LOST Without It

For the last six years, I knew that when the last episode of LOST ended, there would still be a question on my mind.  I spent probably too much time than was healthy wondering what that question would be.  But it wasn't "what the hell just happened?" or "so wait, they pulled the purgatory card on us?" or even "that was the last shot we've been anticipating all these years?"  My question was "what am I going to do with my life now?"  I have spent a long time caring about LOST, more than I would like to admit, and now that it has run its course I am both relieved and at a loss.  And I am sure as hell not going to start watching American Idol to fill the void it has left in my life.  I may be on a slippery slope of watching reruns of The X-Files, so I suppose this could be classified as a "rebound phase."  I'm not sure if this is entirely healthy or not.

I have been inserting famous one-liners from the show into daily conversation.  I have been drawing parallels between events in my life and specific episodes of the show.  I even listened to Mama Cass' "Make Your Own Kind of Music."  This is how Charlie must have felt in the episode where Locke got him to kick his heroin addiction.  Only I'm not psychologically or physiologically dependent on it, and finding a crashed prop-plane transporting hollow statues of the Virgin Mary filled with LOST episodes wouldn't solve my problems.  Because I've said it before and I'll say it again: things have to be end in order to be meaningful.

I was both disappointed with the off-island ending and satisfied with the on-island ending.  The very fact that Hurley, who was originally conceived as a comic relief character, became the replacement Jacob.  You realize that there were really no "good guys" in the show except for the Losties, and even then Hurley, Desmond, and Kate were probably the only ones who was good all of the time.  Jacob, even though he was supposed to be the protector of the gay light/life force of the universe, was kind of a dick and made a lot of people die.  (And as we learned the hard way in season 5, dead is dead.)

We also learned that time travel is not as useful as you may think, that you should never give up even if you're paraplegic, that whatever happened happened, that the universe has a way of course-correcting itself, that polar bears can travel through time, people can talk to ghosts, that punching someone in the face is always the best solution, that childbirth is incredibly frequent and usually takes only a few minutes, that sometimes people have secret other families, that heroin comes in universal, unmarked packaging, that you can be fired as a monk, that it's not Penny's boat, and that if we can't live together, then we're gonna die alone.  And we will never see the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 the same way ever again.

There is definitely potential for a spin-off with Hurley n' Ben, and their whacky adventures of protecting the extremely gay light while at the same time not being paranoid assholes.  And since Hurley can see dead people, deceased characters from the show can make cameo appearances.  Rose and Bernard can also be recurring characters.  Another good spin-off would be the antics of Richard Alpert as he tries to reintegrate into society after being absent since the 1800's, while at the same time coming to grips with mortality and with the fact that he is once again aging.  Lapidus can open a Jimmy Buffet bar with Sawyer as a hard-drinking, wise-cracking waiter, Miles can do his own ghostbusting show, Claire and Kate can have an awkward quasi-family sitcom where everyone thinks that they're lesbians but they're really not, and once Hurley gets Desmond off the island, he can sail around on his boat solving crime around the world.  ABC execs, are you listening?  I smell multiple cash cows here.

And here's this post's twist ending: I have actually been dead since the second installment of Edible/Audible.  How did I write this post?  It's all part of the mystery.

WE HAVE TO GO BACK! Gearing Up for the LOST Series Finale

“You all, everybody
You all, everybody
Acting like you're stupid people
Wearing expensive clothes
You all, everybody
You all, everybody
You all, everybody”

-Driveshaft, “You All Everybody”

If you are not up to date with LOST, this may contain spoilers.

This evening, all questions will be answered… hopefully.  If not, I may have to walk into ABC studios with C4 strapped to my chest, because I will be a very angry man.

After six seasons of jumping through space, time, and even genre, LOST will finally be coming to an end.  I don’t really know how to feel about this.  Because on one hand, I’m excited for the series finale and the anticipated premeditated last short, but I also know that I’ll be sad for it to end.  As much as I hate to admit it, watching LOST and obsessing over theories and explanations has been a part of my life for a long time.

And to haters (of both the show and its fandom) out there I say this: can we please stop using the polar bear as a point of contention?  That got explained at like, the beginning of the third season! 

I will admit though, LOST may be the first show to jump the shark in its pilot episode, which is actually more liberating than anything else.  Very early on, the writers had the option of making it more than a show about just a bunch of castaways who have to learn to deal with each other and their own personal problems in order to survive.

With every season the ridiculousness grew exponentially.  It started with a plane crashed on an island to a plane crashed on a seemingly unlocatable island with a random polar bear, monster, a Sawyer with a very punchable face, and insane French woman; to an island with a hatch containing God-knows-what; to an island with hostile occupants who kidnap the kid and a hatch filled with an awesome Scotsman and a button you have to push every 108 minutes in order to save the world; to an island with bizarre research stations and a group of people that used to be cool because you thought they lived in huts and walked around barefoot but instead became slightly less cool because they live in suburban-esque houses and dressed like normal people, complete with shoes; to an island that was being invaded by mercenaries, hired by someone who hoped to exploit its mystical properties for… whatever and could also MOVE THROUGH SPACE; to an island that could OH SHIT ALSO MOVE THROUGH TIME; to the staging ground of a battle between good and evil; to some sort of vessel containing THE LIFE FORCE OF THE WHOLE FRIGGIN WORLD! WITH A PARALELL UNIVERSE THROWN IN NEXT TO IT!  And I thought it was just a show about some unfortunate people who happened to be in a plane crash.  This is the show that went from one-gun-one-bullet to a nuclear warhead, both literally and figuratively.

And it has traveled through genres.  A TV drama with an interesting narrative twist, action, science fiction, and eventually, has created its own genre.  It’s not really about the story, even though the story is epic and multifaceted and ambitious (perhaps overly so) in its scope.  It’s about how the story is told, and it’s about becoming attached to the characters.  It’s the feeling of being stoked you get when Desmond shows up on the plane, or the loss you feel when Charlie dies, or the oh-shit-did-that-really-just-happen feeling you get when Michael shoots Libby and Ana Lucia and then shoots himself in the arm.

I used to think that it was about the overarching story, the fact that everyone is significant in some way to the story, and I am still hoping that there is some moment in the finale where everything gets tied together and character is revealed to have had some significance in the overarching mega-conflict between (what is supposedly) good and evil.  I’ve how finally realized that yes, there is a main story, but every character’s individual story doesn’t have to fit in perfectly.  With the exception of Niki and Paulo, who were useless and wasted an episode which was only redeemed by the fact that they died in it, most of the characters contributed something.  And even if it wasn’t advancing the main plot to some sort of final conclusion we’re all hoping for, their stories were entertaining.  Even though I was frustrated so often by the fact that Sun and Jin were working out conflicts within their marriage instead of trying to figure out the function of the hatch, I’ve come to realize that it all was part of the experience, and although certain episodes didn’t have a whole lot to do with the story, they did tell a story, and that’s enough for me.

LOST has been a part of my life for a long time now, and I’m looking forward to the finale with excitement and also some weariness.  But ultimately, it’s one of those things where I want it to be over so I don’t have to care anymore.  And I would love to go personal emo blogger on your ass and tell you how every lost episode relates to a moment in my life, but I won’t.  I will say though that the question asked at the end of season 5.  Everyone has issues in their lives, and the working out of those issues usually becomes more meaningful than the issues themselves.  Would you make everything that has happened not happened to create a more favorable outcome?

I sure as hell wouldn’t.