lost thoughts

I just can't bring myself to watch the Lost finale again properly after watching it last night... the original plan was to watch it on the laptop and then watch it on my big teevee, but I just couldn't... it's on in the background while I'm writing this, but the sound is off and I'm only paying attention to parts of it.

I've cried during Lost episodes before... I've cried during Doctor Who episodes... I've cried during at least a couple of Buffy episodes... but I haven't cried like I cried during the Lost finale for... well... a really long time. And we're talking the big, huge ugly cry... with sobbing and snot and everything...

I've lived with these people for six years... following their every move, seeing them bleed and fall in love and fight and explore this giant mystery we call Lost... and as much as the show has been about polar bears and electromagnetism and submarines and hatches and quantum physics and time travel and a smoke monster and candidates and the like, it's also very much been about these people and their connections.

And the finale was all about connections. Connections lost and connections found... connections that just flat out made me cry.

So this is probably where it gets a little spoilery...

In flicking through some of the reviews I read somewhere that the finale was emotionally satisfying but intellectually unsatisfying... and I'll go along with that. In some ways the finale was almost emotionally manipulative (actually, probably not even almost... because, you know, when you bring the dog in at the last minute...) and that extra half hour they added to the show was pretty much just taken up with all the brief little flashback snippets...

Of course the more I start to unpick not just the finale perhaps, but the show as a whole, the more it fragments, but I always knew that they were never going to answer every single question in explicit detail, and like with any series that has been running for this long, there are always going to be inconsistencies...

Like why was Walt so "special" and why didn't that storyline ever go anywhere? And who did that house in the jungle belong to? And who gave Ben the order to kill all of the Dharma folk? And who actually kidnapped the flight attendant and the two kids? And other than the electromagnetism, why couldn't women have babies on the island? And did the numbers ever actually mean anything or were they a red herring? And surely they would have all run out of bullets by now...

But there was really only one little inconsistency that I really noticed with the finale... if Boone had already had his "flash"... who did he have it with? All of the full flashes seemed to be someone they'd loved and lost (tellingly enough) on the island (except Kate's... but the flashes seemed to be caused by love or trauma... so I think she counts as both)... but the only person I remember Boone being in love with was his stepsister Shannon (icky)... but then how did they get him to go to Australia to go and get her.

Maybe somebody dropped a plane on him...

I also read something that stated that for a "sci-fi show", it was a very "religious" ending. And I think that they missed the whole point of Lost. Yes it's a show that has had a lot of science fiction elements... but it's also always been about faith. Not religion, but faith.

Locke has always had faith that the island had a purpose for them. Jack's journey involved him going from a man of pure science to a man of faith. He believes in his purpose so much that he became the island's guardian. And the people who stop having faith or belief in who they are lose their paths (I'm thinking specifically of Claire and Sayid).

That's not to say that religion doesn't play it's part. Jack's father is called "Christian Shepard" for goodness sake. And there's any amount of religious imagery in the show... from heroin filled Madonna statues to Egyptian hieroglyphics to Mr Echo's staff carved with Bible scripture quotes to Dharma's "Namaste" greeting to the motherload of religious images, Eloise Hawking's multi-denominational church.

So the fact that the finale, and in fact the whole of the final season took place within a bardo (I refuse to use to P word), didn't seem out of place to me. Yes, it took place in a church, but I don't know that it necessarily had to be a Western idea of religion...

But the way it all came together definitely worked for me... I was satisfied that this was the way the road ended for the passengers of Oceanic 815.

And I'm glad it had to be Hugo!

Now I just need the complete box set...

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