Lost: The End
I loved the finale and I had some initial things on my mind to type up.
Anybody see that stained-glass window in the “church”?
It had six emblems, if I recall. There was a crucifix, that sanskrit symbol for Hinduism, yin-yang, two other religious symbols, and a fucking donkey wheel.
Who cares what fantastical religion you believe in? Who cares where you’ll end up after this life? That is not important to the creators of Lost. What matters most are the moments during your life, the relationships you build, the love and the loss, the memories.
There was indeed a huge reason for the Losties to be on the island. That reason, the best way I can put it, was just to be there. So many characters took the plane crash as such a negative twist to a life that (according to Jacob) wasn’t even that great to begin with.
I mean come on! You get a fresh life on a tropical island. All the boar and pineapples you can eat. There are great waves and a bunch of old science facilities to explore. There’s fucking electromagnetism and time travel, not to mention cures for cancer, paralysis, and infertility. You just have to embrace it (and I guess you have to befriend some hostile Others and kill a smoke monster too). Maybe fate brought you to the island, but you have to decide to stay.
They shouldn’t have worried so much about where they would finally get to (in Los Angeles). The island was their life now, but they fought that concept off so incredibly. They even detonated a hydrogen bomb to leave! And when it didn’t work, the collective subconscious of the Losties would end up creating that “flash-sideways” to cope.
Christian Shepherd mentioned it in that back room of the church. That they all created this “place” (which I took to meant the “flash-sideways”) so everyone could meet up and remember, move on, and most importantly, realize that the island was their life. Whether you died within days, months, past decades, or never on the island didn’t matter.
So I now consider the “flash-sideways” to be more of a dream-like, collective subconscious purgatory created by the hope and drive of all the characters within Lost. Something that sticks out is when Hurley and Ben compliment each other on being such great Island protectors. They have memories that we, the audience, have never even seen. So this “flash-sideways” must have really come some time after all the Losties lives had played out.
It’s that classic quip about the journey being more important than the destination. Let’s be honest, what part of the series finale made you cry more? The end when everyone was finally together again and moving on? Or was it all those other scenes when we had a chance to recollect on the best memories of the series?
And to expand, Lost is a nice example of the medium being the message. Did you get all your answers? Are you completely happy with where the show ended up? Maybe not, but that’s not important. The most enjoyable part of this television program was not the conclusion, but the 6-year ride with all the moments, polar bears, relationships, Star Wars references, philosophy, nicknames, love and loss; the memories.
Comments
Wow, that was a fantastic article. It very clearly put into words many things I’d thought or felt but been unable to put a finger on long enough to express in words other than “aaarghfuckthisshow!”
That article was a good read, and makes some good points from a fans perspective. But John, no matter what you say I don’t consider you to have been a fan of the show. You had no interest in a very large chunk of what it was trying to do/explore, you disliked far more aspects of it than you actually liked, and I would say I could probably if I thought hard enough come up with maybe a dozen or so episodes in the entire run of the show that you liked, and you definitely disliked way more episodes than you liked. That’s hardly what I would consider a “fan” of something. Which is fine, but it’s definitely a whole different thing than someone who enjoyed the show more often than not, and who throughout it’s run took it for the various pieces when that was appropriate and as a larger whole when that was appropriate. I think it’s safe to say and you’ve said as much yourself, that the show never became what you wanted it to be. Obviously you get more credit than the people who stopped watching for seasons at a time since you did stick with it, but still.
First off, I never made any claims about being a “fan” so I’m not sure where that’s coming from. But now that I’m being pressed on it, of course I’m a fan of the show! What a ridiculous thing to say. I didn’t watch the show to the end cause I hated it and I wasn’t disappointed with it because I thought it had nothing of value.
Secondly, I could definitely come up with more than a dozen episodes considering the first season alone was over a dozen and I don’t think there’s a single episode there I didn’t like. I liked most of the second season, most of the third season (once they got out of those goddam cages and back to the other Losties) and most of the 5th season as well. Now, if you want to make some sort of metric comparing the number of episodes I bitched about vs the number I enjoyed, I’m sure it’d lean heavily towards bitching. But even with the awful 4th and 6th seasons, I still liked the vast majority of the show and the disappointing conclusion certainly hasn’t completely ruined the things I liked about the show.
I guess it depends on how you define a fan. You seem to want me to just shrug off the shitty episodes and rave about the good ones. Well, that’s just not how I work. I’m not Rachel Ack. But I am a fan of Lost and you’re either nuts or just picking a fight by suggestion otherwise.
Overall, I loved Lost way more than I disliked it… and the things I disliked were spread pretty evenly over the whole course of the show. There are episodes from seasons one and two that I dislike heavily. I’m lucky that my favorite things (battle of a Stephen King-esque good and evil, the same philosophical/literary themes echoing again and again) were given the strongest focus as the show closed itself up.
Nothing’s more poisonous to a mysterious narrative than the fans that love it. I hung around enough comic book conventions as a kid to understand that bizarre brand of impatient nerd-rage that erupts if a creator tries to simply stick to the story they want to tell.
The greatest flaw in Lost’s structure was that it tried to have it both ways, capitulating to the fans and demanding they stand back so things could unspool at their own pace. It shows up often: would Nikki and Paulo exist if people weren’t constantly criticizing the invisibility of the background survivors? Would they have been killed off if people hadn’t cried out so loudly about their weak characterization?
Probably not. Although their episode IS one of my favorites of the series, relenting to fans never works out in the end. Their demands are often contradictory.
The antithesis of this impulse is Joss Whedon. Especially his work on Buffy, where he would put his characters through hell and often kill them off suddenly, unexpectedly, and with a horrifying amount of bluntness. The show’s goofy comic-book genre trappings were grounded by the idea that every character was in actual danger at all times. You knew the creator wouldn’t pull punches in the long run just to keep you happy… in fact, sometimes it seemed like he delighted in making things uncomfortable.
I really wasn’t pressing or picking a fight, just discussing the different takes on it.
I just have read a lot of posts/articles discussions from people who over the course of the series, who I know liked more about it than they didn’t, who even when they didn’t like an episode, took some positive things away from it, and who liked it for everything it offered and who STILL felt betrayed by the ending and hated it. To me, that makes me go “Hmmmmm…..interesting” and really think about things because if for most of the show my opinions matched up to that person and they felt betrayed….maybe I’m missing something. Nothing has made me come away yet that changes my feeling but I can kind of see where they are coming from. That’s where I thought the article Justin posted seemed to be coming from and why I made the comment.
But yes, I would definitely say (and you admit) you did infinitely more bitching and complaining about the show than praising it or really enjoying it. I could have pretty much told you 3 seasons ago that you were going to hate the finale, and sure enough you did. I mean there was much I disliked about the show and many episodes and story arcs that I disliked. But taken as a whole I thought it succeeded far more than it failed. Everything other than the first season and other than The Constant after that…..I was just never sure why you watched. You always seemed to hate or dislike every episode at least from what you posted. Maybe because we never watched it or discussed it in person. But based on here…..yeah, much more bitching than praising.
I mean even just on this board, I think Justin is a good example of someone who wasn’t an unwavering fanboy, and who didn’t watch it with blinders on praising everything even when it was patently ridiculous or contradictory. He called out bullshit when it was egregious but for the most part he went with the flow.
Also, I think my main point was based off of your facebook post about feeling “betrayed” which is what didn’t make sense to me. The people I mentioned above who liked 90% of the show I think can say they may feel betrayed. I’m just not sure why someone who hated 50-75% of the show (again, based off of posts on here) would feel betrayed when by the end they had clearly come to expect nothing and had clearly gone their separate way from what the show was trying to do.
Because, simply put, I think criticism is more interesting than praise so I tend to post the critique and leave the praise to be assumed. I felt betrayed because I liked 50-75% of the show, not disliked. More so, I felt betrayed because these writers kept telling us to trust them and I held out hope that they’d pull out all the stops in the finale and really blow our minds. Again and again, they’ve pulled me back into the show with a few great episodes after letting me down for a few. I guess I hoped for that to happen. I was hoping for another second-half of season 3.
Yeah, I guess because I just never bought the “trust us” line, it just didn’t bother me as much.
I mean when people said they felt betrayed by the Sopranos finale I could totally see that. It made perfect sense that people would hate it. I liked it but because it made sense in terms of the overall theme of the show and also every interview I ever read with the writer creator. But that’s a fairly meta reason to like a finale so I could totally see where as a narrative it pissed people the fuck off.
With this, I just didn’t see why people would be so angry, unless as you say you bought the “trust us” thing.
If we went back to the archives I think I also called out the fact that Nikki and Paulo were intended to be bigger characters but when everyone hated them they had them killed off. The writers and a lot of viewers at the time said “No, I don’t think there was that much thought put into it.” But later interviews proved me write.
I’m just cynical, so I guess that explains it.
Kevin said:I’m just cynical, so I guess that explains it.
It really boggles my mind that a guy as cynical as you is OK with Lost. I mean, I’ve been trying to look for trends behind people who liked and disliked the finale (religious/not religious, scientific/literary, etc.), and the one that seems to hold the most water is that cynics thought it was awful while believers thought it was good. This makes perfect sense by the way, just by definition. I know I’m certainly more cynical that Jonathan, and I would venture a guess that Hutch is more cynical than Justin, so this theory fits the limited real world data I have as well.
I just really, really think that Lost sold everyone a giant line of bullshit, and I’m shocked that certain people are buying into it. I hesitate to make a statement any stronger than that because I definitely respect the opinions and analytical abilities of Justin (for example), and part of me wants to believe that the show really was great for what it was and I just didn’t get it. But damn, it is just impossible for me to believe that the original intent of this show was to have to ultimate emotional peak take place during an embrace between Sawyer and a character who wasn’t even part of the show until season 3. These guys allowed their myriad influences to lead them down a rabbit hole that they couldn’t find their way out of and managed to craft an ending that was emotionally fulfilling but otherwise ridiculous when taken in context with the show as a whole.
See, and here’s where your skepticism about people thinking it was all about the characters plays out in terms of why I didn’t hate it. My cynicism started from the get go. I don’t like science fiction, and I always expect science fiction shows to be boring and absolutely full of crap. And from that angle of it, this was as well, and it always was. I never really expected they had a full story laid out, I never really believed they had a master plan, and I never believed that it would resolve itself and hold my interest. The only reason I stayed with it and liked it was because I enjoyed the actors and I enjoyed the acting and I enjoyed the characters and I enjoyed the philosophical aspects of all of that. The ending being full of crap from a science or science fiction or whatever standpoint didn’t really phase me one bit because it always was full of crap and I never really bought into or cared about any of it. Yeah, it was fun and I enjoyed watching it twist and turn but I never really believed it was part of some grand plan so when it turned out that it wasn’t part of some grand plan…..it just didn’t phase me.
I love Mad Men, and it’s not because I have some particular affection for the advertising world of the 60’s. It’s well written, well acted, and the characters as people are fully articulated. And removing all the mumbo jumbo, so were the ones in Lost in terms of how they acted, how they interacted, and how their lives played out (even in ridiculous situations as happened on the island).
Does that make any sense?
It does make sense, but I just disagree on a fundamental level. Mad Men is an amazing show, I love it, but unlike Lost it is 100% about the characters. Don Draper is just about the coolest dude this side of James Bond, and I love watching him womanize his way through life. The 60s and the ad-stuff are just an interesting backdrop.
To me this is an awful analogy though, because none of the characters in Lost are even close to as well developed or well acted as the ones in Mad Men (except for Ben and maybe Locke). And the island, despite whatever bullshit the producers are trying to feed everyone now that it’s all over, was never just an interesting backdrop. It was the entire show, at least for me, and I understand that we disagree on this but it’s still hard for me to comprehend.
The bottom line to me is that if season 1 and season 6 of Lost switched places (if the show was just all of the characters living their lives in LA), I would have never gotten into the show and I doubt anyone else would have either.
Lost is definitely not on par with Mad Men. That was just more an example of the fact that regardless of the setting, if I like characters on a tv show and they are well written and well acted then I will usually like the show and cut everything else major amounts of slack even if it’s not something I’m interested in.
As I’ve said in the debates on this on here I’ve had with John, I liked this show DESPITE the sci fi trappings of the island. They could have written the Island/Mystical/whatever stuff a million times better and answered every mystery, every question, every whatever, and if the characters didn’t interest me as people, and didn’t address real world questions and issues with those characters than I wouldn’t have cared. See X Files, Buffy, Galactica, etc. for examples of shows that didn’t interest me and didn’t draw me in past the first couple of episodes.
Perhaps a better analogy (and again I’m not placing Lost on the level of this, just trying to explain myself) would be something in literature like Orwell or Camus. Not everything that happens in their novels make sense, but they have vivid characters whose lives, words, and actions address more philosophical questions and answers. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense from a real world perspective (talking animals? Big Brother, etc.) but are metaphorical in their exploration of philosophy. That’s what I liked Lost for and that’s why none of the other things really bother me. I looked at the whole thing as some sort of metaphor or allegory or whatever. Yeah, ultimately it was just a tv show, but I think it also existed on that other level and served that purpose well and that’s why I enjoyed it.
I’m going to do a formal, internet discussion mea culpa on the finale to this show. The more I’ve thought about it in the 9 or so months since it ended, the more I’ve come to realize that it was bad and the people who hated it were right.
I still think the shows entire run, taken as a whole was much more good than it was bad. And I still maintain that the characters were some of the best written and fully fleshed out of any show that intricate that I’ve ever seen. And I also think that it was much more of an allegorical narrative than a sci-fi show and on that level it succeeded more than it failed.
But upon further reflection (and honestly I’m not even entirely sure why the show’s finale suddenly popped back into my brain recently, but it did) the ending was a total and complete cop out in every single way. The whole Purgatory/Heaven thing….the lack of any explanation as to what exactly was going on in the island…..all the unanswered questions….ugh.
I think because I had so much good will towards the show for as entertaining as it was for so many years I was willing to cut probably more slack than I should have.
So…..there you have it. I know it’s not something anyone was clamoring to revisit, but since I was very vocal on here about how I didn’t hate it, I figured in the interest of full disclosure of internet arguments it was almost an obligation.
But why the change of heart? More specifically, why do you think it was a cop out? What questions are still out there that you think would make you feel differently if you had a solid answer?
I’ve gone the opposite way in that I like it more now that time has passed.
I’d always hear shit like “well, what sort of explanation could you have gotten that would have satisfied you?” My answer, a new one, is simple: anything Walter Bishop, another JJ Abrams character, mind you, would have said. Fringe proves you can do off the wall happenings and make the science believable. You can keep fantasy grounded in reality with science fiction, and sci-fi does not have to mean bumpy-headed aliens.
When you watch the show from the beginning, it is clear to anyone considering the writers that they had intended on grounding the show in science. They set up far too much, showed too many “loaded guns,” as it were, for there to be any other goal. But they just flaked out on it, like a Scrabbler at a meet-up.
Man, this made me miss the best thing about Lost: talking about Lost.
I guess the more I thought about the whole Heaven/Purgatory thing the more cheesy it seemed. Especially without the dramatic build up of “OMG IT’S THE LOST FINALE!!!!” which admittedly I was swept up in.
Also, I would have accepted any even remotely satisfying explanation. Unless I’m not remembering something they don’t ever actually explain what the island is or the light is. It’s just…….magical….and it does stuff. I didn’t need it rooted in science or even to be science fiction or metaphysical or whatever.
And what Jay said. One of the best things about the show was talking about it and arguing about it. Without that reflection and weekly back and forth, a lot of what I think back on rings hollow.
I still think the series as a whole was great. Time hasn’t dulled that at all.
Did you see the extra 15 minute clip that they made for the DVD? If not, what did you think of the way they explained the whispers? Talking with other people about the whispers and reading different theories was so much better than finding out what they were. And I don’t hate what the answer was; but I liked wondering a lot more than knowing.
I feel like, in the end, we knew pretty much what any of the main characters knew about the island. They went as far back as to show the birth of Jacob. I don’t know how they could have gone back any further or explained anything more about the island in a way that would make sense or not kill the flow of the show.
And I think, John, that’s where there’s a difference between Lost and Fringe, in regards to science explanations. Walter Bishop is a mad scientist who has the ability to explain things in a scientific way because he was the one who created these scientific anomalies. And if he didn’t create them, his partner did or he had theorized about it at some point in the past. Unless you had the character who created the island, you never would have gotten an explanation.
And I definitely agree that talking about Lost was one of the best parts of the show.
A character who created the island would have been rad. Like maybe one of the chief scientists guys they hinted about so many times (Hanzo, was it? Degroot?)
John said:A character who created the island would have been rad. Like maybe one of the chief scientists guys they hinted about so many times (Hanzo, was it? Degroot?)
Yes, this. It could have just been like an experiment gone awry or something like that. But some explanation of something. They didn’t have to explain EVERYTHING. But they could have just explained what the fuck the island and the light and all that was.
I don’t know. Remember midichlorians?