By: mos jef
I was almost in denial last night. I was putting off starting the episode for as long as I could. Once I started it, I would be that much closer to finishing it.
I’m tempted to put the opening lyrics to “Amazing Grace” here, wretches saved…once Lost and now found. But that would be too biblical and I know this show never goes down the religious path.
In a sense, the song would be fitting. It’s the funeral to an hour of my week. Though it’s not putting my confusion to rest.
Quotes of the episode:
“We’re not candidates anymore.” – Sawyer. Yea I still love this dude. He knows his role.
“You’re sort of the obvious choice don’t you think?” – Ballsmell to Jack on being the new Jacob, and some obvious self-deprecating humor by the writers.
That opening was a strong way to get a pessimist to choke up a little bit. Some familiar music, hopeful notes rather than dark, ominous tones. The score was always a very strong element to this television program.
“Grizzly Adams did have a beard.” And so does Bernard. Looks like him and Rose are following String Cheese Incident for the summer. Bernard’s got his chilled out dog, some fresh fish in his stomach, and his old lady rocking some dreadlocks.
“I think I just realized I want to live.” And Miles is right – it’s good timing. Richard wants to live because he’s finally going to achieve that salt and pepper hair look that Clooney has perfected. With Jacob dead, it appears that Richard can finally get older.
Miles, Miles, Miles. As the owner of my camp would say, “Whadda I need you for?” You brought nothing to the show. I award you no points. And may god have mercy on your soul.
“Helluva long con, Doc.” The episode entitled “The Long Con” happens to be a personal favorite of mine. I was discussing it prior to the episode and it made the whole viewing room smile when Sawyer came up with this line. It’s also the second time this finale that the show seemed to be poking fun of itself. 6 seasons is a long time to be conning an audience.
The moment of Sun and Jin remembering the island was far more beautiful than their death scene. Is it lame that this is the most significant sonogram I’ve ever seen? I’m too young to have children of my own. I’ve never held a baby (and don’t really have any desire to do so.) My family hasn’t had any additions to our family. Apparently, little Jin has a place in my heart though.
Far less light in that tunnel, don’t you think?
This is the first part of the episode that pissed me off – Ballsmell tells Jack that it should just be them plus Desmond that goes to the tunnel. The whole show is about choice. You’re not going to see if Kate, Sawyer and Hurley want to come with you?
Maybe the scene with Sayid and Hurley in the truck got me a little too excited… because I knew what was coming. M’lady was right around the corner. But something that seemed very significant to me was Sayid not believing he was a good person. Hurley shook it off with a chubby smile. And it made me think – when you’re given a second chance, you want to be good to the people who believe in you. You want to prove them right and give them validation for having that faith. It’s that small exchange that really exemplified the theme that people can change.
And then the #1 hottie that ever graced the screen shows up with her blonde hair and iced-coffee colored skin. SHAN-NON!
Hey, when did Boone flash? What was his big realization? And what beauty did he ever experience on the island?
Same exact shot of Locke and Jack looking down the waterfall like when they looked down the hatch.
You think Faraday minds taking Sawyer’s sloppies in regards to Charlotte? Or the fact that he’s going after that ginger in the first place just shows how desperate he really is?
During the commercial break we discussed how Ballsmell can now die, and Richard will probably age super fast like Benjamin Button (P.S. we were thankfully wrong about the latter).
Is it just me or is the collaboration of Drive Shaft and Faraday sound a lot like Zack Attack?
Was it beautiful when Kate and Claire remembered their island days during the child birth? Yes. Having said that, they should wipe that baby off before Claire starts rubbing her face all up on it.
So all of these reminders – Birth, First Steps, True Love – these remind us of how beautiful life can be. These are the moments of clarity before death that we can truly understand on the purest level. And that allows us to move on. Notice how Ben’s realization came from a beating. He’s not ready to move on because he hasn’t come to peace with the way he lived his life yet.
All I could think about when they were looking at the ocean below the storm was, “The sea was angry that day my friends. Like an old man trying to return soup at a deli.”
…that is until Jack did the most ridiculous running-jumping punch I’ve ever seen. He should’ve turned to the camera and said, “This mission just got a hell of a lot more impossible.” Cue Mission Impossible theme and the date of the movie’s release. [2nd option…refer back to the “Amazing Grace” opening…and use any number of the renditions to this tune during that slo-mo punch].
I guess the knife to Jack’s neck explains the blood. And then Kate fires a shot into Ballsmell. Boom. Roasted.
The core 4 on the island really can be seen as parallels to the core 4 of the modern day Yankees.
Jack has the intangible leadership qualities and handsomeness of Jeter.
Kate has the love affair going on with Jack, disappoints often but comes up with a big hit every now and then, so she’s Posada.
Hurely — he’s the closer. Pretty flawless. Ala Mo Rivera.
And the Southern Drawl, old reliable makes Sawyer the perfect Andrew Eugene Pettitte.
My friend Rudich pointed this out when Sawyer and Juliet start making out. “Imagine Jack walked in and found them doing that? And he’s like ‘Dude! WTF? I told you where the vending machine is!? That’s my wife!'” Bravo.
Jack giving Hurley a drink of water was exactly like Space Jam. At halftime of the final game, the Looney Tunes are down big to the Monstars. Morale is low. That is until Bugs Bunny labels Michael Jordan’s water bottle “Michael’s Secret Stuff.” The Tunes freak out! This is what makes MJ so good! So they chug it down and they get the confidence to go out and win the game. Jack never said a prayer over the water. It was just water. But Jack’s confidence was all Hurley needed. So Hurley wasn’t like Jack in the sense that he was the new Jacob. He was like Jack because he will do the right thing. He’s a brave dude with limitations.
Hurley’s mortality benefited Ben most of all as I can envision the two of them spending long hours on the beach well into their old age. Just throwing this ridiculous, I-don’t-believe-this-scenario…scenario: maybe in their solitude they throw social taboos out the window and settle down together romantically. “You were a really good number 2.” Meaning he’s his second love. Libby was his number 1. And Ben says “And you were a great number 1.” Meaning Ben was probably a virgin.
At this point I’m a bunch of drinks deep. I’m feeling emotional. I’m loving this episode. And I realize: They only wanted to do 5 seasons. Those episodes I didn’t like, they probably didn’t like either. That’s my flash.
Now we’re discussing how much we’re looking forward to Penny flashing with Desmond. I even said: “Penny’s going to flash sooooo hard.” Little did I know…
Ok. Jack sees his father. And I’m literally tearing up as he walks into the church to move forward with his extended family. Confused, but tearing up. And let the hours of talking in circles begin…
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the one right one. It’s long been speculated, since Season 1, that the island was purgatory. Cuse and Lindelof came right out and said that it’s not. Athletes have been playing this game for years. “I’m not going to the draft” or “I want to retire on the team I’m on now” before bolting for the pros or the greener pasture of a new team. So I understand that people lie. And purgatory certainly would explain a lot more than it not being purgatory. But I just don’t think it was. Let’s make arguments for the big questions.
– When did they die?
– Is the island real?
They died when the plane crashed.
All these people met on a plane. It went down. And the island served as a place where they could create their own heaven “Imagine a box…”
It’s the reason babies can’t be born on the island — because how can you create life when you’re already dead?
The psychic’s prophecy of “Only Claire can raise the baby” can have the vague explanation of — if Aaron were to be born and grow up, the kid would’ve been a murderer, a rapist, just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad seed.
And the Others? Well, they also died. Just not on the plane crash. Tom and Ben and Richard…some died before Jack. Some died long after.
Walt is special because he DIDN’T die on the plane. He’s soaking wet in SHAN-NON!’s vision because he was in the water post-crash. He survived. Michael isn’t ready to move on because he’s waiting for his son.
Jack’s realization of all this, everything that’s happened, happens in an instant when he opens and then closes his eye on the island. All of our characters get to prove what kind of person they really are. And they all find happiness to move on with. Those who lost love can find love.
They struggled with the light and the dark in their souls. Some of them didn’t have a chance to redeem themselves – Nikki and Paulo murdered a man for money. There’s no grey area here. That’s a bad thing to do. They were buried and were unable to move on.
The Oceanic 6 were the most stubborn. They didn’t want to accept that they were dead. They weren’t ready to move on. And Jack was the most stubborn of all.
It would explain Desmond, too. He was on 815 with Jack, as he says before being lowered into the light. He was the empty seat in first class. Maybe he was on his way from the bathroom when the initial turbulence started. Maybe he died a second before everyone else. And like a dream, years can pass by in mere seconds. Those seconds were the 2 years Desmond spent in the hatch, waiting for everyone else.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to the above theory.
The island was real, and they all died at different times.
If the island weren’t real, then what would be the purpose of time travel? The hatch? The Dharma Initiative choosing THIS specific patch of land to study? How could Penny have spoken to Desmond on the phone? Searched for him on a boat?
The sideway flash world is the faux reality. It was created so our survivors could find each other, mimic who they became on the island, so that they could accept their fate.
Jack deals with his Daddy issues by being a better father than Christian was.
Sayid lets Nadia go and finds a new love.
Sawyer brings criminals, like the con man who destroyed his own family, to justice.
Hurley uses his money to help people.
Claire gets to raise her baby.
Kate gets to settle down with a rich doctor.
Sun and Jin are free to start a family.
These are all things they did on the island. Relatively speaking. They meet again in the sideways world, the sort-of purgatory. They remember the truly most beautiful moments of their lives. And they take that piece of light with them.
Jack smiles as he sees the plane fly overhead. Maybe it’s the one piloted by Lapidus. Maybe it’s the Oceanic plane in the sideways world that takes him to the next stage of his afterlife. “You can let go now.” And Rose let’s go of Jack’s hand. But he still has to settle his own passing on internally.
The point is the island life DID happen. It’s a much harder pill to swallow because so much more goes unanswered. The sheer ridiculousness of there being a place where black smoke, tunnels of light, time travel, and Richard Alpert exist is hard enough to accept.
Jack saves the people who got off on the plane. He dies by getting stabbed in the side by Ballsmell. This is supported by his constant neck bleeding in the “afterlife.” I understand that people are going to ask why he died in the exact same position as we first saw him. I think that serves to leave the ending open to interpretation, but also just bookends our story with a concrete ending. Our hero, who once woke up there to cries of help from survivors, can now rest knowing that there will be no more cries for help on the island.
Desmond and Eloise have the unique ability to jump from reality to the sideways world. They know things. They are enlightened. Perhaps they both survived near death experiences. Or else we have to take their gift at face value. If we don’t, there’s just no explaining how Desmond can know what happens after death and still lives on the island.
Eloise, dead in the sideways world, isn’t ready to move on without her son. She, after all, killed him on the island. In the “real world.” Once Charlotte sees the beauty of Daniel’s love, they’ll both be able to move on. And therefore, so will Eloise.
Faraday was right about Jughead exploding, about time travel, about all of it. He’s smarter than us and only Steven Hawking and the 3 people who understood Donnie Darko can really get this. It was part of the show that quenched the appetite of Trekkies and the likes.
Ben, he’s yet to find that beauty. I think Rousseau seems to be hinting, with her eyes, that her French croissant can help him out with that. Together, they can serve as parents for Alex.
We can wonder how Lapidus (told you he wasn’t dead yet), Richard, Miles, Kate, Claire and Sawyer die. We can wonder how old they are when they pass away. However, we can accept that for at least the 3 from Oceanic, regardless of how the rest of their lives played out, the most significant moments they experienced were on the island.
FML — things still unanswered (depending on what you think really happened)
Why can’t babies be born on the island?
And why did Claire have to raise Aaron?
What was the statue all about? It had 4 toes.
What was the significance of time travel?
How was Walt able to make birds fly into windows?
Why did the smoke kill Eko? And the pilot? And anyone else he killed?
What was the purpose of the temple and Dogen and everything else from the beginning of the season?
How were Jacob and Richard able to leave the island in order to interact with our Oceanic folk?
Why were the numbers bad luck for Hurley?
Mysteries of the island vs. the Characters.
You can smash your head against the wall forever asking more and more questions. You can delve into impossibly dizzying conundrums on the topic of quantum physics.
Me? I loved that the story of these characters came to an end. They were Lost. So were we. In general, not all of life’s questions will be answered. And it’s not like we were privy to details about the island that our survivors were not.
The finale showed the conclusion of a journey. A miraculous, unbelievable, hard to explain, fictitious, scientific trip down a rabbit hole. It’s an island of mystery that had a clear battle of good vs. evil. I think they saved themselves. I think we saw the stories of the people that made sure humanity went forward. If you buy the light going out and the darkness escaping the island and corrupting the rest of the planet, then they saved the world.
In the tangible sense, the light that they are saving only affects those on the island. It affects the ones they care about the most. They’re not fighting this war for loved ones back on the mainland. The worlds they are saving are their own, stretching only as far as the Oceanic Survivors and a handful of lesser characters.
It was the purest test of human spirit and of the individual who is given a clean slate.
And they were so important to each other, loved each other so much, that they made the choice to spend eternity together.
And with that…
I’ve never felt this way about a TV show before. This recap started as a way for me to talk about it with some friends and grew into something bigger. There have been issues with my cynicism and my dejection of the show. There has been criticism of juvenile aspects of my reviews and analysis. Regardless of that, thank you all for reading. Thank you for sharing this whole story with me.
“too many questions”
-mos jef
