Angry Robot

The Lost Finale

I have been mulling this shit over ever since it aired. Thank God I’m not a TV critic. I’ve been writing things about it but not posting them, because my opinions of the episode have been a moving target: first I loved it, then a few days later I hated it, and now a couple weeks later I’m somewhere in between.

Lost has always been a show that crossed several genre barriers. I thought the finale resolved Lost the character drama in an excellent fashion. It tied a neat little bow on Lost the thriller. But Lost the mystery – well, the charitable thing to say would be that Lost remains mysterious.

The mystery was there from the beginning, so you have to view the finale as somewhat of a failure. Mysteries are fabulous – they are questions, openings, possibilities, sheer potential. But you have to answer them, and answers are hard. Answers aren’t necessarily great television, as I’m sure the writers discovered. But if you don’t answer them, you’re sailing along with David Lynch and Luis Bunuel n’ tha gang, and take it from a huge fan of both of the above who has a lifetime of arguing the merits of surrealism under his belt: that shit ain’t mainstream entertainment. 9 out of 10 TV fans are NOT going to endorse your product.

Like a wild, drug-addled, ADD lover, Lost made up its own rules and then broke them. You have to respect it for that.

But it also kinda broke your heart a little.