The Lost Finale Was Incredibly Dumb

@missing_piece: I'm not religious so I'm not 100% clear on the rules of purgatory, but Lindecuse have been telling us all along: Don't worry, they're not dead. Seasons 1-4 were BRILLIANT and the flash forwards were amazing. Then in this final season 1/2 of the time is spent on...a bunch of dead people living lives that aren't actually theirs. Not a fan of that.

The Lonely Tourist

I don't have an opinion on this, but boy, the resistance some people defending the finale have to anyone disagreeing with them is really grating.

TheBoar

@salientpartners.pe: Well, Ben was kind of an asshole on/to the island. I think he needs to stay in "purgatory" a little longer and repent for some pretty heinous sinning first.

Also, fuck him.

keverdene

@JorgeLuisGorgeous: Don't you go tarnish the good name of Fraggle Rock.

Maciej

@JorgeLuisGorgeous: Yes, but slow motion + epic, sweeping music = totally poignant.

QueenoftheHarpies

@greenmelinda: Boone was there alone, so I'll just assume he is still waiting for me (swoon)

@pseudorocket: then why are you bothering to comment on a television show....which is on a tv.....which you dont own?

nicepony

@Max Read: So, you thought they were all going to live forever Fame-styles? And how is quantum physics an "illusion"? The whole theory behind it is that it is reality?

I personally interpreted the "flash sideways" as the sort-of purgatory/holding pattern for the Losties. But I don't think they all got there when the plane crashed. I think it was a timeless kind of place.

I think what happened on the island actually happened. Thought what happened to those that left it was left unknown.

But I still don't get how a conclusion that "they all died" is somehow some big bummer of the show. I think we kind of knew from the beginning they weren't vampires.

Atilla the Bun

Why the hell wasn't the polar bear in the church????

I stopped watching after the polar bear, I start watching tonight and I am denied my ROCK, my one true love. I want my fucking BEAR.

I'll never watch Lost again!

Denver80203

I liked it.

Nay, I loved it.

Aurailious

I hadn't ever even seen an episode and I told everyone who asked me about it...they're in purgatory...it's a gimmicky plot hole, but it always made sense. Glad it turned out to be true

nicholas1987ucsb

@MrInBetween: Hooray for me!

contradicto

@jaxx_9911: Pick up the Raw Shark Texts and get back to me.

@missing_piece: Sorry you can't bring yourself to enjoy something different from the norm.

You came at me with that rude little bit, so one can say you're acting superior over those who don't think the show's the second coming. I merely stated my opinion, had a fun jab at frustrated watchers of the finale which includes Max (the writer of this post) and my friends, among whom kept telling me to come back and watch.

If you take it personal, that's on you.

bess marvin, girl detective

Sorry to cross-post this from the Gawker.TV live blog but this has really got me wondering --

I'm totally with the whole "all-the-island-stuff-did-happen-and-flash-sideways-is-purgatory" group. I think this was very well explained in the finale.

But can someone please suggest why Ben didn't want to go into the church with everyone else? Christian explained that everyone who came to the church was there because their experiences on the island were the most significant in their lives. Perhaps Ben didn't feel this way? All things considered, it's certainly understandable...

salientpartners.pe

@Kristina Lucarelli: that's the good thing there- you pretty much know Walt will die. But will he get caught first, and drag everyone down with him?

I was hoping Newhart would wake up and realize it was all just a really bad dream with too many man boobs.

Good Girl Gone Bad

@The Lonely Tourist: But he didn't get it anyway.

I'm okay with this episode. Granted, I've had a fair amount of bourbon, but I was totally moved. I cried. But only twice, which I'm really proud of. I feel like I have a clear idea of What Lost Was About (that it's neither free will nor fate but creating your own destiny). I'm okay. Except....

Mr. Eko? (Unless he showed up in the first 20 minutes that I missed, but I reckon he didn't, so I'm gonna be righteously indignant for a second. But if I'm wrong, let's chalk this up to, you know, bourbon.) WTF? How fucking hard could it be to get Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje for one episode? ONE EPISODE, Carleton Cuse and Damon Lindelhof. How hard can it be?

But, you know-- otherwise, awesome.

QueenoftheHarpies

Wow, that finale failed on every level. It was like Philosophy 101 played out on the set of Fraggle Rock. Note to writers: Slow motion does not equal poignant.

JorgeLuisGorgeous

The real answers (or lack thereof) all lie in the scene where Jack meets Christian in the church. Everything that was said there was aimed directly at the audience and loaded with subtext. And it wasn't even that subtle! It seemed to me a bald admission that basically amounted to this: "Hey... this is all we got, now it's time to move on."

PropSword

@pmarble:

I don't think people expect everything answered in real life but most people expect it in their entertainment.

Most books and movies wrap up the story in the last chapter or scene, people are used to that.

djscruffy

I can say that I felt the ending was just fine. Was it what I envisioned? No. I felt it wasn't the horrible cop-out you said it was.

My opinion, you have yours.

interrogator_chaplain

@Foster Kamer: But I did find this to be affectively emotional and, following your link, I see your point.

Fools. Most people are saying that the ending left room for interpretations, that is very different from not explaining the whole premise of several seasons. Yes, yes, you all cried, it was all very emotional and yet you don't even know what happened in this episode.

"The finale was NOT that they had all died. At least in my estimation. Or at least that issue was left up in the air."

So maybe they did all die if it is up in the air. And yet they escaped on a place. Even if everyone dies eventually and not necessarily on the Island, then surely everyone who ever died would be or at least Walt would also be there.

It was junk guys, the writers know it.

"I thought the finale was amazing. I don't know exactly what happened"

Very good guys, you all don't have brains, if I read a book and thought it was amazing but I didn't know exactly what happened in it, I would be a damn fool.

jaxx_9911

@GaddafisTentPitcher: Serious nodding.

We already know that somewhere around the end of season 2, the creative direction of the show (writers, directors, etc) broke into 2 camps, one side wanted it to be about people surviving together and learning more about where they were. The other side wanted to go total sci-fi, team sci-fi won.

People are just pointing out that team sci-fi wrote themselves into a few holes and we took this final season as their best shot at making it all fit together & tie things up and a few of us didn't think they pulled it off. We're welcome to our opinions, respectively.

monitorwipe

@bess marvin, girl detective: It's not normal television though, that's why I love it.

Hey, if you don't like it, I really don't care - I was just trying to present another perspective, but it seems you'd rather try to feel superior than those who dared to enjoy it than to actually discuss, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

@DTurkin: What do you mean "it didn't matter?" I think the flashbacks show that they mattered big time. They were the basis for the relationships between all these people. Every flashback was about what happened on the island. And if you believe in the whole "center of the island" thing, it mattered because Jack re-lit the "light."

And OF COURSE they all ened up dying. As Jack's dad said, "we all die sometime." You thought they were all going to end up living forever? The question that still remains is WHEN they died. As Jack's dad said, just because they were in the church didn't mean they all died at the same time. That's left for all\of us to wonder. Did the plane with Claire, Kate, etc. crash at the end? We don't know. And I like that. All I know is, at the end, all of them ended up in the same place. But what the "end is" is not some certain point of time.

Seriously, I think some people need to get over the idea of "when" they died. The "when" is just a construct and didn't really have anything to do with the last scene.

Still, when Vincent laid down next to Jack, I totally lost it.

Atilla the Bun

@Foster Kamer: I don't see what's particularly artful about going the spirit-world/heaven route. It's like the movie Martyrs. If you have no emotional connection to the concept of heaven before the concept is introduced in the piece, then why should it make me 'tent my pants' when the resolution is based around this connection. Unless I'm missing what's going on here.

BT-Dub: I love-loved the Sopranos finale. Love-loved.

@Atilla the Bun: I don't think I was trying to "define the whole series"! The quantum physics time is an illusion crap is just a screen, to me. They're all dead. I get that it was just wrapping up the flash sideways. But it sucks either way!

its pretty official. if you watched lost for six years and weren't blown away by that finale then you're just a douchebag.

chicoleo

What would you want? A 2.5 hour finale with them addressing each question one by one and then everyone dies? thats what is sounds like.

Should.Have.Sent.Poet

@Atilla the Bun: [spoilers obvs] I liked The End but I'm going to call double bullshit. It is not a half-assed interpretation, it is the correct interpretation. The Finale was indeed that they all died. Not that they died in the plane crash on the first episode, but that they lived out the course of their lives as we had seen in seasons 1-5 (and parts of 6), died, and then lived in a weird purgatory/matrix which was the flash sideways. Christian meant they had died before or after Jack had died, "sometime" as you put it, though I believe C.Shephard phrased it, "some before, some after." Shannon died in Season Two, Jack died... later, and others died later still than Jake. As Kate said, she really had missed him. There was no time where they were, because it was like King Cross Station in Harry Potter. Blatantly so.

@jasonelias: I bailed around when the Others showed up. I figured, "Hey, these cult weirdos are trying to get rid of the non-believers." I chose to believe the smoke monster is just some kind of hallucination caused by...swamp gas. Yeah, swamp gas...or airline food.

Vulcan Has No Moon

@dostoevsky_was_a_gambler: The Seinfeld finale was amazing. No comparison.

@pseudorocket: You should get rid of your computer as well. Be free!

MyNameIsChris

"Because I don't have anything to be obsessed about anymore."

Not even Glee? The Lady Gaga episode is this week, better bring some light glam or else Sue will be disappointed.

twinturbo2

@Foster Kamer: Mostly agreed, but there was a second show, the "plot-driven show" and that show didn't end well. At the end of the pilot, Charlie asks, "Where the hell are we?" The show (and LindCuse) implied for 6 seasons that answer and others were coming. The show gave us 6 years of the best characters in the history of TV. It also gave us 6 years of amazing WTF moments, but those moments were never brought to anything near a satisfactory conclusion.

Iceland Spar

@bess marvin, girl detective: Yes, instead of finding some real way to connect the two alternate worlds, they choose the easy way out and make the alternate world something that occurs after their deaths. Which is the writers' prerogative, obviously, but it doesn't mean we have to like it.

The Lonely Tourist

@MrInBetween: Eh, to each their own.

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

@contradicto: Congratulations! Your hundreds of hours invested in this nonsense were completely, entirely justified!

@MrInBetween: I'm not sure. They're all dead. Or all living things die.

"...and Jack was lying there, dying, with the dog."

Seriously, was Jack there dying beside the Dog, or the Ghost of the Dog? Or were they dying together?

Vulcan Has No Moon

I love you, Max, but I loved the finale more.

keverdene

@Atilla the Bun:

Alright Jeff Jensen, we've found you out. You have to identify yourself, its like that rule about cops.

monitorwipe

@monitorwipe: I don't. I'm making a statement.

Well, we still got a really nice finale, and it definitely helps fans arrive at a sense of closure on the narrative.

I think the reuniting of characters showed that while some of the individual characters were horrible (KATE FUCKING AUSTEN), it was their relationships/connections that made the show.

That or it was completely emotionally manipulative nostalgia and fucking dog laying next to dying guy bullcrap.

But probably both. I am at peace with the way it ended, but am positive that Cuse and Lindelof are full of shit.

GaddafisTentPitcher

@missing_piece: No clearly you aren't. You seem to think you've watched unconventional TV when it's really bad storytelling.

bess marvin, girl detective

@Atilla the Bun: So all the shit that we followed didn't matter (like Dharma). That pisses me off, and so what that everyone died at some point, it was a cheap way to wrap it up.

DTurkin

They didn't have to try that hard, it's not like they are worried about keeping fans.

@Max Read: But to latch on to "they're all dead" without also listening to the same comments from the character about how time is not a static thing, being dead doesn't mean to be dead "now", is to ignore some of the basic premises of the show. I don't know shit about physics, but I at least understand the basic idea of quantum physics that infinite realities exist at the same time. Is that what happened on this show? I dunno. I still haven't wrapped my mind around what happened.

But to take one quote about dying and use it to define the whole show and ignore many other premises that were shown to exist on the show is just knee-jerk bullshit. In other words, taking "they're all dead" as being completely objective and time (as we know it) defined is simplistic. Seriously did you really watch the past six seasons and used that ONE QUOTE to define a whole series that obviously showed time was a little more complicated that what you had imaged it?

Atilla the Bun

@Max Read: I don't know you, but I'm pretty sure I agree with you 100% on this whole Lost thing.

I never gave a shit about the people. I wanted them to all die. I just wanted to find out more about the god damn island. Jesus.

@Attila Bokor: Just because he disagrees with you doesn't mean he doesn't get it.

The Lonely Tourist

I'm glad I didn't emotionally invest myself in this show. I watched a couple episodes of the first season and didn't feel compelled to continue. Part of it was due to the fanboyism that came with the show.

autoclavicle

@bess marvin, girl detective: Excellent reasoning! Clearly I stand corrected.

Max, dear sir, "V" is fucking awesome. You should indeed watch it. Anna, the lezzie lizard leader (she has a lezzie hair cut anyway), would creep you the fuck out (we gays have a thing for hot, evil women I guess)...as for Lost, despite my love for Sci-fi, I never saw a single episode. So thank you for reinforcing my decision to not bother watching it, ever.

james_cambridge

@missing_piece:

I thought you didn't care if people didn't like it?

monitorwipe

@Cory: The only reason people don't watch TV is to tell people they don't watch TV.

@dostoevsky_was_a_gambler: Closer than you think.

Who gives this tool the conch after the finale?

I don't know who Max Read is or why he didn't take more writing classes, but this was a totally pointless post. Leave the bashing to the heap of commenters who are more than willing to trash it.

harlemite

@pmarble: Dog = God.

Does that mean the MIB or Esau or WTF is a cat and Satan?

Vulcan Has No Moon

@carbonadam: I'm afraid to read the full wikipedia entry on that because it sounds good. I think I might go out and buy it just on suspicion. Thank you.

@Atilla the Bun: "IT TURNED OUT THAT THEY HAD ALL DIED. All of them! And not even all together, simultaneously, in some awesome disaster/explosion. They had all died, at various times, throughout history. "

I think he got it.

@Iceland Spar: Hah, thank you!

Maybe love is too strong a word, but the philosophy major in me is thrilled to have so much to mull over...

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

@missing_piece: "open to interpretation..." and "different from the norm"

Riiiiight. Writers not knowing where they are going and making things as they go. A show like stated above really based on plot and manipulating their characters to do their bidding is as normal as TV gets.

bess marvin, girl detective

Did the dog die, too?

@greenmelinda: God, I mean, the ONE good thing I can say about the finale is that it was better than BSG's.

@The Lonely Tourist: Was it purgatory though? They all seemed to be having the same highs and lows in the flash-sideways that people usually have. I don't know that we can narrow it down to the concept of purgatory. There was a lot of religious symbolism in the show from a variety of faiths, and some don't have purgatory, some don't have afterlives, some have reincarnation, etc. So why would the flash-sideways universe exist solely as the Christian definition of Purgatory? They came together at the end because they remembered, there was no hanging in limbo for any of them as one would normally expect purgatory to be.

@Max Read: Although, to your credit, this is my favorite kind of post. So: Bravo.

[gawker.com]

After thinking about it for an hour, I've made the decision that I liked it and am completely satisfied.

contradicto

@MrInBetween: no, not even close. Even at age 11 I was able to recognize that the Seinfeld finale was pure shit.

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

Yah, you're wrong.

Chance Hamlin

@missing_piece: lol

@MissNormaDesmond: I did and disagreed or are we supposed to live in some kind of echo chamber?

bess marvin, girl detective

"I swear to God, Abrams, Super 8 better be a fucking masterpiece."

Now THAT is funny.

itmustbeken

Basically, there's a heaven. And everyone can go. Oh wait. Not if you're single?

As a huge Battlestar Galactica fan still mad about that crap finale, I'm getting a bit tired of lazy writers chalking everything up to religious dogma.

greenmelinda

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that this was the PERFECT opportunity for pompous jerks to come out of the woodwork to remind us that they don't WATCH television or they don't WATCH Lost.

Good for you. I don't watch PBS, but you don't see me trolling the "Mysteries of Edgar Allen Poe" forum.

@missing_piece: Harsh, man.

Lost is the exact opposite of a character-driven shot. It's a high concept show: Plane crash/desert island.

You Can Count on Me is a character-driven movie. To use a Matthew Fox example, Party of Five was a character driven show. Lost is as high concept as it gets.

WebsterTall

So basically they stole the plot of Riverworld?

Vulcan Has No Moon

Don't worry Max, I'm sure Jimmy Kimmel will clear everything up for you...

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

@Atilla the Bun: Thank you. You should write for Gawker. At least you actually paid attention.

@bess marvin, girl detective: Yeah, did you see above where he said the abusive relationship metaphor was hacky? You really should have paid attention to that.

MissNormaDesmond

@dostoevsky_was_a_gambler: I didn't love the ending, but I pretty much agree with the rest of this comment. (And I heart you for your name).

Iceland Spar

@jmckee: Exactly. What's the point of tv if you have to be so damn dedicated?

@Atilla the Bun: Max isn't exactly known for thoroughly checking his material before posting.

Damn, but you're hostile.

ridingthebomb

@pmarble: Um, no. You're the one calling people smug and childish, and telling them to buzz off. We're criticizing the show, you're criticizing people who didn't like the ending.

The Lonely Tourist

@missing_piece: It was about a magical fuckin' island!

@pmarble: Petty, jerk...unless you work in ABC publicity, stick to decaf.

bess marvin, girl detective

@Atilla the Bun: Nothing pre-confirmed about my agenda! Like I said in the post, I was DESPERATE to like the finale. The "they're all dead" thing was so strongly implied I can't pretend that it's somehow mysterious or up in the air.

@bess marvin, girl detective: No one is hiding anything, they've left information open to interpretation.

Sorry you can't bring yourself to enjoy something different from the norm.

@cuckooforcocoapants: Agreed. I think it was the best way series finale since Six Feet Under.

I'm so glad I don't own a TV... We're not talking about not having cable here, but actually not owning a television...

pseudorocket

I loved the ending, but was 100% aware that it was going to split people.

UweBollocks

@missing_piece: But I didn't decide how it should end. In fact I really had no idea what the ending would be like, and was totally on board with this finale until the last 10 minutes. But after years of Lindelof/Cuse assuring us it was not purgatory, they cheat and make the alternate reality purgatory. Which kind of makes 50% of this season a waste of time.

The Lonely Tourist

@jmckee: It's more than what the writer said it was. It really is worth a watch, because if you like good character development, you'll love Lost.

AraRichards

Love you Max Read, but on this subject, I have to give you a fuck you. Did you even listen to the whole damn show, or any shows previous?

The finale was NOT that they had all died. At least in my estimation. Or at least that issue was left up in the air.

Did you not get the part where, in response to Jack's comment saying "we died," Jack's dad said "we all die sometime" and "there is no past or future." In other words, the people that were all there did not necessarily die when the plane crashed. So, seriously, you are going to hang onto the "we died" comment and ignore the rest of the show? Surely after watching episode after episode where time travel happened on a daily basis you get that the concept of time was not a static thing.

I thought the finale was amazing. I don't know exactly what happened, but I sure the fuck got the point that it was more than "we died" (and I certainly didn't add "at the same time" like you did for purposes of creating this post). I get it , liking Lost was not cool. But don't just do a half-assed job interpreting he finale to suit your pre-conformed agenda.

Atilla the Bun

@The Lonely Tourist: You don't have to like the ending. It's obviously a matter of opinion. But there was and is no need to turn this into a soapbox for slagging off Lost fans, which the original poster did.

pmarble

Does anybody else think that the ending totally ripped off the end of Titanic? With the dead and the dancing?

parapluie

@missing_piece: That excuse about how the writers don't have to answer every mystery is absolutely ridiculous. There was so much random shit in this show that the writers just threw in there to elicit a "what the fuck" reaction that they never intended on explaining. That's a hallmark of lazy writing. Finally people realize that this entire show has been a Ponzi scheme for ratings.

@badasscat: Totally hearted.

@Foster Kamer: I don't have a dog in this fight, but when you reduce any piece of art into these broad, New-Agey aphorisms, you're just bound to make it sound trite.

TheBoar

No one should expect everything they wanted. I felt closure, and that was what I wanted. I suggest you let it sink in for a while, then rewatch it.

AraRichards

@bess marvin, girl detective: Honey, I'm just fine. You're just being a petty jerk. And one who didn't even watch the show, so really, enough.

pmarble

@Foster Kamer: Agreed.

@Max Read: What else was it about then?

[en.wikipedia.org]

carbonadam

I'm glad I bailed on the show when I did, probably about 3 years ago. Having them all die is easy. In a strange way, a lot of the things in Lost was similar to having a near-death experience (very similar). I would have had most of them live.

jasonelias

wah wah wah. The creators saying the show was about the charactors, and then giving a finale all about the charactors, with a fairly satisfying ending in such a framework -- as opposed to BSG's "A wizard did it" stylings... well, that sucks! How dare they fulfill their vision. Losers.

What they should have done was have the Island's version of Glenn Beck (um... Boone?) stand infront of a blackboard and explain how the Polar Bears tie in to the numbers via Jainist mysticism as described by the 19th century philosopher Walter W.A. Aaltinstien, via a detailed Q&A session.

AMERICA demands everything be answered! Now!

Some of us enjoy watching a sometimes good, sometimes bad, often crazy, but unique in commercial television attempt at creating something vaguely artistic... and would prefer it continue that way rather than becoming, I don't know, the Teacher's Answer Sheet to same.

elipton1

Dear Max, speak for yourself. I thought it ruled.

cuckooforcocoapants

@badasscat: Yes, but Nick Denton is offering $7.75 to the first writer who can get a "LOST SUCKED HAHAH SUCKERS" post out there.

Hate!

FaceMelter

@badasscat: Excellent point. It's almost as if he was poised to hate it.

pmarble

@pmarble: "Only children think there are answers to everything."

LOL. Cuse and Co. didn't give you all the answers because they did not know it. They threw all sorts of shit against the board and you think it's something they are purposely hiding from you.

Go to bed. Being fucked around for six years can't be easy. But, rest well my child for there's a sucker born every minute...

bess marvin, girl detective

I'm totally satisfied. What is with people hating knowing that some characters from TV shows go on to live full, long lives after we leave them? Fuck, man. That's life.

Cunning_Linguist

@pmarble: And...plenty of us Lost fans DIDN'T enjoy it. I watched from the very beginning and I'm pissed at the lazy way they ended this. Flash sideways = purgatory? Really? So...where does Jack's magical son come from, then? If it's all just purgatory. It's stupid.

The Lonely Tourist

Somewhere, a little black boy in a lifejacket sits dejectedly in the dark.

TheBoar

@missing_piece: Heart-ED!

pmarble

@Foster Kamer: The show, that you think this show was? About "people"? That show, it sucked.

I love how people decided for themselves how the show should end, and are now pissed off that the show ended in the same vein it always existed in. Did you really think someone was going to come out and be like, "Oh hai! Let's get the Polar Bearz from teh San Diego Zoo and take them to the island to see what happens when we turn the bigass donkey wheel!"?

You don't get the answers to all the mysteries in real life, why should you get all the answers to the mysteries of the show?

Honestly, I would have been highly disappointed if the writers had decided to spell out every last detail of the show for us. Part of the fun for the last six years was the theorizing, and the hunting for clues, and looking for links to things that exist in the real world (books, movies, etc etc). I think it's perfect it ended the way it did, with everyone together - in their karasse, as someone said in the other thread. Anything else would have seemed too contrived.

Oh, Max. How wrong you are:

> [bit.ly]

It was always that show. And the people who miss that point are the same short-sighted , artless assholes who got gorilla-rage when The Soprano's ended. Too bad: their loss.

you don't get it...

Attila Bokor

@jmckee: It's cheating not to suffer in real time with the rest of us.

Shelwood

Seasons 1-3 were really good in my opinion! Season 4 was okay!

What it has turned into now is......

ostartero

@bess marvin, girl detective: Oh, buzz off smug girl. Plenty of us Lost fans enjoyed the show and the finale and enjoyed the multi-layered questions during the series. Only children think there are answers to everything. And comparing fans of a freaking television show to battered wives is pretty contemptible.

pmarble

Now I feel completely vindicated in not ever watching the show. I always thought that it sounded good but just way too much work to catch up and get into the show, now that I know what it's all about I'm glad I didn't.

jmckee

@bess marvin, girl detective: Yes! The Wire should have received all of Lost's publicity, it was 10 times better.

The Lonely Tourist

My feelings exactly. I knew there would be disappointment, but I didn't know it would be that bad. And still make me cry, because I am a wuss.

Shelwood

I stopped watching a while ago. I just got tired of the "mystery of the island." However, I'm going to watch this, to see if it's as bad as all that.

I will never, EVER devote any amount of time to any show ever again. YOU HAVE FAILED ME, TELEVISION.

Now if you'll excuse me I have an episode of Breaking Bad to watch that will not crush my theories and hopes into a million mushy gushy sad-excuse-for-a-fake-Sixth-Sense pieces.

Yes, I completely agree. They had me until the last ten minutes. I really thought they were on the verge of redeeming a shitty final season when they pull this. Lame, cop-out, lazy, etc.

The Lonely Tourist

Loved the ending. Max, sour grapes. Not sure why, either. The show ended the way it should have: on the characters. And it still explained a lot more than you seem to think.

You posted around 700 words 29 minutes after the episode ended. Unless you had an advance copy and were just embargoed on writing anything, how much thought did you really put into this?

I watched the last 20 minutes twice and came away with an entirely different interpretation the second time.

badasscat

What's "Lost"?

BootHillBossanova

Schadenfreude-gasm

intrepid spaniel Stigg

I watched Lost until I could no longer ignore the stench of desperation and cluelessness wafting from the writers' room.

Fans of the show always reminded me of battered wives as they try to convince me to come back when the questions continued to outnumber the answers.

Just reading through the comments of the series finale made me realize how lucky I was to get out early and get tuned to a show like "The Wire" where the writers had a sense of where they were going.

bess marvin, girl detective

Ooohhh. The Lostards are going to get you.

amoureuse est heureuse

We learned nothing from two-and-a-half hours of slow-motion bullshittery backed with a syrupy soundtrack.

They hired Zack Snyder to direct?

MyNameIsChris

@[io9.com] ?

Thank you.

it was closure.

ktcoloms

This is a matter of opinion, obvs. I was perfectly happy with the ending. Oh, and Vincent the Dog = God. Woof.

pmarble

I stand by what I said, the ending was as good as it possibly could have been. I loved it, and I think there's a lot there to be chewed over the next few days.

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

Oh my fucking God. This article summed up my anger in a way that I couldn't express coherently myself.

I keep scanning through the fan reactions on Facebook, on the major forums...and so far, it seems as though the majority of loyal viewers are satisfied. MORE than satisfied even, they're thrilled with the ending.

Don't these people see how cheated we all are? Don't they get that they're basically saying "THANK YOU" after being brutally raped, and giving a standing ovation to the men who tag teamed us???

I feel ill. I'm going to go throw up my pizza rolls.

Rachel Briggs

@monitorwipe: Thank you. That pissed me off beyond belief.

Myrna_Minkoff

@PattiF: I didn't even think about that. Good point.

The Lonely Tourist

@Atilla the Bun:

if you can put what I'm talking about and whatever the heck it is your talking about now together I'll be happy to address it.

monitorwipe

@Max Read: But they weren't.

pmarble

@Atilla the Bun: Excellent point!

pmarble

When you end a show by saying that there is no "now," you are suggesting a perspective that knows everything that has and will happen.

WHICH IS NOT WHAT THE WRITERS OF LOST HAVE.

@Guggenheimlich: Since you know what happened in the end perhaps you can explain it to everyone.

What was the point of Kate et al. escaping the island in the plane and then being dead in the flash sideways, this is only one of the questions out there right now.

jaxx_9911

Oh my fucking God. This article summed up my anger in a way that I couldn't express coherently myself.

I keep scanning through the fan reactions on Facebook, on the major forums...and so far, it seems as though the majority of loyal viewers are satisfied. MORE than satisfied even, they're thrilled with the ending.

Don't these people see how cheated we all are? Don't they get that they're basically saying "THANK YOU" after being brutally raped, and giving a standing ovation to the men who tag teamed us???

I feel ill. I'm going to go throw up my pizza rolls.

Rachel Briggs

@Myrna_Minkoff: It's funny -- I'm noticing a trend that the people who didn't watch Lost and are trolling on this thread about it really have trouble with grammar and spelling. I wonder what that means?

pmarble

@peri1: Tom the Other (Mr. Friendly) was gay. They spent a lot of time on it given his character's relatively small role.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Dellath: They're only on the island for a few months.

yoimfuller

@katekate is squared: Because I wanna be! You're not the boss of me!

autoclavicle

@katekate is squared: Just a TV show? Everything in life can be reduced to nothing with that thinking.

jaxx_9911

@pmarble: And if you want people to "understand" what you have to say, try not to come off as a massive angry asshole. You look absolutely ridiculous which in turn makes me look absolutely ridiculous for continuing to argue with you. Be sane for the both of us.

bess marvin, girl detective

@katekate is squared: Thank you for that. I needed it.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Son-of-MonsterChalk: Ramona?

Solomon Grundy

@katekate is squared: Because they had nothing better to do with their Sundays, apparently.

pmarble

@katekate is squared: X-files was worst of all time. All. Time.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Myrna_Minkoff: Sorry, typo error. "lose", good eye!

Dellath

@missing_piece: This is my problem with the finale: It's not at all clear that they didn't die in the crash. There are different scenes/lines that indicate:

1) they died in the initial crash

2) they died after jughead

3) they died at all different times and met up later.

The concept was great. The execution was piss poor.

Myrna_Minkoff

@monitorwipe: Instead of having a hissey fit, why don't you actually address my theory about the show? I've learned that's the best way to prove a point.

Atilla the Bun

@bess marvin, girl detective: I see -- we're on to the "you're rubber, I'm glue response." Grow up.

pmarble

Why did Aaron go back to being a baby when he died? That must be annoying. And as another commenter noted, there were no gay people in heaven.

PattiF

@katekate is squared: Hey, it's been 6 years, we're due.

semicarbazone

Oh my fucking God. This article summed up my anger in a way that I couldn't express coherently myself.

I keep scanning through the fan reactions on Facebook, on the major forums...and so far, it seems as though the majority of loyal viewers are satisfied. MORE than satisfied even, they're thrilled with the ending.

Don't these people see how cheated we all are? Don't they get that they're basically saying "THANK YOU" after being brutally raped, and giving a standing ovation to the men who tag teamed us???

I feel ill. I'm going to go throw up my pizza rolls.

Rachel Briggs

Mid-summer replacement:

Hurley and Ben are back in

AfterL*O*S*T!

octothorp

@Foster Kamer: Art? Seriously? This ain't art son, this is business.

WebsterTall

@Atilla the Bun: Oh, that's gonna leave a mark.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Atilla the Bun:

please contact gawker tomorrow so they can allow you a post to clearly outline the framework for dislike, we're all coming across like idiots in the meantime!

monitorwipe

@jaxx_9911: I would contend that we had a beginning, middle and end although yes, we didn't get all the answers we wanted.

But i don't think answering questions would consitute a truer ending than the one we got.

Should.Have.Sent.Poet

@Myrna_Minkoff: But the people who are defending it by talking about the purgatory stuff... I mean that's an example of answers too, right? I'm not being bitchy; I'm genuinely confused here. Why are answers like "this other universe is like purgatory" legitimate but questions like "why did only some of the characters come back" not?

TheBoar

@bess marvin, girl detective: If you are an aspiring screen writer, you really need to learn how to write better. And not to use loaded commentary like comparing fans of a show to battered wives.

pmarble

@Myrna_Minkoff: Agreed. I don't think too many people are doing that, though.

The Lonely Tourist

@jasonelias: In the real time most of those who were still alive lived, so they followed your advice. Sure, they all died eventually. Because they were mortal. Hugo probably lived for hundreds of years. Kate's "I missed you so much" suggests she lived for a good amount of time. The sideways world was just a holding space outside the confines of time.

Its a place for them to work out their issues and move on. Not the most original idea and you can attack that. But they didn't all die in any traditional sense.

Cheruth

I do this thing of watching the series finales of shows I don't watch, just to ruin them and prevent myself from wasting weeks of my life catching up some day. So from the perspective of someone who didn't watch anything other than the finales of Six Feet Under, the Sopranos, the Wire, or Lost, I would say that Lost comes in third.

Solomon Grundy

@Dellath: I think he'll "loose" the weight when you "lurn" how to spell.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Max Read: Oh honey, no. Didn't happen on the show, not happening now.

Atilla the Bun

Oh, my gosh

I was wrong

It was Earth

All along

You finally made a monkey

Yes, you finally made a monkey

You finally made a monkey

Out of me.

I love you, Dr. Zaius!

octothorp

@pmarble: "Grammar counts when you're slagging off writers."

Looks like you were staring at your own reflection when you called me petty, eh?

bess marvin, girl detective

@Dellath: Every character that didn't die GAINED weight. The dead people came back looking very thin.

@semicarbazone: What the finale said. Where did it say that they had been "dead the whole time"?



Pay some fuckin' attention people.

Atilla the Bun

Too sad to properly say "fuck off!" It was a beautiful ending and I'm gonna miss this fucking show.

fuzzywhat

@peri1: A couple of them were not in relationships/without their significant other... like Boone, he was kinda just... there.

Should.Have.Sent.Poet

@jaxx_9911: Yay

semicarbazone

@Max Read: Seems a little unfair for people to both say that anyone who expects explanations about stuff is a jackass but then to turn around and yell at you for understanding the Purgatory-whatever. I mean, that stuff is all explanation, too.

TheBoar

@gators12: The finale *could* have been excellent. They really botched the last 15 minutes or so.

But anyone who's bitching about not getting answers to the numbers, or Walt, or whatever is just an idiot who totally didn't get the show.

Myrna_Minkoff

@monitorwipe: Get over it. Yes, you are certainly "allowed" to not like the finale. But dislike it for reasons that actually exist within the framework of the show. To say something like "they all died during the plane crash" is to ignore the entire framework of the show, including the finale.

Look, I've had serious issues with the show over the years, especially the last year. I think some of the production values have been shit and the "ooooh, it's magic"/deus ex machina aspects of it have been laid on a little thick in the last season.

But really, is it so much to ask for someone, especially on a wbsite like Gawker, to criticize the show based on what actually happened on the show as opposed to their selective memory on it? How about you actually challenge me on what happened?

Atilla the Bun

@WebsterTall: Yes I'm from Jezebel but started as a Gawker commenter from way back when so the mentioning of the one-line "insult" escapes me.

Secondly, as an aspiring screenwriter, I am aware of the well aware of business.

Third, the show featured poor storytelling which is more or less very ordinary for most American TV shows. Also, the lights were dimming on this show only three years into its run which is pretty quick if you ask me.

bess marvin, girl detective

all I can say is....

AHAAAAHAAAHAHAAAAHAAAA

I'm so glad, I hate Lost and it's makes me all happy.

Mmmmmm that Pinot Noir is going down smoooooth.

Son-of-MonsterChalk

@katekate is squared: Well using that "just like any other art-form" argument; if Lost was a book, I'm sure you would have thrown it at the wall once you finished that last volume and thought, "damn, 10,000 pages of mystery and intrigue, ended with nothing. There wasn't even a philosophy to be had by this, it was just garbage! Damn!"

semicarbazone

@jaxx_9911: I'm not demanding answers, what I'm saying is their art sucks because the show didn't answer any questions.

hadees

@pmarble: Some people like pat answers in their shows.

Most network shows are made for those people.

I'm not sure why they kept watching Lost with that expectation but they're all over the internet tonight.

Go figure.

djscruffy

@missing_piece: "What we got instead was another two hours of running around the goddamn island with everyone having feelings and stuff—which wasn't even that bad, honestly!—and then, and I have to type this in caps because it's the only way to really let my rage out, IT TURNED OUT THAT THEY HAD ALL DIED. All of them! And not even all together, simultaneously, in some awesome disaster/explosion. They had all died, at various times, throughout history. (Except for Michael and Walt, apparently!) And then they, like, remembered that they were dead, in this terrible, unfortunate excuse for Heaven they had created, and the Church went to white, and Jack was lying there, dying, with the dog."

How did he not get it, exactly?

The Lonely Tourist

@Guggenheimlich: Neither did anyone in the show, really. There's unimaginable power at the center of the island, so people want it because they think they can... rule the world? destroy the world? Who knows? But people want power, and this is a constant, and the island had some kind of power. It makes perfect sense to me. There are mysteries in life that no one ever solves, and rather than try to make up some sci-fi trope, the show just left them as mysteries. Makes it all feel more realistic to me, even if it's not as "satisfying" to my curiosity.

katekate is squared

@The Lonely Tourist: pretty much.

bess marvin, girl detective

@jaxx_9911: I'm pretty comfortable with what I think is the ultimate premise of the series. I said good film, not THE BEST FILM EVER-- Lost is great for what it is, and the writers deserve praise for managing to write something that makes you think and prompts discussion. It's not often you get to see that on broadcast television.

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

@pmarble: "twisting other peoples'"

You're still up? Stop it with the lame responses ("twisting other peoples' words") when someone doesn't agree with you. Ugh. I really hope JJ is paying you overtime with this.

bess marvin, girl detective

@Cheruth: I don't know either. But it made sense that he was excluded. And what it meant it meant from there...dunno. Which is why I loved the finale. It answered the questions I wanted answered but left many unaswered.

Atilla the Bun

@monitorwipe: The truth is I AM ALREADY DEAD!

@Atilla the Bun: Yes, but in Shakespeare the characters weren't dead the whole time. Shakespeare didn't pull a Roseanne/Dallas and have the entire universe be a dream/figment of imagination - just to explain away any confusing plotholes

I didn't watch the finale, so I may have that wrong. But, I don't have a star so who cares, only you will see this lol

semicarbazone

@rabendshein @ArleenCabango: And Ben wanted his position. It was just a power play.

Cheruth

@Max Read:

Max, if the point isn't clear to you yet. You are not allowed to not like the finale. You need to remove yourself from here. Don't even try to go post a less than complimentary recap on another site or your own blog, they'll hunt you down.

you MIGHT be safe thinking these things to yourself, MIGHT.

monitorwipe

Haters gonna hate. The finale was excellent.

gators12

haha suckers, way to waste 6 years of emotions on this bullshit

shutupbitch

@semicarbazone: Well that's just really, really obnoxious.

katekate is squared

Eh, I liked it. And regarding one of your points, if they had all died together, that would have been a horrible ending. "They've been dead the whole time" was a theory people had since halfway through season 1.

My only complaint was that last season seemed to minimize the magnitude of the show. There didn't seem to be some grand plan.

Also, I would have liked the the end scene with Christian to have been perhaps 2 minutes longer, with just a slightly better explanation.

JoshUng

I can't watch the finale until it's up on Hulu, but it sounds like Cuse, Abrams and Lindolf really went the full Dark Tower route here. Guess it really was their favorite book.

@Cunning_Linguist: I half liked how it ended. But my questions lie in if this was purgatory, would they not enter looking as they did when they died? Or was it like Jack's personal purgatory, so they entered as he knew them? And why was Aaron still a baby? The last Jack saw of him he was like 3. And if it was everyone's purgatory, did they have to wait around until everybody else figured it out? Because on the show, everyone figured it out in all of a week.

You don't have to answer, these are just my questions that the finale brought up. I am cool with them leaving me with old answers, not so much with presenting new ones.

mrsfeatherbottom411

@Max Read: Wait...so now you are saying they were "dead all along"? I though you agreed that they all died, but how or when was left in the air? If you are saying they all died on the island during the initial crash, then....well, as I said in another comment, I don't think you were paying attention. When the hell did C. Shephard say they had all died during the crash? I thought he made it clear that the "when" was unanswered.

Atilla the Bun

Oh shut up, Gawker.

Pigasus

@katekate is squared: Because we are on a website about pop culture and because of that Lost was something that we were keenly aware of even if we didn't watch, enough so to have knowledge and curiosity about major plot points even if we weren't interested in watching the show.

jmckee

@Atilla the Bun: Agreed. Except I am not sure its actual redemption or self-forgiveness and self-acceptance that he needed. But really its the same thing.

Cheruth

@John Thompson in: Are You There God? It's Me, Danzig: Oh, so much love for you.

TheBoar

@katekate is squared: Because it's a cultural phenomenon, and we'd all like to say "We knew it'd never be explained from the beginning, toldz ya so!"

semicarbazone

@Max Read: No, that's not it at all. They didn't all die at the same time. Christian Shephard said something along the lines of "there is no 'now' here," meaning there wasn't really time in the place where everyone ended up. So they could have all died many years apart.

katekate is squared

@katekate is squared: "No one who came to the island ever got all the answers, either, so why should we?"

I'm throwing that in the face of everyone I get into an argument with on the ending of the series.

UweBollocks

@jmckee: Good point, I only watched til the first episodes of the 3rd season. I have no idea what was going on with the numbers

semicarbazone

@bess marvin, girl detective: Oh please, your entire original post was rude. And it's "take it personally" not "take it personal." Grammar counts when you're slagging off writers.

pmarble

@Aurailious: I don't know if I loved it. I don't know if I liked it. But I didn't hate it at all. And I feel satisfied. Which is more important.

Cheruth

@jmckee: Honestly, even if Hurley lost 20 or 30 pounds, it would barely be noticeable. I'm so tired of this gripe!

aprilphresh

@dostoevsky_was_a_gambler: Okay yeah, I'm sure Lost is on the same level as the great American novels, its art.

The idea is to be uncertain about the motivations of the characters and not the premise of the whole series.

jaxx_9911

@Atilla the Bun:

their point I believe is that the comment thread looks like this

A: I liked this and I don't care that others don't.

B. THIS

C. I didn't care for it

A: WHY?! WHY?! FUCK YOU! YOU DON'T GET IT! YOU'RE WRONG AND DUMB!

D: Hey C. I didn't like it either. Disappointing.

B: C & D, you guys are idiots!

A: @D, Well then you clearly missed the point.

monitorwipe

@Max Read: They weren't dead all along though. Everything on the island really happened - they were alive for that.

Jughead split the realities, so they also lived in the sideways-reality for awhile until it was time to meet up and move on. I don't think the sideways universe was purgatory though, because they weren't stuck in limbo - they were all living their lives as they would have anyway, but on the island they died alone, and in the finale/sideways world, they moved on together because it was time.

Kind of a metaphysical thing.

Regardless, they weren't dead all along.

I watched breaking bad tonight, I think that episode should be nominated for an emmy.

Character and plot driven! Yay shows that aren't Lost!

semicarbazone

@katekate is squared: You just read my mind!

badluckgirl

@bess marvin, girl detective: No, actually, you completely ignored that bit.

pmarble

@chicoleo: Loves you. (If you are being serious. If not. Douchebag.)

Atilla the Bun

What I don't get is the people who say, "they don't need to explain anything, you child," but then turn around and go into explanations about all the purgatory junk, or whatever. I mean, isn't that stuff explanation too?

TheBoar

@The Lonely Tourist: Sigh. You obviously didn't understand what I was trying to say, and this isn't really your fight.

pmarble

@katekate is squared: Exhibiting superiority. It's kind of cute, really.

@jaxx_9911: Hey, I'm willing to have a reasonable debate about this finale and what it all meant. But to say "if I read a book and thought it was amazing but I didn't know exactly what happened." Ahem, please read Ulysses and get back to me about "exactly what happened." And if you don't think it's amazing...that proves another point about you as well.

Atilla the Bun

@The Lonely Tourist: No, he didn't get it.

taosaur

@katekate is squared: K, but the thing is there was nothing "open-ended". The ending is totally clear, as far as what happens to the characters. Everything else, there isn't anything WORTH interpreting. We don't know anything about the island, or even any of the motivations of anyone who sought to use its power.

Guggenheimlich

The ending was awesome. Easily one of the best ever.

Jason Rouse

@jmckee: Smoke monster was Flocke, the Polar bear was brought to the island by the Dharma people, Hurley stayed fat because they were on the island for 44 days before they discovered the hatch and all the food in it, and before that they did have airplane food, and you want in Matthew Fox's pants because he's hot. As long as he's not talking. :)

@Atilla the Bun: Thank you.

Cheruth

@Cory: That was great. I just read bunch of those kinds of comments.

UweBollocks

@Atilla the Bun: I'm not offering "yah, you're just wrong," "it's pretty much official, anyone who followed the show for six seaons and wasn't satisfied by the ending is a douchebag," or making one of the endless accusations that he had decided before he saw the finale that he would hate it, or that he is just saying it was bad to be cool, or any of the other posts that attack his motives rather than his opinion.

TheBoar

@Max Read: "It was about a magical fuckin' island!"

Yeah, that's not going to turn out to be allegory. Every. Single. Time.

taosaur

@harlemite: You're right, why didn't they find someone who could have sucked Lost's cock? I mean, so few people have deigned to do so over its long run.

@Atilla the Bun: Haha guys, maybe I didn't explain myself well? It's not "they all die." It's: "They were dead, all along."

@jaxx_9911: Entitled much? I mean, come on, it's just a TV show.

katekate is squared

Give it a night folks. I thought it was fantastic an I hope all of you think so after a night rest.

DanPMan0317

@keverdene: Yeah, if the flash-sideways was really purgatory, I think it is safe to say that Ben had not redeemed himself yet.

Atilla the Bun

I would love to see an article explaining all the big questions that us people that didn't watch Lost knew about that were either answered by the show and how or not.

Like the smoke monster, and the polar bear, and numbers, and the code they had to keep entering, how that guy stayed so fat and why I want in Matthew Fox's pants.

That or if someone could just answer them here would be great.

jmckee

I really beg to differ. There will be always be two camps when a series ends.

I am in the camp that is happy. As a die hard fan, I feel satiated by the whole thing. The last 10 minutes truly reminded me of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-5" minus you know the aliens.

I always had a suspicion that this idea of time would play out.

OneMoreLOST

Is anyone ELSE tired of the multitude of comments about how "I never watched this show and it sucks" and all that? WHY ARE YOU ON A THREAD ABOUT LOST, THEN.

katekate is squared

@Good Girl Gone Bad: There is no such thing as too many man boobs. Except when two of them belong to Hurley. That's two too many.

ShanghaiLil

@Atilla the Bun: Exactly.

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

@katekate is squared: I really don't understand people that are saying who are we to demand answers?

The fact is that television is not real life. Real life is not a story, when you tell a story it has a beginning, middle and end. If there is no audience, there is no show. So we should get answers if we demand them.

jaxx_9911

@bess marvin, girl detective: I recognize you from Jezebel. Usually that's my one-line insult to cross-pollinators. I think you're also an aspiring screenwriter. As someone who reps a lot of them, I can tell you that there isn't a writer who I know thjat disagrees with you in the least. And they're not pissed, they know that, look, this is a -job- for actual human beings who cannot believe they've gotten the chance to live out their dreams. At some point, everyone who writes for a tv show, shitty or not, is amazed that they make a living where they make as much as a doctor or even financier, yet can wear whatever they want to work, don't have to comb their hair, can live all over the world and work at their craft, etc. The minute a young kid or seasoned vet sells a pilot, that's money in the bank from 60 pieces of paper, or even 25-30. And when it gets picked up for a series, you know that you're going to make a half a million dollars. Maybe less, maybe more. But that one season is enough to buy a house, or pay for 6 years of a child's education. No matter how high you rise, whether you're a 25 y.o. or Abrams himself, you just want to keep the thing going, despite how much you talk about caring about your characters and such. So, seriously, people need to get over the fact that these guys ever knew what the fuck was going on. It was extraordinary and poor storytelling at the same time.

Point is, Team Bess Marvin.

WebsterTall

I didn't watch the show, and i will only watch it if this question can be satisfactorily answered, after six years does the fat one loose any weight? Because I can't respect a show that lets a fat character stay fat when when lost on a island for that long. Maybe that's where the KFC Double Down trees grow...

Dellath

@TheBoar: Heaven forbid anyone have an passion in defending something. And what exactly are you offering to the discussion?

Atilla the Bun

@thatblackgirl: I would argue that the X-Files was even WORSE. That was some bullshit.

katekate is squared

@katekate is squared: I un-hearted you so I could heart you again.

@thatblackgirl: Is there any sci-fi show that hasn't totally burned its viewers in the end? Twin Peaks, X-Files, BSG. Fringe: YOU'RE NEXT.

A lot of people are having really snap reactions. When it first ended, I was like, "WTF????" And I was briefly enraged. A couple of hours later, I'm starting to think that it was a pretty goddamn good ending.

If you stuck with the show for six seasons (and spent as much time thinking about it as I did), I think you have to at least let it sink in overnight before you trash it.

Yes, the show was definitely a mystery, but it WAS ultimately about the people on the island and their journeys. That's why there were flashbacks (and flash forwards)

Crown_Jew

@Vulcan Has No Moon: That's when I left too, I just didn't like the Others, at all. That's probably around the time when they found that house where Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music" was playing. Thought it was silly...

jasonelias

@Atilla the Bun: Yeah.

katekate is squared

@pmarble: Sheesh, we get it. You think anyone who doesn't like the ending is an asshole.

The Lonely Tourist

@djscruffy: I think the open nature of the questions just mirrors the fact that life is like that. Hence the philosophical debates that the show echoed. I felt like we got a lot of answers to some basic questions tonight, but the nature of the show didn't give itself over to pat answers while it was in process.

pmarble

@Atilla the Bun: This.

@TheBoar:

yeah and my mama used to say something about people who get defensive...

monitorwipe

@james_cambridge: I really like 'V' too, but now I'm questioning if I should get invested in case they pull a LOST. Also, Anna morning the loss of her baby-army was up there with the best of the LOST twists.

sophomoric

Re that whole "don't end your story with all your characters being dead...." Thank god Shakespeare never took the same creative writing class you did.

Atilla the Bun

because cats make everything better.

Scrubbles

To all the people who were patient and watched for six years hoping for a complete and satisfying resolution: I'm sorry, and I feel your pain.

Signed,

Former X-Files fan.

thatblackgirl

@Should.Have.Sent.Poet: Yeah, who are we to demand answers. We are only the viewers, without which the show would not exist.

They just create a sense of drama around something that will not exist 5 minutes later. The plane take off is the great source of drama, then suddenly the island island is saved, and then the take off has even less significance once you realize that they are dead, or may not be, or will be at some point.

jaxx_9911

Shannon, Charlotte and non-crazy Claire were all in this episode. Even Kate cleaned up for the concert. Thus, your argument is false.

Iceland Spar

Alternatively, I think Lost was best explained in the following phrase:

"Fuckin' magnets; how do they work?"

katekate is squared

@MissNormaDesmond: I'm a she, but thanks. "Bess" doesn't want to own her words, but she sure revels in twisting other peoples'.

pmarble

@pseudorocket: yea, I don't use my TV. It's so stupid. I just use Hulu, youtube, Netflix streaming..... It's so liberating!

i_like_turtles

My husband realized at the end of the show that there was not one gay character on the show. (And that apparently you must be in a hetero relationship to "move on" to the Great Light in the sky.) We all felt incredibly dumb not to have noticed this until now.

peri1

@ArleenCabango:

no, there was a divide between camps. They discussed it on one of their podcasts when someone brought it up. Team sci-fi was concerned the show was becoming to "soapy".

monitorwipe

Wow this makes the BSG finale sound like it was a fucking masterpiece. I am so glad I didnt even like Lost.

Jim Topoleski

Eh, what the hell. They didn't owe us anything. TV is just like any other art form (laugh if you must), but we're so accustomed to being spoon-fed everything that we hate anything that's open to interpretation or doesn't have a concrete answer.

No one who came to the island ever got all the answers, either, so why should we?

katekate is squared

@The Lonely Tourist: I don't believe they were dead. I think they genuinely lived those lives then moved on.

I must agree with a commentor from the liveblog post: the writers of the Sopranos (and, may I add, Deadwood) did it properly.

irishbreakfast

@salientpartners.pe: I think he just still had some stuff to work out before he could move on. Like Ana Lucia, he "wasn't ready".

Crown_Jew

@KGibson: If he got it, he missed the point.

Atilla the Bun

Whether or not it all made sense, or answered every question, etc. ... I'm just sad. Sad that it's over.

@nicholas1987ucsb: Fail. They weren't in purgatory. Everything that happened on the island, happened.

Crown_Jew

so why didn't Sayid meet up with Nadia then? One would assume that the woman he loved for a very long time would mean more to him than the chick he banged for a few days on an island,

monitorwipe

Lost backlash in three...two...oh wait, it's already here!

@rabendshein: we know why. Charles broke the rules about shagging someone off the island

ArleenCabango

All the talk about "getting closure" makes it sound more than ever like a bad relationship.

orkid68

@pseudorocket: Yeah you're obviously really logged out of the matrix, dude.

EasyEVG

@nicepony: I didn't know there's a rule that you can only comment on a TV show if you actually follow it?? I do own couple computers & have broadband Internet...

pseudorocket

@MrInBetween: yes. and the writers were going to find another dog to lay next to it while it died, but alas there was not enough time.

i_like_turtles

@monitorwipe: actually there were not two camps. the scifi etc was there from the start, per the design

this show was designed by JJ Abrams. tossing sci-fi type stuff into what starts off looking like a character show is classic JJ. he did it with Alias, is doing it on Fringe also.

heck as I recall he tossed some freaking time travel into Felicity too

ArleenCabango

@greenmelinda: And no Helen, either. Bullshit.

The Lonely Tourist

Max who, now?

EasyEVG

OK, so I get why people like the ending, as a concept. But as an hour-and-a-half of television? How can you say this wasn't written in the laziest way possible?

1. Everything in this season has been MIB on a haphazard killing spree. For no reason, it turns out, because now he suddenly is going to blow up the island and leave by himself.

2. IT WAS A GODDAMN CORK.

3. Over in purgatory, Desmond is rounding everybody up. Except there is no tension whatsoever, because it's just people meeting each other. Like, could there be at least one person who doesn't WANT to remember, besides Jack for a couple minutes?

4. Then, because JJ wrote this on a napkin six years ago, Jack is outside again, to die, full circle. But we definitely weren't going to bother changing even one line of the script to make this make any sense.

Guggenheimlich

@Max Read: The ending in the Church just means that everyone dies AT SOME POINT. Those were just the flash sideways, not actually part of the real "storyline".

Watch Season 6 without the Flash Sideways.

Aurailious

@jaxx_9911: I guess you read some shitty books, then. Good film/literature/art makes you think and leaves you confused, at least for a little while.

dostoevsky_was_a_gambler

@Good Girl Gone Bad: Love it.

Eko and others were Tailies, and they didn't have as many issues. They're just reg'lar dead. Moved on. Our primary cast members needed some serious therapy before they could join Eko in a higher plane of consciousness. (Pardon the pun.)

keverdene

@Aethyr: You don't get the answers to all the mysteries in real life, why should you get all the answers to the mysteries of the show?

That's such a weak argument. I know what you're saying in some respects, about this point and others, but the point is, it's *not* real life, and the quality of a show or motion picture or radio play is that you're telling a story, that has a beginning, middle, end, even if it jumps around, there is a 3-act or 6-act or x-act structure. When you don't answers some of the bigger questions that are put out there, it's the equivalent of a bad movie that has huge plot holes.

WebsterTall

@parapluie: I did think of Titanic, yeah.

noisy doll

@TheBoar: Ha, yes.

The Lonely Tourist

For what it's worth it was a little better than the BSG finale.

Mike Irvine

@keverdene: I think he is waiting around for Alex to have her revelation.

contradicto

EAT A BOWL OF DICKS.

Electrolatino

@Denver80203: I said earlier I assume the polar bear is St. Peter.

Don't you think they should have at least told us why ben kicked Charles off the island???

rabendshein

Loved the series initially but that finale definitely keeps it from being considered a classic in my mind. If you want to see the ending from Narnia re-purposed in a less condescending manner check out St. Elsewhere. Before this I never thought a procedural drama set in a hospital would have a more creative ending than LOST.

lonelyarethebrave

What was the point of even having the sideways/purgatory timeline? So everyone dies eventually. Okay. Does it have anything to do with the island? Or are they saying that in their world, when you die, you live out your issues in another timeline?

Also this show would've been better halved. My 2¢

@monitorwipe: You still have yet to articulate any opinion for the Lost finale allegedly sucking. You are just including yourself in the "others" that didn't like the finale. You have yet to say why you have a problem with the finale other than having a fit with people disagree with negative comment.

I've said why I disagree with some of the posts here. Articulate something other than "we" and "you're mean" and maybe we (e.g., you and me) can discuss the finale was well. But perhaps you should lay off the coattailes.

Atilla the Bun

@monitorwipe:

I don't like your post because of its homoerotic content.

You can't tell me its not meant to be homoerotic, either.

killstrike

@Myrna_Minkoff: Darlton Minkoff, did you not like the conclusion? (Neither did I.) I am surprised, though, I must say. Did you feel like the overtly religious/spiritual answer to the whole thing was kind of a cheat, after everything they went through? Big Daddy answered it all and opened the doors to the light.

ms.attitude

@jaxx_9911: I agree. Confused Max can gripe all he wants to about Lost. But if he's going to write about it on Gawker, he's got to write better and be way more clever about it. Otherwise, he should just send an email to his aunt mary and leave us out of it.

H_in_Brooklyn

@nite_brite: I wholeheartedly agree.

jles

@monitorwipe: Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about? You sound like my grandpa when he drinks too much.

Myrna_Minkoff

@refreshingsips: Oh c'mon...the MAIN characters. Momma Faradey as well as numerous others were ostensibly alive at the end of the finale as well. Did you really take Max's post to mean that the finale meant the end of the human race as a whole?

Atilla the Bun

@irishbreakfast: Hah, yeah? By having absolutely no resolution!? Couldn't disagree more completely. I thought LOST ended perfectly, and the Sopranos, well, just didn't end.

jles

@Max Read: Actually, they did answer a lot of the mysteries -- but some people wanted answers that were 17 layers deep.

Myrna_Minkoff

@mnerd: i am feeling smug as hale. there, i said it.

HurricaneEyes

@Solomon Grundy: The Wire will never be a waste of time. It is the smartest thing I've seen on television.

ms.attitude

@octothorp: Found

ms.attitude

Wasn't this one of the major theories that floated around at the beginning of the show? That they were all dead and in some kind of purgatory?

Thrillho

@Cheruth: Yes, I think that would be a more accurate feeling.

Satisfaction. Absolutely.

Aurailious

@Max Read: uhh, LOST.

jles

@thatblackgirl: Oh great. Thanks for reminding me how much X-Files completely blew at the end. Fuck, now I'm so mad I can't go to bed.

Thrillho

@Atilla the Bun:

we meaning the people whose throats you've jumped down for not agreeing with you...if you wish to consider us royalty thats fine.

monitorwipe

Acknowledging that everyone dies eventually is not the same thing as killing everyone off.

The real world time line ends with several characters flying off to safety and five alive and well on the island.

And, sure nothing last forever and everyone died some day.

The sideways world was just a holding pen that is outside time and space. You don't even have to call it purgatory. It was just a place for the characters to go and find peace and work out their issues. And It was a taste of life that they missed out on because of the island. Maybe it was sappy and unoriginal to make sure to tell us that their souls lived on in peace. But it was far from killing everyone off.

Cheruth

@Atilla the Bun: In which Shakespeare play did he kill off all the characters? Even Hamlet tells Horatio to stay alive to tell the story.

refreshingsips

@Myrna_Minkoff:

well contrary to sentiment, you are allowed to interpret the end in different ways.

Carlton Cuse: We’re not going to respond, right.

We want people to have a chance to digest, discuss, debate and interpret the events of the finale. And we think there’s going to be plenty of things for people to discuss and debate, just like every year. We don’t want to be out there saying, no no no, you must think this or you must think that. We don’t want to sort of spoil the process, which is to let people process the finale and arrive at their own conclusions about it.

but maybe cuse should have cleared that with the framework for interpreting the finale first.

monitorwipe

@Solomon Grundy: The final was the only episode I've ever watched, just for sha-giggles, and I must say, I'm very very fucking confused. :[]

Congrats, Lost viewers! You saw dead people!

@Myrna_Minkoff: Jeez, Myrna! I don't think it's that weird to ask that writers tie up loose ends. That is, you know, Writing 101. I don't mind if there are some mysteries left! But this wasn't "some mysteries." It was "90% of mysteries."

Dear Lost,

Thanks so much for the great ending courtesy of "Sarah Palin's Bible Stories for the Mildly Retarded."

Awesome hoax dudes!

lionboy

@MissNormaDesmond: YES, that was EXACTLY the way I felt.

@monitorwipe: You prove my point exactly.

( And, btw, an impressive use of the royal "We").

Atilla the Bun

@[gawker.com]

salientpartners.pe

@harlemite: I don't know or give a shit who Max Read is, either, he's just some dude who writes episode recaps on the Internet. That said, he and his editor/boss/Denton stand-in is clearly more intelligent than you are. Why?

Because a post titled "Greatest Ending Ever!" is not going to generate the pageviews that this post will. People are looking for somewhere to go to discuss this thing, and soon after its posting, look how many pageviews and comments there are. Imagine how many more there will be by the end of tomorrow's workday. Sorry, but much like extending the cash cow of a television series is more important than anything else, getting pageviews is more important than anything else. People like paying their bills, and having a few million left over at the end of the year.

WebsterTall

@H_in_Brooklyn: Amazing Amazing comment. Agree completely. I was completely satisfied with the ending, and I think that we got every answer we needed, and we ACTUALLY got a resolution. And it's so funny after having read many positive reviews, you come here and get the same old negative snark.

I love it for what it is, but this review is SOOO standard Gawker.

jles

@TheBoar: How the fuck am I being nonsensical?

Myrna_Minkoff

@H_in_Brooklyn: Oh c'mon, you really sound like you are 7 years old.

"But I expected more" Max says, and so what? That's his opinion, and I happen to agree while others will disagree.

Just because he does not share your view, he's trying to be hip you say. If he didn't like it, he didn't like.

Not everyone loves Lost, and I'm sure even fewer do after tonight's poor showing.

jaxx_9911

@Cheruth: The lines didn't match what they showed us. As I stated earlier in this thread, for example, they show Aaron there as a baby. They show Penny there at her current age when, we believe she is alive. They show other people who are dead (Faraday, Ana Lucia, etc.) who are NOT there. Then right after, they show the crash site with no sign of survivors.

So...yeah. Not clear.

Myrna_Minkoff

@TheBoar: That's not true. It's not like the show left zero creative framework. The creative framework invovled quantum physics and simultaneous realities. People that say, "well, hell, they all died on the plane crash because Christian said they are all dead" is completely ignoring the rest of the show--and the rest of what Christian said in that very same speech. He said the WHY was not important. Did you not hear that? All I'm asking is that before someone dismisses the show as "oh fuck they all died in the first plane crash" that they actually watch what the hell happened on the rest of the show, including what C. Shephard said to Jack--partuclarly that part about time of when they died not being an issue.

Seriously, pay the fuck attention dear people. If you have an issue with what happened on the show based on what, you know, actually happened on the show, that's one thing. But to just ignore years of the show, or part of the finale, is just useless.

Atilla the Bun

@octothorp: I'd so watch that

emanze

@katekate is squared: Thank you! I've actually never watched the show, but on some blog entry about people watching the finale on nytimes.com several people made the comment that "we're at war and the economy and this is all bread and circuses and the akin to the fall of Rome!!"

Oh for God's sake. Why don't those people just go back to their copy of the Chomsky Reader and continue to live under the idiotic pretense that they are never distracted from the world's problems and leave everyone else alone.

This of course is contradicted by reading and commenting on the very story itself. UGH.

BicycleShed

@missing_piece: As long as he's not talking...or Jearing.

pandacology

Can you help me out here...so Ben. My favorite character. He didn't go into the church sooooo....what does that mean. He's just alone, wandering the earth without any ghost friends???

emanze

I'm so glad I never gave this show the time of day. There I said it. The show is whatever.

Even in the sideways -many of the characters still messed up. Jack -divorced/distant dad (then redeemed). Kate - well, still on the run. Sawyer and Myles (both con-men) now respectable cops. Juliet - still helping people with babies. Sun/Jin - still good. Hurley - helpful- making good use of his money. Charlie -self abusing until he finds Clair. Ben, forced to be the smart guy in a room full of tools - then regret the death of his "daughter".

Jack remains the most stubborn, except about saving Locke.

Tomorrow is another day- I think everyone who watched is numb.

Erudite23

@pmarble: I was talking about the actual post. Max Read, who I think is a guy, wrote "I'm not going to use the 'abusive relationship' metaphor, because that's hacky and offensive..." And hey, he was right!

MissNormaDesmond

@Atilla the Bun:

here I'll give it a shot. We're confused why we're not allowed to not like the show, but you say we can not like the show if the dislike is within your approved framework for disliking the finale. Which I'm sorry to tell you, COMPLETELY goes against my framework for not liking the show according to the framework of my framework for formulating independent thought that doesn't need to conform to someone's framework of what that thought has to be. This also goes against The Order Of The Snake, which forbids me from many more things.

monitorwipe

@Myrna_Minkoff: Which lines? I thought it was made completely clear by Christian that some people died before Jack some after. Meaning people are mortal and they all died whenever they died.

And then Hurley and Ben had their moment about being number one and number two. Meaning they lived on after Jack and couldn't have died before that.

And then Kate said she missed Jack so much suggesting she lived on after leaving the island and always missed Jack.

I can't recall the lines that contradict that concept. And I had thought it was made clear so now I am not sure what to think.

Cheruth

@Myrna_Minkoff: I did. And you're being nonsensical.

TheBoar

@snakroo: I always thought Boone was gay. Also, "The Other" that infiltrated the camp in the first season, I think Ana Lucia killed him, I can't remember his name. He always struck me as gay too.

@Myrna_Minkoff: Ha! Yes, indeed.

pmarble

@Crown_Jew: Exactly. Eventually they all died. We don't know when. Why some are latching on to the when and making it so important is a mystery to me.

Atilla the Bun

@Atilla the Bun: Do you understand that that's nonsensical? You can't on the one hand say, hey, they didn't need to provide answers because it's vague and ambiguous, and then turn around and say that someone else is getting the show wrong. If it's vague to the point that there's no need for explanations to open questions, it's vague to the point that you can't insist that someone else is wrong about the point. You can't have both.

TheBoar

@nicholas1987ucsb: It wasn't true. But enjoy feeling superior about your completely false assessment which you trumpeted for the world to hear.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Atilla the Bun: At least these folks actually watched the finale. My blood pressure is topping out at the endless commentary by people who stopped watching after Season [fill in the blank] and feel the need to tell us fans how stupid we were for watching the show.

pmarble

@keverdene: This is lovely. Thanks for explaining that part.

MaelstromInTheMiddle

I loved it. I loved that Benry was redeemed. I loved all of Locke. All of it. Terry O'Quinn really needs to go the full EGOT. I loved that Hurleybird got to be Jacob. And I loved Desmond. Oh, Desmond.

However, I was sad that Walt didn't show up with Vincent in the church. Even if they couldn't get Malcolm David Kelley, for whatever reason, they could've at least Seinfeldvision'd him into it.

suddenvalley

@Atilla the Bun: 90% of writers who make over six figures a year never took a creative writing class, or got an MFA from Columbia or what have you. And despite what rubbing elbows with New Yorkers with literary aspirations might lead you to believe, there are a lot of writers in this country who make well over six figures a year. Fucking creative writing class. Please.

WebsterTall

I was too busy checking out the weave Bret Michaels was rocking back from the almost dead flash-nothing on the Celebrity Apprentice. That being said, the only people I know that watch Lost are stoners that failed out of my organic chemistry class. I hope it was worth it buddy cuz now you're gonna be a murse instead of a MD. Good job!

pechorin214

@The Lonely Tourist: Oh, I see quite a few people doing that.

Check out Max Read's piece, for starters.

Myrna_Minkoff

I thought it was perfect. I'm satisfied.

nite_brite

@monitorwipe: Exactly. You can't articulate your own...whatever.

Atilla the Bun

@TheBoar: You didn't watch the show, did you?

Myrna_Minkoff

@semicarbazone: I'm sorry, this is apropos of nothing related to LOST, but Roseanne didn't really try to explain away any plot holes by having the whole last season be a dream. The last season sucked, but that's not necessarily the concept's fault--the execution was terrible. But it was actually a poignant ending, I thought!

Oh man, I am a sad person, right now.

muppet_baby

@autoclavicle: Am too!

katekate is squared

@Erudite23: Finally, an answer I can get behind.

katekate is squared

@Iceland Spar: What he said. False. You're false and your argument, too.

MaelstromInTheMiddle

I loved the airplane/church pew parallel. That sold it for me.

JPisme

@salientpartners.pe: I'm going with the optimistic interpretation-- he didn't really live on the island; he just kind of did the island's bidding. This world give him the opportunity to not only do good, but live life-- to love and be loved in return (i.e., get a little bawm-chicka-wah-wah from Rousseau, among other things). But, then, I always felt a little sorry for Ben.

QueenoftheHarpies

@☆Giroro G66☆: There are DVDs to sell.

Shelwood

@pmarble: Damn Yankee fans in the east.

Erudite23

@pmarble: I think it tells you what you already know about people who would spend time late at night commenting online about a show they never watched. ;)

Myrna_Minkoff

@TheBoar: My post has nothing to do with the people who didn't like the ending. I am fine if people disliked it. I am talking about the people who are trumpeting the fact that they didn't watch the show at all. There is a difference.

I simply find it obnoxious for people to insist on telling those of us who actually watched the show that we were idiots for doing so.

pmarble

@pmarble: True. I kind of regret looking online after the finale. It was ptich-perfect to me. And that should really be all that matters.

But still....I don't like to see Gawker trashing my existential boyfriend. :-)

Atilla the Bun

@bess marvin, girl detective: So your argument for the freshness and novelty of your self-expression is that the idea you saw described elsewhere as unoriginal really wasn't? That's kind of hilarious.

MissNormaDesmond

@Atilla the Bun: @CrownJew: I'm leaning that way, but it's not clear because of a few things:

The beach crash site looks as if there were no survivors. Why is Aaron in heaven as a child if he lived to be at least three?

I think in their efforts to be dramatic along the way, they ended up muddying the waters.

And no, I don't need to know when everyone died -- but my confusion at the unclear final scene took me emotionally out of the moment. It just killed the momentum.

Myrna_Minkoff

@katekate is squared: Because Dancing with the Stars does not inspire this kind of discussion.

Erudite23

This review of the finale is, unlike the finale itself, just predictable, "too-cool" self-loathing bullshit from someone at Gawker who wants to be hip like the big boys.

Let me guess, you actually wrote this last week, while drinking a bumper of Colt 45 and imagining yourself more important than you are. Then tonight you went back and filled in a couple of blank spaces with relevant details.

Sometimes it hurts to be young and confused, Max Read. But sometimes, it's okay to just "let go" and get LOST in the white light. There, there.

See ya in another life, brother!

H_in_Brooklyn

@Rachel Briggs: holy inappropriate analogies, batman.

souligner

@Atilla the Bun: You're doing yeoman's work here. In the end, we are the lucky ones for having been satisfied.

pmarble

@Max Read: I was just telling my friend how gawker is often cynical for the sake of being cynical...moments before you perfectly proved my point.

The writers have said all along that the characters didn't die in the crash.

jaymay13

@jaxx_9911: Seems to me they lived their lives, whatever that was, off the island and then died, like we all will someday.

katekate is squared

@#2 would push him on. But it would have been difficult for the other characters to do the backslap/nice to see you/hugs with Ben.

Erudite23

@Should.Have.Sent.Poet: But then what is the point of an ending? If you believe that enough answers were given then perhaps you classify that as an ending.

Of course it's not really going to enlighten anyone to try to interpret the meaning behind the polar bears for example, but I feel that writers should not so cheaply introduce dramatic characters or moments just for the sake of the moment itself, and not for the sake of the story as a whole.

jaxx_9911

@Cory: werd. I wonder why it's so irritating, but it really is.

pmarble

@Myrna_Minkoff: So you needed the show to tell you when they died? I agree it's not clear when they died. I personally took it as when they died on the island they officially died. So the only really up in the air deaths were (no pun intended) Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Lapidus, etc. on the plane.

And I don't think the finale was supposed to give us any answers as to the WHEN any of them died. I mean seriously, could C. Shephard have made in any clearer when he said it was not about when but now? And the past couple of seasons have been about time just being a construct.

I think there any many questions unaswered frm the finale. But I think the "when" of when they died is ultimately unimportant to the idea that regardless of when they died, we know that they all ended up together in some way. And I thought that was beautiful. And I say this as someone who believes in no god.

So I get kind of annoyed reading a post about how the finale sucked because supposedly (1) everyone died when the plane crashed [which is totally not what was reflected in the finale]; and (2) even if they didn't did then, WHEN they died is oh so important. No, it's not. That's kind of the whole fucking point.

Atilla the Bun

@pmarble: I've noticed a trend that people who like the finale are really, really not too cool with other people disagreeing with them. People can just disagree, you know.

TheBoar

@#2. Jack died on the island, everyone on the plane got away, and Hurley and Ben stayed behind to protect the island. Eventually they all died.

Crown_Jew

I haven't watched it for a while, but I remember this sense of outrage when "Twin Peaks" revealed Laura Palmer's killer. "What? Really? That's what you pulled out of your ass?"

MissNormaDesmond

Whatever, at least they explained Whidmore, Eloise Hawking and all of the Egyptian motifs.

Oh that's right, they didn't.

It was great and it ended exactly like it should have. Some questions weren't answered (some never are) but I loved it too.

Pinekatz

@LeeMarvinsPants: I don't really think they're plot holes, I just got a kick out of it, especially since they focused on fertility and pregnancy for a sizable chunk of a season.

afropique

@Smackdab: Yea they all died at different times, but when they died they all went to this "before heaven" place that reminded them of their lives which they all were able to meet again before going to heaven.

CLY

You know what...haters hate, the rest will appreciate. I loved it.

Atilla the Bun

Your creative writing teacher knew better than Hemingway?

"Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."

rootyb

Umm wasn't there a Black guy and his son on this show once.....did they die too?

CLY

I think I'm an average "layperson" viewer of Lost. I watched it regularly, but I didn't follow many of the theories and speculation on the internet. I feel like I was watching it at face value, and I also feel like there was a gap between what the writers initially promised and what they provided. I was disappointed with the finale. I truly did expect more and I don't think that makes me snarky.

afropique

@dostoevsky_was_a_gambler: It made me think of lowest common denominator television with its pseudo philosophy.

Suddenly Lost is deep because a couple of characters are named after philosophers, this show is obviously grounded in existentialism and metaphysics.

jaxx_9911

@Valkyrie607:

Rewatch and remember what Christian told Jack.

Walt didnt spend very much time on the island, maybe a month at the most. Walt probably had a full life life with more important people than the ones he met briefly on the island.

shortskid

@killstrike: well I'll gladly put that on my info forever if you can show me where I told someone they were wrong for their opinion. I've only said I don't understand why those that didn't care for the finale weren't entitled to their opinion.

monitorwipe

@afropique: And THOSE are the plot holes that bothered you? Really?

LeeMarvinsPants

'Six Feet Under' ended with everyone dying, and in fact, the episode was called 'Everyone Dies'. And it was the best finale ever. This one was OK. I'd call it an entertaining cop-out.

LeeMarvinsPants

@Cory: Those people irk me, too, and I don't have a tv. (It's because I'm so pathetically cheap and broke I haven't replaced the dinosaur that stopped working when the switch to digital occurred. I've managed to get by with Hulu and Netflix and whatnot.)

The greatest example of this I can think of is one of my cousins, who for years couldn't wait to let everyone know about how she never watched television and was so far above such intellectual abjection. So what show does she become entranced with and yap about endlessly when it comes out on DVD? Sex and the City. Oh, yes, Sartre only wishes he were still alive so he could share in the ontological investigations of those sassy vixens.

MissNormaDesmond

Thank you Max. I just stopped my final Lost torrents from downloading. I don't want to watch what you described. I'll just remember fondly how bad the episode before the finale was and leave it at that.

CrayonSmoothie

@monitorwipe:

One thing is clear: you are an opinion nazi.

killstrike

@pmarble: Over the past couple seasons, I've noticed a certain kind of Lost "fan" developing, who believes the show exists to create a mystery and then solve it.

They're watching the wrong show. In fact, there's never been a show like that. Twin Peaks, X-Files, Lost, whatever else you can come up with - none of these shows are about posing questions and then answering them. And if that's what someone's watching them for, then they were going to be disappointed no matter what. These shows are about the wonder of the mystery itself, and the journey of the characters trying to make sense of it.

So yes, I suspect Max was expecting to hate the ending, because I think he knew deep down that this was not the show he thought it was, and that he wasn't going to get the ending that he wanted.

I said it in another reply the other day, but I don't really think people like this are Lost fans to begin with, so it's no big loss if they didn't like the ending. They've already missed the point. I'm glad Max didn't get the ending he wanted, because that would have meant the rest of us didn't get the ending the show deserved.

People with this mentality really should just stick to '24'.

@Thrillho: I remember it being a "Jesus I hope this doesn't turn out to be some kind of they're all dead and in some kind of pugatory type things" theory.

In other words, even fanbois were hoping it wouldn't be that lame.

CrayonSmoothie

@Atilla the Bun:

ummm exactly.

monitorwipe

@killstrike:

clearly

monitorwipe

@Atilla the Bun: FRAMEWORK!

I'm sorry. I just felt like that word had to be used in every post in this thread.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Myrna_Minkoff: Also, I agree about the Jack thing at the end. We could have written that scene ourselves, six years ago.

ms.attitude

@nite_brite: Ditto.

Atilla the Bun

@monitorwipe:

You don't seem to suffer the opinions of those that don't suffer the opinions of Lost finale haters.

This is called a 'slippery slope.'

killstrike

@Thrillho: This was a bit different than that. Everything that happened on the island happened.

JohnMora

@Myrna_Minkoff: Agreed!

Cheruth

@Myrna_Minkoff: I agree that it was messy at that point. Where was Eko? Where was little Charlie, Penny and Desmond's boy? Why was Aaron a baby? For me, the enjoyment of the show and the greatest excitement came from the early mysteries about all the manipulations and contrivance to get these people, selected by Jacob, to the island. This conclusion doesn't answer that for me. I still don't get that very complex underlying story and layers of back stories about the who, what, where, when and why. I get that the island "really" happened and perhaps all for a reason. But I don't get why they were brought there in the first place. That story, and the MIB/Jacob origins story don't mesh for me.

ms.attitude

Redacted because it's pointless to argue with drunk people.

Myrna_Minkoff

This article is incredibly dumb. Talk about lacking the ability to appreciate something beyond its pure entertainment value. The finale solidified the writer's emphasis on a "character-driven show" by making the take-home message all about the characters' importance to one another, and the fact that their lives were deeply intertwined by their emotional connections, regardless of the events of the physical world, past, present, or future. What mattered, in the long run, was the fact that each of the characters had touched the life of the others in the most profound way possible.

Yalie

@pseudorocket: That must mean you're really, really smart, right?

MissNormaDesmond

@Thrillho: The creators said the island wasn't purgatory. And it wasn't. The island was real and as Jack said everything that happened mattered. So they told the truth and never went back on it.

The sideways world was purgatory. But that was really just a construct to give characters closure. Which, is a debatable writing choice for sure. But the original theory back in season one that it was purgatory was incorrect.

Cheruth

@afropique: Ha, and the SIZE of Claire's baby? It was, like, two years old.

@octothorp: Will Klinger and Radar be in it?

Exclamation Mark Violation

it was "jacob's ladder." see what i did there? :|

johnnygrim

@monitorwipe: Oh dear....it is perfectly fine for you to not feel the same way about the finale as I do. All I'm sayin is that if you are going to have pissy-fit over the finale and express that on a comment board, you should understand that others might disagree with you. And perhaps in your response you should have something to back it up other than being pissy. At least if you are going to jump on other people who liked it.

But by all means, go just be pissy without reason or explanation. 'Tis your right.

Atilla the Bun

Does anyone in the Lost writing room know how babies are born/appear in the womb? If Sun is early enough in her pregnancy that she could keep it a secret from Jin, there's no way that baby is larger than a bean on the ultrasound screen. Also, labor and delivery is typically at least 12 hours. Claire is one lucky duck.

afropique

@Cheruth: I think this is right. My complaint is that, when you shoot it so sloppily that a good chunk of the audience doesn't figure it out until 15 minutes after the credits roll, you force them emotionally out of the scene. Even just giving Christian an extra line to the effect of, "Everyone will appear here just as you remember them," would've helped.

It's the same problem with the Sorpranos (which in hindsight I think was genius) -- people are too confused at first to understand what emotion they should be processing.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Solomon Grundy: What TV are you watching? American Idol?

Federov

@killstrike:

I'm allowing you to believe its meant to be homoerotic. I'm not an opinion nazi.

monitorwipe

Did the author of this article not understand the episode? They weren't ALL DEAD. Everything that happened on the island during the six seasons was real, and they were very alive. As the show ended, Hurley, Desmond and Ben were alive on the island, and the plane carrying Kate, Sawyer, Miles etc. flew off the island. Eventually, they all died at various points - like most human beings - and then they went to the alternate reality/heaven. This was explained by Jack's dad at the end, and also when Hurley told Ben he was a great #2.

Smackdab

@Kerry Friesen: I remember the writers and/or producers of the show vehemently denying that theory at the time. I guess they really couldn't come up with anything better.

Thrillho

@Myrna_Minkoff:

see every post about how my and or your criticisms of the finale don't fit into the framework of the proper criticisms of the finale.

monitorwipe

@H_in_Brooklyn: Fair enough

jaxx_9911

Except Michael and Walt and Mr. Eko.

:(

Valkyrie607

@Thrillho: Yes. And the show-runners denied that it was, which makes this ending all the more insulting.

lionboy

@Atilla the Bun:

And you're still trying to tie it in with me explaining things that I've never said. I've just said it doesn't make sense why you can't let people feel differently than you about the finale.

but hey, I'm just proving your points for you.

monitorwipe

@Thrillho: Yes, if only because it's such a ridiculous and overused narrative cliche that people make jokes about it in reference to almost any sort of vaguely sci-fi or magical (??) TV show or movie. Of course, you'd think the TV GENIUSES who made this show would be aware that "IT WAS ALL A DREAM" or "THEY WERE DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME" is so incredibly stupid that they would absolutely not write that sort of story. YOU'D THINK, ANYWAY

Kerry Friesen

@missing_piece: I don't think they really lived in the sideways, though. When Locke told Jack he didn't have a son, he really didn't have a son. The entire sideways thing was not real.

ms.attitude

@jles: well, I agree that the snark is standard, but this review is also boringly predictable; the writing is sub-par.

If one can hold the opinion that one of the best-written television shows EVER fell short, then certainly one's own writing about that show can be called out as trite. I mean, right?

It's time someone snarked the snarkers!

H_in_Brooklyn

@ms.attitude: I was enjoying it up 'til the very end. I think what they tried to do was really interesting. But it was done so ham-handedly, it really turned me off.

The spiritual answer was the easiest route, but it feels like they've been leading us this way for awhile. Closing shot of Jack's eye was so predictable I couldn't believe they used it.

But my biggest point of contention is just the sloppiness of the final scene: Dead baby Aaron? Seemingly alive Penny, Kate, Sawyer, etc. hanging out at the dead man's party? Known dead people like Faraday and Ana Lucia not there? It was just poorly done. If they had extended it another 5 minutes to clarify, it could've been A+. But they dropped the ball.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Myrna_Minkoff:

I agree that not everything is clear.

But the purgatory is beyond time. Penny has to die eventually. As Christian said everyone either died before or after Jack. And they were all shown at the age they would be when the 815 guys first boarded the plane.

And I think Aaron there as a baby was just an imaginary construct of the world. Just like Jack's son who never existed. That world's way of forcing the characters to work through their issues was in this constructed world where the crash never happened. Making everyone deal with themselves and each other without the crazy stuff distracting them.

Christian said they invented this world. They can make it what they want.

I thought showing the crash was just a reminder of where it all started for viewers. I kind of thought the episode ended with Jack closing his eye.

Cheruth

there are so few things in today's world of entertainment which leave

Yalie

@up my feelings, too. I've just started to look online for reactions—even in the comments here—I'm shocked by the number of people who are satisfied with this ending.

A spectacular failure. But it seems that the apologists will be rabidly defending this one.

@LostBedStuy: Maybe I'm just bitter about the anti-climax, but to me, that almost feels like a dig at the show's viewers more than a part of the resolution of the plot. Although, there was a line of dialogue that "you all have to leave together," and I guess in the end, that is what happened...

blackcat77

@slimjim: If you stopped watching the show at the end of season four then how in hades can you judge the finale?! Much less whether this opinion piece on the finale is remotely accurate?

Atilla the Bun

God(s) that was terrible, they should have never shown the pilot on Saturday, how far the show has fallen (down a well of course) became visceral. Side note: Did anybody catch the swishy guitar-tech at the DriveShaft show, flouncing about to get help? That band should be called MudFlap anyway...

mr.november

"...what we got was a show with an engaging, mysterious plot, that was constantly being sabotaged by fool writers who thought that what the audience really wanted was, like, a love triangle. A love square!"

Actually, a LOT of people liked the whole love triangle/square thing. I don't know why anyone would insist that the audience didn't care about it.

That's number one.

Number two, what do you mean EVERYONE is dead? Well, yeah, the show skipped to the, uh, "future" where "everyone" is dead... but only because everyone dies at some point. Instead, complain that the show skipped too far into the future (which it didn't entirely do either). This was just a convergence of everyone's life lines or whatever, meeting at the same point regardless of when they died. If you want to ignore the flash sideways, then not everyone died. Kate, Sawyer, Ben, and some others are still alive. I suppose you could continue the series with Ben and Hurley and whoever else... but since no future seasons are planned, then THIS is how you tie up these loose ends.

But they still have yet to explain certain details about Walt, the smoke monster, and the Kwon child... then again, I suppose these are things that should be explained at the same time the futures of Ben, Hurley, Kate, and Sawyer are explained. And in regards to that, the only thing I can say is...

LOST: THE MOVIE

@sparklyharempants: Love you Miss Sparkly, but you shouldn't base your impression of this show on this recap. It is grossly inaccurate.

Atilla the Bun

@superbunny: Why are people saying this?! ONLY the flash-sideways could be considered "a dream," and even that isn't really accurate. It's almost definitely real, just not in the same sense we thought it was real.

It should also be pointed out that the flash-sideways timeline was only around for the last season. So even if you consider that to be a cheap deception, it's only the last season that is cheapened, really.

kingofspain

@Yalie: Oh fuck you. It sucked.

bearheim

Now I'm really glad I've never seen an episode of this show. Jesus that's a piss poor ending.

sparklyharempants

Someone confirm to me that the death of all the characters makes a movie unlikely?

Please make it so.

Marriage_Iguana

I thought it totally sucked.

If the island was the real world, they should have explained how setting off a nuclear bomb didn't kill anybody. Or how all that time bouncing happened

And what, exactly, was the point in having Jack somehow wash out of the Cave of Light only to stagger around and die messily -- even if it was with the Good Old Dog next to him and in a way which brought the show full circle, albeit with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Better to have left him awash in the golden glow of his sacrifice.

Finally, I'm surprised nobody has yet mentioned the blatant ripoff of "Wrath of Khan" with the pulling of the cosmic plug in the cave.

And I'm not just being a jerk about this. The first couple seasons, I *loved* this show. In the middle, it seemed to lose it's way, and in the end, it was just muddled. I guess I really should expect it -- my two all-time favorite shows, Twin Peaks and Carnivale, did the same thing. But both of them at least had the excuse of not knowing whether or not they'd be renewed. Shame on you Mr. Abrams -- your loyal viewers deserved better.

blackcat77

@Yalie: They could have done both, however. Having the Flash-Sideways world turn out to be a nondenominational Heaven would have been okay.

But only if the A-Story was of conniving, trickery, and intelligent, mystical double-crosses and surprises that the first six years had.

Two dudes fistfighting on a cliff's edge, then a cowboy airline pilot cooing, "C'mon, baby, make it; C'mon baby make it!" to so cliché, boring and staid that even Steve Guttenburg wouldn't use it.

Trai_Dep

Just end it on the Jack dying, some of the survivors flying away and that would have been fine with me. I would have been a lot more satisfied had the "purgatory" timeline never existed. It seemed the only purpose for having it was to satisfy the four year old with the questions, "are they dead? Are they in heaven now? Will they be together forever?" That screen time could have been put to better use filling in more of the island action which seemed rushed at times to make room for this "heaven" stuff.

I half expected the church was going to turn into a spaceship and all the "special" people were going to go back to their home planet in a twist no one would have guessed because it would have been the stupidest shit imaginable.

Noah Jacquemin

You know sometimes when a baby is crying and you dangle a new toy in front of it and it gets intrigued enough trying to figure out what the new toy is that it forgets to cry? This finale was the exact opposite, in that we were so busy crying that we temporarily forgot to try to figure out what the fuck it is the writers have been dangling in front of us for the last six years. So, I guess, on the level of treating its obsessive fans like easily distractable babies, it actually kinda worked.

Wendy_Kroy

I thought somehow Slocke would be winning but then something done in the sideways universe would ruin his plans. Even if it was "he didn't account for love!" it would have been better. I mean, basically the sideways universe was what? A waste of time? All that build up to SOMETHING turned out that all of them were dead, except they werent? Its RE-TARD-ED.

realpolitiker

@sophomoric: Wasn't the baby thing awesome? She felt emotion for the first time and it looks like she ordered a massive attack on Earth...thousands of ships entering Earth's atmosphere and the skies all over the world turning red...now that's a cliffhanger! They can't let us down too much next year...the worst that can happen is that they keep stealing the plot lines from the original "V"....but maybe, just maybe, they'll surprise us! Either way, who cares...there are Lizards, and spaceships and evil queens and the Earth is about to be annihilated. It's all we need.

Gawker should start doing recaps of "V" next year...please don't be too snobby and feel you're too good to recap such a "pedestrian" tv show. Perhaps you can even combine "Rupaul's Drag Race" with "V" for one super bitchy reacap!!

james_cambridge

I'm surprised Jack didn't wake up at the airport hearing his name as a last call for Oceania flight whatever - "The whole thing was just a dream."

This ending affirms my choice about ditching this show at the end of season four.

slimjim

@aprilphresh: It is SUCH a lame question. I especially love how everyone who asks it thinks they're being so clever.

FeeBeee

With Lost, the plot got cockeyed every so often, but there were rules that gave it consistency.

There always has to be a balance. Yet there's a second (and third, even) Jacob, but no opposite Man in Black.

A person thrown into The Light results in a crushed corpse and a Smoke Monster.

Having Jack unwittingly turn into Smoke Monster II, to Hurley's (and Jack's) horror would have been fantastic.

And what happened to Ben? Crafty Ben. Ben "I always have a plan" Linus.

Unless "plan" entails wandering around like a whipped puppy passively doing whatever anyone asked of him, including being Kate's walkie-talkie caddy.

Having Ben shriek in rage at being passed over again then hurling himself down into The Light would also have served that purpose.

Trai_Dep

@Myrna_Minkoff: Ana Lucia wasn't ready. They explicitly said so last week.

FeeBeee

@Cheruth: I believe there was a 2005 interview with JJ Abrams where he specifically denied that the characters were either dead or in purgatory. I think that's close enough.

Thrillho

@IWantToGoToThere: A dog could probably lay down next to the devil dying and I would cry. But Vincent laying next to Jack? Tearduct overflow.

Atilla the Bun

@superbunny: Except that's not what happened. Where did you get from the finale that is was all a dream?

Cripes people. There are criticisms to be made. This kind of bullshit is not. How 'bout you criticize what actually happened on the damn show?

Atilla the Bun

@Solomon Grundy: you RANG!!!!!!

Son-of-MonsterChalk

@Valkyrie607: I was wondering about them, too.

Mega-Panda

BS! The finale was fantastic. I feel very satiisfied. And they didn't all die. Hugo, Desmond, Ben, Kate, Claire, Miles, Richard and Lapidus all survived.

Mega-Panda

@Valkyrie607: And Richard and Frank and Miles and Jacob.

FeeBeee

Lost is like a book of drama, fantasy, mayhem, murder, birth, death, love and on the final page is written...

"and then I woke up. It was all a dream."

It's a cheap device.

superbunny

SO WAIT WAS JACKS SON TOTALLY PRETEND?

Green Line Coed

Let's just get Ben and Hurley running the island, making jokes and being bros and doing fun things.

That's an awesome idea, but as the resurrected Christ(ian) Shepard said tonight- it's time to move on.

@Valkyrie607: Yeah, hey. What the hell?

oldsplitfoot

Vincent made me cry.

IWantToGoToThere

What are you all talking about? Everyone knows Lost ended 2 years ago when some got off the island and some stayed on it. If they would have continued for 2 more seasons it would have been an incredible twisted clusterfuck that would make you resent ever having liked the show.

Like what if they all got to meet in fucking heaven?! Could you imagine how lame that would have been?!

bearheim

Lost, like many of life's most wonderful things, is best enjoyed while high. The lovely scenery makes up for the plot holes and when you think you're going to start bleeding out of your ears, you can always just go look at a tapestry or lava lamp.

Green Line Coed

@Yalie: Oh hon, the person you are responding to enjoyed it. What's your excuse? You watched something for six years you hated? No wonder you are so bitter.

Atilla the Bun

@Green Line Coed: aw shucks. go figure I get starred while drunk posting.

Green Line Coed

@DrZaius: Jacob forbid!

blackcat77

What evs. If your next "must see" disappoints you AT ALL in the first season, let it go and do something productive with that time. Wait and watch your fave series selectively on Netflix, or DON'T GET STARTED.

Life's too fucking short, y'all. :)

Begs2Differ

@octothorp: Brilliant.

Marriage_Iguana

@Alex9: Nice note, Alex. And I agree with you about what the writers decided would be the spiritual message of the series. The only problem I have with your idea is that the same thing could have been accomplished on Gilligan's Island. None of the conclusions you reached necessitated any of the mysterious elements -- the hatch, the others, the whole idea of the Dharma Initiative, and on and on and on. In fact, your interpretation would have been more powerful in a Lord of the Flies kind of setting rather than one that was salted with so much odd technology.

blackcat77

@bearheim: haha, well then I'm sorry for you. I guess you wasted your time watching it.

Yalie

@Marriage_Iguana: Why? I somebody going to make you watch a fucking movie any more than you were forced to watch the TV show?

Atilla the Bun

@blackcat77: many things were resolved and the characters were a means by which the island's secrets were revealed, but as the producers pointed out when stating their purpose for continuing the show the way they did, not everything has an explanation beyond the fact that it is simply life and there are certain mysteries which will remain just that. it all depends on how the show influenced you. I, for one, think that if a show leaves you thinking, it has done more for you than a concrete conclusion ever could.

Yalie

@Solomon Grundy: Your cavalier approach to all the TV shows I haven't watched either but have been told about for years is an inspiration to all of us who just don't give a shit about our friends favourite shows.

I heart you.

Marriage_Iguana

Ugh, I'm not a fan of this article at all. You're so far off...

@shortskid: And Michael is stuck on the island. And anyone else who wasn't at the church, just might not be dead yet.

FeeBeee

@lionboy: I lol'd.

33rd°

@Yalie: A show can be character driven so long as it doesn't lose sight of the thing that brought them all together in the first place. The way Jack's dad was talking, the island, and all it's mysteries, didn't really matter. All that counted was that everybody was there and they all found love and happiness, amen! That's bunk! Maybe the character issues were resolved, in an artificial, pasted-on sort of way, but it was still the ISLAND, not the characters, which drew me in. The characters should have been a means to reveal the secrets of the island, not just soap operas along the way.

blackcat77

They weren't "flash-sideways" -- they were "flash-reincarnation/pergatory"

...And I got that if you left the island EARLY, you got left out of the next leg of the eternal journey... (where ever that turns out to be). [Though the implication is that Ben will join them eventually]

I feel really sorry for AND STRONGLY OBJECT TO Vincent not being with the group in the Church -- he seemed important enough to Jack at his demise to have earned a place with the group.

I ain't gonna be impressed with Heaven if my dogs aren't there!!!

xxxciter

I just finished watching this amazing and absolutely beautiful finale, so please let me before I go to sleep share what I feel the show has been all about.

To be fully alive all of us have to go through life with, love and care for others. We need community to define our best and truest selves. Only with others can we have fulfilling and happy lives.

The people of Oceanic Flight 815 as Jacob said were lonely, unhappy people who went through life in misery. They crashed on an island and so were forced to get to know each other and work together to literally survive. Through many hardships they bonded and became a band of brothers and sisters.

This gave meaning to their lives, where it hadn't existed before. They learned to love: Jack and Kate, Charlier and Claire, Sawyer and Juliet, all of them really. They learned to let go of their egos and internal problems. In the process, they became different but also better.

A definitve example is Ben. Ben wanted to control others and the island. He did not care about anybody else. He only wanted to gain power, fulfill desire, any of the things we think we want when we are by ourselves. But Ben changed. He was redeemed. His forgiveness, the recognition and cleansing of his sins was only possible through other people. He forgave himself only when others forgave him and gave value to his life.

This was the same with all of them. They were hurt, damaged, full of regret for not being able to connect with others. This journey redeemed them, gave them purpose, gave them love so that they could love themselves and be loved.

This sense of community was what created the flash sideways. In very beautiful scenes they recognized each other through touch, through babies. And what are babies but the literal creation of human life by the literal joining of two others. This is why I think the Others--great name because they were seperated from other people--could not have children. Because they were literally and emotionally seperated from society, from community. Under Ben, they could not form close relationships. So their babies died, which is a thematic way of saying you need others to live.

Think about Aaron. He lived because his mother and his stepfather Charlie were already in a community. They loved each other.

And what was the the point of the Man in Black. He had never been loved. His mother had raised him for a dark purpose: to replace her so she could escape. Her love was entirely selfish. Thus he distrusted people and saw the worst in them. It is not an accident that he had no name. We are given names by our loved ones. What we call each other is the first and greatest mark of identity we have. We become friends and lovers through our names. MIB did not have that. He was unloved, apart from community so he became evil and had a low opinion of others. It is ironic that he wanted to leave the island. Where would he go? He couldn't join society because he was permanately apart both emotionally and physically.

In this finale, we learned that sideways world was heaven. Heaven is other people. Sartre once said Hell is other people, that we are destined to be alone because other people will hurt you, they are corrupt, they destroy. It is what MIB believed.

But he was wrong and Jack Shepard proved it. He came to the island a broken, tortured man who had an inferiority complex and a very selfish desire to fix things, not for others but to assauge his own damaged psyche. Throughout the series, living in a community, loving and making friends with others, he fixed himself. He learned to help others not because it was good for him, but because it was good for them. He was a doctor who literally saved lives. At the end, he became a man who literally saved lives by meaning it, by earning it. It was not professional and therefore cold; it was given out of love. He sacrificed himself because he truly wanted to and so finally became a whole man. He truly lived the promise of his name: Shepard. Change a vowel and you have a leader of a community. Christian Shepard. Change a vowel and you have two words for charity, the Golden Rule and community.

And so the ending. They were in heaven but could only see that they were if they remembered their lives. Through contact with each other, they remembered them and so bonded and became happy an fulfilled. They had been unable to recognize where they were because they were still alone. But contact with each other triggered their memories and those memories were with each other. That gave their lives and their afterlives meaning. Lost was saying that life has value only with others. Even if there is no literal heaven, we can make heaven on earth by having friends, having love and being in communities. This has been the true theme of the show and why if you were focused only on plot points, you missed the rich point of this series.

As Jack once said: We either live together or we die alone. Or, in other words: You All Everybody.

Sorry for the repetitiveness. It is late and I am tired. These are my impressions of what this finale and this show have been all about. I am going to bed. Two quotes from the finale sum it up:

Ben apologizing for killing Locke: "I was selfish."

Kate to Claire leading her off island so that she and both can raise their son: "Let me help you."

Alex9

@CrayonSmoothie: Well, what Max described was completely inaccurate.

contradicto

@Cory: Hey, it's $8.75! Have some journalistic integrity!

@missing_piece: That's nice. Why on earth did we have to sit through HOURS of WAAAAAAAAAAAAALT? So we could feel warm and fuzzy because Jack and Kate looked cute next to each other in the pew as the light washed over their faces? Bullshit. He's a character, if it's character-driven why make such a huge deal out of him and then...nothing.

theMiracle

@LeeMarvinsPants: The Brady Bunch also ended that way.

Poor Cindy, falling into the cement mixer...

OctaveDoctor

@Max Read: And covered in odd white goo. No blood though, so she might yet save the hideous dress.

33rd°

@Atilla the Bun: Early in the show I thought that the dog might be something more than just a dog, but that never panned out. I guess they couldn't let the Island's Very Own Christ Figure die all alone, but I believe it would have been better with wither Hurley or Ben or both. It would have been a lot more meaningful than just handing Hugo a plastic bottle full of water.

blackcat77

@Atilla the Bun: Dog spelled backwards is god, just sayin'.

BruceGoose

@Smackdab: I don't think anyone misunderstood that quite obvious point. The author's problem is instead that half of every episode all season has been devoted to some cheap fantasy-land heaven.

NexusRanger

@Green Line Coed: I watched the first 3 seasons completely baked off of my ass. I'm with you.

Mothergooch

@rootyb: Ending a story in death is one thing. Telling an entire story only to find out at the end that it was an elaborate dream that held no real weight is an entirely separate kind of bullshittery.

NexusRanger

@Pinekatz: Unhearted.

NexusRanger

@Cheruth: The Island wasn't necessarily purgatory in the truest sense, but it definitely was a crucible.

It served the same purpose as purgatory, so it's easy to draw the comparison. It's all the end's fault really though - if the end was different, this conclusion couldn't/wouldn't be drawn.

CarbonFalcon

Well I loved it... almost... what I didn't like was the "AHHHH WE KNOW FROM BEFORE" moments that took half of the show... other than that, I actually really liked the way the main story ended and that we got a season long epiloge...

I also didn't like that jack didn't turn in Smokey2.0.

It would have been so much more awesome if Jack's eye had closed...

...then it cut to Walt, opening his eye on the plane, him exclaiming "Woah!", then title.

Or we could have gone with new-age religious bullshit, that works too.

33rd°

@Cheruth: Um, this. Jesus, are there some bitter wanna be writers out there or what? No, jackasses, they came up with something better than you. Deal.

Atilla the Bun

@pechorin214:

have fun on grey's anatomy

Cheney Guevara

@FightingChance: Run run run to the library when the clock strikes "open" tomorrow! I promise you will fall so in love with it.

snugbug

@snugbug: I have not - yet. I remember pouring over the wikipedia article about the author though - amazing stuff, a story unto itself.

@FightingChance: You're stating some reasonable things here but really, a dozen graphs are not necessary to do so.

I've never, ever watched Lost either, but I find the mass hysteria a bit LOL-worthy. And I adore people with weird, obsessive fetishes, in general.

Also: Have you read a book called The Little Prince?

It's like Lost + Philosophy 101 + space travel + Dr. Seuss + David Lynch + delicious French humor + your mom telling you she loves you, which makes you feel embarrassed in the moment but makes you weep tears of gratitude later + proto-eco mindset + gentle, anti-capitalist manifesto written by an aristocrat.

Oh, and it's a children's book written in 1943. Allegedly.

snugbug

@nite_brite: Couldn't agree more.

I'd like to write up a little something that I think will offer some unique ideas, as a person who has never watched Lost and only know of the show and it's events from posts such at this on Gawker and elsewhere.

Wait! Wait, stop. This isn't going to be about superiority, or schadenfreude. I offer this as someone who loves stuff like Lost - a mysterious universe, where you want to learn the rules so you can understand how their world operates.

I think we should start with something that I have not seen a lot of people talk about, and that's the context of what Lost is, and I don't mean what's happening on the show, but how the show came to be. The medium is important here, because different mediums have different realities about how they convey stories.

Think of the perfect medium for content control - books, right? One creator/author, unlimited 'budget' (if you can write it, you can have it), practically unlimited time, no limitations with regards to characters, etc. In most (all?) cases, the core idea of the work can be fully expressed through the content of the book, start to finish. There's no conflict of interest - the author has a story to tell, period.

Let's think about something similar, but has different rules - movies. A movie is not (typically) made by one person. Because it takes many people to make a movie, and perhaps more importantly, takes many people's money to make a movie, the work itself must adapt to service the needs of more than one person. This can influence things like details, plot, ending, etc. Certainly you've heard of movies being changed based on test screenings to demographic audiences. This is damaging to the initial idea of the work, because it is being changed (in some cases maybe for the better, but I would think this is rare since design-by-committee often produces poor product).

Now let us think of how a TV show operates - a TV show on 'free' TV no less. Requiring a bulk of it's funding to come from sold advertising space, a television show cares first and foremost about ratings share, since the producers are often in the drivers seat (more so than more glamorous movies, where directors and content creators may have enough fame to obtain all the resources and clout they want). Not only that, as a work that continues on over time, many people (in the case of Lost, hundreds, maybe over a thousand directly?) look to a show's continuous production as steady work.

With this said, all these mediums actually begin with pitch - a seed statement, let's say one to three sentences long. So, at some point, J.J. Abrams writes down the following:

"LOST is about a group of survivors living on an island after their plane crashes. What they don't know, is the island _________. Ultimately, _________. " (sections left blank for obvious reasons.)

This was Lost is it's most pure form - a work with a beginning and ending. But being a TV show, the factors I listed above came to influence the course of the show in ways that hurt this original expression. The show became popular. Producers greenlit more episodes than there was content for. Actors quit or would be forced to leave the show over time, introducing more alterations to the plot to compensate. Some actors may have even been able to negotiate contracts where they would appear in X number of episodes a season, despite their characters showing up later and not making sense in relation to the events of the show (the 'flash-sideways' universe I read about could easily have been a writer's way of keeping the actors on camera. 'Dead' characters re-appearing as ghosts or the smoke monster are the same idea). Abrams moves on and other writers are bequeathed the reins, extinguishing much of the drive to deliver a specific ending; in fact, the later writers may have looked upon Lost as a challenge to ride out the show as long as possible while keeping the experience interesting, in deference of all the cast and crew of the show. It is/was their livelihood, after all.

What I'm saying is, Lost existed in a medium where the deck was always stacked against it as a work. When the show began, the subtext was "Pay attention to everything, because everything is important (the inference being 'You will then be rewarded'); but through the factors that TV and time brings, it became "Everything wasn't actually important." And so, those of you who were engrossed in this universe, trying to understand it's rules felt betrayed to a degree, as was said by Max, it was a plot driven story where the plot was interesting but the characters were not, but became more and more about the characters as it was plain to see the plot could never reach specific conclusion based on the details already given.

Other issues contributed to this unfocused feeling, such as forcing fans to go to other mediums (internet games, etc) to obtain 'cannon' information, which I have never cared for (I think a work should be self-contained in one environment. Sometimes it works pretty well, ala Halo 2). Also, a book and movies are stand alone events that typically one person takes as a whole. A long form TV show, especially in this day and age, allows many fans lots of time to discuss and debate a work before it's conclusion, which has obviously colored expectations of what makes a satisfying resolution.

So this is what I thought of Lost as a show, and what I thought that it's viewers felt as the show progressed. Sorry for some of the run on sentences, it's late and I wanted to get this out before I lost (heh) it.

All in all, I'm glad they took a chance on Lost and glad that it got made, despite never having watched it.

@blackcat77: Plus it would make the whole "Live together, die alone" speech a little silly.

JohnMora

MAX READ'S POST ABOUT THE LOST FINALE WAS INCREDIBLY DUMB #rants #lost

exquisitestereo

I also thought the finale was fantastic. I just want to know if all of the 'glad I ditched the show in season x' people out there are seriously judging a show using a 6-x year absence and this review. Watch for yourself and jusge, or shut up!

For the rest of us, the plane was loaded with explosives, right? So they all did die.

Michal and Ben had done things to break formt he group. So they still needed to work this out before they can move on.

But Jacks goal was always to get them off of the island. Not leave them as whispering ghosts. So he and our 'Christian Shepard' led the flock into heaven.

stwf

@afropique: I think gestation works differently in purgatory.

Kaj Skjelstad

Disclaimer: I'm tired right now, and I'm not even sure if this even makes any sense the more I try to read what I've written below. But I think I'm angry at Lost.

---

So the worst part of this finale? It could have happened at any point in the series and still made just as much sense.

Remove the flash-backs and flash-forwards from any season of Lost - and I mean any season of it - with the flash-sideways of this season and you still get the same narrative.

And that's why it's a poor ending.

A good ending is built up to. It requires more than just a starting point; it needs rising action, it incorporates information and clues provided along the way, it reflects the changes and growth of your characters over the period their tale is told.

Presented as Lost did here, though, they could have reached the same conclusion without any single one of the show's arcs. Without any of the rising action.

Why have the characters travel through time? Why have Jin and Sun separated for two seasons? Why have Desmond fight so hard to prevent Charlie's death? Why kill Sayid, then bring him back to life only to kill him again?

Regardless of how any of these arcs are resolved, eventually all the characters would have died at some point in history and entered into the flash-sideways universe, where that self-contained mini-series could have been told and reached the exact same outcome.

So, in the end, Lost wasn't a story. In stories, events occur that determine the ultimate outcome of the finale.

Instead, we got a bunch of half-baked ideas that a couple guys thought would be cool, sold to us as something "epic" and "revolutionary," but in reality was just a reinvention of the prime-time soap opera.

Poop Cooper

and it was allllllllllllll a dweam - the only thing missing was Bobby Ewing in the shower....................

Michaelgh

I think I was more mad 1/2 way through the finale when I thought the alternate reality was the writer's way of being able to destroy everyone but still have them end up alive and happy.

Oh wait, that's what happened anyways. I said it during season 3 and I'll say it now:

FUCK THIS SHOW.

Travis Gohr

@stwf: I actually liked the finale too, but I don't think you really understood it...

RedLineRage

What I hated the most, were the knowing looks everyone gave each other. The corny, loving looks accompanied by gratitude and affirmations. "I love you man! We were all dead all the time except this was the most important part of my life so as my life flashes before me you were there too." FOR. 6. YEARS. BARF.

doggotmyshoes

@Federov: I prefer comedies, or hard news/documentaries. I know, right? Personal taste: it's so personal.

Solomon Grundy

@eleusiswalks: Okay. Only darkskinned black men don't go to heaven. Good. Now I know heaven is nothing like prison!

jennifa0jenny

Hey, new guy. Leave the recaps to Lawson.

eleusiswalks

@Smackdab: But how do you explain Mrs. Widmore/Hawkins?

She seemed to possess the same type of knowledge in the ring store where she first instructed Desmond to go to the island, as she did in the sideways world where she told Desmond they weren't ready yet. Not to mention everything she knew at the lampost.

How did she know about the island, the people on the mainland and the afterlife? Was she dead? Did Desmond speak to a ghost?

jennifa0jenny

@Marriage_Iguana: haha thanks

Solomon Grundy

@afropique: They were in sideways/heaven. There was no need for bloody babies or hot water. All pretend!

jennifa0jenny

@Brian Phillips: Rose was there.

eleusiswalks

@Valkyrie607: Okay wow. Black people don't go to heaven now?

Brian Phillips

How do I become a writer at gawker? I've taken a few creative writing courses and I can interpret the art a little better than this piss poor review.

Knyght

Closure. I loved the finale, especially the final 20 minutes.

SC_Lane

Wait wait wait, even though Hurley was in charge of the island HE STILL DIDN'T GET THIN?!!

Travis Gohr

I call BS on Sawyer. That is one hot daddy. I thought last night the creators were gonna rip his clothes off and munch.

plasticene

@Alex9: For me it was just a beautiful ending to an amazing show and Alex9, you have summed it up just lovely.

I have been sobbing my heart out since 5am (UK time) - it's now after noon and I'm still sniffly.

x

petite_anglaise

@eleusiswalks: You do know I'm joking, right? Except for the heaven being nothing like prison part.

jennifa0jenny

@jennifa0jenny: Eloise clearly had a revelation in sideways world just like everyone else. Like Ben, she chose to stick around in the purgatory realm and work her shit out (or Daniel's shit out, or whatever) rather than move on with the Losties. That's why she wanted to make sure they weren't taking her son with them.

In the regular world, Eloise had knowledge of the future because of the journal she sent back to herself in the past.

eleusiswalks

It was a fucking 2.5 hour clip show.

mamacrass

@Poop Cooper: That's fair. The Walt thing is a serious dropped ball, and even with the kid growing up too fast they should have done -something-. Otherwise I think people should chill out.

eleusiswalks

@xxxciter: Aww! Maybe Vincent was keeping ghost-Michael company? Or he could have been waiting for Walt to die before he was ready to let go?

petite_anglaise

@eleusiswalks: Walt.

Poop Cooper

@Myrna_Minkoff: I think Faraday wasn't there because his mother wasn't ready to let him move on. Miles probably wants to stay with his father and chances are Ana Lucia still has issues she needs to work out. Also, I don't think Ana Lucia spent the most significant part of her life or found true love on the island.

jennifa0jenny

@Rachel Briggs: Yes, being disappointed with the ending of a TV show is just like being brutally gang-raped. You are a moron.

eleusiswalks

@jennifa0jenny: Eko quit the show and presumably did not want to come back. Walt would not have been with these people he knew very briefly when he was a child. Michael has about as much claim on the bonds of their friendship as Charles Widmore. I get where you're going with this but it's not a really compelling argument.

eleusiswalks

@lobstr: lol yeah, it's funny having absolutely no clue why some guy's melodramatic trudge through the beach is so clearly fraught with significance and emotion. it makes it all quite campy (though for lost i had to start cleaning my parlor because it was getting too confusing).

Solomon Grundy

@FightingChance: This post made me feel a lot better. Of course, some of my anger stems from the fear that because Lost bungled up this ending so severely I'm concerned this kind of serialized television may never get the kind of fan-following it needs ever again due to the sour taste left in everyone's mouth.

Ultimately, I believe Lost was good for TV. Unfortunately, this past season, Lost itself was not good TV.

Poop Cooper

@CrayonSmoothie: This is an absolutely terrible summary that doesn't in any way describe the actual episode, so you might want to rethink.

eleusiswalks

@NexusRanger: That is in no way what happened, though. Did you watch the finale?

eleusiswalks

@KelseyElle: Eloise Hawking was explained like two years ago. The Egyptian motifs are pretty easily explained by "the island is hella old and people have lived here for centuries", which the Allison Janney episode displayed. What more do you want?

eleusiswalks

@Alex9: Lovely comment, very insightful. I think you are right.

@jles: If you think the Sopranos didn't have a clear and very apparent resolution, you did not pay attention.

eleusiswalks

@Max Read: Dude they cleared up most of the mysteries. If you really need your hand held the Lostpedia freaks have a pretty huge compendium of all the answers. Clearing up anything else (with the exception of Walt, which I think is indeed a bad writing issue) would have been entering "The Force is midichlorians" territory.

eleusiswalks

@PattiF: There were no gay people on the show, which is another problem altogether.

I am not sure Aaron was really 'there', exactly. The mechanics of the sideways reality were left largely unexplained, as I think is appropriate.

eleusiswalks

@emanze: He is staying with Danielle and Alex in order to spend more time working out his demons, was my assumption.

eleusiswalks

I stopped watching when Eko was killed off and all I want to know is what did the numbers mean?

@jennifa0jenny: After some of the comments in the liveblog last night it is seriously not all that far-fetched to think you were being completely serious.

eleusiswalks

I don't know, but I liked it. Besides, everything on the island happened and once they died, they went to the flash sideways world that Juliet created thanks to setting off the bomb. It wasn't as beautiful as the Six Feet Under finale, but I was satisfied.

cpjones

"I have taken a creative writing class or two (can you tell?) and do you know this thing they teach you? "Don't end your story with all your characters being dead."

Did your creative writing teachers ever hear of Hamlet? Apparently not.

mrs_weasley

Points of contention:

No word on what the Flocke/Smokey/MIB name was.

All that ancient Egyptian writing and imagery was a red herring and never explained or even hinted at.

Didn't the plane Kate, Sawyer, Miles, Claire and Lapidus take off in have exposives in it so when the engine started it would expode? What happened with that?

Jack lied "it all matters". As it turned out, none of it did. At all.

I feel cheated somehow. The series ending for Land of the Lost was better than this. Seriously.

TurdBlossom

Lost was a character-driven story, and the finale did an incredible job of wrapping it all up. It was fantastic, and if they had spent the whole time just giving you quick mythology answers, you would have bitched that they were too simplistic or otherwise unsatisfying. A mystery show can leave you with some mystery.

HotSoup

@Poop Cooper: Walt was special, just like Hurley and Miles were special in their own ways, that's all. And the Others wanted him to use as a tool to get rid of the castaways and protect the Island, not because of his "powers." That's my interpretation, FWIW.

mrs_weasley

it was lame

Wiffy

@MrInBetween: I think the dog was there so Jack wouldn't die alone. But I don't think the dog died at that moment. Of course, he died at some moment- just not then. (What?)

roxymilo

Still waiting for Gilligan and the Professor and Maryan

Meercat

All in all, I wish I could pretend the 6th season never happened and the show ended on the 5th season's white light. I would have had a little bit more respect for the show.I can't believe the writers who came up with the first 5 seasons are the same ones that came up with the last.

irreligious

I guess Shakespeare was a wussy then...

williamlapt

The whole thing kinda reminded me of "The Last Temptation of Christ." Except not as Scorsese-y.

GerryMander

I grew tired of this show after two seasons. I think I made the right decision to stop watching it.

homoviper

Flash sideways was just a redux of the movie Jacob's Ladder - identical in all aspects including lighting, edits, etc... luckily I love that movie so I'm okay with a tribute, but they should have written a bit more about the original Island storyline and answered some of the sci-fi questions.

Bdobbs

@mrs_weasley: And I've taken about a hundred creative writing classes as well as taught them. Here's what I know: Never say never.

manchops

@juustuunder: Also, not very helpful to those of us who only saw snatches of Season 1, but still wanted a recap of the finale.

Sigh, still so glad I never got into this show.

jesbelle

I kinda liked it actually. And I think it went a little deeper than all that. Think the closing credit shots of the crashed plane. I think they all could have died in the crash and the whole show is what-if of imagination as a way to deal with, wait for it, loss.

manchops

I thought it was beautiful.

SALVATlON

@destor23: Patrick Duffy agrees.

Greenspanner-in-the-Works

@TurdBlossom: No, MIB removed the booby traps from the plane.

And it did all matter. All the deaths were real. They reunited in the afterlife.

cassiemajestic

What's weird is, never having seen lost, except for in commercials and random clips here and there, I still had a feeling that this is exactly where the show was headed from the very beginning. So glad I didn't bother.

@cpjones: Nothing will ever be as beautiful as the Six Feet Under finale.

juustuunder

Oh, stop. I understand that this is the internet and all but this is not a very thoughtful rant.

juustuunder

@Poop Cooper: That is smart and pretty stated, for being tired...and I agree.

jasonaut

@MissNormaDesmond: Ah, yes, excellent point and extra points for reading comprehension, which I will take away from my overall score!

pmarble

@eleusiswalks: oh yeah? What'd I miss?

jles

@badasscat: Ha! Yes, I was thinking about the parallels to Twin Peaks myself. Thank God the producers gave themselves an endpoint so the show didn't suffer quite as much as TP did towards the end.

I've tried to suggest this elsewhere, but the notion that we should get answers to everything denies what was best about the show -- the struggle between varying philosophies being played out by characters and events. The "answer," of the finale was, to me, that it doesn't matter, of course, in the end what religion or philosophy you espouse; what matters is that you live with a sense of respect for and connection to your fellow man (and woman). And maybe, if you were more alone in life, you will remain in many ways alone in death (see, Ben, Farraday, Ana Lucia).

I think the simplicity of that humanist notion is also what a lot of the haters are reacting to. Too bad, because they are missing out.

pmarble

Hey Max, I'm pretty sure that you are also not supposed to start a story with a person waking up. So maybe the rules you learn in a creative writing class were never exactly guidelines for this show?

cassiemajestic

@mrs_weasley: Different! All killed is okay. All were dead is just the same as "it was all just a dream!" Wussy.

@Meercat: Now THAT was a character-driven show.

MsStabby

@doggotmyshoes: Swallow that vomit. They were only dead in the sideways dude.

This "I'm really dead but think I'm alive'' thing has already been overdone. In "The Sixth Sense'' with the "I see dead people'' annoying runt and even before in Adrian Lyne's "Jacob's Ladder'' with Tim Robbins. So I ws like "what the??..."' cuz I couldn't believe they were resorting to that tire old story line. I love me "Lost'' but I'm glad it's over.

plasticene

@Smackdab: I am also going for that 'everyone dies SOMEtime' idea so that not everyone in the church necessarily died in the crash. Here are two questions I have though, not out of snarkism but curiosity--any takers?

-What was up with Hurley's kinda reproachful glane at Ben when Ben said he wasn't coming in just yet at the church?

-In the credit-rolling scene there is the iconic layout of the wrecked plane on the beach obviously just having happened. There are no survivors, no chaos, no one wandering around--is this because everyone died or because no one had woken up yet or what?

jaxdesert

@TurdBlossom: Smokey took the explosives off the plane, put them in a backpack, and switched it with Jack's so the sub blew up.

mballback

@Alex9: Thank you. I have had such mixed feelings about the show, because it hurt my heart to watch the ending, but everyone around couldn't stop talking about what let down it was. I still am not 100% ok with the finale, but your explanation has made me more at peace with it.

@doggotmyshoes: This is what really got me. Now I admit I saw the first episode of Lost many years ago and haven't tuned in since, despite always hearing how great it is from everyone around me. I knew that it had a deep and confusing plot so if I was going to start watching I'd have to watch all the past episodes already, which just was too numerous to happen. I did want to see the finale, even though I knew I had no idea what would go on, just because it was the finale.

I totally didn't get it (no surprise, right?) As an outsider, the flash forward, backwards sideways is totally lost on me of course, but despite not knowing what the show was about I can't imagine that finale was great. It seemed like half of it, as dog points out, was just people looking lovingly at each other and hugging? I mean did you see that part in the church? It was literally just 5 minutes of happy smiles and hugs. It was so poorly done, it practically cheapened human emotion for me. Not that there shouldn't have been any hugging, but seriously that's all they did. And then that scene ended and that was it. I guess for some people who had been through the show for 6 years would be glad to see everyone reunited in one place, that was obviously lost on me since I don't know who anyone is, but I guess I would have expected a more extraordinary type of ending from a clearly extraordinary show.

Vartan84

@manchops: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso... this was not.

The writing was crap.

superbunny

@Chris Braak: At the end of Hamlet, all the MAJOR characters are dead: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonious, even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for crap's sake. Fortinbras is in, I believe, two scenes and Horatio is just a supporting player. So there's that.

Everyone is dead at the end of Lost because, as Christian noted, everyone eventually dies. The point was that, in death, they met back up with the people who meant the most to them in life.

And you're obviously ignoring the point that my statement was a purposefully humorous observation that his writing teachers are full of shit.

mrs_weasley

@eleusiswalks: Yes, I understand that - but *why* did she have to sacrifice Daniel? What was the larger plan that made that necessary? You know?

And I'm just using that one as an illustrative point. There are countless other things on the show that were supposed to be so important - not just little mysteries, but drivers of the larger plot and big island mystery - that they decided were unimportant in the end and focused on romantic relationships.

Apparently I'm not the fan they cared to sate. And I'm fine with that, but I just wish I had known I was only watching a soap opera.

saralovesyou

@eleusiswalks: Amen.

ryan the temp

@mrs_weasley: I think the point is, unless you're fucking shakespeare and you can fucking make that shit AWESOME, don't end a story with all your characters being dead.

carlton cuse= SO NOT SHAKESPEARE

girlzilla

@Chris Braak: So some died in the crash and the rest died on the island later of hunger, injury, disease. Does there have to be only one answer?

manchops

@DTurkin: No, he didn't. Christ. HE DIED WHEN HE DIED ON THE ISLAND. They all did. Shannon got shot. Charlie drowned. It all happened. Don't mistake they fact that they chose to bookend the series with a REFERENCE to the opening shot as it being the same shot. It wasn't. The plane that was flying overhead was Lapidus, Miles, Sawyer, etc., not Flight 815.

chase.mitchell

@saralovesyou: Clearly she had to sacrifice Daniel in order for the causal loop to right itself and thereby provide her with the journal, which gave her insight into other future events and enabled her to know about Desmond et cetera.

I would agree that the Widmore plot feels a bit like filler.

eleusiswalks

This post just made me so angry- it was a beautiful and fitting ending.

I, for one, cared much more about the characters and their emotional journeys than I did about finding out the minutiae of the island's mythology.

And for the record, anyone who walked away with the message "they have been dead the whole time" is completely misunderstanding. They haven't been dead the whole time -- they all just died EVENTUALLY and used the alternate timeline as a place to find each other again. Everything on the island happened. WHAT HAPPENED HAPPENED!

ryan the temp

I thought it was a beautiful finale. It didn't answer all, or most, questions, but there was no way it could. I'm okay with them wrapping up the series with the main relationships in the spotlight. Although, really? Fine ass Boone is alone in the end? I guess they need players in the afterlife.

I'm thinking the thousands of people who are complaining about the ending on the Internet this morning have thousands of different ways they want it to end. There is no way to make everyone happy so I hope at least JJ and Darlton are satisfied as it their story.

PJamma

Glad I never bothered getting involved with the show in the first place, even though I wanted to.

I'm really getting tired of all these "every mystery will be explained" shows because it seems like nobody can write a good ending to them. Lost, BSG, et cetera. Maybe if we did TV like the Brits and only had shows go a couple of seasons with a conclusion...

edosan

@eleusiswalks: I had no idea. I intended to join the live blog but decided to watch Lost unmolested. It was beautiful.

jennifa0jenny

@TurdBlossom: Smokey took the C4 from the plane and put it in Jack's bag.

And yes, it all mattered. It all happened, and it all mattered. Jack sacrificed himself so that his friends could escape. Hurley and Ben ruled the island for god-knows-how-long. Desmond got home to Penny.

The time they all spent together was (clearly) the most important time in each of their lives. Before the island, they were lonely, aimless. The island gave them a family and a purpose, so their souls found each other later, after they had all died, in limbo.

Sappy? Maybe. But I thought it was fantastic.

chase.mitchell

@mrs_weasley: Horatio?

CroutonShield

@mrs_weasley: Hamlet doesn't end with everyone being dead. It ends, actually, with a couple key people (Fortinbras, Horatio) being still alive. Also, you're overlooking the point that this statement was a purposefully humorous oversimplification of the more accurate phrase "Don't end your story with, 'it turns out they are all dead and possibly in heaven'."

@eleusiswalks: I'm having trouble fully committing to the idea of the island events being 100% real. The Losties being in the sideways world/way station to heaven seems plausible whereas sending journals to yourself from the past does not.

Christian made it clear that time (when) wasn't important and Miles quipped previous episode that he lived in New Otherton "30 years ago last week," which may indicate that what we think took place within a 30-50 year time line actually took place within the blink of an eye. For the viewers, the Losties were originally trapped on the island for 3 years but for the show it was 108 days. Adam & Eve were mistaken for 50 year old skeletons. And Taller Ghost Walt.

I think Eloise was a construct like the flash forwards, sideways and probably all of the events on the island. The ending credits showed a totally destroyed airplane on the beach. I could not tell if it was Lapidus' plane or the original 815. If it was the original plane the I think they all died in the crash and Desmond in a ship wreck. Charlotte and Faraday are different. I think Faraday's experiments led not to time travel, but travel between life and death. Through his calculations the frieghter was able to travel to the afterlife but they ended up dead on the island anyway.

jennifa0jenny

@kingofspain: Because in writing it's one of the first things you learn NOT to do.

Don't use a cheap device at the end of a story to justify the fantastic or complicated.

Not that it's a dream, that the plot reveal, is LIKE when a writer inserts that it's a dream at the very end to explain the inexplicable.

superbunny

@afropique: My friends and I were watching the show with their newborn baby and we concluded that the men who write scripts either aren't with people who have babies and/or don't attend their own child's birth.

My favorite thing was when Juliet did the ultrasound on Sun's tiny stomach and the fetus on screen was a third trimester one.

saralovesyou

@elipton1: I honestly don't care about 90% of the answers we didn't get, and I thought the finale was fulfilling and a good way to send the series out. That said, throwing in mysteries with no intention of revisiting them just to make your show more mysterious for the ratings makes me feel dirty all over. It doesn't sting just a little bit knowing you were trying to figure out what was going on when you were actually working with hundreds of pieces that didn't matter AT ALL? You could have made 5 finales, each one with a different theme based on how much was going on, and that's just lazy writing. I signed up for a show that knew where it was going, it looks more like they figured it out midway through season 3.

theMiracle

@manchops: Except it's not; the show plainly states that they did not all die in the plane crash.

There was only one turbine on the beach in the credits.

@snugbug: It's funny you mention this - there was actually an episode of Lost called The Little Prince, and apparently had connections to this book.

@JacquesPaysan: Think of the time you spent not watching this show, and flash-back to thank your past self for your foresight.

puhctek

@eleusiswalks: That's not actually true. Part of explaining Eloise would involve explaining the whole battle between her and Widmore and why she knew Desmond was important and why she and Widmore seemed to have a very deep understanding and to be carrying on some separation from eons before.

Why did she have to sacrifice Daniel - sending him back to the island, knowing she would be the one to kill him?

And a million other things. I was invested in the mystery, not merely the characters, and the finale was just a shlocky religiousy disappointment.

saralovesyou

@mrs_weasley: I think what he means is all your characters HAVING BEEN dead all along, not that all the characters die during the course of the drama.

superlicious

@Begs2Differ: LOST is the last show that I will let myself get "involved" with. I really enjoyed the show, but I am glad that it is over now. I have now gained back one night a week for half the year or so, its amazing how easy it is to waste your life in front of a television.

i_cant_think_up_a_scrn_name

@mikestopcontinues: I don't know. It looks like Jack died when the plane crashed.

DTurkin

@Atilla the Bun: LIKE.

Can you read?

It's the same type of device.

I remember reading a few seasons ago in a rumor that the solution to the mystery of Lost was that they were all dead.

And I remember thinking then, "no way, the writers wouldn't use such a cheap and obvious device."

superbunny

@plasticene: Though the conceit worked very well in Flann O'Brien's novel "The Third Policeman," which I highly recommend.

tar8

That was a great concert, though.

PattiF

@Poop Cooper: I'm extremely surprised by this sort of reaction.

Knowing what @FightingChance said about the medium, I've been a little more generous with the show. I forgive things like Walt (which was obviously the biggest bug), because trying to write a cohesive story that is constantly in flux, over a 6-year span, with the input of hundreds of people is--well--impossible.

That said, with Lost, I've never felt like I had to overlook real crap. For instance, the X-Files forced viewers to watch through 9 seasons for about 3 seasons worth of good stuff. DS9 and B5 gave us a long form story, but at the cost of having to sit through dull first seasons. Meanwhile, in Lost, the only episode I didn't enjoy watching was that stupid tattoo episode. Otherwise, despite how I would have written the series if it was mine, I enjoyed the ride.

Season 6 required us to take a leap of faith with the sideways and I feel that it was paid off in the finale. Not only did the finale avoid the expected answer of "this is what happens if Team Jacob or Team Black wins", but it makes super sense. The bomb at the Swan didn't split Time into two timelines, it split Consciousness into two. Instead of the character's existing only in their first-person lives on the island, they were also shuttled into the outside-of-time afterlife where their group wish for redemption (a second chance) was played out in a third-person observation of their 'life' from the perspective of the outside-of-time in pantomime.

Maybe it's not right to suspect it, since I enjoyed the end (my favorite seasons were actually 5 and 2 though), but with a little more time to reflect, people's opinion might change.

I felt like Ralphie in A Christmas Story after he decoded the secret Little Orphan Annie message. "A crummy commercial!" ... for Christianity.

thwarted

@xxxciter: I like to think Vincent went straight to the next place.

pmarble

@jles: He got shot, dude. The guy walking into the bathroom all shifty was an enforcer retaliating after the gang war, and the sudden fade to black is exactly how "getting shot to death" is described a few episodes previous in a conversation between Tony and Bobby Bacala. They practically handed it to the audience, I do not understand why nobody gets this.

eleusiswalks

"I have taken a creative writing class or two (can you tell?) and do you know this thing they teach you? "Don't end your story with all your characters being dead." It is like cheating. It is worse than cheating! It is the wussiest thing a writer can do. And these smug dickheads went ahead and did it."

Umm... Shakespeare?

As for this review, you clearly have no soul.

Technically speaking it IS flash-sideways, because the afterlife, should it exist, would exist outside of the time-space continuum. Maybe a person spending time in creative writing classes can't speak coherently on even made-up science.

solomonrex

I know this is Gawker and you feel obligated to be all hater/shockey but this was poorly done, and wrong. There is a difference between character driven and plot driven. If you didn't feel emotionally invested in the characters you wouldn't give a fuck if the smoke up them. You're either too jaded, trying to be shocking for shocks sake(my bet) or it just went over your head.

Brett Daigle

@FeeBeee: Yes, I know they said that. But she "wasn't ready" because.....? Ready for what?

If we don't know what they're getting ready for, than it's not really an answer. Especially since this is a "place without time." Theoretically, she's had another 150 years to get "ready". And how the heck would Desmond know who was or wasn't ready? He's not God.

It was sloppy. They were very, very lazy in writing this.

Myrna_Minkoff

@Green Line Coed: He never had a son in the real world, if that's what you mean. But in the flash-sideways world, everyone got to redeem themselves and live their 'dream', and for Jack, that included being a father, as well as making up with his own.

scottishwildcat

@#2 who stayed outside. I don't know exactly why he stayed outside and didn't "move on", but my best guess is that he felt he didn't deserve it yet because of some of the terrible things he has done. He was probably the most ambiguous character and went back and forth from "good" to "evil" constantly.

I thought it was a great finale. I disagree with your article ENTIRELY! It's a character driven show.

@Cheruth: That makes a lot of sense.

@internetcommentman: All of this is so painfully true.

AlexKap

@PJamma: Sentimentality comes cheap, and this was truly a cheap ending.

Gregoire

This post rules.

cantabber

From a strategic point, I think it was a great way to end the series. There's people who want a standard TV show with concrete mysteries and then finally, answers. And that's what you got on the island. There's no questioning what happened on the island. Jack died. Hurley's in charge, Ben's helping, and everyone else flew off into the sunset.

But the sideways reality was introduced to draw attention back to the underlying themes of the show: Fate, religion, science, and why the hell is this happening? It was an abstract ending, and I'm not quite sure when everyone died or what the island was, but I think the point of the church was to say that it doesn't really matter because it's not true that you live together, die alone. Live together, die together and you'll find happiness. Maybe? (I don't know, this is what I'm telling myself, though)

The finale has a concrete ending to the plot of the first three or so seasons, as well as a more abstract ending to discuss forever because that's what the fans of LOST love to do.

@Chris Braak: Oh, for the love of Christ. I made a smart-ass remark. Sorry it wasn't humorous enough for you. But I'm really not interested in getting into a pissing contest about Shakepearean drama. You win, OK? Happy now?

mrs_weasley

@Dürer's Rhino: Eko was killed off because the actor wanted to leave the show. Not everything that happened in the 6 seasons was part of the ultimate story.

@cassiemajestic: @TurdBlossom: And the producers said a while back that MIB's name (or lack thereof) wasn't important or significant; they weren't ever going to reveal/give him one.

I am a little irked after being told repeatedly that the island is not Purgatory to have the characters end up in Purgatory except OFF the island. Kind of a "truthy" statement by the writers. And the way it was originally presented (as a result of the "reset") did not make much sense that it was a Purgatory. Anyways this is kind of typical of the show. Very good at occasionally touching the "oh shit!" part of your brain but not really connecting into an overarching complete thought. This is a deadly combination as it causes people to think they are seeing profound, groundbreaking television when really they are seeing sloppy ad-hoc plot lines dashed with some intriguing moments. I am a big fan of complex interleaving story lines but thought this series was not a good implementation.

internetcommentman

@Bdobbs: Also Places in the Heart.

@lostarchitect: that's what I was sorta getting, but thanks for actually laying it all out for me. One question, why did that one guy not go into the church at the end? He was the other guy still alive on the island with the big huge guy (who was in the church)--what if anything did that mean? Sorry I don't know there names

manchops

@plasticene: "Outward Bound [1923] is about a small, motley group of eight passengers who meet in the lounge of an ocean liner at sea and realize that they have no idea why they are there, or where they are bound. Each of them eventually discovers that they are dead, and that they're about to face judgment from an Examiner about whether they are to go to Heaven or Hell."

@manchops: No. you totally missed it. Not only did they not all die in the crash, everything that happened on the island was real. People made it off the island on the jet; Hurley and Ben stayed, etc. Jack died on the island with those others we saw die there throughout 6 seasons. Claire and Kate may have lived long lives and died 60 years later; we don't know when. Hell, Hurley could have lived 1000 years. Then, finally, when everyone was dead they created the "flash-sideways" world so they could "find each other" and "move on" together.

that's what happened. and it was dumb.

@mrs_weasley: Oh, right, also this:

Everyone is dead at the end of Lost because, as Christian noted, everyone eventually dies. The point was that, in death, they met back up with the people who meant the most to them in life.

Look, I GET what they were trying to say. Everyone gets it. We just think it's dumb.

And if that part is true, then why is Sayyid with Shannon at the end, instead of Nadya?

@mrs_weasley: Yes, I know how Hamlet ends. The point is that the play is structured in such a way that, by including characters who are alive at the end, we understand the events of Hamlet as taking place in an actual world, that has a culmination and consequence outside of Hamlet himself.

And, really, come on--your point wasn't that humorous. Besides, if you're ignoring his point in the first place, then your point doesn't actually make any sense.

@Chris Braak: "They were dead the whole time." I can care about people who die in the course of a film, especially if there's enough time to get to know then while they're alive and they're not a mom dying of cancer just so her bratty son can learn a life lesson and become a famous writer.

To be sure, there are critics who complain that the revenge tragedy format (which encourages maximum bloodshed, preferably onstage) is something a distraction from the poetry and psychology of Hamlet. But Shakespeare was savvy enough not to explain away The Tempest with "they all died in the shipwreck."

"I have taken a creative writing class or two..."

HA HA HA HA HA. I bet you have some LOST spec scripts you wrote saved on your computer, don't you?

It's a fuck'n TV Show! It was fine... Jebus, it's time wasting entertainment, not da dam dead sea scrolls, which were totally boring, get a frig'n life ass clown. The show and it's ending were just fine.

wallycrawler001

Did "The Others" all congregate at a Sizzler down the block? Didn’t see any of them at that church.

Glad I never wasted my time with a single episode.

TimmyTim

@superbunny: Full disclosure, I saw only some of season one, and the just watched the "recap" show before the finale and then the finale. But one thing I will say for Lost, hating the finale or loving it, it won the night for over the top amount of interest in it. To the point that even I had to watch it and I hadn't even been following it!

manchops

@plasticene:

@emanze: I like to believe that Michael Emerson said he didn't want to be involved in the wack attack in the church.

aprilphresh

@afropique: Judging from when Alison Janney was helping with Jacob/MIB's birth, I think the writers still believe in the stork. She turned around and immediately put them on a blanket. I'm no MD, but I'm pretty sure there's a cord.

aprilphresh

@eleusiswalks: Makes all sorts of sense, thank you.

emanze

@salientpartners.pe: Thanks again!

emanze

@puhctek: Don't worry. I still totally wasted that time watching 24 and Battlestar Galactica.

51,000 views here and another 40,000 on Gawker TV. Good or bad, pro or con - Lost created discussion, debate, and new heights in snark and sarcasm. That is the legacy.Snark: Carlton/Cuse were assholes on Kimmel with their lame "alternate" endings. Sort of degraded all that we were trying to wrap out heads around.Perfect ending (and already made by another commenter onGawker TV) Hurley, "so Dude" (filled with cup of Jacobean knowledge), Ben, Vincent on beach with Hurley explaining some of the twists and turns.

Erudite23

The appearance of Vincent, the dog, at the end was actually one of the nicer touches, a little spoonful of honey to wash the down the massive Human Centipede-levels of excrement being shat down our throats in the form of a Judeo-Christian denouement.

At the end of the day, this very same ending could be stapled to the back of any television show, just as it's often been used in many movies. (A certain February 2010 blockbuster used a similar device to far greater effect.)

It's a character driven show when convenient, mythology/science based at other times. For this final round, the cointoss landed on heads, as in headed for Touched By An Angel territory.

Gregoire

I didn't even have a chance to get really truly mad at the ending because one of my drinking partners started screaming "BULLSHIT THIS IS BULLSHIT" as soon as Jack's father appeared, like on repeat, and so I spent the last 15 minutes screaming at him to shut the fuck up, which was apparently my coping mechanism.

All I know is that if it turns out tonight that Jack Bauer's been dead all these years, I'm gonna cut a bitch.

@katekate is squared: Well, I think that type of commentary is completely useless and pointless, but I will tell you that I am a person who never watched this show, and I am on this thread because I just discovered this morning that Lost fanboys are HILARIOUS. Half of this thread sounds like a suicide cult!

@ryan the temp: "WHAT HAPPENED HAPPENED"...because of quasi-magical magnets that explain away the show's many, many inconsistencies, dead ends, and loose threads.

Super love/death/life/rebirth magnets.

Criminy

@H_in_Brooklyn: You still sound like you're 7. No one who comes and uses phrases like "It's time someone snarked the snarkers" or "get LOST in the white light" has any right to judge anyone else's writing, either in a positive or negative way. Because you're awful at writing!

@eleusiswalks: My thoughts exactly.

MyTelevisionSays

@Atilla the Bun: You can't be all "Um, this" and get bitchcakes towards people criticizing the show when the poster you are big upping literally says he also finds the writing choice debatable.

@mrs_weasley: You started the pissing contest...? Sorry that apparently 50% of the internet thinks Lost is stupid?

@PJamma: I know one way that would make a lot of people happy:

Answer the questons.

I'll admit to watching the entire finale without really ever having seen the show before.

I was content to be befuddled.

If I am not mistaken, the Big Guy with the sideburns won the $1,000,000 and Pontiac Azteck, right?

href="http://gawker.com/tag/wellyoumighthavechuckledin2005/">#WellYouMightHaveChuckledIn2005

It could have been spectacular if it were 1 hour long. The glacial pace of the last episode seemed calculated to wrench every last "Lost" dollar out of their hapless advertisers.

RonMwangaguhunga

Lost writers, producers, and cast: "You will get answers."

Audience: "Whatever, it's not like I was busy with anything else."

For levity if nothing else, here are the things I shouted/cried/laughed out loud about during the final:

1. Wasn't Claire gorgeous and 'TF has happened to her face in the interim??

2. When the ground starts shaking, move AWAY from the cliff, fellas....

3. Miles: "I don't believe in much but I believe in duct tape."

secondaccountaslostpassword

@TurdBlossom: Flocke/Smokey found the explosives on the plane in the episode where the submarine sinks..hence it blowing up..

nessadarlin