Last Thoughts on LOST

I was going to begin this post with an apology for writing something as shallow as a review of a television series. But then I realized who am I kidding—this is a blog, and blogs were made for this sort of thing.

I will practice good netiquette here and warn you that the following contains spoilers. If you've never seen LOST, don't read this post. It won't be any fun.

There are only two TV series for which I've watched every episode: Arrested Development and LOST. I resisted LOST when it debuted because I hate the idea of my life revolving around a TV schedule, but so many of my very dear friends loved the show that last July Erin and I put the DVDs in our Netflix queue.

The first two seasons of the show completely blew me away. I had been skeptical of my friends' gushing over the show before, but I can honestly say those two seasons were the best television I've ever experienced. Moments like the raft launch and "we're gonna have to take the boy" are etched in my memory. I don't think I'll soon forget the scene where Jack, reeling from a life filled with attempts to fix others which blew up in his face, furiously beats Charlie's chest in a desperate, seemingly hopeless attempt to revive him while the rain pours down, the mud covers them, and Kate screams and pleads with him to stop. I'm getting chills just typing this. As all my friends claimed, the characters on the show were like none other. I was mesmerized in particular by John Locke's story of pain and rejection which was redeemed on the island. "Walkabout" remains my favorite episode of the series. The conflict between reason and faith personified in Jack and Locke deeply intrigued me as well, even if it was a little less than subtle.

The show declined a bit in season three, and then hit rock bottom for me in seasons four and five. There are many, many reasons; I won't go into all of them here. I think all that would serve to do is dishearten people who love the show and stoke the anger of those who dislike it. I'll just say I'm one of those folks who thinks the show's writers made up too much of the story as they went along, and as a consequence piled on more mystery than they could handle, eschewing the elements of a good story. I found it kindof appropriate that they chose to name an episode "Deus Ex Machina" while cramming so many of them into their storyline. I remain unconvinced that they decided the nature of the smoke monster until very late in the game, possibly between seasons five and six.

But the real trouble is that LOST was primarily a mystery, not a drama, and though the characters were fascinating they did not compensate fully for the swiss cheese plot—especially when the unique, character-specific flashbacks were ended in season four. I've never been one of those people who expects a story like this to be all tied up in a neat bow in the end, with nothing left to the imagination. I didn't expect to ever find out why the statue has four toes, why there's a bird on the island that screams Hurley's name, or why Desmond winds up naked after the hatch explosion. But to craft a good story the authors owed it more resolution than they gave. It killed my faith in the show that big questions which entire seasons revolved around (What is the meaning of the numbers and the source of their curse? What is the nature of Jacob's power? How are people healed by the island? Why are women unable to have children on the island? Why is Walt special? What was the nature of Ben and Widmore's duel?) were never resolved. Endlessly replacing mysteries with new mysteries is not storytelling.

And so we arrive at the finale, or as one reviewer called it, "Touched by a Desmond." Throughout season six and most of the finale I loved the flash-sideways storyline. I was intrigued by it, and I was hoping very much that it would turn out to be a flash forward, the result of the characters finding some way to actually change the past and confirm Juliet's claim that "it worked." (In retrospect, that would have been too easy—what can I say, I'm a sucker for happy endings.) The flashbacks which occurred when the characters met each other and remembered their history hit me hard every time, particularly Jack's. Watching all the scenes where he rushed to save someone in rapid succession was such an emotional, inspiring moment. I briefly remembered why I had been so drawn to this series in the first place. When, a day after the finale, it hit me that Juliet unplugging and re-plugging the vending machine was a metaphor for Jack unplugging and re-plugging the island, I was downright giddy.

Unfortunately this emotional high was killed in the troubling final reveal that Jack is dead, and the sideways world is some type of purgatory invented by the characters for them to find each other and "let go." While this may have served as some conciliation to others, giving the audience the reunion they longed for by killing everyone off and letting them find each other in a pluralistic netherworld just didn't do it for me. Seeing Claire and Charlie marry or watching Sun and Jin experience their baby's first steps is not the same thing as seeing Jack and Kate hold hands and walk into the "great light." At best, this resolution was a poor attempt at spiritual depth which treated religion with the same disrespect that was shown to science in seasons four/five (with human "constants" and truth serums and hydrogen bombs which fit into backpacks). At worst, it was simply a cop-out. Throwing random bits of religion together in a post-mortem cast reunion does not make a show spiritual any more than naming its characters after philosophers makes it philosophical. I felt let down. I think many of us did.

So I'm inclined to just ignore the sideways story and focus entirely on the island timeline, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The battle between Jack and Esau, Jack and Kate's goodbye... even Lapidus' survival and the duct tape repair of a 747 were great moments. Matthew Fox sold the final scenes with better acting than he's displayed in any other episode. I have a lot of respect for the writers' decision to kill off four of its major protagonists, including its hero, in the last season. Not many television shows have that kind of bravery; I was fully expecting them to come back to life somehow. And no one can deny the beauty of Jack's story coming full circle in the end.

Yet, without the sideways world, the story of LOST is an incredible tragedy. Jack, Sayid, Sun, Jin, Juliet, Charlie, and Locke are killed without ever being able to be with the ones they love for any substantial period of time. And what did they die for? To save the island and its magic light hole—a ridiculous MacGuffin introduced two episodes before the end of the series. Why the writers think I give crap about the damn island and its light hole, I'll never understand. If LOST is truly the character-driven show that its fans claim it is, how can it sacrifice these beloved characters to a preposterous plot device? I fell in love with Jack and Locke's characters over six seasons; I want to see them live together somehow or failing that, at least not die alone in the name of a"light which is in all of us" that just showed up a few hours ago. Yes, the castaways were brought to the island for a purpose, but tragically that purpose had no meaning.

As another reviewer expertly pointed out, Jack turned out to be quite wrong when he said "all of this matters."

So the show ended on a sour note for me, the culmination of a three-season sour symphony. Still, I want it to be understood that I don't hate the show, and I would never tell anyone who loves it that their feelings are invalid. It's a very uncharitable thing to tell your friend that something he/she loves is dumb, and I think LOST was far from dumb. In every season's premier and finale (and a few times in between) the show soared. I laughed hard when Hurley tried to explain his adventures to his mom. I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach when Sun shrieked at the loss of her husband (employing some of the best acting I've ever seen on television). I remember my heart jumping when Jack turned to Kate and just flat-out told her he loved her. I remember so many exciting moments of surprise (the hatch's inhabitant reveal, the book club reveal, the Henry Gale reveal, the "we have to go back" reveal). Because I loved the show's stories, it does break my heart that so many of them were left unfinished—but that doesn't mean I didn't have a lot of fun watching, particularly in the first three seasons. There's no hate here, only disappointment, and honestly, a bit of relief to no longer have so much to be curious about.

In the end, it's just a TV show, and the fact that I just wrote 1,400 words about it proves it was extraordinary.

Images: Anthony Geoffrey