Lost

[alonewiththemoon]

I was going to write a bunch of stuff about Lost, but I think I will just say "What TLo said."  I still feel a bit like the series pulled a BSG on us, but the more I reflect, the more I can be okay with it.

Also it made me cry twice.
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Comments

[meddevi.livejournal.com]

heh, as we lay in bed last night contemplating it, I said to Keith, did you really expect it to be any more satisfying than the ending for BSG?

[alonewiththemoon]

Ultimately I think it was more satisfying--at any rate, it didn't piss me off ;-)

[meddevi.livejournal.com]

Yeap, didn't piss me off either...though I would have liked more meat on the mysteries, but I already expected it to be whitewashed over with the treatment of it a few episodes about the light...that was the time to explain...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_perihelion_/]

now I see why it had to be 2 and a half hours long. that thing had more commercials than the SuperBowl.

[alonewiththemoon]

Agreed!

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

I agree with a lot of what that reviewer said, but in the end, I'm one of those people he pities because I need more answers, damn it.

[alonewiththemoon]

I'm slowly letting go of needing answers, the more I think about it. I guess I am moving on ;-)

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll get there some day. But for now, I feel like marking this final season up with a red pen and jotting writerly advice down in it like, "If you pick up a gun in the first act, you need to use it before the final scene." And I'd write that next to notes on Walt, Aaron, the mystery of women dying while pregnant...

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I havent' followed the series at all, but I think saying that they mysteries don't matter, that it's all about the characters, is a cop out. I might feel differently had I watched the show.

[alonewiththemoon]

It's kind of a cop out, but it's a fairly valid cop out, since so many of the mysteries existed as tests of character. The more I think about it, the more I think I'm okay with it.

[ayun.livejournal.com]

I'm with TLo as well - LOST has emphasized over and over again that Man of Science/Man of Faith dichotomy and ALWAYS come down on the 'Faith' side. I never really found any of the science-y stuff (Faraday's whole deal) convincing in the first place, so the spiritual-y conclusion wasn't much of a shock for me.

I'm pretty satisfied with the ending, myself.

[spitcurl.livejournal.com]

Riddle me this:

Was it really the sideways timeline that was the purgatory, with the island being "real"?

Or was the entire series -- the entire Island and every Islander's memories of being on trips off the island -- either a collective purgatory, or all just Jack's purgatory?

I felt like the Island itself was a spiritual weigh-station, where you only left and moved on once you sorted out all your unresolved conflicts between the life you lived and the death you are not yet ready for. That the sideways timeline was just another manifestation of that illusion (the last one, the most positive and satisfying one before accepting death).

It is easy to think of it as just one big illusion of Jack's, with his unrelenting need to save everyone, right down to dying only after he "saves" the remaining few people left on the island.

But no matter which way you look at it for answers, it still leaves unanswered questions, and it still leaves me feeling pretty emotionally satisfied with the cheesy, sentimental, but tidy wrap up.

[alonewiththemoon]

My feeling is that the island is real, and everything that happened there happened. (as so many characters said in the last season, "what happened, happened.") That glowing light/evil pit at the heart of the island is the essence of humanity, in all its strengths and weaknesses. When the evil is kept bottled up, the island can heal those who come to it, both physically and, if the person will allow it, mentally.

The sideways timeline I am thinking of as something like the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime, a time and place that is ancient and still happening, laid over the here and now but not subject to the same rules of time and space, and a place where the archetypal rules of culture are laid out. I don't like thinking of it as purgatory because those Christian terms don't sit well with me, and I think the prominent plastering of many religious symbols in the church was confirmation from the producers that it shouldn't be seen through one religious lens. In Lost's Dreamtime, people who died in all different times and places can co-exist together and find each other again. Maybe the Dreamtime is a collective hallucination, maybe it is something that always was/is there and only through the experience of the island can one reach it. (though I don't think Penny was ever on the island, was she? and Richard's dead wife I believe was in the church too)

In the end, I'm willing to embrace the sentimental wrap up, and accept that just as most of the duration of the show was about asking questions, so was its ending.

[spitcurl.livejournal.com]

Was Richard in the church? I didn't see him. That would wrap up a loose end.

I liked it when Kate laughed, "Christian Shepherd? Are you kidding me?"

I've been going over some of the online sites, which quote the producers as stating the island is NOT purgatory, so I am trying to accept that.

The Dreamtime theory is interesting and has a lot of merit (there seems to be a myth on the wiki about a crocodile-headed god who turns to stone...just like our croc-headed statue on the Island!).

I'm guessing the producers scoured every mythos and archetype available, jumbled them all in together as index cards in their writing sessions, and used whichever fit for that week's script and the overall story arch.

[redbeka-rose.livejournal.com]

I'm actually okay with not having 'all the answers' and I don't think we were meant to have all the answers anyway. I was pretty satisfied with how it ended and that it left so much open to interpretation.

Oh...and I cried my eyes out during the finale!!!