COLIN'S IN A COMMERCIAL!

My Post Finale Hater Post

Although I supposed I really did like a lot of Lost's final episode (the Sawyer/Juliet reunion, Jack's act breaking, jumping punch on the cliffs), and while I still think Lost is the Best. Show. Ever. (see: "Through the Looking Glass") After a couple days, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to get over the completely bizarre, abrupt and disappointing "flash" universe revelation and the now canonized ultimate fate of our Losties.

I'll start with my awakening: There's a short piece in nymag that details the vehement denials of the creators of the show regarding the theory that the island is "purgatory," or "limbo" or whatever.

The fact that this "classic" purgatory theory was so concretely denied by both J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof and then for it to be so integral for at least half of the final season, I kind of find it hard to ignore. I would like to view what Doc Jensen called "the Church Bus to Heaven" as merely a lame conclusion to a disappointing season. But I'm getting the sneaking suspicion I might have been had.

And it's not like the build-up to a conclusion of the Sideways world is just important to me. Lindelof himself earlier this year said that this "flash" universe was so important it's explanation is "the only answer we owe." I'll just write out the full context of this quote since it's so damning (hee hee), and I don't want it to seem like I'm being mean. PS. This message was broadcast directly to us fans via nerd publication Wired Magazine:

Lindelof (emphasis added): It’s not just what would have happened if the plane landed; now Jack has a son and there are these changes. The audience is saying, “I hope they explain the relationship between these two stories,” and that, to us, is the only answer we owe.

And then, they went with Purgatory for that answer. So, in addition to not really answering and/or getting back to a lot of stuff once seemingly so important (see ANY of Becky's pre-finale hopes), the Flash-Sidewayses (Christ, I can't believe I'm still calling them that!) ended up being a big ole bowl of nothing.

Here are some new questions:

What did the thin on-island events of the finale, OR THE SERIES AS A WHOLE, really have to do with the Purgatoryverse? How long had Jack been in limbo for since he explicitly died before Kate? Why did this collective mind-meld invent a son for Dr. Jack? Why was only Jack showing wounds from his death? Why did Sayid need to kill fakeKeamy Mikhail in limbo to get to go to heaven with Shannon? Why was someone like Bernard still a dentist but Sawyer was now a semi-happy cop? Why was Penny at the damn church? Had she ever even met half these people?! All of these question now appear so silly, I can't help but feel kind of embarrassed even asking them in light of what they chose to go with.

It would have been nice to wrap up the show's last season in a more tangible way, with stuff related to what we've actually been been following for years. Not some last minute vision, and final season invention, of something so completely distant, so unrelatable and so on the nose religious it feels like it's from a different plane of storytelling and not really about a magical island in this world.

(I should of course also say: if this isn't the case for you, and everything clicked when that white light came pouring into the church, I'm glad it all came together in your eyes. Or if the show was still worth all the trouble even with a lame finale, that's totally cool too.)

But there still seems to be two points here. 1) This was Lost's big finale and they went with the one theory they had explicitly said they weren't doing all along. And 2) Why? At the expense of rushing the island storyline along (which consisted almost entirely of "cork gets taken out of a plug, cork gets put into a plug,") and leaving out what were some of the real questions posed earlier by the authors of the show, it feels like either: A) Darlton decided to be like, self referential or something or B) these whole six seasons were kind of just a long con.

The part that original nymag piece that really shocked me into this sad post came when the author, who is surprising not Emily Nussbaum, posits a post-finale question posed by fans. "'Why didn't Darlton care at all about the show's mythology?!'" To me, that really drove home that this is the end. And in the end, the show's creators and authors decided to not give us longtime Lost apologists much to defend the show with. And, most depressingly of all, I don't get to watch another episode next week.

So there you have it. I hope you aren't infected by my darkness too much after reading this. Then again, part of what made Lost sincerely worth all this time was trying to make sense of this crazy world with wonderful, smart, terrific people like you all. I hope one day we all get to sit in pews and and bathe in white light together. So I can't wait to hear what everyone else thought. Re-watch soon?

Namaste and Good Luck!

It's Here.

I remember my first encounter with Lost: I walked into a room where my mom was watching this new plane crash show, the one that made me repeatedly say "I'll just stick to Gilligan, thanks" whenever anyone mentioned it. It was a scene from the episode I now recognize as "Hearts & Minds" - the scene in which Boone and Shannon are running from the smoke monster big time. How could I have known six years ago that this show would be the center of most of my thoughts? How could I have guessed that I would've co-created a theme blog for it? How could I forget how hokey I thought Smokey was? Six years of hard work, I guess. Hard work watching the craziest show on tv.

Tonight Lost ends in a two and a half hour episode called "The End." Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer are left, plus Ben, Miles, and Smokey. I'm assuming Jacob's ashes will have blown out by 9pm tonight. There's a possibility Widmore isn't all the way dead. And don't forget about Desmond!

I have hopes for tonight, but if none of them are met, I think I'll still enjoy the evening. No matter what questions remain unanswered, this trip was better than Gilligan to me.

That said, my hopes include:

• Eloise Hawking's designs and the source of her omniscience will come to light due to her actions tonight.
• Widmore's secret to Smokey is revealed.
• There's something special about Aaron.
• Any mention of Walt, hopefully, but I know Walt's not really in this anymore.
• Rose & Bernard save the day.
  
• The Hansos are explained just a litttttttle bit more.
  
• They go over the no-babies thing one more time.
• Desmond does lots of cool stuff.
• A whole new gang gets lost and it starts all over again!
  

Oh, KG

'Lost' audio: Garnett explains the island to 'Big Baby' from The Basketball Jones on Vimeo.

a thousand questions from becky

A Thousand New Questions, by Becky

Since last night's "Across The Sea" gave us a long look at Jacob and MIB's childhood, I have no reason to complain about still having questions. We were provided with a few answers, such as: J&MIB are twin brothers, MIB perhaps never got a name (and is thus more of an archetype, perhaps), Jacob took on his Mother's role of protecting the golden-light-pool-which-contains-the-stuff-that's-in-everyone's-soul, and what we see as Smokey most likely got released because Jacob threw MIB into that very same pool. Going off of that, I still have infinity questions, and I thought it might be useful to put them out here. This way you can add to it or provide your answers or theories in the comments section, and at the end of it all, we can look at (a) which questions get answered, (b) which will only get hinted at, and (c) which we will simply have to explain by ourselves. Here it comes!

1. If Mother came from her own mother, I think we can assume that she took over Island Guardianship from her own mother. Who was the first person to take on that post? How did that person first find out what the golden light pool was?
2. Does the golden light pool become the building site for the Temple? If so, why doesn't the Temple water have a similar effect as MIB's adventure in the golden pool? Does Sayid's transformation hint at what MIB's golden pool did?
   
3. Is Smokey something very, very ancient that was released when MIB was thrown into the golden pool, or did MIB become Smokey when he was thrown in? And WHAT IS SMOKEY? All those mechanical clicks and all that puffy black smoke...what makes Smokey take on these characteristics?
4. What would ACTUALLY happen if Smokey made it off the Island? I feel like we're still hearing half-truths on that topic. I'd like to know what would actually happen. Would Smokey take over everyone's corpse-copies and pilfered memories?
   
5. Has anyone ever used the golden pool for his own horrible devices? Why weren't the consequences as bad as what might happen if Smokey gets off the Island? I ask because to me it looks like there's no particular evidence that something bad happened because the golden pool was tapped into. Is the endgame protecting the golden pool, or keeping Smokey on the Island?
   
6. How and why can Jacob get off the Island? And why can't MIB do it the same way?
7. How and why and what The Donkey Wheel?
   
8. How and why can Jacob see things through his lighthouse mirrors?
9. How can it be that a concentration of golden poolwater on the Island is connected to the teensy bits of golden poolwater within all of us who walk the Earth? To ask what the water is would be too open-ended, I think. So I'd like to know more about how people know what they know about it. Basically, what does Mother know that she's hiding from us?
10. Has anyone ever released Smokey through the golden pool before? If not, how did Mother come to collect information on how dangerous it is to enter the pool?
11. MIB mentioned that he was "special." What makes him say that? If he is special, is it that he's innately special? Was his father someone interesting? Is he special because he has the ability to lie? Doesn't everyone (minus Jacob)?
12. Why is Mother so thrilled by MIB's ability to lie when she goes on to condemn his fellow villagers for lying (and fighting, and destroying, and corrupting, and it all always ending the same)?
13. Why did Jacob stay the same age for so long?
14. What gave Mother the rule-making ability to keep Jacob and MIB from ever hurting each other? Why then could Jacob throw MIB into the golden pool and either (a) kill him or (b) make him suffer a fate worse than death? Aren't fates worse than death also "hurtful?"
15. Why could Sawyer see the young boy who appeared to Smokey in the woods? I think the actor who played Child Jacob is clearly the same actor who did both apparitions, but let me check out lostpedia...ah, inconclusive.
    
16. Did Smokey originate when Jacob threw MIB into that golden pool, or did the event just release the Smokey that was already down there? Can't Smokey take on people's memories (because if he can copy their corpses, I guess he can copy their memories?)? We know that MIB's body was left unburied, so it's hard to say that MIB definitely became Smokey just because he appears as MIB. And yet Mother said that to go into that golden pool would be worse than death. Is being Smokey necessarily MIB's "fate worse than death?" Or could there be something else going on?
17. Why does everyone sound so unnatural speaking Latin?
18. What makes Boy Jacob different from BIB? Why could one lie and one not?

Please give me your answers or theories or whatever else in the comment section (or in your own posts, locke-down planners). I don't want to just nitpick a show that I love, particularly while I'm try to watch for character, story, mythology, and entertainment at the same time. I'm frustrated because, although I was entertained last night, I didn't understand any more of Lost's characters, story, or origin mythology. Lying leads to violence - DUH! We knew that when Sawyer got bamboo up his nails in season 1!

And!

Oh, and I forgot to mention it until now, but I realized a few weeks ago that if you say "Ji Yeon!" kind of strung together, it sounds like "JIIIIIIIN!" but with a cletus the slack-jawed yokel voice. Jiyun!

Tonight, The Candidate. Tomorrow, The World!

I CAN'T BELIEVE THERE'S FINALLY GOING TO BE A NEW Lost ON TONIGHT! After 14 long days of waiting, we shall spend this evening watching the 5th-to-last hour of LOST. And as I have tried to do in the past, I'm going to take a few guesses about what the episode will be like based on the title alone.

The Candidate...makes me think of presidential candidates...or "Mrs. Robinson"...or all the candidate talk on LOST so far. Jacob's dead, right? And these people, according to Smokey, are potential candidates to replace him, right? Then why do half of all recappers/theorists keep suggesting that those little boys/that little boy are/is Jacob, quickly growing back up into Jacob? Wouldn't that make them/him the candidate? I think the boy (and I do think that it's just one kid, with a few years in between appearances) isn't going to end up being Jacob or Smokey. I think he's something else, something that does have to do with J & S, but something that's maybe even more supernatural than they are. Because he reminds Smokey of the RULES, and these rules certainly don't seem to be the kind that come out of a governed body; instead, they seem like ancient rules that were made up a long time ago by someone that maybe wasn't just some guy. All I'm saying is, if the kid is the referee, he's got power over Smokey (or at least his precious rules do).

Then what's the Candidate? Is it the one 815 survivor who's going to turn out to be the one to replace Jacob? How will this one person be chosen? Was Jacob once someone else's candidate? These are some huge questions. I wonder if they'll go into all of this, or if it'll turn out that "candidate" really just meant like, a candidate for city council in the diagonal reality. Nah, they'll go into it. But how far? Will they tell us who should replace Jacob? Will they tell us that they're also going to replace Smokey, since this whole cycle thing seems to be ending? I don't think it's a coincidence that there are TWO name-planning areas. One (the cave) is Smokey's, and the other (the lighthouse) is Jacob's. That's what I think, anyway. And that means either Smokey was desperately trying to keep up with Jacob's plans, or Smokey was also planning on finding his own replacement.

WE SHALL SEE TONIGHT!!!

PS I forgot to mention Ji Yeon. She's a candidate, I think. LOOKS LIKE THE BABIES HAVE TO GET TO THE ISLAND AFTER ALL, right guys? Right? Please just bring those babies so we can find out all about them. Please!