I will miss it.

[in_the_blue]

Spoilers definitely. After a few days' rumination, and because a few of you asked, here you go.

First, I'm going to look at the story as a circle because I'm really big on circular storytelling. From that perspective, I have to say that the first show opening with Jack's eye opening and the last show closing with Jack's eye closing was a very beautiful thing. All along, it was obvious that they couldn't all survive and in the greatest of celebrity death matches, Jack vs. Locke was not only hinted at, but more smashed over our heads until we had no choice but to nod our okay, we get it. They tried to fool us a little this season by having Sawyer tied so closely to Locke and then betraying him like the con-man he always was, but hey, it wasn't him after all! My roleplay curse (the ones I play always die) is broken! (Except, you know, for later and for what Christian told Jack about how everyone dies sooner or later.)

Lost has always had a habit of taking characters who were less likeable and making them hugely sympathetic just before they bump them off. They did it with Charlie, they did it with Michael, they did it with the real John Locke, they did it with Eko (although fuck the status quo; I always loved him as a character) and finally, at the end, they did it with Jack. I think it's pretty clear that by that point no one wanted Smokey to make it off the island, and I have one thing to say about that: hot damn, Kate Austen. Way to go, girl! She had more nachos than any of the guys! Kind of echoed Sawyer doing in Tom at the end of... season three (back when Lost was fantastic all the time) in Through the Looking Glass. But I digress.

We here in the Jackson household have determined, for our own digestion, that everything that happened on the island, in the flashbacks, and in the flash-forwards actually happened but what happened in the alt (formally the flash-sideways) was Jack's dying fantasy. It's the best way for me to personally stomach all the soulmate crap they pulled. I know, I know, it was sentimental and gorgeous and highly saturated, but all I could think was that the leprechaun who found the pot of gold at the beginning of the waterfall took it and released a little bit to each couple who "found" each other in the alt. They were all so suffused with golden light! I took to calling them everyone's Hallmark Moments. Now for all you sentimentalists out there, don't mind me; I'm both a natural cynic and a natural romantic but I'd been so disenchanted with the show the past few seasons that it was hard for me to watch without peeking through the veil of cynicism. When I look on it as Jack wanting to believe that everyone he'd seen happy and in love was going to end up happy and in love, it was kind of a warm fuzzy moment. If I look on it as a kind of limbo-limbo creepy place, then it's not a warm fuzzy moment. It's depressing, thinking that no one was able to move on with their life from a place beyond what happened on the island.

Speaking of on the island, I really did kind of love that Ben became Hurley's Richard. Let me say it again: Ben became Hurley's Richard. And Richard, who'd lived many lifetimes' worth of indentured servitude, flew away. I was pretty relieved to see Frank alive, and that he and Miles and Richard and Kate and Sawyer and Claire made it off the island, although I was sitting here hoping like hell that they'd removed all the C-4 from the plane. Must've happened during a commercial. Other on-island things I really liked were KATE SHOOTING SMOKEY (I may have mentioned this one already) and Kate convincing Claire to go with them and Richard being suddenly mortal with that single gray hair (Miles, I love you but Richard earned that one, leave it alone). I liked that Desmond was both wrong and right in his assessment of what he had to do in the cave, and that he kind of survived but was stuck on the island again. And I liked that not being able to get off the island was only Jacob's rule and could be changed.

I knew Juliet was going to be li'l blue-eyed David's mom, that she was going to be called in to consult on Sun. I did like the way a lot of the on-island things from other seasons were echoed in the alt (which only makes sense, because Jack either witnessed or heard about a lot of them). I liked that Sawyer was a cop. I liked Kate's "Christian Shephard? Seriously?" line. Out of all the people in the finale, I think Kate kicked major ass.

Lots of people are still on a high from the way the show ended and I don't want to be a downer to anyone, so I'm not going to include what I didn't like. But don't assume if something wasn't mentioned that I didn't like it. I've only watched the finale once and I would like to watch it again, specifically without the peanut gallery that is my wise-cracking family in the room. I love them so much, but they kept making me laugh at inappropriate moments.

So that's it for now. If you'd like a striking visual representation of how the show ended up and who was where, visit my friend Amanda's journal. And if you missed Jimmy Kimmel's Aloha to Lost, which aired just after the show, you can see it right here. Snakes on a Plane 2: Electric Boogaloo indeed. Namaste, y'all.

Comments

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

We don't need to be mentioning the zombies, now do we.

[silveraspen]

Thank you for posting this! I have been wondering what you thought of the finale.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Took a few days to digest it. I'm still not sure what I thought of it in its entirety, but this is a start!

[buongiornodaisy.livejournal.com]

Miles is just so used to gray hair that of course he'd be a little wasteful with them.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

MILES. I'm going to miss his snarky little jungle jokes. I'm stunned and surprised that Richard a) didn't get et by Smokey and b) got to be mortal. Wait till he finds out aging isn't all it's cracked up to be. (That will have to be in LOST: THE MOVIE, right?)

[buongiornodaisy.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure Sammy the Smoke Monster gave Ricardo the gift that keeps on giving: back problems.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

LOL.

[lostinapapercup.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about it for a few days now, like you. I'll miss what it was in the first four seasons, but I just didn't enjoy it in the same way in the last two seasons. I thought the finale was okay. Some of it I liked a lot: Kate exhibited all the qualities that made me like her in the first place and Evangeline Lilly sold it well (although I admit I liked better before she had her "awakening" in limboland and got all cryptic like the rest), the on-island ending of Jack bringing him literally full circle, Desmond being involved in the on-island storyline, Rose and Bernard and Vincent, people presumably getting off the island in the end (I was shocked), Richard becoming mortal and making it off the island (I was shocked by that, too), Hurley as island protector (not that I wouldn't have preferred everybody getting to flip destiny off and truly make their own kind of music rather than just singing their own words to the tune provided) and being simultaneously scared and brave enough to ask Ben to help him.

Some of it I really didn't like, though. I've read a lot of reviews, curious as to what made it work or fail to work for other people and hoping to better pinpoint what exactly made me so dissatisfied with it, and there are a few things I've read that I agree with. The first is that while I absolutely cared more about the characters than anything else, the answers they actually gave for the mysteries of the island had a poor execution. Plus I didn't particularly want or need for everybody to be happy in the end. I was turned off by the soulmate vibe in the alt and find the majority of alt stuff more palatable by thinking of it specifically as Jack's limbo or dying fantasy even though I feel sure it wasn't supposed to be just his. But otherwise I don't find enough rhyme or reason in the people who got admission to the Church of Love and Realization in the end.

The second is that the alt and afterlife story line are generic enough that with minimal adjustments they could've easily fit for any old show's big thrilling finale. There was a real wealth of possibilities open to the writers -- and so many ways to tie things into the story of the island that they'd been selling all along with the stories of the characters -- but there was nothing iconically Lost about the alt other than the fact that it was told in flashes. And... nothing especially clever, either, even if they did keep the reveal for the last episode. I could've done without the alt entirely or maybe even just as an epilogue restricted to the end of the finale rather than half of the entire last season.

The third is that a lot of the things about the show that drew me other than the individual character stories seem shockingly pointless now. I can't help thinking episodes from previous seasons, while certainly enjoyable on a case-by-case basis, will seem hollow on rewatch when thinking about the bigger picture.

Fourth is that I want to believe those who took off on the Ajira plane really did make it and live lives beyond the island, but the limbo-based implication that only their island experiences carried enough weight to matter doesn't quite sit right with me. But that's somewhat related to my problems with who was in the church and who wasn't and who was in limbo and who wasn't.

Not a bad episode and without question one of the best of the last two seasons, but also pretty far from a wholly satisfying show conclusion in my eyes.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

I know we've talked about this a lot, but this is a hell of a comment and it's worth commenting on in turn. I think the limbo-based conundrum for me is a question of exactly who got to be inside that church, like you said. If there was no True Island Romance, it seems like they didn't get to be in there. Locke got to be there because his True Island Romance was with the Island itself. But you know, Sayid died for Nadia, not for Shannon, unless I totally mistook him all season long when he talked about wanting the dead one he loved back. He had years loving Nadia, and a few weeks hopping around with Shannon, so it's a little bit insulting to think that he could only have been happy for all eternity with Shannon instead.

On the other hand, if this was all Jack's dying fantasy then it makes more sense. He didn't know Nadia, so she wouldn't have been included in his Island Collective. LOOK AT ME RATIONALIZING AWAY.

jexowian had the best rationale for Ben not going into the church. She said if Ben was the new Richard then he was immortal and couldn't enter, not that Jack would know that. Then again, I say if Jack was truly "like Jacob" then he would've known the offer Hurley made to him anyway. He would have known all!

I really didn't mind Kate's admission of loving Jack. She also told Pickett she loved Sawyer, and I believed her both times. She really was my favorite in the finale. From saving a bullet for the bad guy to talking Claire onto the plane, she was hands-down wonderful. And then they made her get real mystic and all, and I rolled my eyes so hard I think they took a trip to Guam. (Ilana was not in that church. Mr. Eko wasn't in that church. He should have been.)

The writer's strike really hurt this show in a big way. The whole momentum changed then, and I don't believe they ever really got it back. We never found out about the reason for all that infertility on the island or why WAAAAALT or Aaron were special, why they took kids. Those were pretty big oversights, and they could have been easily included in the all-mythology episode of a few weeks ago.

Anyway, you've already heard what I have to say about the show. I still don't know if I'll buy the last two seasons but if I do and if you do, you can be sure I'll watch with you. ♥