Lost: The Final Season

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by LonghornDub

This comment proves my point. You're making value judgments about the explanations given, which is fine, but that's different than saying that the episode was pointless. And I have to wonder if you even really watched the episode (maybe you just completely tuned it out because you hated it so much) if you think his only reason for wanting to leave was that he was told he couldn't.

Also i love how you skimmed over the big section about the light well, which was my main reason for saying it was pointless. would love to hear your comments on that. yet you focus on a little blurb in my post to try to prove your point.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by jthig32

Oh yeah. He got spit out.

I'm an idiot.

Oh perhaps I'm succeeding in forgetting that horrible episode.

and jack was spit out. But jack was also IN THE POOL OF WATER.

[bobbyfg7]

Originally Posted by sike

So who the freakin heck was Alvar Hanso??? I wish that would have played some kind part of this season.

An anagram for "valor as han"?

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Alvar

[alexamenos]

Season 5 began with Willy singing

shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear
bitin' on a bullet and pullin' out all of his hair
shotgun Wiilie's got all of his family there.

...don't know how anyone can forget that opening.

also, it's possible that Lost is still airing in a parallel dimension.

[LonghornDub]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

Also i love how you skimmed over the big section about the light well, which was my main reason for saying it was pointless. would love to hear your comments on that. yet you focus on a little blurb in my post to try to prove your point.

That's because "pointless" means that there wasn't a single point to the entire episode. I only have to explain that there was one point to prove that it wasn't pointless. I chose to focus on something other than the light well.

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

I just want to say that i will not be posting much in here today (or i probably will, i get sucked in), because i am in absolute complete shock. I just found out like 45 minutes ago at our ultrasound appointment that my wife is having twins... I kid you not.

Congrats!

[sike]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

and jack was spit out. But jack was also IN THE POOL OF WATER.

assuming MIB didn't make it to the pool is probably very mistaken.

[sefant77]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

If they're boys, we're going with the names Jacob and Smokey/MiB.

Congrats.

Locke and Ben

[mary]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

you've been missing my point. if an answers are pointless, the show that conveyed it is pointless. i have said MANY times, i would rather have not known his reasons. I was fine with him just wanting to get off because he'd been stuck there for so long and jacob was in his way.

I just want to say that i will not be posting much in here today (or i probably will, i get sucked in), because i am in absolute complete shock. I just found out like 45 minutes ago at our ultrasound appointment that my wife is having twins... I kid you not.

If they're boys, we're going with the names Jacob and Smokey/MiB.

Whoa...congrats BBL! Its probably a good thing you got in all your LOST watching pre-multiple-diapers-to-change. What if they're both girls? Kate and Juliette? I hope at least one of them grows up to appreciate the ATS episode.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Evil Twin post.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by LonghornDub

That's because "pointless" means that there wasn't a single point to the entire episode. I only have to explain that there was one point to prove that it wasn't pointless. I chose to focus on something other than the light well.



Congrats!

yet the light well was THE focus of the episode. And ATS only managed to confuse the topic.

Yes, of course they addressed things in ATS. But again, i don't feel anything they addressed was important. AT ALL. So the finale would have made perfect sense and not had a chunk of 40-50 minutes missing.

And thanks!

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by sike

assuming MIB didn't make it to the pool is probably very mistaken.

I agree with you. It's possible/probable he did. But it's still an assumption. So chalk it up to bad set design or whatever, it's still an inconsistency and only confused the matter.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by mary

Whoa...congrats BBL! Its probably a good thing you got in all your LOST watching pre-multiple-diapers-to-change. What if they're both girls? Kate and Juliette? I hope at least one of them grows up to the appreciate the ATS episode.

ha ha, that will be the one thing i teach all my kids. A pure, unadulterated, inexplicable (according to Longhorn ) hatred of one episode of my favorite show for 6 years.


I kid, i kid. I didn't HATE ATS. but i still think it was pointless and a disappointment.

[sike]

Twins...I can just hear Norm yelling "Two!" Congrats BBL.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

ha ha, that will be the one thing i teach all my kids. A pure, unadulterated, inexplicable (according to Longhorn ) hatred of one episode of my favorite show for 6 years.


I kid, i kid. I didn't HATE ATS. but i still think it was pointless and a disappointment.

I think in general, it was more to add gravitas to the Jacob/MIB backstory and Jacob's gambit or "game" than anything else. The Light is obviously the most important element of the entire series as it serves as the crutch, but I enjoyed ATS because it gave us more of Jacob and MIB...and that is a good thing in my book. I loved that element of the series.

[nikeball]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

If they're boys, we're going with the names Jacob and Smokey/MiB.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment..._revealed.html

his name was Samuel!

[nikeball]

Love this recap/analysis:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...at-i-mean.html


One of my favorite books of all time is "Watership Down." In that story, the main action of the book ends with around 20 pages left. (It's here that I'll warn you there are spoilers for "Watership Down" ahead, but the book is almost 40 years old. C'mon.) The rabbits who have come to Watership Down to make their home have survived an incursion by the borderline fascist General Woundwort, and everyone is safe for a little while. It's a lovely scene, but it's made even more moving by the short epilogue, set in an undetermined future. The book's hero, leader Hazel, has grown old and is enjoying one last summer among all of those for whom he built a world worth living in. Which is when El-Ahrairah, something like the rabbits' folk hero and/or god, arrives to take Hazel away to what's after, not a rabbit Heaven, not exactly, but definitely a place where there will be less pain and less worry. The final sentences are elliptical, suggesting more than showing, creating something that is and always will be while staying just ahead of us. We are not yet ready to see what is next. We can only catch pieces. Hazel worries about those who will go after him, but El-Ahrairah insists he needn't worry. "They'll be all right," he says, "and thousands like them. If you come with me, I'll show you what I mean."

So when Sawyer was reading "Watership Down" back in season one of "Lost," I thought it was just a tip of the hat from the producers to a book I loved. I didn't know it was the answer to the whole series.

On Tuesday, I talked a lot about the letting go, about the process of readying yourself to let someone or something slip away from you and become a part of something else. It can be as simple as letting a friend move cross country, or it can be as profound as putting a family member in the ground and hoping you might see them again someday. The final season of "Lost" has been about having the kind of faith needed to accept that things will make a kind of sense, even when they don't, about realizing the world is sometimes a tragic one where bad things happen and sometimes a beautiful one where people can create things larger than themselves by the mere process of coming together and building something. I've talked here about how I love things that are about community, about the ways that people can work together toward something else. And in the end, that was what "Lost" was about as well. It just showed its cards awfully late.

I can already see on the various Internet haunts I frequent that the episode didn't work for everyone. It continued the series' hard left turn into outright mysticism, and some are frightened that the end of the show suggests that everyone has been dead all this time. While I can see where some are coming up with that theory from (or its far more cynical variant that this is a hallucination that Jack is having on his way to his final resting place), I don't think that is what we're seeing here. This flash-sideways universe is one final gift from the last protector of the Island that we see -- Hurley -- to everyone he ever knew or loved. It is a chance for him to do what he does best, as Ben says. He is taking care of people, giving them both what they wanted and what they needed. The structure here is meant to be elusive, to always run just ahead of us while we chase along behind. At some point in the "Lost" world, all of these people die. And then they end up in the sideways world, where they're able to have what they wanted (perhaps thanks to Hurley). And then Desmond becomes their spiritual counselor, in a way, helping them to let go.

So much of the finale of "Lost" is about bringing things to a sort of holistic closure, about tying things together. Much of the series has been about duality, about things that are split between two halves or two forces that act in opposition, but the finale is largely about solving dualities. I mean, on one (really obvious and kinda Freudian) level, it's about putting a big rock back in a magic hole. But it's also about the character who's probably been responsible for the most good in the world of "Lost" and a character who has been responsible for a lot of bad looking to find another way to do business than the way that the Monster and Jacob did it. There doesn't need to be judgment followed by execution. There doesn't need to be a moratorium on people leaving the Island. And there doesn't need to be the constant struggle between light and dark. Rose and Bernard had it right after all. The best way forward is to opt out, is to just do the right thing by those you love. In this way, Jacob was "right" or at least on the side of what the series thinks is "good." He was more about sacrifice than selfishness, and the finale's latter passages are about what it means to embrace that ethos, about what it means that Desmond probably could put the stone back in the hole, but Jack is the one to do it because Desmond still has someone back home to live for.

"The End" chose not to tie up loose ends or make the mythology entirely make sense. It decided not to make more specific just why the Monster couldn't leave the Island or why the Island had to exist for the rest of the world to go on as it is (at least, that's how I'm interpreting the idea that the Island's heart going out would mean the end of everything). It probably figured that vague notions in these regards were all we needed. The plot of the episode, as it were, is pretty much about people running between various points in an attempt to get certain tasks accomplished. Richard and Miles need to get the plane in the sky (with some help from -- hooray! -- Lapidus). Jack needs to kill the Monster. The Monster needs to destroy the Island. Very little of the actual plot is, really, all that thrilling. But it works and it becomes thrilling because it provides character payoffs we've been waiting for. Locke and Jack finally have a titanic battle in the rain. Kate and Jack finally come together. Sawyer finally gets to leave the Island. The flash-sideways world is one, long series of buttons on character storylines that allows the episode to be the classic series finale clip show without ever making it one, not quite. (Though I don't know that I was so invested in the Shannon and Sayid story as to think it was the best way to wake Sayid up.)

Was this the right call? For me, absolutely. Big, giant answers about what the Island was or its place in the world's cosmology or why it had Egyptian stuff all over it or anything like that were probably bound to be disappointing, as most of the answers dispensed this season were, only even more so. Saying what the Island is is like saying what the meaning of life is; it's a question you can ask but never receive a really satisfying answer to. Really, what would you have liked? It was a crashed spaceship that somehow ended up in the ocean and had life grow upon it? It was a long-lost, fabled isle like Avalon or the Garden of Eden? It was Purgatory? The answer, here, I suppose was that some just wanted the show to say that the Island was SOMEthing, to put a definitive button on the show's biggest questions. But, for me, buttons are always less interesting than the things they're meant to plug. Put another way, were you more interested in the rock plugging the hole, or the hole itself, with all that glowy light inside of it?

One of the reasons I think "Lost" worked was that it was always more interested in the box and the person holding the box than what was in the box. A closed box is almost always a mystery, really, until you open it and see what's inside (which is how so many parents misdirect their kids on Christmas morning). All of the imitators of the show that have come along have focused far, far more on the contents of that box. They wanna shake it and hear if it rattles. They wanna pull back the wrapping paper and take a peek. "Lost" has always been satisfied to dump a package in your lap and think that's enough. Is it? Again, for me, absolutely. But if not for you, does the fact that you opened the box and didn't find what you wanted ruin the whole experience of the show, all of the fun you had along the way? It's not wrong to feel that way, not at all. But it probably does speak to the different kinds of people we are, and the different ways we react to art.

Me, I prize ambition above absolute coherence. The producers of "Lost" have talked about just how much they love the work of Stephen King, and King's novels tend to get less interesting the more he expresses just what's going on. What I think makes "The End" work on a plot level, ultimately, is the fact that the characters are only doing what they need to do to come to the end they want to come to. Jack pushes Kate away so she can live the life he knows he won't. Sawyer finally gets to leave. Ben joins the side of good in the end. The characters pass by some of the biggest mysteries on the show, but they only give them glances. The ultimate meanings and associations are there for us to draw conclusions about and argue about for years to come, and I'm sure we will. The important thing, as my wife put it after the episode ended, is not answers. It's resolution. And "Lost" provided that in spades. It was an attempt to put us in a place where we were ready to let the show and the characters go, to release them to whatever was waiting for them beyond those church doors, in that blinding white light (perhaps the light that Juliet released when she blew up the bomb at the end of last season -- it worked, indeed).

One of the things that's made the last six seasons of this show so fun is the way that it's kind of a Rorschach test for who you are. Your answers to the questions the show presented were as important to the experience of watching the show as anything else. I might fixate on the way the show suggests the destruction of the Island means the end of the world (since I do love my post-apocalyptic fiction so). You might fixate on the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Someone else might be very interested in the way the show expresses the philosophies of Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. What matters to me doesn't matter to you. "Lost's" genius is that it stirs up a whole bunch of what matters to a lot of people, then never takes sides on what's most important. Like science fiction? Here's a full season of time travel. Like philosophy? Here are a bunch of characters named after philosophers and an occasional episode that expresses their precepts. It's a big, pulp stew of everything the producers think matters, a stew where you pick out what's important to you and maybe don't have quite as much of that little piece over there.

What makes "The End" disorienting for many of us, I think, is the fact that it's ever so gently letting us know what the producers think is most important here, which pieces of the stew they've been most interested from the start. What I'm intrigued by is how the episode works with "Across the Sea" and "What They Died For." The first is a suggestion of how this entire bloody mess got started, of how this place tends to take men and turn them into monsters (sometimes literally). The second episode (and this one) are suggestions of new ways to go forward, of a way to give people a choice in their own destinies and, finally, a way to create a kind of peace for all of the people who died needlessly because of the events of "Across the Sea." These episodes matter even more than they did in the initial telling now, because we've seen there's a better way, a new way.

But at the same time, "The End" doesn't take the show away from us entirely. The producers are skillful enough to leave us more room for debate, a place left for us to interpret, questions left to answer on our own. I saw this episode in a room full of other "Lost" fans, critics and aficionados. And as my colleague Dan Fienberg wrote on Twitter afterward, what was most important wasn't necessarily the ending of the episode, but the fact that the episode made us talk. We all could agree that the episode's opening acts were skillfully done (as "Lost" always does these big, exciting action payoffs well) and that the emotional payoffs in the flash-sideways universe were mostly well-handled. But it was that last act and the meaning of everything that happens -- is Ben still in Purgatory? where were Michael and Walt? and even if the stained glass windows in the "Lost" church were so multicultural, what about the atheists? -- that really set us to talking. And by leaving us with that (as well as some of the bigger questions of the show's mythology), Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse may have completed their greatest act yet.

I don't know where I'd rank "The End" against all other "Lost" episodes. There were some jokes that fell flat, and an overreliance on sentimentality that could be a little grating at times. I thought the ending was lovely, while still finding myself jarred out of it by Christian telling Jack that he was dead. (Indeed, I suspect this moment will have more resonance for me a second time through, when I'm able to accept that this doesn't mean everyone on the Island has been dead the whole time. I was really worried there for a while!) I liked the way it reinforced the final season's decision to reorient all of this in characters, to, say, tell us the story of Richard's great romance instead of the story of his whole life on the Island or to turn Smokey and Jacob from enigmatic figures into eminently human ones locked in a kind of twisted sibling rivalry. It's a fantastic piece of television; I'm just not sure if it's a fantastic ending to "Lost." Not just yet.

But I loved it all the same. After it was over, I had occasion to stand outside and gaze up at what stars can be seen in the Los Angeles night sky, to smell the flowers all around me, to feel the cool of the night breeze on my skin. What I most love about "The End," what I suspect will bring me around to loving it completely in due time and in the end, is the fact that it suggests that all of this is part of a continuum, that we will live again, not in a place where all is transformed by deeply felt religious faith or by being a better person than someone else, but in a place very much like this one, surrounded by people we loved and cherished. There will be stars in the sky and people we love and things still to see and learn and become. No matter if you believe in an afterlife or not, if you believe in a God or not, that, I think, suggests that the producers want us, at least, to believe in some capacity for people to do good, to come together and build a better world that lies just beyond those open church doors. There are two things that are important, "The End" says: that we care for each other, and that we keep the conversation going.

[Flacolaco]

Twins?...may God bless you, sir. Seriously.

I can barely handle the one sometimes!

I remember at our first ultrasound when the doctor started pointing that thing this way and that and I said "what are you doing?" and she said "Just making sure there's only one in there." And I replied emphatically "There sure as hell better be."

[LonghornDub]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

Yes, of course they addressed things in ATS. But again, i don't feel anything they addressed was important. AT ALL. So the finale would have made perfect sense and not had a chunk of 40-50 minutes missing.

And thanks!

It would have lacked probably the single most key thing that should exist in every major scene, and that's motivation. I can absolutely get by with confusion about how mystical light drain-stoppers work, how a floating, quasi-mechanical, quasi-pure evil smoke monster thing can be created, etc. That stuff needs little explanation because the explanation is not something we can relate to anyway. What I can't get by with is not having some base for understanding why central characters are doing what they are doing. That is something we can relate to--basic human emotions and motivations--and it's absolutely critical to have for any key action in a story.

Without AtS, there is no motivation for MiB. He's just a guy who wants to leave the island. And "everybody wants to leave the island" is not motivation, because it's not true. Jacob, the one person most similarly situated to MiB, did not want to leave. Ben, similar to Jacob and MiB in that he spent basically his entire life there, did not want to leave. AtS establishes the contrast between Jacob and MiB, deep-rooted in their childhoods, and consequently explains why MiB is so hell-bent on getting out of there. And it's a whole lot more than just "he was told he couldn't." You severely undersell the complexity of a brilliantly created character by saying that.

It sounds like the fundamental difference between us is that I see AtS as primarily (predominately, in fact) meant to expound upon the characters of MiB and Jacob, not to explain the plot device of the light-cave and everything that goes with it.

[Flacolaco]

I get what LHD is saying, but I still lean another way. Perhaps in a third direction, relative to your conversation.

Why he wanted to to leave the island isn't interesting to me. In fact, the realization of it runs counter intuitive to what we had been told about him before ATS.

Consider the following

1. We had been told that if he leaves, everyone is going to die. That everyone is doomed. Not just on the island, but everywhere. This implies that he would leave and then wreak havoc on the world.

2. In ATS, we learn he wants to leave simply to see what else is out there and where he's from. He doesn't like that he's been lied to and he wants to get away.

When you weigh one against the other, they don't add up. This is the failing of ATS to me. I wanted ATS to inform the present-island story that I cared about (why can't they let him leave?)....it did not.

And that's my final word on this.... I kid...

[Big Boy Laroux]

no, i do get that it was character background. And i do like the characters (MiB infinitely more than Jacob). Again, i wasn't looking for things to be explained. I don't need to know what the light cave was. But the writers/producers went there, so it's a viable topic.

Also, these were characters that were thrust at us about the same as Nikki and Paulo were. One day, they were just there. So to focus an entire episode on them, and one that honestly, 100% did not need to exist as an hour-long show (and could have been a one-scene flashback - and actually probably would have worked better character-development-wise in a shorter dose, possibly as part of the richard episode) made it pointless to me.

The mystery that surrounded them was what made them interesting. I will concede that the only good point of ATS was its reveal that neither Jacob nor MiB were truly good or truly evil. Just like everyone else on the show, they blurred that line. that was a good message. Ok, so not 100% pointless. 99.999999% pointless.

But the rest? Meh.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Flacolaco

I get what LHD is saying, but I still lean another way. Perhaps in a third direction, relative to your conversation.

Why he wanted to to leave the island isn't interesting to me. In fact, the realization of it runs counter intuitive to what we had been told about him before ATS.

Consider the following

1. We had been told that if he leaves, everyone is going to die. That everyone is doomed. Not just on the island, but everywhere. This implies that he would leave and then wreak havoc on the world.

2. In ATS, we learn he wants to leave simply to see what else is out there and where he's from. He doesn't like that he's been lied to and he wants to get away.

When you weigh one against the other, they don't add up. This is the failing of ATS to me. I wanted ATS to inform the present-island story that I cared about (why can't they let him leave?)....it did not.

And that's my final word on this.... I kid...

I think it could all be explained by saying "perhaps Jacob was wrong". He doesn't really know what would happen other than what he has been told. Or are we to think that somehow the Island itself communicates to him. (I did not get that impression this season.) The Light, it seems, is an entirely impersonal force.

[Ninkobei]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

and jack was spit out. But jack was also IN THE POOL OF WATER.

Jack was also the Protector of the Island. MIB was a failed protector.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Good article, nikeball, thanks.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

I will concede that the only good point of ATS was its reveal that neither Jacob nor MiB were truly good or truly evil. Just like everyone else on the show, they blurred that line. that was a good message. Ok, so not 100% pointless. 99.999999% pointless.

But the rest? Meh.

okok...do you disagree with me that these following pts we learned as facts in ATS are not "good pts" or interesting bits of info?
the fact that they are/were both just humans and not at all "gods" is very interesting
the fact that they are biological twins is very interesting
the fact that they were very close at once point is interesting
the fact that Jacob was not the initial first choice and wasn't "special" is very interesting
the fact that that seeminly neither one of them really has a ton of background knowledge about what happened on the Island before they got there is interesting (and their general limitations in general are interesting)

[sike]

interesting vids here...scroll down to the second vid for some answers
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watc...real_name.html

[LonghornDub]

Originally Posted by Flacolaco

I get what LHD is saying, but I still lean another way. Perhaps in a third direction, relative to your conversation.

Why he wanted to to leave the island isn't interesting to me. In fact, the realization of it runs counter intuitive to what we had been told about him before ATS.

Consider the following

1. We had been told that if he leaves, everyone is going to die. That everyone is doomed. Not just on the island, but everywhere. This implies that he would leave and then wreak havoc on the world.

2. In ATS, we learn he wants to leave simply to see what else is out there and where he's from. He doesn't like that he's been lied to and he wants to get away.

When you weigh one against the other, they don't add up. This is the failing of ATS to me. I wanted ATS to inform the present-island story that I cared about (why can't they let him leave?)....it did not.

And that's my final word on this.... I kid...

This is an interesting way to think about it. Here's my response--

For me, I didn't feel those two things were incongruent or somehow "didn't add up." The way I see it, #1 goes to the effect of him leaving (assuming that Jacob was correct about that effect in the first place), whereas #2 goes to his motivation for wanting to leave. Maybe counterintuitive is an appropriate way to describe it, since we would naturally think that if the effect of him leaving is to doom the world, then that's his motivation also--to doom the world, wreak havoc, etc.

But that's my absolute favorite thing about it--destruction is not his motivation. Here you have a guy who somehow embodies evil, such that if he leaves this place, the entire world is overcome with darkness. And yet beneath all that, you've got a guy with a very basic, very human motivation for wanting to leave. He was deprived of any sort of normal life, forced to live with only two people (one of whom wasn't even his real mother) at a place he didn't consider his home, and all his wondering about the outside world was met with assertions that: 1) there wasn't anything out there, or 2) even if there was, he'd never get to see it. Then, on top of all that, he was turned into a monster by the one person he actually did care about, and then was forced to stew on all of this for thousands of years.

So, the way I see it, the effect of him leaving was evil, but the motivation was not. The motivation very human, was something we can probably all understand. And I personally love that complexity. Even when he was killing everyone in his path, after I saw AtS, I never once got the sense that he was doing it because he just likes to kill things. He was doing it because it was part of his larger plan to get himself off the island and maybe eventually try to live the life he was unfairly deprived of by some woman who had grown tired of protecting the island for thousands of years.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by sike

okok...do you disagree with me that these following pts we learned as facts in ATS are not "good pts" or interesting bits of info?
the fact that they are/were both just humans and not at all "gods" is very interesting
the fact that they are biological twins is very interesting
the fact that they were very close at once point is interesting
the fact that Jacob was not the initial first choice and wasn't "special" is very interesting
the fact that that seeminly neither one of them really has a ton of background knowledge about what happened on the Island before they got there is interesting (and their general limitations in general are interesting)

honestly? Meh. I could have gone without knowing any of it. I think the mystery surrounding those subjects was better than finding out. I swear i'm not being difficult just for the sake of being difficult.

[Big Boy Laroux]

Originally Posted by LonghornDub

This is an interesting way to think about it. Here's my response--

For me, I didn't feel those two things were incongruent or somehow "didn't add up." The way I see it, #1 goes to the effect of him leaving (assuming that Jacob was correct about that effect in the first place), whereas #2 goes to his motivation for wanting to leave. Maybe counterintuitive is an appropriate way to describe it, since we would naturally think that if the effect of him leaving is to doom the world, then that's his motivation also--to doom the world, wreak havoc, etc.

But that's my absolute favorite thing about it--destruction is not his motivation. Here you have a guy who somehow embodies evil, such that if he leaves this place, the entire world is overcome with darkness. And yet beneath all that, you've got a guy with a very basic, very human motivation for wanting to leave. He was deprived of any sort of normal life, forced to live with only two people (one of whom wasn't even his real mother) at a place he didn't consider his home, and all his wondering about the outside world was met with assertions that: 1) there wasn't anything out there, or 2) even if there was, he'd never get to see it. Then, on top of all that, he was turned into a monster by the one person he actually did care about, and then was forced to stew on all of this for thousands of years.

So, the way I see it, the effect of him leaving was evil, but the motivation was not. The motivation very human, was something we can probably all understand. And I personally love that complexity. Even when he was killing everyone in his path, after I saw AtS, I never once got the sense that he was doing it because he just likes to kill things. He was doing it because it was part of his larger plan to get himself off the island and maybe eventually try to live the life he was unfairly deprived of by some woman who had grown tired of protecting the island for thousands of years.

This is a good post, longhorn. Still a pointless episode, but good post. I can give credit where credit is due.

I understand your point (and have since the episode aired), I also understood the point of the episode and what they were trying to convey - humanizing Jacob and MiB. I just don't feel all of it really amounted to anything. Thus, pointless.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

honestly? Meh. I could have gone without knowing any of it. I think the mystery surrounding those subjects was better than finding out. I swear i'm not being difficult just for the sake of being difficult.

Not trying to change your mind....but for me, there was still a TON of mystery about those two and their doings.

I would have been close to furious for the show to end and know no more than smokey was bad and Jacob was good.

[Flacolaco]

It just dawned on me that Rose and Bernard were still on the island. I guess they got their happily ever after after all.

[Big Boy Laroux]

i may grow to like ATS over time. and i'll eat crow then, maybe in a few years.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Flacolaco

It just dawned on me that Rose and Bernard were still on the island. I guess they got their happily ever after after all.

no doubt. who knows how long Hurley kept them around.

I imagine with Smokey gone, Hurley had it pretty easy.

[LonghornDub]

Originally Posted by Big Boy Laroux

i may grow to like ATS over time. and i'll eat crow then, maybe in a few years.

At this point, I consider you saying it was only 99.9% pointless a victory.

But seriously, I'll want to know what you think about it when (if?) you go back in watch it in the flow of the entire season/series, rather than just us reflecting on it after having seen the finale.

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by LonghornDub

One thing I thought was funny in the finale was how Juliet showed no hesitation at all to start making out with Sawyer when she was married to Jack and presumably had a kid with him. I guess once you "remember," nothing in that afterlife seems important.

Well they were divorced, no?

[mary]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were. She said something like, "You didn't mention you had a sister the whole time we were married" or something like that.

[jthig32]

Yeah and David asking his dad if he was going to "get weird" when talking about his mom....also earlier in the season I seem to remember David was only staying with Jack because his mom was out of town.

[nikeball]

It seemed like they were flirting too. "Hello Doctor..." "Hello Doctor"... I was expecting Claire Dunphy to show up to reprise her role as Jack's ex wife. BOOOOOOOO.


Jeff Jensen's part 1 recap is up.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,2031...387946,00.html

[bobbyfg7]

Minor detail ... did anyone else sense that Ben wanted to stay behind instead of going into the church because he wasn't quite done hanging out with Alex and Rousseau?

Just trying to figure out a reason why he didn't go into the church.

[nikeball]

Originally Posted by bobbyfg7

Minor detail ... did anyone else sense that Ben wanted to stay behind instead of going into the church because he wasn't quite done hanging out with Alex and Rousseau?

Just trying to figure out a reason why he didn't go into the church.

Very nice. Perhaps Alex is the person he had to "enlighten" to complete their journeys. She was his important people.

[sike]

There is no doubt that Ben is staying for him finally having a chance to have a family...