Lost!

Alright... it's been two weeks already since the season finale of Lost! I've been wanting to blog but haven't had time. Within that period I've gone through such anger and resentment but now am okay again... sort of.

Here's the deal...

Lost! started as a wonderful show. To me it was primarily about John Locke and an incredible setting that was terrifying and fascinating. The characters on the island struggled with their pasts and many were searching for teshuvah. Locke alone had faith in the island and was devoted to it. It was his destiny. If we had faith too, it was supposed to pay off in the end...

Over the years we were brought into many characters' lives and were taken through many parts of history. We watched characters face redemption like Charlie who knew he had to die, but who chose a noble death. (I hated losing him.) We saw the smoke monster face Ekko head on and, if you backed up and looked inside the smoke, saw images of all he'd done wrong. 

It was weird the way people's lives converged. Many of the characters had brushed against other of the characters in the "real world." It was strange that Ekko's brother's plane crashed on the island, that Locke's evil father was also the real Sawyer whose conning had led to James/Sawyer's parents' death.

Then there were peripheral things we didn't understand... the Others (who originally didn't leave footprints, by the way), the Dharma Initiative, a giant 4-toed statue, a guy with a beard who was the villain for awhile and who eventually must have just quit the show, a polar bear, a porthole to a dessert...

As time went on, villains changed, probably because the writers just couldn't make up their mind what they were doing. (They finally realized a great thing with Ben but never could quite decide what to do with him.) Then we met Jacob and didn't know what to make of him. Was he G-d? Did he run all of this? Was he the one who was helping people find their redemption? Why was he invisible at first, then coming into the outside world? And poor Ben who was so filled with faith that he would murder any and all, but never got close to Jacob except, finally to kill him. (My favorite line on the whole show was when Ben delivered a eulogy to Locke. "He was filled with faith, more than I ever had. I'm very sorry I murdered him."

Up until now I was still watching with pure blind faith that despite a lot of bad writing, bad acting, my annoyance that none of the writers could possibly be mothers (what ridiculous turns they took with Claire and Sun!) and more questions than could ever be answered, that at least there would be meaning in how the island operates. What it is. What it's for. I was hoping for some way that this metaphor could enlighten me in my real life and actually connect to my own faith. For crying out loud, I once was able to compare Ben to Moshe when talking with another Lost fan!

But when it turned out that Jacob and the black smoke were opposed to one another, I no longer could make sense of how they worked together as Island Entities. And then in the second to last episode to learn that they knew as little as we did about the damn place should have alerted me to how wrong it would all go.

The final episode was not about the island at all, but about the "sideways world" that only existed in the last season... a world in which everyone who has died before on the show can be see again in a kind of purgatory before accepting their own deaths and moving on. I think I'll call it Cameo world. I have always been disappointed by when characters die but then really come back. (Tasha Yar from ST:TNG and Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring are just two examples.) But then to bring them all back smiling, hugging, kissing and we're supposed to be satisfied by this!!!!????? One explanation is that this is Hugo's island, but come on... really?

What's the fricking island!!!???

I see now that the writers were just in it for the money, for the easy emotions that they knew they could stir in us from having characters lose each other and find each other again. All the intrigue were just tools to keep us watching.

I feel cheated and resentful. Who do they think we are?

I will never commit to a TV show like this again.

At least I'm not alone. This video makes me feel just a little bit better:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.