Sunday, May 23, 2010

Reeling After Lost--- Nikki, try and read this

I feel so... so...

I'm going to be going through my own form of withdrawal, so maybe I'm not in the best frame of mind to write this. But Nikki isn't going to be posting on this site until tomorrow at the earliest, and by then, I'll be going through more withdrawal because 24 will be going through it's final episodes, and then I have to get ready for Saving Grace, which begins it's final episodes this Monday. I don't know if Damages has a future, and Law & Order will be finished, though given its rerun quantities, we'll never see the last of that. We're losing a lot of good shows this year.

I watched the last 2 hours and thirty minutes of Lost in a semi-daze, my Lost action figures around me. Now I'm the kind of person who mists up over the smallest things on TV --- there are moments on Scrubs that make me weepy, so I may not be the best person to judge. But I spent half of the first two hours in tears. Part of it was seeing all the characters, most of whom I'd grown very fond of, for the last time.

But part of it was because, Nikki, you were right--- this show DID come down to love. All through the night, we watched character after character finally find their balance as they reunited with the piece in their life that made them whole--- Sun and Jin, their child, Kate and Claire, Aaron, Sayid and Shannon, Sawyer and Juliet, Locke seeing his foot move. All of these moments made me weak at the knees because if all the characters had pieces missing (as Jacob implies in the previous episode) they were all finding it. And I thought maybe that's what the sideways world was for

And the parts of the episode on the island seemed to work well, also. Ben's backhandedness being the element that saved the castaways,, Richard and Frank being found alive (I knew it in Frank's case) the final arrival of the volcano (cause nothing else makes it shake like that) Kate finally choosing between Jack and Sawyer--- and then having that choice thrown back in her face. Jack's final confrontation with Desmond, seeing Bernard and Rose one last time. My own highlight was seeing Desmond confront Mrs. Hawking and give her the verbal smackdown she's deserved sinces 'FLashes Before Her Eyes'.

For two hours the show was working nearly perfectly. It was even running smoothly when Locke got out of his wheelchair after one final conversation where he and Ben finally made peace. And then came those last ten minutes--- Jack coming out of the water on the island, and finally confronting his father, finally getting the peace that he deserved.

So what was my problem? They never explained to the best of my satisfaction what that world was. Was it somehow Jack's perception of what the world was? Was it some kind of heaven? Somehow that doesn't work because it didn't explain why the last few people who flew off the island were. Was this some kind of reward for finally passing the islands test? Did that mean he survived? And was it really that easy to kill the Man in Black? Why did a bullet work where before it failed?

What dissastisfied me was that so many other parts of the character's fates worked so well. Kate convincing Claire to get off the island, Hurley finally choosing Ben to help him make his number two. Bernard and Rose, still alive after all these years, and we know that there is still a way to reunite Des with his Penny. The show was running all sevens for the last couple hours, and then they seemed to fumble on the goal line And while the final shot was symmetrical (and it did make sense that Vincent was there) I don't know if it really satsified.

Does this episode mean that the journey was a waste of time? Of course not. The acting to the end remained flawless, and it was so wonderful to see all our old friends listed on the credits one last time. Damon and Carlton have done such a superb job this season, and they managed to succeed so much better than where other shows like X-Files had failed. It's just that I feel the show worked so brilliantly, and all we needed to make it perfect was maybe one more line of dialogue, and I'd have been able to say: they did it. They managed to meet our wildest expectations. Maybe then I'd have been able to get something I had hoped for--- closure. But then again, considering the nature of Lost, maybe we'd never get that.

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