My Thoughts On The Lost Finale

It was 11 o'clock on the dot when they began the local sports. The "Aloha To Lost" Jimmy Kimmel Live special was to begin at 11:05. Probably wasn't going to be a better time to pop the sandwich in the toaster oven, then go downstairs and slice me a piece of cake to stash in the fridge.

I thought I could do it all in five minutes, and even if I couldn't, I probably have a couple minutes because JKL never starts on time. Apparently they did, however, because when I came back Kimmel was in the middle of interviewing Matthew Fox. Time on my converter: 11:07. I was late by two minutes and therefore have to check out what they said the first two minutes of the show? Damn.

Other thoughts:

• The series finale is the first episode I've seen from start to finish. Knowing a lot of the story, as understandable as it could be, I think it was emotionally satisfying. At first I didn't get it, but once I saw that people thought the flash-sideways was in fact limbo, a sort of waystation before getting to heaven, it now made sense how people will running into each other.
• People that didn't understand or like the ending either still believe the finale showed they all died in the plane crash or thought the ending scene at the church was superfluous. I've come to remember something I learned in film school: There's a difference between resolving the plot and resolving the characters. Those who've become fascinated by Lost got sucked in by the premise but fell deeply in love with the characters. When you try and extricate yourself from a series, you've got to tell the end of the story and the end of the themes of the story. So while it didn't tie up every loose end, it went to the heart of the matter -- namely, the important thing was not getting out of the island, but realizing that the people you meet on the island are the ones that matter the most.
• I had a feeling the three alternate endings were funny bits. How could you film alternate endings in a show as deeply thought out and precisely detailed as this one? They were pretty funny -- they parodied Survivor, The Sopranos and, best of all, Newhart, getting Bob Newhart himself to reprise the waking-up-out-of-bed final scene. However, they were promoting these endings sincerely, like they actually happened. That they turned out to be fakes for the special is a bit disingenuous, because people who actually looked forward to seeing them may have been misled.
• ABC turned this into an event. How? I understand the cult fervor behind it. But this is not a ratings dynamo. It has been safely ensconced in the Top 20 every year except the fifth season last year. However, they have garnered, at most, 16 million people per episode. A phenomenon these days, to me, is 20 million. Such a following doesn't get special attention from Time and Entertainment Weekly. And no one was creating such a big deal out of this until the beginning of this final season, so it seemed like a manufactured milestone, not a real one from the grassroots. But that's just me.
• There was an online-only Q&A after the Kimmel special. What a fucking waste of time. They opened it up to members of the audience, and all they did was ask stupid shit like, "Will you guys come back to Hawai'i?" and "If you guys were on a reality show, who'd be voted off first and why?" Only one guy asked about the plot, and even then he did so after Kimmel said the questions being asked so far was "bullshit." The actors who were there might not know the entire plot, but the audience had to come up with something better than, "Did you guys take anything from the island?" Stupid, stupid people.