or whatever, but come on. Series finale of Lost here. Shut up, please.
So, Lost fans: what did you think? Surely, there will be more here later this week, but for now, this will have to do. And in case you missed it, here's Sean's final "Drawing with Sean" Lost tie-in.
Labels: Cable Television Rundown, qualler, TV
This entry was posted by Unknown, on
Monday, May 24, 2010.
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I loved it! Thought it was fitting and beautiful and touching. I still have a lot of lingering questions but I'm trying to suppress those and just accept it for what it was. A beautiful end to my all time favorite show.
Glad you liked it, Reading Rachel! The episode is still starting to wrap around my brain and I plan to blog about it again next Monday to continue to ponder all the different angles.
Warning: Spoilers and a bit of a rant:
I thought the ending was a bit out of context. I loved the episode up until the last 30 minutes, and I LOVED (and predicted!) that Hurley would take over, but I take issue with the whole "not a real parallel universe, but what these people created for themselves before moving on to the afterlife." The show was about time travel, islands, these character's lives. And that ending sequence seemed like a deviation/distraction from the rest of the series.
If this was a show about dying, fear of death, the afterworld, than this would've made sense. Spirituality has been a big part of the series, but this seemed off from how that normally has been addressed. Fate, purpose, good vs evil, weren't really a part of this ending even though they were at the crux of every spiritual question on the show.
But the finale was pretty and emotional, and the last sequence with Jack (on the island) made me cry the hardest (in a good way).
But there are so many unanswered questions and I'm mad that they said they would address every major question and then didn't (Why was Walt special? What happened when the bomb went off? Why did Christian's body go missing on the island the first season? Why was the island under water in the "post life" world? And now, how did Hurley rule the island differently?).
I guess I just feel a little bit cheated after waiting so long for some of these answers and am acting out about that. I'll still have a lot of good things to say about the show if you catch me on another day :)
Christine -- you make great points about the unanswered questions. But, enough of those questions were answered to me. (Except for what happened when the bomb went off. Why the bomb moved them to 2007, and why they showed the island at the bottom of the ocean in what turned out to be purgatory doesn't really make sense. But, we know enough about Hurley and we know enough from the dialogue saying that he could be a different Jacob that his rule was probably much more free and less creepy than Jacob. His rule of the island would be more suited to a spinoff, I think.)
The more I think about the ending, the less sense it makes to me, for your same reasons. But I don't think it wss a deviation or a distraction from the rest of the series, because the series was about the characters, and the choices they made, and the mythology was just a part of it. And death has always been a big part of the show -- it started with everybody who survived the plane crash dealing with their near-death experiences, then dealt with it with so many major characters getting killed off, etc.
I'm still torn, though. I have to watch it again and see if it makes more sense (both the finale, and the entire series.) My suspicion is it will mostly hold up through and through, which is more than one could say for most TV shows ever.
Here's a great summary of many great writings about the Lost finale that do it much more justice than I could ever do (both positive and negative) via the great Myles McNutt:
http://cultural-learnings.com/2010/05/24/lost-the-morning-after-critics-face-the-end/
Fair enough. Maybe if I rewatched it with proper expectations, I would be more satisfied.
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