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May 26, 2010

LOST - FINAL episode


All right this here’s my swan song ladies and gentlemen, the last episode of Lost, my last Lost breakdown, you guys won’t have old kid vegas to kick around anymore. So as for this episode, shockingly… I kind of liked it. The on Island stuff was pretty solid, I got the all-out war I was hoping for, Team Jack killed MiB and saved the world, and a few of them even made it out to live long fruitful lives in the real world.

Off island the big reveal was that their retarded “flash-sideways” timeline was actually a “other dimension” timeline, since apparently they were all in heaven the whole time; I’m a little dubious of this one, a couple too many inconsistencies. I think Cuse and Lindelof called an audible midseason when they realized everyone thought their alternate timeline was retarded (thanks mainly to me and my blogging) and switched it to heaven. But you know what, the heaven interspersals kind of worked in this episode; they didn’t work in any of the season’s other episodes, but for the finale they worked. Even I was a little emotional as Jack saved the Island and simultaneously came to the realization he was dead with his old man. Now let’s get to my final observations on what worked and what didn’t:

-Rose and Bernard, really?? Did we really need them to rescue Desmond just so he could be kidnapped two minutes later, and all so we could get that same retarded speech they gave last season finale about them thinking they were too cool to get involved with the other castaways? Yeah, Jack is busy saving the world while you two are douching it up in a hut, and you’re the ones who are too cool. And what was the deal with them showing up at the Church at the End - none of the castaways even liked them. How did they get an invite? Why not throw Frogurt, Steve, and hell, even Ethan Rom in there? Sure, Rom killed about 5 castaways, but at least he wasn’t old, annoying, a poor actor and didn’t douchily move to the other side of the Island and lecture people about things he didn’t understand.

-Speaking of random fringe characters no one liked showing up, I was kind of a little disappointed they didn’t have a 40-year old Walt show up at the church, even if he was just in the background laughing with Hurley. His bizarre age spurts don’t need to make any sense in heaven, I would have liked to have seen him, just for comedy’s sake. And why does Aaron have to spend eternity as a baby, we assume he led a long life after Jack died… I would have gotten his namesake Aaron Boone to play him.

-I mean going back through the season we can point out a million weird things with the Lost producers heaven, but the three that stand out the most to me are:
1. What is up with being able to have kids in heaven, now that doesn’t make a lick of sense… I’m looking at you David Shepherd. The obvious explanation here is they were going to make it an alternate reality and wimped out because that was such a stupid, stupid idea, or they just threw him in there to throw everyone off the scent of it being heaven, or maybe it was just some random kid who died on the island and Jack and Juliet just pretended he was their kid. They should have had that kid play the young Jacob in the Early island flashback, now that would have been a mindf^&$.

2. How the heck did Keamy slip into heaven yet Michael is still stuck on the Island whispering to random people. I mean Keamy killed Alex in cold blood, he was such an over-the-top bad guy it was ridiculous. I mean couldn’t they have cut to him being trapped in a hut with Rose and Bernard for all of eternity? That would have been an appropriate fate for him.

3. Why is Sayid the only one who doesn’t get to be with the girl he liked? I mean, did the producers just forget about Nadia? He loved her since he was 5, they got married, when she was killed he went psycho and killed a bunch of people for Ben Linus (speaking of, did we ever find out who those people were?), or maybe Sayid was being punished for all the people he killed by having to watch his brother nail the girl he loved, while being stuck with some random chick he banged because he was deserted on an Island. (More likely, the producers were seduced with the prospect of a Maggie Grace cameo, and couldn’t find any other way to work her in. I must admit though, I did enjoy seeing her).

-I get why they had to end where they did, because if they had done any flashforwards during the season it would have ruined the ending for everyone, but I still wouldn’t mind seeing an epilogue episode where we find out what happened with Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, Alpert and of course Dez. We know Kate “waited a long time for Jack”, but I mean she had to have at least banged Sawyer a few times off-island after Jack died. And what about Alpo being reintroduced to society after 500 years on an island? And will young Charlie Hume develop any super-powers passed on from his father, and if so will they form a father/son crime-fighting team? (Sounds like a spin-off to me. They could have Mr. Paik and Ji-Yeon be the supervillains they are constantly trying to thwart.)

-All in all a pretty good series though, obviously some pointless plots and lame mysteries over the seasons, but as a whole I guess most of our questions were answered, though the answer to most of them as we said a few weeks ago was “magic.” Sure we all have a few questions we’d still like answered. (e.g. Why did Jack’s magic tattoos make Asian people hate him?) But I think we got the closure we needed from the finale and can say the 6 seasons of Lost were pretty solid as a total product. So good luck out there and godspeed. I will answer any lingering questions people have about the show or any leftover mysteries in the comments section.


11 people have chosen wisely: on "LOST - FINAL episode"

Chase Kahn said...

I didn't really like it. I liked the Jack stuff on the island - and his death with Vincent was touching - but overall it was 2 1/2 hours of schmaltz.

I like mysterious, unexplained, WTF "Lost", not Michael Giacchino/slow-motion syrup.

Although I do give the team credit for actually wrapping the story up in a semi-tidy fashion, it just didn't work for me at all.

Fletch said...

As I was watching it, I enjoyed the finale (up until the end, but more on that in a sec), and throughout the time that I got on board with this show, it's been a highlight of the week, the show I most looked forward to (yes, even more than Survivor).

That said, looking back on it, and thinking more and more about not just the finale but the series as a whole, the more I'm starting to feel like all those naysayers from over the years that called us all idiots for watching this show. I'm not a fan at all of the purgatory flash world that they wasted half of their final season on. What the hell purpose did it serve, other to give us all the warm and fuzzies for ten minutes. It's no better than the torn-to-shreds Seinfeld finale, though perhaps it's worse since, again, they took half a season to say what might've been said in 10 minutes.

Anyway, it's not so much the myriad questions left unanswered that bother me, it's how meaningless they all are; not just in a "ooh aah" grand-context-of-it-all, psycho-analysis of pop culture way, but in a "none of this shit really even mattered to the series itself" kinda way. We followed the producers blindly down hundreds of side streets and switchbacks, but almost all of them turned out to be dead ends. Nearly everything that was once shown to us as being "what the show was about," at least in terms of the day-to-day narrative, was pointless (Dharma, Ben vs. Widmore, Others, etc.).

I guess I'm just glad they didn't string us along for one or two more seasons.

I miss season one. And I can't wait to rewatch it time and again, and then be depressed upon completion every time.

Fletch said...

Almost forgot the most important part: many thanks to my main man Kid Vegas for guesting this whole season (ok, almost all of it ;) ). It was fun watching the restless natives come around to you, and of course, you're always welcome back for guest posts.

Nick said...

According to an email from one of the writers, none of those things were pointless (Dharma, Others, etc.). It all makes sense in context. Granted, it's not good storytelling that we need this email to understand it, but the email did help me appreciate it more.

Fletch said...

What email? You got a link?

Anyway, I'm sure they could argue that it all made sense, but I can disagree. It smacks of a group of people that really didn't know where they were going, so they just b.s.-ed their way through for awhile.

Which is fine - it makes LOST much like any other serial. The problem is when people (myself included) start/started to treat it like it was special. It wasn't. It was just another soap opera. But hey, at least it felt special while it was on, right?

Nick said...

You can just check my blog. I just posted it up earlier this evening.

Anonymous said...

The producers led us down a garden path, which went off a cliff. But then they decided to let us fly. Why? Because they couldn't think of anything else.

As said above, it was BS for the last 3 seasons.

When one goes to a 2 hour mystery movie in a theater, one knows most of it will make sense somehow. If not, word gets around quickly that it is not worth wasting the time nor money to see the movie.

Here, they sucked us in for 3 years, then ran out of ideas that made sense. So, we get time travel, etc. If that stuff had been known in the first year, most of the viewers would have left.

So, they kind of wasted about 120 hours of my life.

Even the 2.5 hour final was simply one long car commercial, interspersed with tidbits of the inane final plot pieces.

It was rerun tonight, and somehow only took 2 hours!!

So, in the end it was all for money after the first couple of years. The producers should be sued, drawn and quartered, or somehow let it be known we were not taken in by their games.

Anonymous said...

Im afraid that was the worst possible ending imaginable. Its one the same level as one of the characters waking up and saying it was all a dream. It proves the writers had no clue where the series was going and was a complete success in failing to answer virtually all of the questions about the island. And all this talk of Christianity... If i had known I was watching the bible channel i would have tuned out years ago I want my 'lost' years back please

Anonymous said...

Im afraid that was the worst possible ending imaginable. Its one the same level as one of the characters waking up and saying it was all a dream. It proves the writers had no clue where the series was going and was a complete success in failing to answer virtually all of the questions about the island. And all this talk of Christianity... If i had known I was watching the bible channel i would have tuned out years ago I want my 'lost' years back please

Anonymous said...

I'm from Mexico and I watched the finale a week later but I desperately searched the web for the reviews and critics hoping to find awsome reviews.....but this results of unsatisfied viewers shocked me!, when finally I watched it I had no other feeling than join this groups. I was expecting so much more of this even though Im partially satisfied on the emotional side (happy american clasic ending thou) on the other side I have no doubt that this 16 or 18 million viewers are not gonna get lose by the producers and the broadcast companies, it's such a humongus success economically speaking that probably in couple years we may see a secuel (or a precuel) so they were force to leave so many doubts in the air that will provide foundation for the next LOST II.......after all, we all saw how after 20 year we know how Darth V becomes Luke's father aint'we?
Regards from Chihuahua