My favourite TV shows 5/5 aka The Official LOST Post

1. Lost

Executive producers Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse. Starring Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Jorge Gargia, Naveen Andrews, Terry O'Quinn, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick, etc...

(Very) long story (very) short: A plane crashes on an island and some rather weird things happen.

September 22nd 2004 the Oceanic Airlines flight 815 crashed on an island in South Pacific and the first episode of Lost aired. Because sometimes it sucks to live in Finland, I saw the Pilot on January 26th 2006. (I remember that because I have a poster, or an ad really, cut off from some magazine, that says: Se alkaa vuoden neljännen viikon neljäntenä päivänä. Sattumaa?) Beforehand all I knew was that Merri from LotR would play a drug addict and there would be a plane crash. I liked the first part of the Pilot, sure, and thought the scenes inside the plane were scary as hell. In the end of Pilot pt. 2 they hear the mayday transmission that's been playing in repeat for sixteen year, and Merri, or Charlie as I'd learned by then, asks: "Guys... Where are we?". And there. I was hooked. And been ever since.

Now it's over and I need to discharge the appreciation and longing I feel towards Lost. So I'll spill it all out to you, and talk about it as much as I have to, in order to be able to let go and move on. I will probably have to cut this post into several parts, so that there might be a chance that someone will have the patience to actually read it. This is my plan: in this first part I will talk especially how I felt about the ending of the series. In part two I will list the characters and my thoughts about them. Then I probably make a couple of Top Fives, because, well, I just like lists. Duh. The season 6 dvd box will be available in late August and then it's time for The Complete Lost Marathon, which I can hardly wait! I think I'll write a "review" of each season then. If I can wait that long.

I am biased, yes, but I don't think anyone can say that Lost was just another tv show. It's not everyone's cup of tea, which I totally understand, as I understand those who have stopped watching somewhere along the way. After all, any show has to develop all the time, especially a show like Lost, and not everyone can be pleased by the way they decided to go. I remember some of my friends stopped waching already on season 1, because it was getting 'too weird'. Haha. If only we'd know back then HOW weird it would get eventually. I've personally (almost) always enjoyed the weirdness, even after I realised it would only get weirder and weirder without explanations. Nothing is too weird if you don't think about it too much! Many did, and while the speculating and theorizing was always a huge part of the show, in the end many felt disappointed, because the mysteries they'd pondered on for six years weren't that significant after all.


This is what the six seasons of Lost have been: mysteries, romance, tears, lauhgter, unanswered questions, vague answers, nicknames, popular culture references, polar bears, shirtless men, flashbacks, flashforwards, WTF-moments, OMG-moments, dynamite, awesome music, numbers, cliffhangers, visions, dreams, love triangles, eyes that open, embarrasingly bad CGI, freaky character connections, time travel, Apollo bars, rabbits and lots and lots of Dharma beer.

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't watched the whole show and are planning to, I recommend you to stop reading here. The rest of the post is about the series finale.

I loved the finale. Loved loved loved, and thank god I did, because not loving it would've SUCKED. I weeped like a baby pretty much throughout the episode, sometimes at totally random places as I thought about how it would be over soon. And after the screen went black for the last time, I had to lie down for a few minutes and breath deeply and pull myself together... It was quite pathetic, really! But expected. Haha. I just finished watching it again a minute ago, and this time I was just a little teary, but got shivers, lots of shivers.

If I tried to sum up how I felt about the finale it would be a list of words of praise, and we've seen enough of that, haven't we? So I'll jut list some of the things that made the finale so near-perfect to me.

• 'I'll see you in another life, brother.' 
• 'That's one hell of a long con.'
• The white tennis shoe (hell yeah! I'd been waiting for its comeback for years!)
• 'Just find me some thread and I'll count to five.'
• 'Well, first time for everything.' (Jack being right about something)
• Kate and Sawyer joking about her tendency to follow him against orders
• 'I have a bad feeling about this.' It was a little over-the-top, but I'm always a sucker for Star Wars references!
• All the flashes as they "remember". Great reminders of all those great moments along the way.
• 'I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape.' Oh yeah. Miles is my king.
• 'In case you haven't noticed, I'm a pilot.' Duh.
• Hurley's grin as he meets Charlie in that... place
• Rose and Bernard and Vincent
• 'We should get coffee sometime. We can go Dutch.'
• Ben getting a punch in the face one last time
• Richard's first grey hair
• that Jacob's cork metaphor wasn't just a metaphor
• Locke forgiving Ben
• Ben becoming Hurley's sencond. Reminded me of the awesomely random and sweet moment on season 4 (?) when they share an Apollo bar.
• The shot of Jack and "Locke" looking down at the Source. Took us right back to that brilliant last shot of season 1.
• The ending. Christian explaining what it's all about, the happy-happy reunion and moving on.
• The circle becoming complete: Jack laying down at the bamboo field with Vincent, the plane flying over him and his eye closing. P E R F E C T.

(My sister's husband just called me from work and asked me to clarify some things about the finale. Apparently they'd been debating over them for a while. Haha.)

The ending at the church was an inch away from being too religious for my taste, but as it was more spiritual that religious, it was fine. I thought it could've been cool had it happened in LAX or any airport... But well. It was very good, anyway. And I think it's wonderfully ironic that the "flash-sideways" turned out to be a sort of a purgatory - which was one of the most popular fan theories during the first seasons. Those sneaky, sneaky writers.

The finale was obviously about the characters. The mysteries were left in the background as we got to spend the last moments with the characters we love and properly say our goodbyes. That was just the way I wanted it, as I've always watched Lost as a drama series, spiced up with mystery. For those who enjoyed the sci-fi aspect of Lost the most, the finale (and the whole season six) was very likely a disappointment. And yes, I admit that I wouldn't have minded a few more explanations. But I'm not complaining, because emotionally and character-wise the finale couldn't have been better.

 The finale was also surprisingly light! I mean, we've gotten used to the finales being dark and twisty with breathtaking cliffhangers. But it's only appropriate that the series ended this way. Everyone got their redemption and their peace, in the afterlife if not before. Things, many things were left open, but that's how they roll in the Lost universe. We get to write our own endings to the stories of Sawyer, Kate, Claire, Miles, Hurley, Ben, Desmond, Richard and so on. Which I think is fitting and really great. Overall I'm very satisfied with the ending. A remarkable ending for a remarkable series.

That's it for now, I guess. I'll be back soon with part two and the characters. Then I'll shut up about Lost for at least a month. (That wasn't a promise.) I'll end this post with a shamelessly unrelated picture. But aren't these two just great?