One thing that kind of pisses me off about the way media and culture is disseminated these days is the instant judging of everything. So many voices, screaming into the internet ether, "Listen to me and value my thoughts on this thing that I just watched on television!" or something to that effect. Opinions are like assholes. And yes I get the hypocrisy in posting these sentiments on a little-read blog. This is my reason for not putting anything up about the Lost series finale until now.
I read something somewhere sometime that said how the internet's instant processing of cultural ephemera actually diminishes the ephemera's already short shelf-life. Which makes a certain kind of basic sense. Like, the more people talk and rehash and consider something now, the less need there will be to think about it later. Participation value was involved somehow. Oh right, it was on Mark Cuban's blog. So congrats, Lostophiles, with your high participation you are reducing the need for anyone to consider this show in the future. Thank god.
Quick summary: I laughed, I cried, I shook my head in quiet bewilderment. I said various things in a Desmond accent, brutha. I watched Jack attack Locke with a flying knee-punch of some sort which was clearly the best moment in the entire series (spoiler!).
One thing I sorta liked was how it sorta came together, in a forced deux ex machina way. As my roommate pointed out: The series opened with a tight shot of Jack opening his eye, and ended with the same shot, except this time, he closed the eye. The producers (or as I refer to them in my mind, Carldamon Lindecuse) had that shit planned from the start. At least those two shots with Jack's eye. That symbolism is gold! The rest was made up as they went along, especially the numerous exploding boats. But those who watched the two-hour recap/masturbathon beforehand surely knew what parts were important, especially when those same things were flashed to in each alterna-character's remembrance scene. Guh.
Which brings us to what I think actually happened in the end? They are all dead in the church, moving on to the next life, which may or may not be bathed in golden light. The entire flash-sideways universe was created by the castaways as a way to reunite in death or whatever. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of quantum mechanics can tell you that when the most important events of people' lives occur on an electro-magical island, they will join each other in the afterlife, and also return to how they looked at that time. Either that, or it was all a dog's dream (suspect the dog). Also, Jacob was a gnostic archon.
Oh and one more thing: Much has been made about how the characters names in this show are so clever, in that they are the same names as various philosophers and scientists and shit from the past, eg John Locke, Faraday, etc. Which is all well and good, but if you really want to get into some crazy shit with names, read some postmodern (sorry Sean!) books. edit: The argument could be made that this is a very postmodern show (for lack of a better term) because the references and easter eggs go far beyond just the names of characters. Less concerned with plot, etc.
