Any of you who have followed my following of Lost over the years at this blog have likely given up waiting for me to post something. I dawdled after it was over May 23rd, and was caught up in the controversy over finale, I kept intending to but alas, other business kept the procrastination going until now. But yesterday I found another reason to delay–for months. Our 16 year old son, Benjamin recently began watching the episodes on Netflix with us, starting at the first season and is thoroughly hooked. We had always intended to re-watch from the beginning to get a perspective on the series as a whole but now that he’s joined us, we’re urging him to avoid looking up anything about what happens from where we currently are, in the midst of the second season, to the sixth, lest he learn of any of the many developments to come. I’m even warning him from leafing through the books I’m using for my academic research on the series. Thus, my commentary here would possibly be read as he sometimes reads my blog. I therefore must stay mum about this until we finish sometime in late summer, I expect, when we order the Blu-Ray final season and special feature and see how he handles the conclusion. But if you want to try leaving a comment below, I will attempt to write you at the e-mail address you leave and respond one-on-one, something which I’d love to do, since I was quite affected by the finale and would love to share my thoughts with you.
July 4, 2010
So, what did I think of the Lost finale?
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Hey Alex,
I’ll try and stay as vague as possible (NOTE TO ALEX’S 16 YEAR OLD SON: please do not read!). the Finale has caused lots of mixed feelings for me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it and I felt it was satisfying enough. But I wonder if the Flash Sideways was more of a red-herrring in the end. There was so much build-up in Season 5 regarding Jughead and the temporal ramifications our heroes hoped to produce that, when we got the final reveal as to the nature of the Sideways world, I was left wondering what the point of Jughead really was.
That’s a very convoluted paragraph — my apologies.
Also, what was your opinion of the stained glass window? Chris Seay, who was writing about the final season at Christianity Today found it offensive. I might have found it a little off-putting, but I don’t know if it offended me.
I would love you read your thoughts, and I have always appreciated your perspectives on the show over the last few years.
Thanks so much!
Comment by taj — July 7, 2010 @ 10:30 pm |
So good to hear from you again, taj–
Ben doesn’t read our e-mail (I don’t think) so we should be safe corresponding. Yes, you’re not the only one to wonder if a season long sideways world that turns out to be the anteroom to the hereafter wasn’t a bit of a cheat. I’m not really bothered by it–it allowed the show to keep its cutaway-to-another-place/time structure while making us wonder what’s real. It also was a way of reiterating the show’s theme of letting go of the past, no matter how good it feels.
Juliet said, “It worked.” And I think she meant, it got the cast back to the future so they could confront Smokey and Jacob’s successor (s) could take over. It didn’t reset their lives as if they had never crashed because “whatever happened, happened.” And what happened mattered. I think that was the point and purpose of Jughead.
The stained glass window seemed at first to be a all-paths-lead-to- God imagery, as were the other religious symbols in the room. I think all that was meant to be an orienting set dressing to announce that we’re addressing ultimate issues here that connect to these people’s lives whose backgrounds are represented by these symbols. It’s true that the Christian symbolism seemed to out weigh the others, what with the big white statue of the Sacred Heart Jesus in front of the church and the alter cross, etc. Moreover, it was hard to miss the fact that Jack Shepherd, finally, lays down his life for his friends, receives a wound in his side as he defeats the devil figure and then finishes his road to Calvary by replacing the big stopper in the cave of light which ensures his demise, but not before he sees the fruit of his labors, captivity no longer captive, sail off into the sky. So, perhaps Lost does seem to lean toward Christianity more than other faiths or philosophies; it is a show about redemption, after all, and it’s hard for a Catholic and a Jew executive producers to avoid framing their story without such Judeo- Christian themes
I don’t think this is meant as a strict religious allegory of salvation theology–that would be a jolt to try to wedge that in in the last ten minutes of the show after all the other plodding through the complex plot’s resolution. Lost was more about how we learn to live with one another so that together we find some sort of redemption. No one does it alone and every time someone tries, they fail. The series created a story situation that used its mysteries to examine its characters who are isolated from their private hells through the plane crash and forced to confront the, shall I say it, meaning of life–it infused the ancient debates between choice and destiny, fact and faith, what the good life is with a vivid drama that forces us to ponder what it all means. We argue and research the various character and plot intersections and follow the clues of the character names, book titles, songs and other puzzle pieces and this is all good. Term papers and dissertations will chew on this along with the chat-rooms and bible studies–for a long time, I think.
Comment by Alex — July 8, 2010 @ 2:33 am |