Friday, June 4, 2010

Sit right back and you'll hear a tale....


(NOTE: SPOILERS ABOUND SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!) Apparently I don't need to say this since everyone on Earth has told everybody else by now, but ABC's Lost has come to an end. Yep, it's over, and less than a second after Jack closed his eyes, the web was breaking in two under the sheer weight of opinions being thrown around. My wife and I, like millions of other viewers, sat by the television watching and waiting patiently to see if all the time we had invested in this show was worth it. Once it was over, I made the big mistake of tweeting my opinion and I definitely regret it now. It was a mistake because as soon as I said anything, I was told by multiple people that I was wrong. Well, I have let some time pass and ruminated on it and now it's my turn! BWA HAHAHA. This is my blog and here I am king! My opinion cannot be besmirched here!

After reading and hearing so many opinions, I think I know what I want to say about the finale. It is an unpopular opinion, but it is mine and I stick by it. Here goes. See if you can follow me. The finale itself was fine and served its purpose as a bookend for the show. I totally understand why people were moved by it even if I thought it was a little preachy. I totally understand where all of the positive reactions are coming from. The whole episode was a gigantic affirmation of life and even of death. You would have to be a statue for that not to affect you in some way. This is my problem with it though. These affirmations act as a smokescreen for weak writing not only in the finale but in the series as a whole. Giving happy endings to everyone is how the writers fool us into forgetting everything we have thought about the series.

I think a friend of mine, Matt Marquissee, put it better than I ever could: "It's a puzzle without a picture, just pieces. Then, when you're about finished, someone throws it out." If you think about it, he is totally right and you could even take it further and say that not only was there no picture but there were a lot of pieces left over too. Before you even say it, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY! "The writers told us we would not get all the answers!" "We knew everything was not going to be answered." "The show isn't about knowing everything." Those are all cop outs for the writers, plain and simple. I'm sorry but I don't buy it. There was too much left over or cast aside. All those happy endings just stop you from thinking about the series and all the plot lines, character development, and continuity that now means nothing. For instance, let's go all the way back to the first season and the episode "Raised By Another." Anyone remember why Claire was on Flight 815? Anyone? Bueller?......Bueller? She was on the plane because a psychic had a vision that if Aaron was born, he would be some type of evil incarnate. So the psychic bought Claire a ticket knowing full well the plane would go down and kill her and her evil son. Don't remember that? That's because everyone is so happy moving on with their loved ones to the afterlife. Or hey! What about Faraday? The poor guy gets shot by his own mother in the past and he doesn't get to go on to the afterlife because she doesn't want him to? Doesn't seem fair to me at all. I could go on and on about everything that didn't make sense or all the instances of sloppy writing, but I won't. No one wants to read that. All I have to say now that it is all over and we can see it all in focus, Lost was a very interesting ride that ended up having a lot of potholes, but it was interesting nonetheless.

3 comments:

Katie Shea said...

Call me a statue but I wasn't touched at all by the bullshit "happy" ending. It was a a lazy piece of shit and a disservice to many of the characters and their development.

Basically we learn at the end that Sayid's story was pretty much bullshit ... there was no reason to bring Shannon back. They had no chemistry together. She was universally hated. The world cheered when she was killed off, yet everyone seemed to forget all this when they bring her back for the finale.

Locke's character was desecrated with the fake Locke bullshit that dominated the last season. He is berated by the main characters and ultimately dies alone...no one even attends his funeral...but his heaven is sitting in a church (alone, mind you, because god forbid Locke gets a love story)with these assholes who treated him like shit when he was living.

Oh I could go on. And please remember I am complaining about the piss poor writing in terms of the "character stories"...addressing issues with the mythology of the show would require a novel.

Katie Shea said...

Also, I am so happy they finally explained more about the characters they introduced in the last season and we found out about the meaning of the cave which was introduced in the second to last episode.

:eyeroll:

Matt Marquissee said...

I'm famous! You are totally right. The writers said Lost came out of myths from many places, but most myths are meant to actually explain the unexplainable. Lost didn't even do that.