Live together, die alone, ascend to heaven together via the Interfaith Church of Sideways and Pendulums
May 24, 2010
That’s a lot of text. People are going to have to get really long Lost t-shirts now.
I mean to be writing about Santa Fe and New Mexico, but I feel like I have to write about Lost if I’m going to write the day after the series finale was aired. New Mexico will always (I mean never) be timely, so I can get back to it at any time. Right now I’m adrift in the Lost zeitgeist and I need to respond appropriately
Anyway, be spoiler alerted, if somehow, you haven’t seen the finale yet.
I really liked it. A lot. Not entirely immediately. Immediately afterwards I just felt the neck-pain and exhaustion that comes with sitting in a room full of people I don’t know at all or that well, and sensing I’m the only one crying (silently) like 8 times, and pushing with all my might not to let it come out in sobs and thus tolerating a 2-hour (no commercials) long thunderstorm in my throat.
Also I felt confused because I thought there would be more questions answered and so that was my frame of mind going into it, and I had trouble letting go of that. Even when Christian Shephard–awesome that Kate called that out–told us (via Jack) to let go of that.
But so many hours later, the emotional resonance remains and the frustration/confusion of the unanswered questions has faded. I think a lot of what really appealed to people about lost was the socialness around it (the focus on relationships and characters in the show, of course, but also the group viewings, the fan clusters and their wiki pages, the collective conversations and theorizings) and so it was probably more important to more people to deal with the emotional/relational issues in the finale than the mysteries, and having unanswered questions still gives people stuff to throw around together. (Also I’m reading rumors about a Ben Linus spin-off, sparked by the fact that he didn’t enter the Church of Our Favorite Dead People – speaking of which, what about Walt and Michael and Mr. Eko? Are Black people not allowed in heaven if they’re not Rose?)
I think the fact/way that they dealt with the characters all being dead kind of helped us with the mourning process as well, despite the heavy-handed Christ0-Buddhistness. Maybe our collective culture wants to have some heavy-handed Christo-Buddhistness once in a while.
Anyway, it felt good. It felt cathartic. It was funny and irreverent and self-aware when it needed to be. It was well-paced and well-written. It was just overall an excellent piece of tv-ery.
And so you were able to forgive the silliness of the giant carrot/penis/cork that turns Evil on and off and baptizes people with fire and water. And the bullshitness that is Sayyid and Shannon awakening with each other. And a lot of other stupid things (Like all of season 6). TV is stupid. But for TV, Lost was one excellent show and it clearly hit a lot of people where and when they needed it. It was important, it was a phenomenon, it brought people together in a pretty divisive time, and even though it was obsessed with black and white and good and evil, it was all about complexity and nuance. In general.
I’m just really gonna miss it.
