Hey you all everybody. I am back. Kinda. I came back from vacation to a computer being worked on, so things are a little dodgy right now, keeping me from 100% capabilities until maybe Wednesday... fingers crossed that it won't take that long. I'm also having a ridiculously difficult time syncing myself back to East Coast time and am just basically completely exhausted this morning. Whine whine, et cetera.
All of these factors of irritation are also making me think I should wait to say anything much about last night's Lost finale because I don't want to project too much of the harshness I'm feeling this morning due to other factors onto the show, which for me had equal doses of enjoyment and lameness (unfortunately tipping deeply into the latter in its final 15 minutes).
I will offer up this thought however (and yes this is a SPOILER): how long after Jack's eye closed at the end do you think it took Vincent, lying beside him, to start devouring his corpse?
All of these factors of irritation are also making me think I should wait to say anything much about last night's Lost finale because I don't want to project too much of the harshness I'm feeling this morning due to other factors onto the show, which for me had equal doses of enjoyment and lameness (unfortunately tipping deeply into the latter in its final 15 minutes).I will offer up this thought however (and yes this is a SPOILER): how long after Jack's eye closed at the end do you think it took Vincent, lying beside him, to start devouring his corpse?
ETA I really should've posted this here:
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21 comments:
LOL... I was thinking the same thing about the dog!
I didn't think the last 15 minutes was lame at all. Of course by then I had consumed an entire bottle of wine and was crying at everything on the TV.
I cried bunches throughout the episode - Sawyer and Juliet! Jin and Sun! Hell even Claire and Charlie! - but I really have very little patience for doors opening onto a blinding white light.
Even though I'm trying to piece it all together in my head (and I admit a twinge or two of disappointment), LOST was worth it. I'm reading as many threads and internets comments as I can and as Cuse and Lindelof predicted, there are many opinions. Why show the plane wreckage on the beach at the end? It would be too arbitrary if the writers wanted "window dressing" over the end credits like that. I think they were dead from the start and that their collective afterlives intersected over six seasons with all the religious, philosophical and pop references we all accumulate in our lives as narrative fodder. It was for me one of the most emotionally affecting finales ever and I balled my eyes out (something I rarely do and for TV no less!) I'm going to watch it again in a few days but for now, I'm haunted by the power of those characters and remain touched by their "re-connections" in the finale.
A good sci-fi show ended like a bad drama series, very disappointing. From monsters and magic island to finding the "true love" in the after life. From a series completely unique to a remake of the movie "passangers", I think a saw Anne Hathaway seated on one of the benches with Patrick Wilson waiting to "move on".
I thought the main character was the island not Jack. I think I was lost.
I think the writers at some point didn't care of the answers so they kept throwing stuff into the series knowing that the end would be like this.
What a shame.
Of course this is what I think, nothing against anyone's opinion.
Sorry, guys, but I think there were far too many indications leading up to the images of the wrackage that go against the "dead all along" theory -- I mean, hello, Christian specifically said that it all was real. Plus, I think I saw shelters among the wreckage from their first nights there.
I think one hurdle people are having trouble with is that they are being forced to shed presuppositions about the timing of sideways world...it just seems like it was happening nearly in tandem...the rules of time didn't really apply there. Everyone died and came there at a different time...each lingered there a different amount of time...finally, when the last of the core group was dead and had arrived, they all converged to move on. Who knows when that happened. Kate, Sawyer, and the rest flew off and likely led full lives. Hurley could have lived as protector of the island for centuries until he handed the mantle off to another.
I thought it was quite affecting. No one will convince me they were dead all along -- too many indications to the contrary.
Finally, ha ha about Vincent, but you forgot about Rose and Barnard...unless all the island shaking killed them, which I doubt, they probably found Jack and gave him the burial he deserved.
I don't think anybody here was arguing they were "dead all along" shaun but I have seen that argument around and agree with you that the "sideways" was as you described. What doesn't really work for me in that context though is everything we saw in this post-life way-station world. I was one of the seemingly few people that really liked the sideways stories but now it all seems like a lot of pointless misdirection. Why were Jack and Juliet married with a kid there? Why was Sawyer a cop? Desmond was actually aware of their future afterlives because of electromagnetism? A lot of it worked emotionally, sure, I loved seeing the characters reunited and happy and so on, but it felt like they paved over everything else with these kind of cheap emotional manipulations.
JA, your questions are fair ones, and I didn't take you to be suggesting they were dead all along. I have a list of questions of my own as well. However, one comment -- which the author deleted after mine -- flatout said that they were dead all along. Also, another commenter's analogy to "Passengers" is consistent with the suggestion that they were dead all along (sorry to spoil that horrible movie for you if you haven't seen it yet). So, here and elsewhere, people indeed are suggesting they were dead all along.
Oh, and I think that some (but surely not all) of the anomalies in sideways world wore representations of things the characters had wanted or needed in their first lives or were echoes of their first lives -- as on the island, Jack and Juliet had a relationship, Jack's son gave him a chance to be for a child what his dad never was for him (in the episode where Jack discovered the audition), Jin and Sun were united despite the marital bonds that forced them to stay together at first in life, Hurley got to be lucky for a change.
As for Desmond, I think he had two special skills/gifts -- he had a high tolerance for electromagnetism in the real world, and, in the after life, with a little prodding by Charlie, he was quick to figure out what was going on. I still need to think more about what it meant for him to be the "constant," but, judging from how things didn't go as he expected towards the end down in the cave, I don't think he really fully understood the limits of who he was and what he knew.
When I talked about "Passenegers" I didn't mean they were dead all the time,they lived they're lives at the island. I was talking about the side-verse, it was exactly like that movie, she lived her life but after the plane crash she thinks she's still alive untill she wakes up and notice she has to move on. Is the same with the sideverse. They were living until they woke up. And if you think that movie sucks, well I'm sorry to say that the sideverse and the whole season sucked for the same reasons, don't you agree? it's the same thing.
I read somewhere that dogs are loyal enough to sit patiently by the sides of their deceased masters... Your cat, however, will absolutely eat you.
I decided that if I was going to miss my sleep time, I wouldn't be mad at it, no matter what. And I enjoyed ... for what it was. Who would have seen coming that the island was in fact like a giant bathtub? That the key was not to take the plug or the swirl would be so huge it would destroy it?
There're too many questions and all that, but sleep deprived I can barely put words together. My WTF (or little WTF) moments were Hurley crying or whatever he was trying to do. Sorry, love the character but that was painful to watch. The other one was Jack's father answering patiently Jack's questions which was too clearly Viewers=Jack/Writers=Christian. You could almost picture the writers smiling when they wrote it. I guess they thought that was a smart way to "answer questions".
All in all, I'm glad it's over. I do wonder what will happen with the careers of most of the cast. I don't see a George Clooney there.
First of all, I LOVE Chris's comment because that was exactly what I did (bottle of wine, crying at everything). Secondly, dashdog is the one that mentioned that they were "dead from the start" (third comment). There seemed to be some debate among the comments about who said that and if it was said at all.
I think I read somewhere that on the DVD there will be an additional 20 minutes of unseen footage from the finale. Something like that. I wish I could remember where I saw it.
For the record, I loved the finale. It took awhile for me to figure out exactly what was happening, but I kind of felt like Jack. I was confused for awhile, but then it all made sense and I was at peace. (Cheesy, I know, but I'm very happy with the way it all turned out.)
Ok, I was wrong but...
An ABC insider has knocked down reports that there will be 20-minutes worth of resolution on the final discs, but confirmed there will be "new content that addresses some of the unanswered questions in an entertaining way."
Ha! I thought the same thing about Vincent! I hear so many people saying that they were touched by his appearance, but I could only think, "He's going to at least start licking those wounds!"
I think my problem with the ending is that I thought the island was the main character and seeing that after jack died nothing mattered was disappointing.
And I have a theory, if you watched the show more for the characters and the love they were founding and what happened to them before and after and the drama, I believe the ending was good. But if you were watching the series for the mythology and the island and the time travel and the smoke monster and Jacob and thought of it as sci-fi, I think the ending wasn't the right one (like me).
At some point I was praying for an UFO to arrive at the church and take them to the island or something crazy like that.
But at least it had an ending, so that's what matters I guess, it wasn't cut in the middle of the season like many others.
It was way uneven but gripping just the same, liked the romantic bits best:) And I love that it ended where it all started, just like one of Darltons biggest influences, S. KIng´s The dark tower saga...it´s all a big circle.
I think you're onto something jkrojas with your theory!
Based on Christian Shepherd's conversation with Jack, I'll concede that they were likely alive on the island -- those end credit images were too confounding -- but I was completely satisfied that the sideways reality was a staging for an afterlife together. Mostly, I LOVE all the comments here and all over the net. When has a show been so provocative?! Looking forward to your 150+ words, JA, when you get your own space/time equilibrium back...
I'll second your comment dashdog that I'm really enjoying reading everyone's comments and thoughts here and everywhere... I've actually spent most of the day flipping around reading people's thoughts and I've found them illuminating... one might say even more illuminating than I actually found watching the episode... one might say. One might say that definitively, and with much emphasis, one might. But that's worth plenty in itself, that the episode's generating so much thought, all over the map.
Thanks Shaun, I knew my theory had something.
Did anyone watch Jimmy Kimmel live? Marylin Manson was there, I wonder what he thinks of the series finale, lol, I don't think he cried ... or did he?? hmmmm
I felt lied to, manipulated, and cheated to the point that I couldn't even enjoy the emotional, character-driven aspects of the finale. Furthermore, to the point that I actually hate the entire series now. I wish I'd never watched it.
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