Why the LOST Ending Works (and why some of you forgot why it works)

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(Logic-Stoopid Ratio: 8:10. Mood: "Duuude.....")

Preamble: I started watching LOST during the height of my Lord of the Rings obsession, when I learned that trilogy cast member and Hobbit Dominic Monaghan was starring in the ABC pilot. I caught it from the very first episode onwards, missed the second, but was really hooked when I saw the fourth episode Walkabout, revealing that (highlight to read)the only way wheelchair-bound John Locke was able to walk again was for Oceanic Flight 815 to crash on the Island. It was pretty damned compelling for this creative personality.

So I've been there from the beginning, and though I spent last Sunday night driving through New Jersey on the way home from Manhattan, as soon as I was rested and able, I watched the ending with my family on Monday morning.

And it was worth it. The entire series was worth it.

Why? Why, when a series notorious for unanswered questions, for supremely strange puzzles and occurrences, left so many of them still unanswered by the climax, would LOST be worth purchasing on Blu Ray and DVD for those who are wondering what it's all about? Why, when so many bloggers, fans, and critics alike are positively black with vitriol over the finale?

First, there is always that cadre of people who aren't happy with anything. Evidence for the existence of these people ranges from the bitter nature of their Facebook updates and Tweets - bitching about the only cloud on a beautiful summer day, typically - the trends set by past reviewers of the episodes to date (the Vulture reviewer, in particular, readily admits to her own vitriol since the final season started), to, well, who they are as human beings on a daily basis.

It goes to your personality type. If you're a rational, by-the-numbers person (and not 4-8-15-16-23-42, BTW) who typically likes to label everything in life and sort them into nice little boxes....what the hell were you doing watching LOST??! You were bound to be disappointed by everything that didn't make sense, so you deserve to be pissed. You've probably been pissed since Locke and Jack managed to blow open the Hatch.

For those fans who are, by nature, open-minded, upbeat, optimistic, and positive -or at least neutral - who still find themselves legitimately disappointed in the ending, fear not. The last six years of investment in this show will not go the way of your average Miami hedge fund.

LOST, and its finale, are worth it because both were what the show has always been about: the characters.

This was a show whose entire first season was about the survivors: the weirdness of the Island was simply the backdrop to learning about their secrets, seeing how they interacted with each other, see the human side of survival. We grew to love and care for, and at other times hate and fear, these people as if they were real, in the spirit of any good drama.

The Oceanic 815 survivors - most of them, anyway - are what drew most of us to the show, but remember the frustration many fans felt in Season 2 when they kept introducing new cast members beyond the original 815 crew that we all loved. The series couldn't just keep going on a character-centric basis, so they evolved the story: who is the DHARMA Initiative? How did the Black Rock end up so far inland? Who were the Others?. Once they shifted the focus on the story, they had to maintain the mystery as best as they could, introducing all of the mysteries designed to keep you guessing, and bringing in new characters - like Juliet and Widmore and Richard - only within the context of the new storyline.

But never forget that it all started with our core favorites: Jack, Kate, Locke, Sawyer, Hugo, Boone, Shannon, Michael, Walt, Sayid, Jin, Sun, Claire, and Charlie.



Sure, along the way, they created anomalies in the storyline - what was the real deal with Walt? How was Jacob able to leave the Island while Smokey couldn't? The true secrets of the Hanso Foundation? What was the Light, really? - that never got decisively answered, but I'm glad they didn't.

If they had answered all of the questions, we would have inevitably been disappointed even moreso by the answers, much like how the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica felt so rushed, overwrought, and really thin given the context of the show (Seriously, how do you have "angels" appear in a show based in gritty realism? ), because Ron Moore tried to tie up all the loose ends in three hours. No, it wouldn't be good, and it wouldn't be LOST, without a little bit of mystery left to it.

Oddly, not answering everything made the show more like real life. LOST began as a fraud, in many respects: it was a science-fiction and fantasy show posing as a primetime drama. It was a convincing drama that even attracted fans who hated sci-fi/fantasy, real enough to be believable at first, and then gradually taking us down this path to the point where guys who talk to dead people and time travel one day became acceptable parts of the show's reality.

The sense of realism from the show applied to the narrative as well. As horror writer (and LOST fan) Stephen King said, real life doesn't tie up all of its loose ends. Somebody dies, and there are threads that never get picked up again. The endings aren't convenient, not even all meaningful. Similarly, you can't solve all the mysteries in a story if you want it to retain that sense of verisimilitude, because strange things happen in real life to which nobody gets all the answers.

Ultimately, what got me about the finale was the drama, the spectacle and emotion, learning about the real nature of the alternate universe . I watch TV to feel good, as I do with other things, and I felt damned good watching this episode, if a little misty throughout.

Some critics panned the "goopy" New Agey aspects of the reunion of the castaways in the Afterlife, and while I'm partisan on the New Agey-count, I nonetheless found it deeply moving, and I'm very grateful that the writers chose to return to the relationships between the characters instead of just sticking to the plot. You would have had to have had a heart of uranium-235 not to have teared up, even a little, during the episode's final moments.

LOST managed to integrate nearly every story you can imagine - romance, sex, horror, sci-fi, comedy - into a single, coherent, for the most part believable epic. And it worked: why else would so many of you be pissed?

So, LOST is what it is, and what it is is a unique, wonderful, compelling, and intelligent story - far more intelligent, admittedly, than most of the audience members, myself included - that I will gladly share with any willing novice (or unwitting captive). It is a novel for TV combining a surreal story with a believable verisimilitude and emotional core that that no show will ever again be able to match. And the ending suited the series quite well.

Yes, I'm done gushing. Now, off to get some dinner....