Didn’t know what I thought about the last episode of Lost right after I watched it, but my opinion gelled pretty quickly and here are the things I wrote on Twitter the morning after:
Lost Finale Summary: The why of the island is unimportant; what’s important is that everyone learned a valuable lesson.
It seemed more like a finale for the characters than a finale for the island.
You can’t make a show all about the weird secrets of an island and then make the island only vaguely important in the finale. Well, I guess you can (they did), but I won’t like it.
I hope the 24 finale isn’t as ambiguous. If Jack Bauer found out he was in purgatory, he’d probably torture his way out.
They could do a Lost style finale for American Idol. Instead of telling us who won, they’ll just focus on the banter of the judges.
The message of the Lost finale is we’ll be stuck in purgatory until we let go of how disappointed we are in the Lost finale.
I wish Jack Bauer was on the Lost island. He’d get answer one way or another; he always does.
I didn’t expect the Lost finale to actually wrap things up nicely, but I did expect at least a half-assed try to do so.
The Lost creators made that finale knowing full well Obama doesn’t have the courage to send them to Gitmo.
The Seinfeld finale tried and failed to sum things up. I feel like Lost didn’t even try.
I know I vowed this after the X-Files and Alias, but I will never trust a show with mysterious plot lines again!
Now, some people seemed to like the finale and thought it was some sort of genius, and I feel like they got some Kool-Aid I didn’t get a sip of. We spend all these years seeing the mysteries of the island, and the finale doesn’t care anything about the island. It’s all about the characters finding peace in purgatory, but it could have been a cop show and you could have the finale be about the characters in purgatory — it’s like the setting no longer mattered. People are trying to justify that by saying the show was really all about the characters, but I never felt that way. Half the time I was only putting up with Jack’s whininess because the mysteries of the island were so interesting. Really, how many people after the first season were not wondering, “What’s in the hatch?” but instead wondering, “I wonder what all the characters will feel about what’s in the hatch?”
The first season finale was the first big sign of trouble. It ended with the hatch being blown open but not even the slightest tease of what was inside — because the writers didn’t know the answer yet. I was well aware they were just throwing weird stuff on screen with no idea of the backstory, and it really started to wear the series down in the third season. Then they decided they would only have three more seasons and had a killer third-season finale and it seemed like they were actually moving towards something. Nope.
“The island has a light and it has to be protected because… well, let’s not worry about that. The important thing is Jack made friends and learned something about himself.”
I didn’t expect a great resolution that answered things in the finale, but I at lease expected an attempt to give the island some overall meaning. They didn’t even try. Inexcusable.
UPDATE:
Doctor Zero feels similarly and expresses some other points of contention I agree with. Also, now that I think of it, I’m not very convinced the Lost creators even had this ending in mind when they started the season and might have just hacked it together as a last minute copout.
Forget how you felt about the “Lost” finale. I want to know about the portal to Hell under the frozen donkey wheel in your basement.
Perhaps its because of the scars from midichlorians (sp?) I was glad they didnt try to explain to much. Just because the limits of writer and TV audience intelligence are like jumping off the high dive into the kiddie pool. It would have been stupid. At least this way I can imagine their was a bunch of good interesting reasons.
When people try and use something like Lost or Star Wars to replace the spiritual hole left behind after the Left yanked religion out then the one unforgivable sin is to ruin that suspension of disbelief. In that sense I think Lost writers learned form Star Wars.
I just wish that once, during the “Sarah Palin writes stuff on her hand” flap, that she had written “Not Penny’s Boat” on her hand and held it up.
Who cares about any of what you just wrote? The point is they made lots of cool “fan designed t-shirts”.
No wonder I only have a television for sporting events.
That’s not completely true. I also need a television for Cops. That show has the best reruns I’ve yet seen.
LOST’s DVD sales will suffer now that everyone know that the entire story line was just abunch of random individual trials and tribulations of dead people in purgatory. BORING and totally insignifigant to any creative mind.
Your comments and those of other Lost fans make me glad I didn’t watch any of the show past the first episode. I watched the first episode and the line “this show is gonna be a dumb one” kept running through my head. Seems I was right.
disagree. if you watch the first season, it demonstrated that the show is all about the characters and each of their flaws. before they got to the island, the characters were dealing with their faults alone. everything that happened from seasons 2 to 5 might have been the roller coaster of island myth as you say, but it brought about the introduction of Jacob and his brother. their purpose was to bring people to the island and watch them sink or swim. up until Oceanic 815 washed up, every other set of people had failed to do good. this group came together, on the overall, and proved Jacob correct. this lead to the defeat of Jacob’s bro, though the whining Jack. because the island meant so much to the group, they used it as their “constant” in their limbo to bring them back to each other before moving on. sorry, but you looking for everything in a tight package just wasn’t going to work for this show. there was no diner. no dream. no jail cell. none of those endings would have served this show justice.
I am so, so, so very glad I gave up on Lost after 15 episodes. I couldn’t stand one more minute of those douchebags douchebagging their douchebaggy backstory, which by the way does not constitute “character development” in any form I am willing to lower myself to acknowledge. Every episode would’ve been better if it had half the length and half the characters died horribly in some fire.
In that, the finale having everyone dead is the most satisfying thing I could’ve asked for.
I join those wondering if Lost will be remembered as the show that killed long-form mysterious-plot shows. I hope so.
shiggz nails the whole New Spiritual Paradigm By TV Show paradigm.
I’ve learned that fictional series, be it TV, movie, anime, books, whatever that throws random “stuff” at the viewers to be cool is just that, random stuff. I’ve got grandchildren who do that with mud pies. Maybe they have a future as writers.
Actually, if you think about it, Lost’s finale is acceptable. Consider this, if the writers had been able to live up to expectations by maintaining the story line and tying all the loose ends together into an intelligent cohesive resolution, everyone would have been all strung out on Lost, cults springing up left right and center and productivity impacted. Co-workers would have spent all their time around water coolers consoling one another for months on end. Besides, I’m tired of Jack turning to profile everytime the camera cuts to him and I got really, really sick of the Kate’s only line “I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL YOU TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON!!!” (Final season it was “Claire?” That was getting old.)
This way everyone is pissed off and thinking “Good riddance to those pogues!” Hence, life continues uninterrupted–compare Lost to the cancellation of “Firefly”. There are still those that mourn.
When all else fails, there IS always “Cops”. Gotta love it when the robbery victim is ducking the cops because he’s a trucker in a leopard leotard and lipstick.
I’m out. No cable. Too expensive for too little.
MJDZFUN,
Recently, there was a rerun of Cops where two officers found a shirtless old black man burning his furniture in the middle of the street. I couldn’t understand any of what the crazed old man said, but one of the officers informed his partner that the man was saying he burned the furniture because the drug dealers up the street made him mad because they had been having sex on the furniture. “Since arson’s not gonna handle this call out here,….he’s just outta his furniture.”
Dangit, I love that show.
happened to all those characters that “died” during the previous 6 seasons but showed up at the end? Like the brother & sister, Charley, Juliet, et al? Where did they go to? double secret purgatory?
I read Doctor Zero’s column, and some others, and I am still lost, so to speak.
Did Godzilla fight the smog monster? Who won?
All this talk about Dharma, and not one mention of Greg.
Why?
What happened to Greg?
Was he the one that was Lost?
Did anyone punch her hippie parents in the finale?
If what I’m reading from Lost fans is any indication, we’ll soon see lots of them in episodes of “Cops” as they’re hogtied and flung head first into the back seat of a squadcar and driven to the closest loonie bin where they can share padded rooms with the equally insane fans of “24.” Trust me, you don’t want to hear a conversation between fans of Lost and 24. Between the mumbling and drooling, Jar Jar Binks makes a lot more sense.
“Meesa no a fan of Lost or 24. Meesa no retard!”
I utterly refuse to get involved in a week-in, week-out or else you are “lost” story-line show, so I never watched Lost.
Worst series finale of all time? Nope, not M*A*S*H, not Seinfeld (although both were horrible endings to otherwise marvelous TV shows… the winner for all-time worst ending would still have to be St. Elsewhere. The entire series, as it turned out (including the doctor as a serial rapist story arc among others) took place in the mind of a young autistic boy staring at a snow globe with a little plastic St. Eligius hospital in it! Talk about weapons-grade stupid! THAT twist was worthy of the death penalty for the writer or writers that came up with it if you ask me! Top that!
Another Random Thought:
I got my Top Ten Democrat Slogans shirt! Not only do I look peachy keen wearing it, the thought of the Domcrat waiting behind me at the local Dunkin’ Donuts having a connuption as he/she reads it, PRICELESS!
@MarkoMancuso~
I SAW THAT ONE!!! THAT WAS HYSTERICAL!
Also gotta love when they run themes…like “Love Hurts” on Valentines Day, airing all domestic violence calls. That show has layers.
@Proud Infidel~
I got my “Top 10 Dem Slogans” Saturday past. I look just like SarahK in it. Seriously, can’t tell us apart. I can’t wait for Nuke The Moon Tees.
Now I am even prouder of the fact that I have never seen a single episode of either Lost or 24.
Me too RWK, me too.
Luckily I was not disappointed because the characters lacked depth from the opening scene of this horrendous series. Terrible acting, random/misguided writing disguised as puzzling, and overall a sorry excuse for a television show. If you are disappointed in the mediocracy of the finale, you should go back and watch the mediocracy every scene written for this show. Then again, I’ve never written anything more successful so I have no right to talk. It’s really bad though, you should watch better television.