AND THEN THEY WOKE UP.
OK, I feel like I should give my thoughts on the Lost finale.
I was actually pretty pleased with the episode.
"But Maggie," you might ask, "didn't it bother you that they didn't answer any questions at all AT ALL, and apparently seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5 were all red herrings, and the show was really ALL ABOUT JACK and his search for inner peace?" You would think it would. But I decided before watching that I was going to go into it not expecting them to answer a SINGLE QUESTION (which they didn't) and just let myself go with the flow. It was very cathartic. I mean, sure, I'm pissed off that apparently the show I thought I was watching all these years, the one with all the time-travel and weird shadowy multinational conglomerates doing research on sharks and mind control and immortal pirates and dead people appearing out of nowhere and SCARY EYEBALLS IN CABINS OH MY GOD FOR SERIOUS WHOSE EYE WAS IT??, wasn't the show the writers were actually making. They really meant for the show to be about Kate's toy plane and Shannon's mean stepmom and Locke's pot-growing cult and Charlie doing diaper commercials THIS WHOLE TIME. Silly me. But I realized that I actually DO kinda care about these characters, even the ones that annoy the crap out of me (*cough*Kate*cough*Boone*cough*Jack*cough*Shannon*cough*Claire...wow, I have a nasty cough!), so it was nice to get watch such an emotionally satisfying end for all of them.
Well, OK, when I was first watching Jack and Christian's conversation and Jack said, "I died," I was immediately like "WHAT THE SHIT DARLTON I THOUGHT YOU SAID THAT THE ISLAND WASN"T PURGATORY ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME??" but then I kept watching and actually LISTENED to what Christian said and was like, "Oh, no, wait, the island was real. The sideways is purgatory. They all died at various times and ended up here so they could all move on together. That's actually really nice. That's pleasant closure." Although, of course, you can nitpick some of the details. Particularly the fact that it was original-recipe-baby Aaron that moved on with them, which doesn't make sense because he did grow up to be his own person with a life and whatever, one would assume. But apparently some people in the alternate reality were just kinda...props? Like Jack's "son"? And Segev was like, "Wait, how come some of the cast doesn't get to go?" and I said, "You mean like that black guy? Or that other black guy? Or the black kid? Or that Chinese guy? Or the Cuban guy?" IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT IS A REFLECTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM. But, you know, Lapidus didn't get to go either.
Which is such total bullshit. Why don't any of the characters care about Lapidus?? He saved your asses MULTIPLE times, but you all think he drowned and you're just like "BOO HOO HOO SUN AND JIN...who's this Lapenis dude again?" And then he WASN'T dead, which we found out in a moment that I'm confident made at least 75% of the audience sit up and shout "LAPIDUS!" in jubilation, and then they walkie talkie Jack/Kate/Sawyer and say, "Yeah, hey, Lapidus is here and it going to fly us off the island," and Kate's just like, "hm, great, thanks Miles." YOU THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD! HE IS NOT DEAD! You can't even say "Oh, awesome, that guy who knows how to fly is still here? He seems like a nice enough guy. Cool." No. Nothing. And then he doesn't even get to go to heaven with them? How many times does a guy have to fly you off a collapsing/disappearing island for him to get invited to your potluck dinners? Well, I'm just going to fanwank that Lapidus died with absolutely no inner turmoil to work out and shuffled off this mortal coil in a cloud of fairy dust and awesomeness the second his heart stopped beating.
I was also pissed that Batmanuel wasn't invited to their little Unitarian Universalist Purgatory Party, especially since Ben was, but I'll fanwank that one too -- for Richard, the island really WAS purgatory. He was there for 150 years. So once he got off the island, it was all just frosting -- by the time he died he'd worked his issues out and got to leave tout de suite as well. (I was also thinking to myself, "Good luck back in the real world with no social security number, dude," but then I remembered he'd BEEN off the island before, so apparently he just had to head back to the Mittelos Bioscience lab headquartered in the back of that butcher shop where Ben apparently had some sort of identity theft/meat processing/Kerouac reading cartel going on, which will NEVER BE EXPLAINED...OK, the bitterness came back up a little bit. Swallowing it down...)
And Daniel's going to stay and hang out with his bitch mom who tortured him his whole life and then shot him when he went back in time. Fine. At least he can make out with Charlotte...who continues to have no real backstory or inner life of her own. But she DOES have pretty hair, so WIN in the end for Charlotte.
And Eko already walked into the light with Yemi. And we're just going to pretend Walt never existed...or else WALT wants to pretend all the other crash survivors never existed and just moved on with his life and blocked all this stuff out, which, I wouldn't blame him. And Michael is stuck on the island whispering for all eternity, because apparently shooting two people, one of whom was really fucking annoying and a murderer herself, is worse than all the crazy crap Ben did over the course of 25 years. You know, like stealing someone's baby and gassing everyone he grew up with (wait, WHO told him to do that again??) and just straight up shooting people for shits and giggles. He "still has things to work out," but he gets to do it while eating coq au vin with that lady whose baby he stole (only now she's showered!) and that said same baby. (And can we PLEASE stop this trend of putting people in pigtails to make them seem like they're 17 when they're really 24? The same thing happened with Shannon in that Liam Neeson killbot movie. They gave her pigtails with RIBBONS and had her SKIPPING. Of course, then later in the movie they have her doped up on heroin, slumped over in lingerie being auctioned off as a sex slave to sultans. But seriously. As I said on Facebook, I am already skeeved enough that the actress who plays Alex is boning Jeff Goldblum in real life; I don't need the added horror of picturing her dressed up like Dorothy Gale while they're doing it.)
And Miles...Miles is just going to stay in purgatory-LA and have a spinoff cop show. With Ana Lucia. There will be hijinks.
So, basically, what we learn in the finale is that Jack is the worst island protector ever. (Which goes along with him being JUST THE WORST in general.) I mean, you spend all season walking back and forth across the island, trying to stop Smokey's plans to get off the island. Then you finally meet back up with him (right after he has threatened to kill Rose and Bernard with extra pain sauce, which STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERACIAL HIPPIE COUPLE, EVIL DOT MATRIX PRINTER LOCKEFACE GUY!!) and he's like, "Hey, Desmond and I are going to go into this magical cave of phlebotinum and pull out this incredibly literal cork from the shiny electromagnetism," and Jack's just like, "OK, that sounds cool, I bet that will actually further my goals even though I have no reason to think it would because Jacob didn't tell me ANYTHING and just made me drink this river scum because you broke his bottle of magic wine like a hundred years ago, thanks a lot for that BTW." And then it sorta DOES work out, because Locke becomes mortal (just total luck on Jack's part) but not until scary RED phlebotinum comes out of the island anus and the whole place starts shaking and falling into the ocean. Couldn't you have waited just a little bit longer to put this brilliant plan into action, Jack? Because Miles and Richard are trying to build a plane out of duct tape. (That was one of the funniest moments in the episode -- that and the look on Jin's face when Sawyer says he's a cop. Daniel Dae Kim can do no wrong.) And then we get that AWESOME flying punch shot. And then Kate's obnoxious habit of following people when they specifically tell her not to FINALLY pays off and she gets to do something useful for once in six damn years. And THEN they make out. Which I was super happy about, because apparently Jate was fate after all and that's fine because Sawyer deserves better. Well, he deserves Juliet. And he gets her later, which was just a lovely scene. Awwww.
I completely called the last shot (Jack's eye closing) about 5.75 seasons ago, but I wasn't expecting Vincent to show up, and it made me teary.
So, yeah, once I got through the penultimate episode and realized that what Darlton considered an exposition dump was really just completely without any substance and only addressing questions I didn't give a shit about, I went into this episode with a sense of resignation and was pleasantly surprised.
I would have been more pleasantly surprised, though, if it had just been Desmond dancing around in an unbuttoned blue shirt drinking McCutcheon and singing sea shanties for 2.5 hours. Brought to you by Target. Smashcut to black. LOST.
I was actually pretty pleased with the episode.
"But Maggie," you might ask, "didn't it bother you that they didn't answer any questions at all AT ALL, and apparently seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5 were all red herrings, and the show was really ALL ABOUT JACK and his search for inner peace?" You would think it would. But I decided before watching that I was going to go into it not expecting them to answer a SINGLE QUESTION (which they didn't) and just let myself go with the flow. It was very cathartic. I mean, sure, I'm pissed off that apparently the show I thought I was watching all these years, the one with all the time-travel and weird shadowy multinational conglomerates doing research on sharks and mind control and immortal pirates and dead people appearing out of nowhere and SCARY EYEBALLS IN CABINS OH MY GOD FOR SERIOUS WHOSE EYE WAS IT??, wasn't the show the writers were actually making. They really meant for the show to be about Kate's toy plane and Shannon's mean stepmom and Locke's pot-growing cult and Charlie doing diaper commercials THIS WHOLE TIME. Silly me. But I realized that I actually DO kinda care about these characters, even the ones that annoy the crap out of me (*cough*Kate*cough*Boone*cough*Jack*cough*Shannon*cough*Claire...wow, I have a nasty cough!), so it was nice to get watch such an emotionally satisfying end for all of them.
Well, OK, when I was first watching Jack and Christian's conversation and Jack said, "I died," I was immediately like "WHAT THE SHIT DARLTON I THOUGHT YOU SAID THAT THE ISLAND WASN"T PURGATORY ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME??" but then I kept watching and actually LISTENED to what Christian said and was like, "Oh, no, wait, the island was real. The sideways is purgatory. They all died at various times and ended up here so they could all move on together. That's actually really nice. That's pleasant closure." Although, of course, you can nitpick some of the details. Particularly the fact that it was original-recipe-baby Aaron that moved on with them, which doesn't make sense because he did grow up to be his own person with a life and whatever, one would assume. But apparently some people in the alternate reality were just kinda...props? Like Jack's "son"? And Segev was like, "Wait, how come some of the cast doesn't get to go?" and I said, "You mean like that black guy? Or that other black guy? Or the black kid? Or that Chinese guy? Or the Cuban guy?" IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT IS A REFLECTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM. But, you know, Lapidus didn't get to go either.
Which is such total bullshit. Why don't any of the characters care about Lapidus?? He saved your asses MULTIPLE times, but you all think he drowned and you're just like "BOO HOO HOO SUN AND JIN...who's this Lapenis dude again?" And then he WASN'T dead, which we found out in a moment that I'm confident made at least 75% of the audience sit up and shout "LAPIDUS!" in jubilation, and then they walkie talkie Jack/Kate/Sawyer and say, "Yeah, hey, Lapidus is here and it going to fly us off the island," and Kate's just like, "hm, great, thanks Miles." YOU THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD! HE IS NOT DEAD! You can't even say "Oh, awesome, that guy who knows how to fly is still here? He seems like a nice enough guy. Cool." No. Nothing. And then he doesn't even get to go to heaven with them? How many times does a guy have to fly you off a collapsing/disappearing island for him to get invited to your potluck dinners? Well, I'm just going to fanwank that Lapidus died with absolutely no inner turmoil to work out and shuffled off this mortal coil in a cloud of fairy dust and awesomeness the second his heart stopped beating.
I was also pissed that Batmanuel wasn't invited to their little Unitarian Universalist Purgatory Party, especially since Ben was, but I'll fanwank that one too -- for Richard, the island really WAS purgatory. He was there for 150 years. So once he got off the island, it was all just frosting -- by the time he died he'd worked his issues out and got to leave tout de suite as well. (I was also thinking to myself, "Good luck back in the real world with no social security number, dude," but then I remembered he'd BEEN off the island before, so apparently he just had to head back to the Mittelos Bioscience lab headquartered in the back of that butcher shop where Ben apparently had some sort of identity theft/meat processing/Kerouac reading cartel going on, which will NEVER BE EXPLAINED...OK, the bitterness came back up a little bit. Swallowing it down...)
And Daniel's going to stay and hang out with his bitch mom who tortured him his whole life and then shot him when he went back in time. Fine. At least he can make out with Charlotte...who continues to have no real backstory or inner life of her own. But she DOES have pretty hair, so WIN in the end for Charlotte.
And Eko already walked into the light with Yemi. And we're just going to pretend Walt never existed...or else WALT wants to pretend all the other crash survivors never existed and just moved on with his life and blocked all this stuff out, which, I wouldn't blame him. And Michael is stuck on the island whispering for all eternity, because apparently shooting two people, one of whom was really fucking annoying and a murderer herself, is worse than all the crazy crap Ben did over the course of 25 years. You know, like stealing someone's baby and gassing everyone he grew up with (wait, WHO told him to do that again??) and just straight up shooting people for shits and giggles. He "still has things to work out," but he gets to do it while eating coq au vin with that lady whose baby he stole (only now she's showered!) and that said same baby. (And can we PLEASE stop this trend of putting people in pigtails to make them seem like they're 17 when they're really 24? The same thing happened with Shannon in that Liam Neeson killbot movie. They gave her pigtails with RIBBONS and had her SKIPPING. Of course, then later in the movie they have her doped up on heroin, slumped over in lingerie being auctioned off as a sex slave to sultans. But seriously. As I said on Facebook, I am already skeeved enough that the actress who plays Alex is boning Jeff Goldblum in real life; I don't need the added horror of picturing her dressed up like Dorothy Gale while they're doing it.)
And Miles...Miles is just going to stay in purgatory-LA and have a spinoff cop show. With Ana Lucia. There will be hijinks.
So, basically, what we learn in the finale is that Jack is the worst island protector ever. (Which goes along with him being JUST THE WORST in general.) I mean, you spend all season walking back and forth across the island, trying to stop Smokey's plans to get off the island. Then you finally meet back up with him (right after he has threatened to kill Rose and Bernard with extra pain sauce, which STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERACIAL HIPPIE COUPLE, EVIL DOT MATRIX PRINTER LOCKEFACE GUY!!) and he's like, "Hey, Desmond and I are going to go into this magical cave of phlebotinum and pull out this incredibly literal cork from the shiny electromagnetism," and Jack's just like, "OK, that sounds cool, I bet that will actually further my goals even though I have no reason to think it would because Jacob didn't tell me ANYTHING and just made me drink this river scum because you broke his bottle of magic wine like a hundred years ago, thanks a lot for that BTW." And then it sorta DOES work out, because Locke becomes mortal (just total luck on Jack's part) but not until scary RED phlebotinum comes out of the island anus and the whole place starts shaking and falling into the ocean. Couldn't you have waited just a little bit longer to put this brilliant plan into action, Jack? Because Miles and Richard are trying to build a plane out of duct tape. (That was one of the funniest moments in the episode -- that and the look on Jin's face when Sawyer says he's a cop. Daniel Dae Kim can do no wrong.) And then we get that AWESOME flying punch shot. And then Kate's obnoxious habit of following people when they specifically tell her not to FINALLY pays off and she gets to do something useful for once in six damn years. And THEN they make out. Which I was super happy about, because apparently Jate was fate after all and that's fine because Sawyer deserves better. Well, he deserves Juliet. And he gets her later, which was just a lovely scene. Awwww.
I completely called the last shot (Jack's eye closing) about 5.75 seasons ago, but I wasn't expecting Vincent to show up, and it made me teary.
So, yeah, once I got through the penultimate episode and realized that what Darlton considered an exposition dump was really just completely without any substance and only addressing questions I didn't give a shit about, I went into this episode with a sense of resignation and was pleasantly surprised.
I would have been more pleasantly surprised, though, if it had just been Desmond dancing around in an unbuttoned blue shirt drinking McCutcheon and singing sea shanties for 2.5 hours. Brought to you by Target. Smashcut to black. LOST.