Mmm. [LOST SPOILERS HALLO]

[prog]

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.

Comments

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

I was a bit WTF at a panreligious stained glass window in a CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

dude

[cthulhia]

it was the house of blues, dude.

but, yeah. I was loving the finale up until "it's all fake, they're in heaven" reveal.

Re: dude

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

and they tried to mitigate it by explicitly saying, "no, this is real."

Calling a duck a potato doesn't make it not a duck.

Re: dude

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. Potato Konundrum doesn't quite have the same ring.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I'm not gonna make fun of you... I'm just going to feel smug about not watching the show myself. Too damned easy to get sucked into even though I know perfectly well that the writers don't have a clue what the actual backstory is. If they did, it would inevitably leak over the course of time. So the last season of a show like this is always going to have rough spots in the wrapping up because no matter how many hints and clues you've been given the reality is that nothing makes sense and most of the action is being chosen for the drama, and the big reveals are actually the result of random co-incidences the writers hit upon fortuitously during production.

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.

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

I am expereincing as similar smugness, based on having watched a couple of early episodes, heard people talking about it and formed the nigh instant conclusion that there WAS NO big secret, they were making it up as they went along. The closest opposite expereince I can describe would be the Astro City comic series, where even though the early stories were very unconnected, I had a strong sense that the writers knew EVERYTHING about the background, and the hints really were hints at something they had fully plotted out somewhere, even if they never gave it to us all in one story.

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.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

"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"

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.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I wasn't paying close attention to the show, so I thought at first the character was in a chapel attached to an otherwise secular funeral home, where the window would have made more sense, and I just thought the show's creators were going out on a carefully nondenominational note. But then this ended up being the setting for the big reveal.

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.

[leestewart.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Really, Jack as Jesus? With his "father" walking them all into the light? It went way heavy handed at the end. And what's up with Ben electing to walk a different path? Why the random mix of people in the church? Claire's baby was there, but no love for Sun? Was Penny ever on the island?

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.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Christian(!)'s explanation was that they were all gathered in a point outside of time, and so Sawyer and Kate et al were present because they had expired due to one reason or another after the events of the main LOST narrative were over, perhaps after leading long lives of their own.

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.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

If I were to try to rationalize it at all, I might say that this particular afterlife scene was solely Jack's POV. From Aaron's POV it would be totally different, and probably would have a completely different set of people. Or whatever.

Re: It was great until Jack talked to his father.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

The Sun/Jin scene had more of an impact for me because their death scene was pretty lame, so this felt somewhat like an apology for having killed them off so abruptly and randomly.

Re: It was great until Jack talked to his father.

[leestewart.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I don't want to get started on how dumb their death scene was. I understand that Jin didn't want to leave Sun - they had been separated by both time and space for much of the last couple seasons. But really, he thought it would be better to die with his wife instead of leaving her and going to RAISE THEIR CHILD?!

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.