Monday, May 24, 2010

Reaction to the LOST Finale: A TV TWEETS Special

Well, I just got home from a little Lost party and, other than the three other people I watched it with, haven't heard any other people's reactions as of yet. We all seemed a bit unsure if we completely liked it, but no one was outraged either. At this moment, roughly half of an hour after the wreckage on the beach rolled with the credits, I think I liked it. Here's why.
For me, Lost hasn't been about the puzzles or the monsters or the fantastic impossibilities for a while. Probably been two, maybe three years since I gave a shit about what those damn numbers meant. But I continued watching more out of just habit and water cooler sustainability. I wanted to see if Desmond was ever going to get to be with Penny. If Jin would ever get to meet his daughter. If Sayid could ever forgive himself. If Jack would stop trying to fix everything. And why were these people doing these crazy things in the first place?

Well, we learned last week that Jacob picked this group (excuse the paraphrasing) because they were flawed, lonely people. And what does Christian explain to Jack in that penultimate scene? That he will be with his fellow castaways, the people he loves, presumably forever in the afterlife. The journey they went on together forged deep bonds of friendship and love, the kind of relationships none of them had prior to crashing on that island. The group became greater than the sum of it's broken individual parts. And they got to be together, forever.

I'm sure there's a mountain of hate and nitpicking going on right now across the interwebs. But, in this moment, I like "The End." A lot. Chalk it up to the memory of that magical first season or my iPod striking a chord while very coincidentally playing Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Hesitating Beauty" on my trip home from that viewing party (key lines for me being: "By the stars and clouds above/We could spend our lives in love"), but in my book it was a fine ending. Certainly not perfect or as grand as we might have dreamed in 2005, but still satisfactory.

I think only the truly depraved amongst us wouldn't want to spend eternity with the most beloved people in our lives. Ultimately, what else is there?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is truly what the show is about. The characters. If you listen to the podcasts that the creators do every now and again, that's exactly what they saw it's about. People get too caught up on the mythology and never really take it like they should. If all they got out of the finale is "where are my answers? I have lots of questions still!" then they seriously missed the idea behind it.