The end of "Lost," until the eventual feature film
"Lost" is over and done with, leaving years of conjecture in its wake and no doubt spawning a few more of analysis. I still don't quite grok how the wheel and computer fit in with how the island worked, and Desmond's actions vaguely reminded me of Spock's scene repairing the warp drive from Star Trek II. I can easily see how the finale could wind up alongside the one from "Battlestar Galactica" for hair-pulling and remote-chucking. For all its weirdness, the show could have easily ended in an even more unsatisfying way. So since these aren't spoilers (unless you thought of them, too), here's a few ways that it could have ended that would have inflamed nerd rage across the nation:
1. It was all a dream that was being had by Vincent the dog, the polar bear, or an autistic child at St. Elsewhere hospital.
2. All the weirdness was being caused by the engine core of a crashed spaceship. For extra points, a scrap of metal reading "U.S.S. Kelvin" would be found right before the closing credits.
3. The flashbacks and "remember-backs" were all memory implants by a novelty dating service, kind of like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" but in reverse.
4. It turns out that Ricardo Montalbán faked his death years ago in order to reprise his role as Mr. Roarke, ushering the Oceanic passengers onto the private plane that will take them away from Fantasy Island.
5. The Losties discover they're in the year sumthin-or-other B.C., and they save the woman who raises Jacob and the Man in Black from the the island's population of stranded dinosaurs.
All kidding aside, here's how it broke down for me, without going into too much detail. As a character piece, it was well-done. You got to see most everyone from the show again, they had what I'd call a "take the long view" happy ending, and if that's what kept you watching, then tears were jerked and heartstrings were tugged. If you watched it for the sci-fi weirdness, then you probably felt cheated. I know I did, on several points, because if the show wound up explaining what the island was the way I think it did, then a whole lot of what happened was pointless (unless there are subtleties I'm missing).
Before the mythological Cain-n-Able setup for Jacob and the Man In Black, I had a personal theory that the smoke monster was actually a guardian/entity from the future (since the island didn't seem to obey the standard linearity of temporal behavior), hence the machine sounds and image-projection abilities. I figured it'd be a cloud of nanites or something, especially after it confronted Mr. Eko. Shows what I know, I suppose...
ABC also took the opportunity to trot out promos for some of its upcoming genre shows. "The Gates" looks like "Twilight" meets "Desperate Housewives." If the woman we saw was a vampire, they're already breaking the rules about walking around in daylight which really makes me not care about whatever mythology they're cobbling together. The network is also making a live-action relative of "The Incredibles" called "No Ordinary Family." Michael Chiklis may have been the best (pardon the pun) thing about the "Fantastic Four" movie, but I dunno if I could get behind this program. That's assuming that most of the plots center around keeping their powers a secret and/or they eventually manage to add new super-powered cast members "freak of the week" style until it gets as cast-heavy as "Heroes."
I didn't forget about "Doctor Who" going into the year 2020 this past weekend. The only thing that I didn't pick up on right away (and this isn't a plot related spoiler, in my opinion) was that a child character had a learning disability, which made him a fan of audiobooks; I was fully prepared for a near-future "shock" where the audience was presented with a generation that was losing the ability to read in favor of audio and video as methods of absorbing information, which was a common theme of several Isaac Asimov short stories. It's also a two-parter, so we have to wait until next time to see if the setup of episode 1 pays off.
And while I did see SGU, I'll save that until it's own second part is aired, if for no other reason than to make it seem less like all I do is sit around and watch TV constantly. I also manage to surf too much on the internet, as you can tell thanks to these:
- At last, someone is willing to stand up and tell the truth about Mac 'n' Cheese.
- Chick-Fil-A is giving away free spicy chicken sandwiches if you make a reservation.
- Someday, if you have as much money as Microsoft, you can own Star Trek art as cool as this.
- Your dose of "trippy" for the day: Slo-mo footage of gelatinous stuff bouncing.
- Slicerix is a puzzle game where you have to cut away background elements to get like-colored objects to strike each other.
- Mark Twain wrote a memoir that wasn't to be published until 100 years after his death. It will hit print in November.
- I'm a sucker for 'spot the difference' games like Stranded Viking, so it should be no surprise you found it here.
- Last week, I linked up a video from the comedic geniuses Mitchell & Webb. Before they had a TV show, they did sketch comedy on the radio, and some YouTuber has placed the audio from my favorite sketch of theirs online for your listening pleasure: Greetings to new students from the head of Hufflepuff house.
- Just in case you thought you'd seen the pinnacle of "Twilight" fandom, you can now download a font based on Robert Pattinson's handwriting, created from meticulous analysis of the autographs he's given out.
- And Vehicles winds up the linkdump with a puzzle game where you use anthropomorphic cars and trucks to clear the board of "evil" cars and trucks, which is only just and fair, right?