I want a new drug
by Bryan
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about television, it’s not to get worked up about a series finale, or to read too much into one. In all but the rarest cases, we follow our television shows like we’re taking a drug, and expect that final, last hit to be the one that validates all the rest of them—to be the one that shows some sort of clarity for our actions, that absolves us for the dozens or hundreds of hours we’ve sat on a couch, staring at a screen, in a life where people outside are interacting with each other. This is, of course, not how drugs work: The returns are always diminishing. You’re always chasing that first hit again. This is, of course, also exactly how drugs work: When you’re chasing it, you don’t realize the futility of your quest, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. You have a delusion that there is supreme clarity at the end of this path simply so that you will allow yourself to follow it, and you do so because it feels good.
There was one series finale that permanently punctured a hole in this delusion, that showed you what this addiction was really worth, and basically smacked across the mouth the people who believe that television “owes” them something: it was that of The Sopranos, the one modern ending to really be all that instructive in terms of understanding how the medium really works. You want answers? Fuck you, David Chase said. Television is not about answers, it’s not about closure, it’s about catnip voyeurism even in the best of cases. Anyone who thought The Sopranos still “owes” them something is missing the gift in front of their face: A way out. Permanently lower your expectations, Chase was saying, because television will never love you the way you love it, and television is never going away. Learn to deal with it, or spend your life being disappointed. Enjoy the ride if you can, but might it be better never to take the ride at all?
I confess to being something of a Lost apologist: the show was not without its flaws, but it created drama out of nothing better than any show I can remember. My favorite example from this season was when Jack destroyed the mirror at the top of the lighthouse and it seemed like this big deal. I was basically shaking when it cut to commercial before I realized that I had known about the mirror for about two minutes before it was destroyed. It felt like a big deal, and maybe it was for Jack’s character arc, but it was something I hadn’t known existed when I had started the evening. Then, I’m sure, the writers went back to some sort of Dogen-themed subplot I couldn’t stand, but I was satisfied. I had my fix for the day.
So then what to say about the logical problems of the finale? I’m not talking about the lack of answers for really anything having to do with the island. I’m grateful for that. I didn’t want some post-facto explanation about what this place “meant,” as if was anything more than a convenient tableau to create drama. I didn’t want answers where they clearly didn’t exist. For example, the Smoke Monster. What and why? We got nothing, and that’s perfect for me. And the island: What was it? Turns out it was an island, and really entirely separate from the ultimate lessons of Lost. That’s fine too. It, like everywhere else in the world, was just a place where things happen.
No, my problem with the finale—in retrospect—is the final scene, where the castaways are all huddled in the multidenominational church in Purgatorytown, waiting to really die, or whatever. I don’t even have a problem with the conceit. What I have a problem with is what Christian Shephard said: The reason that this particular group of people was assembled was that they had spent the most important years of their lives together, despite the fact that several of these people escaped the island. Are we to believe that nothing important enough happened when Kate and Sawyer got back to L.A. (if they did) for the rest of their lives, and that’s why it was this group that their souls had, consciously or not, chosen to meld with to ease everyone’s transition to the afterlife?
And here is where I reconcile my television problem the way some people might reconcile their cocaine problems. I realize that the entire setup was a conceit to get everyone in the same room so that you feel like it’s all been “worth it,” that you can feel good for these characters and about yourself as you both move on… but why am I supposed to be an expert on “TV conceits?” Why should I care? It’s just another way of feeding the addiction. I liked Lost, both as a series and as a finale, but I’m under no illusions about what it was and wasn’t. It was good popcorn fun couched in the world of survival and the language of philosophy. It wasn’t more than that. I might be ready for something different. I might be ready to even heed the lessons of the show: to focus on life as it happens, to spend more time with the people I’m around rather than falling back on the company of a mostly superficial, compelling TV show, and to do everything I can to enjoy the real things in this world before it cuts to black.
UPDATED THOUGHTS: I was wrong to admonish the final scene for being a TV conceit. I thought about them earlier today and came to the same conclusion Jeff Jensen was, in a sideways world somewhere, banging out on a keyboard:
Personally, I don’t think Lost was promoting one faith over another, and I don’t think Lost was sketching an afterlife cosmology. I think the show was offering us an allegory for how life should be lived — with an ongoing effort to understand each other and ourselves; that such a project is best undertaken with a community of people.
I also think, as I wrote in the comments, that the finale was just great.
Bryan Joiner 
I’m with Ben, and upon reflection I don’t underestimate the substance behind the message. I think it was great, and about as good as it could be.
Ryan cited someone who called the whole Desmond bit “Desmond’s Eleven,” which is just awesome.
Mike, I can only assume it is the afterlife portions which you are referring to as meaningless. I guess it all comes down to whether you were moved emotionally by the closing scenes. Because if you were, I think it’s clear to see that the entire season had been building to that moment. If you weren’t moved, well that’s a huge bummer and I am sorry.
Once we learned several episodes back what Desmond was up to, it was great fun watching him go to work. The same is obviously true of Hurley last night. I thought it was great TV. I care about all of these characters and getting to see them off was a pleasure. There was, of course, little about this story arc that was satisfying on an intellectual level, and perhaps that’s why you found it all so insulting. But in the end, it’s very difficult to conclude that this was anything but “popcorn fun” with window dressing all along. I have made peace with this and I found the ending highly appropriate. Not entirely fullfilling, just damn good fun.
Emotionally, Jack’s death got to me, but yes, I was engaged in Lost more on an intellectual level. And so I was disappointed with the unexploited loose ends. There are so many cool ways the series could have addressed the open science/pseudoscience issues. But alas, it ended up being about emotions.
Which would be ok I suppose except for the declining level of dialogue and emotional intrigue this season. Maybe I’m disaffected, but much of the time I just wasn’t caring about what was happening to the characters. Maybe on a second viewing of the season I will find some more to latch onto.
I also have major issues with the goings-on in the purgatory world. What was the point if the cplex plot developments? Gun battles? Odd pairings? Unless this was an actual alternate timeline, they made no sense. We are to believe that everyone is working out their post-death, pre-heaven issues with some baloney scrambled-up existence? Why? It’s pointless.
And it’s an incomplete answer in its own right. What of the souls of the many others who died on the island? Why was Sayid with Shannon instead of Nadia? Why was Faraday excluded? Charles Widmore? Why open the season with an underwater island, Dharma shark, and foot statue? It’s all irrelevant to the purgatory world. No explanation came because it doesn’t make sense.
I feel like the alternate timeline did not start out as purgatory. It feels like a panic decision for an ending. And knowing that the logistics of filming a TV show would indicate that it was indeed planned just makes it worse.
No good.
I’m of the mind that that the afterlife world was Jack’s world. It seemed too Jack-centric to be otherwise. I consider it an off-kilter almagamation of Jack’s own desires, his limited knowledge of island friends’ off-island lives and random appearances by random island people in random places. It works pretty well for me on that level. Also, the fact that the show opens and closes with a look into Jack’s eyes has me firmly believing we are watching this all with a Jack perspective. He didn’t know Nadia, didn’t really know Widmore, Faraday wasn’t that important to him. I thought the gathering in the house of worship was intended to represent Jack’s island people. Penny’s presence I cannot explain.
As for the underwater island, I would submit that that’s what would have happened had Jack not sacrificed himself and reinserted the giant phallus into the snatch of the island.
In the end, I’m sorry to say, I don’t think there was very much actual science involved. Not at all. Explaining some of this shit with science would be more maddening to me than not explaining it at all. What in particular did you want explained on the scientific tip?
I can sort of get behind the orientation to Jack’s perspective. But that doesn’t explain the weirdness of the purgatory world. Why was he with Juliet? Why wasn’t his family fantasy with Kate if she was the one he loved? Why wouldn’t his marriage and child with Juliet trigger the link to the island that he finally experienced? He had a thing with her too. I guess each character could have their own version of the hippie church with their own cast of characters, but that just seems messy and dumb to me.
I find the purgatory world pointless. Peolpe were supposed to be working stuff out? Letting go? What did Shannon work out? Or Juliet? She just had a zap with Sawyer, they recognized each other
and that was it. There wasn’t any
substance to it.
That said, I did enjoy those moments. Particularly that one and the Sun/Jin zap. I mean, they remembered their deaths, that was hardcore emotional. But in the end it was just cloying and didn’t resolve or further anything in the characters for me.
As far as science, what I really mean is “mythos” – all the stuff that Lost was really made of for me. I don’t mean I wanted a scientific explanation
for everything, but there were huge things that were not addressed. The fertility problems, what’s the deal with Aaron, more about Dharma, Walt, and yes, the numbers. I don’t need to know what they “mean.” But why in heck would they be broadcast from the island? I don’t think we “deserve” answers to everything, but I think the nerd contingent – a huge part of the fanbase – was underserved by the resolution.
As for the underwater thing – it doesn’t make sense that there was a “would have been” world in play. It’s either purgatory or an alternate reality, not both. I know that shot really was just for the audience, it doesn’t have any real bearing on Jack’s purgatory experience. And that’s why it’s so misleading and inconsistent.
It’s really only this last season and the ending I have a problem with. The purgatory thing has rubbed me the wrong way because it rendered moot any speculation and fun related to figuring out the alternate timeline. At least with previous Lost mysteries, even though I suspected answers wouldn’t be forthcoming, it was fun to talk about because it mattered (not in real life of course). Not with the purgatory bullshit. It was a waste of time.
I’m rambling now. But also I think the whole purgatory thing was unneeded and a distraction. Why not have Jack’s death be uninterrupted by that nonsense? Why couldn’t we have all the island action and skip the stupid sideways purgatory crap? Was it really necessary? What did we really get out of it?
And what happened to Christian’s original body????????
“We are to believe that everyone is working out their post-death, pre-heaven issues with some baloney scrambled-up existence?”
How is that different from regular life?
Or maybe more to the point: Why wait until you die to go after the things that you want?
It sucked.
The whole season was retroactively made meaningless and insulting. Or at least half the season. I don’t need answers for everything, but I need the final season to not contain plot fissures.
Bad.
Amen, brother, Ben is the winner. Three cheers for Karamazov.
I was desperately hoping to see Mr. Eko show up to lead the sermon. That letdown aside, I dug the finale.
How could I not enjoy a finale that, for better or for worse, affirmed everything I had long believed about the show. In short, a character-driven series about a bunch of lost souls finding purpose/redemption on an island; a facile metaphor dressed up with adventure, mystery and all the cool shit the writers liked in the world: samplings from philosophy, literature, religion, physics, pop culture, sixties counter-culture etc.
Surely the answer hounds must realize that if Lost’s writers were to endeavour to answer all of the questions that they wanted answered it would require the monumental task of solving all mysteries scientific, religious and metaphysical that we humans have long confronted. How could you possibly expect that of a network drama? HBO? Sure, maybe.
Thoreau, take us out! “It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable, experience to be lost in the woods any time. Not till we are completely lost, or turned around,—for a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastness and the strangeness of nature. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”