...Was Blind, But Now I See.
Tonight saw the airing of the series finale of Lost. And as such, I thought I would do a brief write-up to say farewell to the show. First, the non-spoiler comments. I've been a big fan of Lost since seeing a leaked copy of the pre-air pilot during the summer before the show launched. As it turned out, that leaked copy was even an incomplete copy of that pilot episode (it ended well before where it should have - I don't recall exactly where). From the opening moments of the pilot, I knew this series was something different. As such, I figured it would die a quick, tragic, heart-breaking death. I figured something this original was never gonna succeed, given the track records of the broadcast networks and how much they love predictable programming. Much to my surprise, the show was a hit from the start, and remained so all the way through to the end.
The series' success was ultimately driven by a few factors, essentially a perfect storm of elements. First, you had the exotic locales and staggeringly well produced style of the episodes. The island, and Hawaii by extension, was easily one of the stars of the show. There's a reason that Lost is one of the best series currently on Blu-Ray, cause it looks and sounds absolutely amazing. Second, you had an utterly amazing cast. It's a particularly diverse cast that plays off each other perfectly. Third, you had the utterly insane writing. This writing style was as much an experience as it was a massive tease. For every question the writers would answer, they would raise a half dozen more. Then, just to screw with you more, they would later make those original answers mean something else entirely. And to add to that sense of writing style, the writers would play with structure in mind bending ways. Never happy to let anything play out linearly, they would always be playing with different times and realities (and eventually time travel itself), and how they related to one another, typically deep diving into a particular character. In the end, the writing on Lost goes down as some of the most audacious writing in the history of television. Eventually, the viewers learned to just go with the flow. Only the truly obsessed would try to remember and actually track all the entanglements of the writing. And believe me, they have. I was of the "go with the flow" camp of viewers.
I will miss Lost, to be sure. But I'm happy that the producers went out on their own terms. It's one of those rare series that got to go out when and how it wanted. Thankfully, there are shows like Fringe (also from JJ Abrams' team of folks), to help fill the gap of deeply crazy and intricate storytelling that is left by Lost's departure. Now, for the spoiler-filled comments about tonight's series finale. Do not read on if you have not yet seen it. And, since it's simply a set of first impressions, I'm gonna just do a bullet point list. Overall, I loved the finale, but I'm gonna assume some won't, given the stylistic choice they took in terms of storytelling. Rather than try and wrap up all sorts of plots and answer tons and tons of questions, they chose to take an emotional, cathardic, character oriented closing. Perhaps the plot-centric ending would have made the hard-core nerds happier, but I was far happier with the emotional, character based closing. For all its plot twisting machinations, I hope Lost will be best remembered as a character driven series.
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I loved the impressionistic and downright open-to-interpretation nature of the story. Frankly, I always expected the island to be the "purgatory" or afterlife side of the story. I was happy to see I was wrong, and which direction they went with that.
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Best line of the episode goes to Miles: "I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape." That's gonna be my e-mail signature for a while.
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As soon as the wounded Jack walked past the shoe in the trees, I laughed out loud at where they were clearly headed for the final shot of the series. I immediately knew that they were gonna close it on the same shot as it all started - the infamous eye shot on Jack.
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When they got to that final moment of him laying on the ground, they then added the PERFECT touch to it by having Vincent walk over and lie down next to him. I absolutely LOVED that little touch.
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Fun trivia fact: Vincent gets to be the last one to "speak" in the series.
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I really liked how they did all the moments of characters connecting with each other and realizing how they knew each other.
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Of course, one of the true highlights was getting to see so much of the cast from over the years back together again. Seeing Maggie Grace return, and her moments with Sayid, was particularly great.
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Getting to see Daniel and Charlotte again was also great.
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And of course having Penny back together with Desmond is always great.
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Another thing I liked was who was specifically missing - Michael and WAAAAAAAAALT! They were two characters that I never particularly liked on the series (though some of the stuff with Locke & Walt did actually work well). I was pleased that they didn't show up in the mix of the many characters to return.
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Some of the previous characters made appearances earlier in the season, such as Ana Lucia, which was a nice thing.
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The take-off sequence of the Ajira plane was nicely done.
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Having Kate deliver Clair's baby again was a nice touch.
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I really liked Ben staying outside the church at the end. Honestly, I really loved all of Ben's stuff in the final season (like that needs to be said - Michael Emerson was great as Ben through the whole series).
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I loved the resigned moan reaction that Ben has when Sawyer clobbers him in the face with his elbow. Ben has been beaten up and smacked in the face so many times that the moan he makes is almost comical. Poor Ben.
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All the stuff between Clair and Kate was great. Actually, Evangeline Lilly specifically deserves a heck of a lot of credit for her work in this finale. She was in top form throughout. But she always did such great work on the show, so I suppose I shouldn't be shocked that she can elevate her game to this level for such an emotionally charged send-off (and of all the behind-the-scenes stuff from over the years, she always seems to be one of the ones who loves her job and being on the show the most).
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For a series fundamentally based around conflict, the finale is nice in that it is all about coming together and resolution.
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Oh, and Hurley got a great line that pretty much sums up the series nicely: "This would be so sweet if we weren't all about to die."
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Last, but definitely not least, there's Michael Giacchino's gorgeous score. As always, it's fantastic.
One of my summer projects will be watching through the series again from the start via the groovy Blu-Ray releases (I'm planning on doing the same for Battlestar Galactica). It'll be interesting to see all the complex plotting play out again in retrospect. Perhaps I'll try to track it all using the Lostpedia timeline. Maybe it might be able to be tracked when watched in fast succession.
I just shot 99% of my evening on something unintended. iTunes posted all three seasons of Veronica Mars in 720p high def not too long ago. I just got around to snagging the eps and pulled up the first episode of season 3 to check out the quality (pretty good, btw). Now roll the clock forward nearly 9 hours and I'm done watching 12 straight episodes. Actually, let me rephrase that:
