i knew after the first hour of the final episode of LOST that this was not going to be an episode where all questions would be answered... i stepped back from it at that point and saw it for what it was going to be... the final episode of one of my favorite tv shows ever... i stepped back in my mind far enough to see the big picture of what LOST was actually about, to me anyway... i worked out long ago that it was about people who were lost... either in the real world or in some parallel universe... it didn't matter... LOST in the end wasn't really about the plot twists and the confusion... it was about people... it was about great characters...
when i read an interview the week before the final episode, the creators talked about their favorite tv finales... the sopranos and M*A*S*H* were both mentioned... they talked about how M*A*S*H* ended and how emotional it was when the helicopter took off at the end and the word 'goodbye' was written on the helicopter pad... i remember that ending from when i was a kid and even then, before i really knew anything about saying goodbye to friends that i had known for a long time or losing important people in my life, that still struck a chord with me and i remember feeling really sad... and i didn't feel that same sadness in the final of macgyver... man, i can't even remember what happened in the final of macgyver... i'm going off track here...
anyway, so basically i was expecting a cross between the two of those finals... and that's what i got... something emotional like M*A*S*H*, and then also, the death of the main character like in the final of the sopranos... luckily there was no helicopter taking off and hurley had not written 'goodbye' in the sand, although saying that, when jack was laying in the bamboo dying, the plane did fly over and i guess in his mind he was saying goodbye to whoever made it onto the plane...
my favorite scene was the scene with jack and his dad in the church when jack finally faces up to the fact he was dead... i thought that matthew fox was great in this episode and i am glad that he had such a big role to play in the final... that scene really got to me, and although right from the start of the show one of the popular theories was that they were all dead and in purgatory, this didn't lessen the impact of a scene where a dead father comes to his son and tells him he's dead too, and it's time to let go... think about it... it's frikkin' heavy... and like with all the best episodes of LOST, like that other great final episode where a bearded f@#ked up jack meets kate in the night and tells her that they should have never left the island, it left me with a weird feeling in my stomach, like those events had actually taken place, and i was somehow emotionally involved in their journey too...
at the end of it all we won't have all the answers and maybe it doesn't actually matter and that's not what life is all about anyway... it's not going to be about knowing everything and understanding why something has happened, it is actually going to be about flashbacks in your mind of the important people you have come across in your life and people that you have loved and the memories of those people that you will take with you to your grave...
maybe i'm taking this show waaaaaay to fukkin' seriously here, but when i woke up the morning after the final, i did actually feel a bit weird... slightly empty... like i had said goodbye to some friends or something the night before, knowing that i would most likely never see them again... and that, to me, is the power of tv and that is why most homes in the western world have a box in the corner of their lounge with moving pictures and sound coming out of it... it should be for viewing shows like LOST and not to watch keeping up the motherf@#king kardashians or private motherf@#king practice...
even if you were let down by the final episode or not, LOST was one of the best tv shows ever made, and in years to come i am sure people will look back on it as one of the great shows of all time, as something truly original and unique... i wish that i myself could travel into a parallel universe where i had never seen an episode before and watch it all over again right from the start...
i have worked out on my calculator that it would take roughly six days to sit down and watch all 121 episodes back to back... i'm not ruling that out as a future project...
anyway here's something clever and funny after all that...
and heres another good LOST blog...