That's what I thought about the episode. Sure, it didn't give us many answers, but kudos to them for focusing instead on giving us a sense of closure and completion to these characters.
What did other people think? I didn't really mind the religious overtones to the fold-in of the flash-sideways to the main timeline. It felt very nice and full, and was something i didn't see coming. In a good way.
Walead! you were right about Hurley.
And *I* was right about what the last shot of the series was gonna be.
Yay us!
5 comments:
I thought for a second, that Jack would be the new smoke monster, but they didn't go that way. I think it was more emotionally satisfying than, intellectually satisfying, but satisfying none the less.
I'm surprised at all of you. This entire last season was as clumsy and half-assed as I've ever seen, and the finale was only marginally better. Here's what I know: Lost has always been about 2 things: the characters and the mythology. The mythology was much more interesting to me personally. Without the mythology, it's really just a soap opera. And I think the mythology is what made the show special and exciting. The characters were good and we came to care for them, but I probably wouldn't have watched but for the mythology. And we now know that the writers had no idea what they were doing with the mythology. They were just making shit up as they went along and then realized they couldn't answer anything. So, they did what any lazy writer would do: they marginalized the mythology. They made the mythology just an incidental vehicle for telling the soap opera. To some extent, I was touched and moved by the finale, which I think on the character level was lovely and even profound. But it's only half the story! So how can it be a successful finale? How can it be satisfying? It was a cop out. They gave up on what made the show special and just focused on the soap opera. And, moreover, even on the level of the soap opera, it wasn't particularly good! They didn't really earn the emotion. The characters were absolutely dull and empty this entire season. For the first time, I was frankly sick of many of them! Sayid may have been the only real zombie, but they were all just going through the motions. And then they're gonna try and make me cry at the end? I'm happy you guys were satisfied, but this season -- for the most part -- was for shit. Logic was thrown out the window to hurry up and get to where they needed to go. The writers just gave up. They cheated us. The threw shit at the wall the entire 6 seasons, and when they couldn't come up with an answer, they said, hey, what if we just make it not really matter? I hope they're enjoying their checks.
Damn, Walead! So full of anger...
Although I can identify. I felt a lot of anger after the BSG finale. Six months and three viewings later, however, i thought it was perfect.
i guess at the end of the day, what moves me the most in any work of narrative art - what provides the deepest emotional engagement - is my connection to the characters. Citizen Kane's beauty and innovation would be nothing without the fact that i love Kane in spite of his horribleness, or the fact that i cry when the old jewish banker fellow tells that story about seeing the girl on the ferry in the white dress (you need both, of course - good characters and stylistic/narrative/aesthetic intelligence...). So the fact that the series finale brought us back to the characters and their human drama (which, admittedly, has its taint of soap-opera-ness) made it far more satisfying to me than it would have been if we had gotten a massive info-dump that answered all my questions. LOST's big problem, i think, for the past two-three seasons, has been to try to do much on the narrative level - throw a bunch of shit to the wall and see what sticks. It should have been about the characters all along. You're right - they became zombies. When we lost track of the characters, for the sake of crazy quests that didn't make any sense, or convoluted time-space fluctuations meant to keep us scratching our heads, i lost my emotional connection to the show. So it was nice to get that back, in the end.
I somehow agree with both of you. I did think they copped out in way. They failed to answer some questions, the most pressing for me being,why children conceived on the island couldn't be born. And although they technically didn't lie, since it was the alternate reality that was purgatory-ish, not the island, it still seemed trite for that to be the big reveal.
That being said, I found the ending to be very emotionally satisfying, but not intellectually satisfying. The ending was beautiful and moving, plus it really brought everything full circle for jack, who we now know that it was all about. Not only because the first and last scene of the show, were mirror images of each other but also because he started out chasing his father and finally caught up to him in the end. In the end it seems that the light, was the source of all life. The beginning and the end, and in the end they were all drenched in it. I also found it very poignant that Ben did not go. He was the one, I was scared for. I figured that when he remembered who he was in real life, he would be horrified. I'm sad that we didn't get to see his reveal. I wonder if it might be his job, to awaken others now, like Desmond. I think Desmond was tasked with this job because it was his fault the plane crashed. So maybe Ben's contrition will be to awaken others, like his Dad and Alex... People who he got killed.
I think although they sort of copped out, if they would've focused on giving answers the ending would've ended up feeling hollow. I found the hints they gave in retrospect clever. For example, Rose telling Jack on the plane "You can let go now" and Jack wanting Locke to let go saying "You go first".
In the end Lost was about redemption, balance and letting go of the past. I think they remained true to that.
I also believe that everyone's version of that church, would be different. Jack needed his father, who always told him that he wasn't good enough to be the one to open the doors. He need to see Locke, who was always the man of faith to tell him, I'm glad you could join us. He needed to see Boone, who he wasn't able to fix or save. He said be decided to become the island's guardian because he messed up his life, he needed to see that it wasn't true. He needed to see all the people that he touched, who he sacrificed himself for. I loved the smile he gave when dying, when he saw the plane flying overhead. And he needed to remember that he died a hero.
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