Monthly Archive
for: ‘May, 2010’

LOST was an exceptional television journey. I’m feeling mostly rewarded for having given the show my loyalty over the last 7 years. JJ Abrams, Jeff Lieber, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and company crafted a beautiful, complex and challenging world… purgatory as it turns out… I enjoyed immensely the way the writers wrapped things up… ” What happens now?” Jack asks his Father… “There is no ‘now’ here,” Christian Shephard answers his son… of course there isn’t right? LOST reminded us every step of the way that it had a loose grip on time… but now as the emotionally feel good finale has resonated for a few days, the unanswered and unresolved can’t help but linger as we were asked to devote significant amounts of time to these characters and threads in the LOST lore over the course of the series.

I don’t want to discount in the least that the ‘stepping into the light’ ending was a reasonable direction to take things… I mean, bringing LOST to a conclusion is a daunting task for any writing team (except for David Simon’s perhaps), but a more ominous, not-so-happy-ending that answered more of the shows mysteries would have been a more satisfying way to leave things in my opinion… it would have also shown more imagination and commitment to storytelling… one way or another though, there was still a ton of details where we were just left hanging… my biggest problem with that fact was that in retrospect, there was the opportunity to resolve many of these things over this past season. Perhaps that would have been a better use of time than the”flash-sideways” arc, at least worthy of split-time.

One example would be the numbers; 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Some might argue that they were given enough significance; they were the numbers that won Hurley the lottery, they added up to 108 which was the number of minutes between having to enter them into the Swan’s computer to reset the timer, they were the slots that held the names of Jacob’s candidates (in the lighthouse) that had not been scratched off…. But these numbers were given such significance, especially during the earlier period of the show, I was almost sure we would get a solid explanation as to their actual significance.

What about the whole magnetism aspect? Is it tied to the relatively recent introduction of the yellow glowing light cave? When Desmond removes the stone cork and turns the Eden-like glowing cave into an ominously volcanic threat… was that shaft connected to the series-permeating magnetic core of the island? Was this magnetism linked to the curing of diseases and the gifts of immortality? Was it the reason the smoke monster became mortal and Richard’s hair began to gray? Or maybe just the fact that I pose all these questions is all the proof I should expect?

I also felt that certain characters didn’t come to a proper resolution… like Sayid. Near the end he was what? the undead? the smoke monsters henchman? The biggest problem here was that if Sayid was indeed in purgatory, he was repenting not so much for his torturous past, but more so for the consequences it led to in his losing Nadia, the love of his life… and then at the end we should feel right about him stepping into the light with Shannon? A minor character who Sayid had a brief affair with and one of the few characters on LOST that wasn’t really seen again after they died. Are we to believe that Shannon’s was simply the “face” the writers wanted to put in the church at the end?

And what happened to Walt? The Others wanted him pretty bad back in the early days and they got him… and from there we’ve seen just a few glimpses of him… but he always felt like he had a symbolic meaning to what was going on, yet he never returned. In reality, this was probably due to the fact that Walt was played by a child actor who grew and changed physically too quickly to be included down the road… but one way or another… Boo.

Why was there a fertility problem on the island? For much of the show it seemed significant… tied to Claire, to Sun, to Juliet, to Rousseau… was it caused by one of the islands many “events”? Considering the shows religious overtones though, a better way to weave it in would be to imagine a ramification of original sin brought on by the killing of Jacob and the Man in Blacks mother… but it was never clarified…

So as far as the island goes, the characters that survived were Hurley, Sawyer, Kate, Claire, Desmond, Ben, Richard, Lupitus, Miles and Rose and Bernard (was there ever any doubt?)… oh yeah and let’s not forget Vincent the dog. Where has this dog been hanfing out for the last 5 years? A flash-sideways for him might have been nice… That may have also shed some light on what Walt was up to… and Michael, remember how important to the show he seemed? They really had me believing that Walt was somehow key to the meaning of it all… but I guess in the end sometimes characters are sacrificed solely to create tension at that particular point in the story with no further significance… So is that right? Anyone else? Feel free to hit the comments below if someone lived that I’m missing.

There were times over the life of the show that Jack Shepherd trying to figure out his purpose could get tedious. But as he was the best of the good guys from the shows very first episode, it stood to reason that he would need to get a little dirty along the way in order to authenticate finding his purpose in the shows final episode. Father and son were the shepherds, helping all in their extended family of truth seekers towards the light. The last shot of Jack’s eye closing was both the realization of what everything meant as well as the literal and figurative period at the end of the LOST sentence.

Hurley was the quiet hero, the guy that was always more concerned about his mates than himself. In the end, who would be a better candidate to carry on for Jacob? We should have known all along I guess as Jacob was mostly only visible to Hugo… He was the nurturer with the fierce sense of loyalty. “I’m with you dude” Hurley tells Jack near the end… with you until the last. Hugo also had the most interesting backstory if you ask me… Fried chicken franchises, a massive lottery win and the subsequent black cloud it brought, philanthropy… and his father was Cheech.

In a final estimation, I think the series as a whole would have ended up more in the ‘classic’ realm if it had answered more of the mysteries and arcs that it asked us to invest time in over the years. In truth, my list above could have been a lot longer, maybe 50% of the mysteries were explained in the end, that really doesn’t cut it… but there have been a tremendous amount of great LOST episodes over the years… and maybe I’m expecting too much… maybe others find value in having a lot that’s not revealed and left to the imagination… that preferred to ride the emotional “gangs all here” vibe of the finale… I’m actually feeling as though I might be one of them half the time…

One way or another… no more LOST is definitely a sad occurrence. It was a great show that will be sorely missed.

Some other interesting commentary can be found here, here and here, with some interesting comments here.