LOST- "The End"

Hey everyone, I've been awfully busy job training and preparing to graduate during the past couple of weeks, sorry I haven't been around to share my thoughts and opinions on Lost with you. My wife, Lola Cutter Hensel, had a lot to say about last night's series finale, and I decided to let her come on here and sound off. 

If you're wondering where I personally stand on this subject, my opinions are almost identical to Lola's, only my review would have probably included a few more expletives. Enjoy!


Last night's series finale of Lost reminded me of one of my favorite Jack Handey quotes:

"It's funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating."

Mr. Handey's observation about pirates works on a comedic level because it is so delightfully naive.

The Lost series finale didn't work, on an epic level, because it was so sickeningly naive.

At the end, Lost treated us to a large room in a brightly lit multi-faith chapel filled with all most of the show's principle characters. The characters greet each other knowingly, with warm smiles, and embrace. A beautiful white light fills the chapel as everyone holds hands and prepares for whatever celestial hereafter awaits them. From what I've read, many viewers wept at this point.

The whole flash-sideways universe, we have learned, was some kind of post-life, pre-afterlife playground created by the collective unconscious of the flight 815 survivors - a world they designed for themselves so that they could find each other and prepare to "move on." It's a touching concept, but a crappy ending to the show. It's been argued that everything in Lost was resolved, and that's fair; after all, death is the ultimate resolution. However, I had been hoping that there would be some substantial answers - the illumination of some kind of thread that connected everything together, something more quantifiable than the vague, ethereal magic-light-at-the-heart-of-the-island explanation that the writers tossed our way.

So what was the deal with Walt? Remember what a really big, special deal he was? What was up with that whole infertility epidemic on the island? What about the numbers, and the candidates? We were lead to believe that these were topics of great, cosmic importance but then were pretty much told that they were just random selections according to Jacob's whim. The numbers? Oh, Jacob just had "a thing" for numbers. The candidates? Remember when Kate reminded Jacob that she was no longer a candidate because she had been crossed out? Jacob responded, "It's just a line of chalk Kate, the job is yours if you want it." Oh okay, no big deal then, I guess. What about the food drops? The "infection"? Why was Aaron so important (remember how crucial it was that he not be raised by anyone but Claire)?

I felt fully gypped by the flash-sideways storyline. Why was there any sense of urgency there? Christian Shephard told Jack, "There is no now here." It turned out that the whole sideways universe was timeless and consequence-less - it had been mutually created by the survivors so they could find each other in the afterlife, so I think we could rest assured that they all would have come through eventually. All the stakes the writers had raised in this part of the storyline, all the risks they presented, turned out to be purely imaginary.

In the end, it was all about the characters relationships with each other. By ending the show the way they did, the creators of Lost nullified the importance of all the island's mysteries and, along with the mysteries, our investment in them. The creators essentially said, "Hey, remember all the questions we made you care about? Remember how we raised the stakes week after week, hitting you with new twists and mysteries? So... yeah... none of that really mattered. All that mattered were the fond memories that the survivors were creating."

Bullcrap.

I will never regret that I followed Lost with the passion that I did season after season. Ultimately, the characters and their relationships with one another were legitimately moving and wonderfully crafted - that's why the first two seasons were my personal favorites. It's been an amazing ride and I'm so glad I went on it. However, I feel insulted and cheated by the sub-par, escapist finale I was given.

The epic adventure story that I loved was subverted into an extravagant zen parable. And that's not an ending worth applauding.

-LCH