Television

Open Thread: The Lost Series Finale

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I’ve invested six prime time years of my life into Lost, and I can’t recall a single legal angle. None of the characters were lawyers — no matter which reality you look at. More than that, I can’t even recall a single legal concept the show explored.

Last night’s series finale was no different.

But, everybody, everywhere is talking about it. So, we wanted to serve our community water cooler function and let you lawyer Lost fans discuss the series. Already, the dominant question from the finale is: “What the f*** just happened?” I’m sure you guys have some ideas…

I’d give you a “Spoiler Alert,” but if you didn’t watch the show last night you really don’t care. Here’s how the Times lead off its review:

[Y]ou have to think that the gauzy, vaguely religious, more than a little mawkish ending of ‘Lost’ – “Touched by a Desmond” — will not sit well with a lot of the show’s fans. Many of them will have thought that things were going pretty well for the first two and a quarter hours of the final episode, as the producers treated them to a series of montaged moments in the sideways reality world, in which the main characters regained their memories of the island. But then came the ending, in which most of the main cast members gathered at a church for the big reveal: they were all dead.

I’m suffering from an epic lack of satisfaction. Sideways reality and the resolution of sideways reality hurts the logic centers of my brain. And while I’m comfortable believing that the stuff that happened on the island was “real” (I don’t think they all died in the initial plane crash six years ago), I’m very annoyed that the producers clearly wanted to leave some ambiguity on that issue. “They’re all dead” is way too close to “it was all a dream” which is equivalent with “hahaha, you watched and defended this stupid television show for six years.”

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Also, everybody being dead from the beginning would make sense — and we know the Lost people don’t like making sense:

So what was the island? Those who have been voting for purgatory all along can make a case, though it seems highly unlikely that the creators had anything so specific in mind. Fans and commentators will go through all sorts of twists and turns to make sense of the ending. From here, it seems that if everyone is dead, the only thing that makes sense — if that’s a requirement — is that everyone was dead at the beginning.

Yet all the fabled Lost ambiguity goes out of the window when Desmond removes and then Jack replaces the “cork” in the island. I mean, literally, there’s a damn cork in the island.

Obviously, the show’s creators wanted people to talk about the series finale, and that’s exactly what people are doing this morning. What do you guys think?

More importantly, what the hell am I supposed to watch now? What primetime, scripted drama stands ready to take Lost’s mantle? I haven’t enjoyed a vampire story since I read Bunnicula so True Blood is out. Am I going to be forced into watching the white male’s wet dream that is Mad Men?

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If they cast The Firm correctly, maybe that will work?

‘Lost’ Watch: Embracing the White Light [New York Times]

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