it only ends once: LOST S5&6
S5 thoughts
- So...WHY THE FUCK NOT??!? I feel like this might've been frustrating to watch in real time, given weeks in between episodes to theorize and try to puzzle it all out, but I think it's best as a marathon.
- I thought it was a fun set of variations on a theme. This whole idea that who you are has a great deal to do with who you were, but deciding to what extent and in what ways can be dangerous and terrifying.
- I thought the "let's kill Linus" plot was inevitable and I liked how it was handled. Sayid, idealist and dreamer that he is, would decide he's got to be the guy to make the tough choices.
- blaaaaah, I took a long gap of a few weeks at the very end of S5 and I forget what I was going to say. But! I liked that at least some of the characters got sent back to the seventies and had a chance to live something like a life. I ended up really moved by Sawyer and Juliet? It could've been a "love of a good woman" thing which just always goes horribly wrong. But instead it was just...two people who could give as good as they got, and therefore didn't feel the need to push away.
s6 thoughts
So....I thought I had been spoiled? I thought everyone died/they were all dead? (At least I did know Jack was going to bite it, so I was ~braced.) So AFAIC this was a way happier ending than I was expecting, with...what, four survivors of the original crash, plus a few other people? and one of them effectively immortal, to boot.
Hurley will be a great island god. Like, you can check out anytime you want but you will never want to leave! I...didn't know exactly what the plan was? Like, the people who were brought there before were all there because either Jacob or (Esau?) the Man in Black wanted pawns for their conflict; the DI was pretty much defunct by the end. Is Hurley just going to hop the island around being a landing spot for disaster survivors? Because Jacob took care of the place; Hurley, like Ben says, takes care of people. I liked that his first act - and, it seems, his last one, at least, on this plane of existence - was to absolve Ben, unlike Jacob.
I ended up quite liking Ben's development, as well. I find it very believable that his whole relentless push forward was just to make himself needed. Watching the Locke-monster play Linus like a fiddle all season was a hell of a thing. I really appreciated that the show never brought Locke back! I mean, not so much because I was more interested in the guy than wild about him (and the black smoke, so much more interesting) but because you're always expecting there to be some deus ex to right the big wrong of the murder victim being abused well after his death. No, Locke was just DEAD, even suffering the final indignity of the smoke monster soaking up some of his memories and personality traits. WAY HARSH, I loved it.
"Nothing's irreversible" might well be Jack's catch phrase. BBY JACK! was my favorite by the end. He works so hard to attract everyone else's blame in a weird way? Like, he expects to get kicked around and to feel like he desrves it, so he makes a big show of seeking out accountability for the impossible and trying to make himself into other people's scapegoat - but if he really does believe something is his job, he flings around blame at others (a la the girl in the flashback). Before the finale I wrote this sentence: I don't even think it's the god-complex entirely that motivates him to step up and claim Jacob's job at the end, so much as, I think it was a question of having a job with parameters, instead of feeling like he's in this permanent state of crisis where EVERYTHING THAT COULD CONCEIVABLY GO WRONG IN THE WORLD IS ON HIM. AFTER the finale - yup, that is exactly what I could've said. He gets a job, does a job, and finds enough peace to move on. Though I did not think that asshole Christian had earned the right to be anyone's guide into the afterlife, I was at least pleased that Jack found some peace with him.
(Though I would also add...did he really have to die? I mean, I know he got stabbed, but why wouldn't he at least try to take a little bit of the immortality water down with him in case he did survive turning the magic back on? Not that it would definitely work, but...if it's do or die, you always make the Hail Mary pass, you know? WHATEVER IT'S LOST IT'S JACK LOGIC IS NOT A THING.)
(Also, gold star for the casting dept, Jack's kid is great at playing Jack's kid, consciously and unconsciously mimicking Jack's stride and diction, acting out Jack's insecurities and drive without the hard, obsessive edges.)
I didn't like Jack's comment to Desmond, that "there's no shortcuts; there's no do-overs, all of this matters." I don't think that the ability to learn from an experience and do better makes it worthless! I think it's worth even more, because: better! I mean, I totally buy that Jack would find that belief appealing.
I'm guessing the mythology was polarizing but it worked for me so eh. BBY JACOB! Even trying to set aside my warm fuzzies toward Pellegrino (BBY LUCI!) I just loved him. There's that wonderful ethereal quality to his performance, with an unyielding edge to his submissiveness and an innocence to his rage. I liked that the mega-conflict never asked us to take a side on which was the good brother, you know? They were both responsible for getting everyone there, and they were both in a very unfair position where they were acting pridefully and selfishly - and it all made perfect sense given their backstory.
BBYS KATE AND CLAIRE. MOST EPIC OF LOVE STORIES TBQH. They are totally in lesbians and nobody and nothing will convince me otherwise. Kate has her flashback epiphany while staring into Claire's ~precious lotus of life, okay. lbr, Jack totally kind of lives the kind of life where his sister gets with his girlfriend.
OVERALL: I liked the show a lot, though I do think I preferred the later seasons over the first one or two. I could draw a couple of comparisons here and there, but as a total product, I've never seen anything quite like it. It's curious and dreamy and earnest, and never loses pleasure in the chance to be all of those things in this conversation about the human condition.
I don't so much find the idealism vs cynicism scale to be entirely predictive on its own as to how I'll feel about a narrative, for a whole lot of reasons. What I think is more useful for me is the scale of villain narrative - survival narrative - hero narrative. Of the three, I think survival is actually the most likely to be cynical? Because you can have a villain narrative where the villain dies, or gets caught, or turns themself around. Survival is pretty much going to be amoral in theory and nasty in practice, and about a condition that's got a built-in 100% mortality rate to boot. Lost is...probably not entirely unique, but a very rare bird in that it's ultimately an optimistic survival narrative, embracing life and all its metaphors and what-ifs and absurdity.
Also, I'm guessing fandom was weird about the whole ~destiny thing? IMO, it's a whole lot more respectful of characters' agency to acknowledge that they're having their chains yanked by extremely powerful forces they can't explain than to yell about how they choose their choice after they've been threatened/blackmailed/gaslit to hell and back. Instead, it's about...there are choices you do have, and choices you don't. And acknowledging that some things will be (divinely inspired/enforced, fate, structurally imposed, whatever) doesn't mean you can't accept that with grace and make the best decisions you can with what you've got. I can get behind that.
SO YES TALK TO ME ABOUT THIS SHOW AND REC ME YOUR FAVORITE THINGS, because I think I'll need to read and stew for a while before I get really fannish about it, though I could see that happening easily. Next time a five-month hiatus has me antsy as fuck I'll do a rewatch and get totally ridiculous, lol.
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