Today's preamble is going to be short, I'm afraid. The Cap'n has pretty much dissected the Lost finale to the point where I'm just tired of debating it. The problem really lies in the last ten minutes, where it becomes abundantly clear what the "flash-sideways"'s are, which for me sullied what was otherwise a reasonably well constructed last episode. Sure, the Jack / UnLocke fistfight was kinda weak, but it doesn't really compare with the limp, uninspired multi-denominational Heaven ending.
Briefly, allow me to make two points:
1. If that was always the ending, what was the point of Seasons 5 and 6? - Let's say that Lost has always been building to the concept that the Island is a place where the survivors find each other, so that when they die, they'll meet again in this flash-sideways purgatory. Okay, so then one could make the argument that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse pulled a huge bait and switch with the "can we detonate the bomb and undo everything?" trick, which is central to the time travel story in season 5 and is (misleadingly) linked to the flash-sideways.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that as late as the Desmond episode, they weren't sure how to end the show. Why? Because the conversation that Faraday has with Desmond in the flash-sideways points more to a course-correction about the bomb sinking the island. In fact, the sunken island in the first episode is a nasty trick to pull on the audience because it suggests that the flash-sideways has anything to do with detonating Jughead. However, the last scene with Jack and Christian Shepard makes it pretty clear that this "purgatory" was always going to be there for the extended Island family to reconnect. So why travel through time? Why introduce Jacob and the Man in Black? Why are some people who died there and some aren't (if we're ignoring casting problems)? This brings me to my second point...
2. Purgatory - Very early in the run of the show, JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Carlton Cuse all refuted theories that the characters were in purgatory. Many people have defended the finale by insisting to me that technically speaking, just because the flash-sideways is a purgatory, the creators kept their word that the island was, in fact, not purgatory. Pardon my french, but bullshit.
In "Everybody Loves Hugo," Hurley runs into Michael in the jungle, and the following exchange takes place:
HURLEY: You're stuck on the Island aren't you?
MICHAEL: [nodding] 'Cause of what I did.
HURLEY: And...there're others out here like you, aren't there? That's what the whispers are?
MICHAEL: Yeah. We're the ones who can't move on.
Sounds like the Island IS a form of purgatory. So even if we're getting into semantics, the creators of the show weren't being truthful. After five years of promising that audiences were barking up the wrong tree about purgatory, in the final season that's exactly what's going on. Pretty cheap, if you ask me.Okay, so it wasn't as short as I'd hoped it would be. Let's move on to the videos, eh?
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Our first video answers the question you were no doubt asking, "what if someone collected all the times Hurley said 'Dude'?" See for yourself:
Our second video comes from Jimmy Kimmel Live, a show I must admit I haven't watched before. However, I am a sucker for unnecessary censorship, which turns out to be a regular feature on the show. Since Kimmel made one for Lost, and because it makes me laugh, I share it with you:
Bonus clip: Karl Pilkington, of The Ricky Gervais Show fame, shares his take on Sky 1's programming, including a surprisingly logical take on Lost -
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