Thoughts on the finale of "Lost"

I love it when Hollywood makes the sequel first...

"Lost" ended last night and I'm pleased to see that the powers behind it were smart enough to reestablish a simple truth that has been central since Season One:  "Lost" is about the characters, not the island.  After all, they're the ones who are "Lost"; not the island.  That said, WHAT THE FUCK'S WITH THAT ISLAND?  I guess now we'll never know.  J.J. Abrams sure as hell didn't have a clue.  The guys who he left in charge of the island couldn't figure it out.  At the end of the day, the island is as it always was:  An enigma, and a damn fine one.

I'll be honest.  I was hoping for a flawless and focused wrap up akin to "Battlestar Galactica", which fobbled only gently while delivering a very powerful and satisfying conclusion that tied up most of its strings.  Unfortunately, "Lost" has more holes in it than the Battlestar herself by the time the dust finally settled in that conclusion.  Despite what people may think or believe, "Lost" has more contradictions, half-truths, ambiguities, and just plain moments of gibberish than the Bible itself (sorry, Christian Shepherds, but it's true).  Fortunately, "The End" is told so well and the performances are so spot on (how anyone else on television could muster an Emmy nod next year will be beyond me; "Lost" should sweep all its respective categories IMHO) that all its faults are outweighed by the tremendous and emotional ride we have taken these past six years.

I don't need to recap it.  If for some reason you're reading this (which means you're reading my blog...weird) and you give a shit enough that you're STILL reading this, then you've probably seen the episode.  Maybe you're not the "Lost" fan, I am, but you're probably informed enough.  Rather than rehashing this episode, however, all I will say is that coming into Season 6, I thought "Lost" was just about perfect.  Season 6 proved me wrong.  I will probably always hold it as the weakest of the series behind the snoozefest that was most of Season 3, and yet I was no less captivated.  Season 6 intrigued me but seldom blew me away and left me more frustrated than any other season (read: "Across the Sea").  It highlighted the series' most common flaws, including that, at the end of the day, "Lost" has never been able to directly answer almost anything about the island's core mysteries.

"The End" did not disappoint.  At least not entirely.

If Lost's finale were truly judged on its ability to answer some of the island's key mysteries (the statue, the smoke monster, the lighthouse, the donkey wheel, etc.) it probably pissed off a ton of people.  The statue still has no history (would it have mattered if it did, though)?  We still have no real idea why the hell the smoke monster was so damn scary or what exactly it was in the first place (if Jack hadn't killed it, would the afterlife for the survivors really have been comprimised and, if so, why?).  We don't know who built the lighthouse, how Jacob came to operate it, or ditto about the temple.  The donkey wheel continues to be about the strangest part of the series, and God only knows how anybody (Ben or Locke) had any clue as to how that thing would work.  I could throw theories at you on any of these matters, based on the episodes in which they are referenced but "Lost" never told you upfront.  We are still left very ignorant about the history of the island itself, how it operated, or what the hell electromagnetism really has to do with anything.

(Breath.)

What we do know is that everyone, with the exception of any black, male actor on the show (think about it...no Mr. Eko, no Michael, no Walt, no Matthew Abbadon in the finale) found his or her happy ending in the end.  I wasn't very happy with the resurrection of the Sayid/Shannon love arc considering all the emphasis that "Lost" has placed throughout the years on Nadia being Sayid's TRUE love, but many of the characters were closed out perfectly.  With regard to Sayid, I guess I have to look at his ending in the context of an afterlife.  I think his perfect world would have been being surrounded by those people he loved most.  In losing Nadia and being with Shannon, he gained Nadia, as well as his brother, who had both perished. In the end, all those whom he loved most were restored.  Bliss.

This leads me to my primary gripe about the finale.  Although the episode clocked in at 2 1/2 hours, I could have used about 15 minutes more to show that life on the island actually meant something.  There were survivors!  It would have been nice to have seen some reference to what happened to those who survived life on the island (Ben, Hurley, Desmond, Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Miles, Frank, and Richard).  We never got to see Claire reunited with Aaron in the real world.  We never got to see Desmond and Penny finally get to raise Baby Charlie.  We never got to see Kate and Sawyer awkwardly realize that they outlived Jack and Juliet and remember their jungle passion. Nor did we even get to see Richard as an older man with longer hair arriving at his own paradise somewhere on a Spanish villa to be reunited with his lost love.

Betting the whole island on the flash sideways without some of this linear timeline closure kinda left a bad taste.  However, there's your material for sequels and movies.  For example, what's gonna happen when some wacky scientist builds a dinosaur themepark on the island with, get this...REAL FUCKING DINOSAURS!  Suck on it, Smoke Monster.

Ultimately, the finale's success rested on the actors' shoulders and Matthew Fox, for me, has cemented his Emmy award for best actor.  I don't think it can be argued that he turned in his best work this season.  He sold the evolution of the show's protagonist and I felt like Fox had been hitting the same notes for a while when it came to Jack.  In Season 6, though, the character was almost completely reinvented and I can't name the number of scenes that Fox absolutely nailed.  Breaking down on the beach after the submarine sank?  Gold.  The long-awaited reunion with his father at the closing of the series?  The fabric of dreams, my friends.  Even Jorge Garcia pushed Hurley to the edge of what we'd come to expect of his character, and Terry O'Quinn explored everything that was best about two different characters throughout the series.  Honest to God, there should be no less than five or six acting nominations come out of this season alone, which I find ironic given my mixed emotions about the substance of the final season.

Those are my thoughts for now.  I'm sure I'll be back with more opinions as I digest the conclusion.  Hopefully it will be a while before we're met with the inevitable "Lost: The Next Generation" or a Lost motion picture.  Still, I'm left satisfied while also wanting more.  A year from now, I think it's finally going to hit me that this epic series is actually over.