Mmm. [LOST SPOILERS HALLO]
May. 23rd, 2010 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So Lost ended, and firstly let me say that I liked the note that the "real world" thread ended on, finding it a perfectly fine and even touching closure. They even gave ol' Vincent a rationale for being there. This was good and I appreciated it. I will even fondly remember it.
I can't say I felt that way about the other business. That the show pulled a fast one on us about the context of the side-stories wasn't itself objectionable -- indeed, the reveal in 2007 that that season's flashbacks were actually flash-forwards remains a series high point. But the "the 'alternate timeline' was actually Heaven" thing... eeugh. What does that have to do with anything that came before? It felt like the show stapled a made-up-at-the-last-minute cosmology onto the end, totally divorced of anything the characters or DHARMA or any other element of the drama, and then dumped us all into it.
I can also add that propping a carefully panreligious stained-glass window into the final side-scene doesn't make it anything other than a distinctly bubblegum-Christian depiction of the afterlife, but I am sure that wiser critics will do a better job sighing at that than I. Oh well. I don't regret watching it, nor do I regret taking a pass from watching the previous several episodes.
The rest of you may all commence making fun of me for grousing about this but still liking Battlestar Galactica.
I can't say I felt that way about the other business. That the show pulled a fast one on us about the context of the side-stories wasn't itself objectionable -- indeed, the reveal in 2007 that that season's flashbacks were actually flash-forwards remains a series high point. But the "the 'alternate timeline' was actually Heaven" thing... eeugh. What does that have to do with anything that came before? It felt like the show stapled a made-up-at-the-last-minute cosmology onto the end, totally divorced of anything the characters or DHARMA or any other element of the drama, and then dumped us all into it.
I can also add that propping a carefully panreligious stained-glass window into the final side-scene doesn't make it anything other than a distinctly bubblegum-Christian depiction of the afterlife, but I am sure that wiser critics will do a better job sighing at that than I. Oh well. I don't regret watching it, nor do I regret taking a pass from watching the previous several episodes.
The rest of you may all commence making fun of me for grousing about this but still liking Battlestar Galactica.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 04:53 am (UTC)dude
Date: 2010-05-24 05:36 am (UTC)but, yeah. I was loving the finale up until "it's all fake, they're in heaven" reveal.
Re: dude
Date: 2010-05-24 05:47 am (UTC)Calling a duck a potato doesn't make it not a duck.
Re: dude
Date: 2010-05-24 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 01:15 pm (UTC)Being currently in the "re-writing and reconciliation" phase of the novel I'm working on, I'm continually surprised by what kinds of connections and rationales I find between disparate parts of the text, and I'm as sure as anything that I didn't put them there. What I'm doing is the equivalent of seeing a face on Mars: we are tuned up to find order and meaning in events, so we do, even where there is none.
In the unfortunate social and political climate in the US today, falling back on "God did it" must be incredibly tempting for writers trying to bring so many disparate threads to some kind of coherent conclusion. Curiously, this is actually the idea that William of Okham was pushing with the idea that has since transmogrified into "Okham's Razor". When he said, "Do not multiply entities beyond necessity," he meant that only God is necessary to explain everything.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 08:57 pm (UTC)Maybe I was wrong on Astro City, but even if I was, that illusion was powerful stuff in the ye olde willing suspension of disbelief process.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 01:33 pm (UTC)At first I thought that was just a particularly creative way to describe some stupid thing the show did, and then I realized no, omg no, that's -actually- what they did. (Have never seen any of the show, and it still made me say WTF?)
But I still like "bubblegum-Christian" as a descriptor.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:25 pm (UTC)But by framing that window so prominently, LOST replaced all the fun, puzzling mystery of the DHARMA logos -- the compelling I Ching-based symbols that symbolized the general attitude of the first couple of seasons -- with the familiar reassurance of the cross/star/crescent/wheel/aum, as if the whole series had become born again at the moment of its own death, and asked you-the-viewer to just forget its troubled past and remember it in the embrace of insert-your-favorite-god-here.
It was great until Jack talked to his father.
Date: 2010-05-24 05:00 pm (UTC)When did Sawer and Kate die? Seriously, I can't work that out - did Lapidus get them off the island? Were they dead from the explosion at the end of season 5? Or were they dead from the first episode?
To me the emotional highpoint of the episode was Sun, Jin, and a sonogram. Weird that the Sawyer/Juliet "reunion" and even the Jack/Kate scene didn't have the same level of impact. Was it because Sun and Jin were separated so much and Jack dulled the emotional power of the flashes by "denying" them?
Re: It was great until Jack talked to his father.
Date: 2010-05-24 05:12 pm (UTC)I just think of what a crap deal this was for Aaron, though. He might have lived out his entire life to ripe old age, might have been president of the united federation of planets or something, but reverts to a pre-sentient baby in the afterlife because that's how all these other goofballs think of him? Bummer.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 05:56 pm (UTC)Re: It was great until Jack talked to his father.
Date: 2010-05-24 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: It was great until Jack talked to his father.
Date: 2010-05-24 06:34 pm (UTC)I think that the Sun/Jin relationship was "steady", with a strong character arc that showed how they could overcome past issues. The Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet musical chairs had less impact when the music stopped in the finale and they all grabbed the nearest partner. Oh, and Sayid suddenly "forgets" Nadia, his childhood friend and long-lost love?
Grr, the whole thing makes me want to stab someone in the face.