Lost: The Final Boner

[Weebs]

Lapidus!

This finale is the balls so far.  Can't wait to see how it all plays out.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Lapidus!

This finale is the balls so far.  Can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Awesome piled on awesome.

So... Is the alt-timeline Jacob's backup plan/winning move?

[Weebs]

Lapidus!

This finale is the balls so far.  Can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Awesome piled on awesome.

So... Is the alt-timeline Jacob's backup plan/winning move?

I don't think so.  I think everybody on the island is dead.  The flash-sideways world is actually some kind of "purgatory," and Desmond is helping everybody cross over.

Or, maybe, they've always been dead.  The key point here is that everybody on the island winds up dead in the end.  I think these flashes they have in the sideways world are actually them realizing they've died.  Now they're doing...something...maybe their whole purpose is to help Rose, Bernard and Vincent live!

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Lapidus!

This finale is the balls so far.  Can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Awesome piled on awesome.

So... Is the alt-timeline Jacob's backup plan/winning move?

I don't think so.  I think everybody on the island is dead.  The flash-sideways world is actually some kind of "purgatory," and Desmond is helping everybody cross over.

Or, maybe, they've always been dead.  The key point here is that everybody on the island winds up dead in the end.  I think these flashes they have in the sideways world are actually them realizing they've died.  Now they're doing...something...maybe their whole purpose is to help Rose, Bernard and Vincent live!

I just meant that, while EvilLocke thinks he's won, maybe Jacob still has a move to play.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Namely: Desmond.

[Weebs]

Well EvilLocke has sort of lost. And I'm starting to think more and more that all of these people are dead. The flash sideways world is what they all see when they die, their ideal lives, and now they have to move on. "See ya in another life, brotha."  

[Tinker to Evers to Chance]

[Weebs]

He shoots and he scores!

[Canadouche]

T minus 4 hours from Chuck, Pen and Weebs bitching about how it all ended.

I don't know if anyone else is watching the pre-End Lost special on ABC right now, but listening to Daniel Dae Kim talk is a trip. I already knew the guy was raised in the States, but he sounds nothing at all like Jin.

Naveen Andrews sounds like a big British homo.

... who is, in reality, a big British Couga Hunta.

[R-V]

Loved it. A supremely entertaining 2.5 hours of television and a fitting final shot.

[Wheezer]

I can only hope the discussion of the Jimmy Kimmel after-show is as spirited.

[R-V]

So how awesome was the clifftop showdown with Jack leaping down to tackle Locke? Also, thi:

You could argue that the Flash Sideways was entirely unnecessary. You know what? You would be right. On a plot level, you did not need it at all. It had no direct bearing on what happened on the Island. It turned out that, unlike what some of us thought (including maybe Island Desmond), Sideways Desmond's efforts to "awaken" his friends had no bearing on saving the Island or defeating Locke. You could have simply picked up season six in 2007, had everyone realize that Juliet's smacking the bomb did not undo the Oceanic crash, and ended the series with Jack dying and a few of his friends escaping.

You could, but you would have given up an emotionally powerful ending whose spirituality--though it may rankle some as Battlestar Galactica's ending did--bothered this big fat secular agnostic not one bit. To me, the closing of Lost was not telling me that I do or do not have an immortal soul; it was telling me what these characters lives meant. And that meaning, like all our lives' meaning, derived from the interactions they had with, and the memories they shared with, other people.

You could take that literally, as in: this is a picture of what happens when you die. Or you could take it metaphorically, as in: this is a story using spiritual imagery to depict the lasting legacy of human contact. (I personally see it that way, in the same way that I believe that religious scriptures are not literally true and yet are some of our most powerful and important stories regardless. Your mileage may vary, as they say on the Internet.)

[Weebs]

So how awesome was the clifftop showdown with Jack leaping down to tackle Locke? Also, thi:

You could argue that the Flash Sideways was entirely unnecessary. You know what? You would be right. On a plot level, you did not need it at all. It had no direct bearing on what happened on the Island. It turned out that, unlike what some of us thought (including maybe Island Desmond), Sideways Desmond's efforts to "awaken" his friends had no bearing on saving the Island or defeating Locke. You could have simply picked up season six in 2007, had everyone realize that Juliet's smacking the bomb did not undo the Oceanic crash, and ended the series with Jack dying and a few of his friends escaping.

You could, but you would have given up an emotionally powerful ending whose spirituality--though it may rankle some as Battlestar Galactica's ending did--bothered this big fat secular agnostic not one bit. To me, the closing of Lost was not telling me that I do or do not have an immortal soul; it was telling me what these characters lives meant. And that meaning, like all our lives' meaning, derived from the interactions they had with, and the memories they shared with, other people.

You could take that literally, as in: this is a picture of what happens when you die. Or you could take it metaphorically, as in: this is a story using spiritual imagery to depict the lasting legacy of human contact. (I personally see it that way, in the same way that I believe that religious scriptures are not literally true and yet are some of our most powerful and important stories regardless. Your mileage may vary, as they say on the Internet.)

My only problem I had with the finale wasn't that the reveal of the Sideways world was unnecessary, but that all of the events leading up to it were.  I'm guessing if we go back and re-watch season 6, knowing what we know, that some of the Sideways events will start to make sense in the context of some kind of "afterlife," but right now they all just seem like a way to confuse the viewers until we finally figured out what was going on.  Why did Jack have a kid in this life? Why did we have to see Sun get kidnapped and Sayid shoot some guys?  Why did we have to watch Sawyer's date with Charlotte?  I'm sure there's an interpretation of the world where it all makes perfect sense, but right now it just seems like all of the Sideways events were unnecessary distractions to string us along until we realized everybody was dead.

[R-V]

So how awesome was the clifftop showdown with Jack leaping down to tackle Locke? Also, thi:

You could argue that the Flash Sideways was entirely unnecessary. You know what? You would be right. On a plot level, you did not need it at all. It had no direct bearing on what happened on the Island. It turned out that, unlike what some of us thought (including maybe Island Desmond), Sideways Desmond's efforts to "awaken" his friends had no bearing on saving the Island or defeating Locke. You could have simply picked up season six in 2007, had everyone realize that Juliet's smacking the bomb did not undo the Oceanic crash, and ended the series with Jack dying and a few of his friends escaping.

You could, but you would have given up an emotionally powerful ending whose spirituality--though it may rankle some as Battlestar Galactica's ending did--bothered this big fat secular agnostic not one bit. To me, the closing of Lost was not telling me that I do or do not have an immortal soul; it was telling me what these characters lives meant. And that meaning, like all our lives' meaning, derived from the interactions they had with, and the memories they shared with, other people.

You could take that literally, as in: this is a picture of what happens when you die. Or you could take it metaphorically, as in: this is a story using spiritual imagery to depict the lasting legacy of human contact. (I personally see it that way, in the same way that I believe that religious scriptures are not literally true and yet are some of our most powerful and important stories regardless. Your mileage may vary, as they say on the Internet.)

My only problem I had with the finale wasn't that the reveal of the Sideways world was unnecessary, but that all of the events leading up to it were.  I'm guessing if we go back and re-watch season 6, knowing what we know, that some of the Sideways events will start to make sense in the context of some kind of "afterlife," but right now they all just seem like a way to confuse the viewers until we finally figured out what was going on.  Why did Jack have a kid in this life? Why did we have to see Sun get kidnapped and Sayid shoot some guys?  Why did we have to watch Sawyer's date with Charlotte?  I'm sure there's an interpretation of the world where it all makes perfect sense, but right now it just seems like all of the Sideways events were unnecessary distractions to string us along until we realized everybody was dead.

Obviously there was an element of stringing people along with a mystery. That's what Lost is, a mystery show. But the "why" is pretty simple - setting off the bomb worked. They got to experience what their lives would've been like if 815 had never crashed, if Ben & Juliet would've never gone to the island.

The only catch is that they didn't get to play out this version of reality until they were dead.

[Weebs]

So how awesome was the clifftop showdown with Jack leaping down to tackle Locke? Also, thi:

You could argue that the Flash Sideways was entirely unnecessary. You know what? You would be right. On a plot level, you did not need it at all. It had no direct bearing on what happened on the Island. It turned out that, unlike what some of us thought (including maybe Island Desmond), Sideways Desmond's efforts to "awaken" his friends had no bearing on saving the Island or defeating Locke. You could have simply picked up season six in 2007, had everyone realize that Juliet's smacking the bomb did not undo the Oceanic crash, and ended the series with Jack dying and a few of his friends escaping.

You could, but you would have given up an emotionally powerful ending whose spirituality--though it may rankle some as Battlestar Galactica's ending did--bothered this big fat secular agnostic not one bit. To me, the closing of Lost was not telling me that I do or do not have an immortal soul; it was telling me what these characters lives meant. And that meaning, like all our lives' meaning, derived from the interactions they had with, and the memories they shared with, other people.

You could take that literally, as in: this is a picture of what happens when you die. Or you could take it metaphorically, as in: this is a story using spiritual imagery to depict the lasting legacy of human contact. (I personally see it that way, in the same way that I believe that religious scriptures are not literally true and yet are some of our most powerful and important stories regardless. Your mileage may vary, as they say on the Internet.)

My only problem I had with the finale wasn't that the reveal of the Sideways world was unnecessary, but that all of the events leading up to it were.  I'm guessing if we go back and re-watch season 6, knowing what we know, that some of the Sideways events will start to make sense in the context of some kind of "afterlife," but right now they all just seem like a way to confuse the viewers until we finally figured out what was going on.  Why did Jack have a kid in this life? Why did we have to see Sun get kidnapped and Sayid shoot some guys?  Why did we have to watch Sawyer's date with Charlotte?  I'm sure there's an interpretation of the world where it all makes perfect sense, but right now it just seems like all of the Sideways events were unnecessary distractions to string us along until we realized everybody was dead.

Obviously there was an element of stringing people along with a mystery. That's what Lost is, a mystery show. But the "why" is pretty simple - setting off the bomb worked. They got to experience what their lives would've been like if 815 had never crashed, if Ben & Juliet would've never gone to the island.

The only catch is that they didn't get to play out this version of reality until they were dead.

Well I get that, but why did the bomb put everything into effect?  Detonating it was supposed to actually put them back in LAX, alive.  It was supposed to be a reset switch for everything.  I guess we're supposed to interpret it as more of a symbolic act, where the bomb explosion was the point at which everyone decided to have their class reunion in the afterlife?  I have no problem with them stringing us along for the mystery with all the flash-sideways events, but I'd just like to know what was going on there actually had some purpose, and that there was a reason why nobody would remember their other lives until something triggered them.