All dogs don’t necessarily go to heaven

This is going to be a very long post, and it consists of a combination of ramblings, musings and observations, but it’s all about Lost, so it’s all behind the cut.

First off, I thought it was an excellent idea to enlist the actors and producers for the recap show. It made the review much more enjoyable, especially hearing things like the fact that Locke had no idea through all of Season Five that he was the smoke monster. Or to hear that Michael Emerson thought that Ben used “taking a beating” as a way of extracting information from people. Terry O’Quinn’s opinion that Locke wasn’t a man of faith but rather a man desperately needing faith.

In passing – I really hope that Cuse and Lindelhof get along as well as they appear to on podcasts and other interviews. (Maybe they get along even better than that: see the third alternate ending from Kimmel!)

I loved the Target commercials that were mini Lost spoofs. I wasn’t as sold on the way they injected the Final Transmissions into scenes from Lost. I couldn’t decide if it was exceedingly campy or clever. (And damned if those mooing cows on the Chik-Fil-A commercials didn’t remind me of LOST sound effects.)

Four and a half hours of Lost went by far too quickly. Two hours of recap and suddenly we were into the real action. How to sum up my thoughts on the finale, and most particularly the last ten minutes or so?

I think the entire series could be enjoyed without the sideways parts of Season Six. That’s not to say that I didn’t like that part. What I mean is that the sideways confused some people into thinking that much of what happened on the island didn’t matter in the larger context. I’ve seen people argue that Desmond was right when he tried to convince Jack that putting the cork back in the hole in the cavern and killing Locke didn’t matter. I think they mattered very much. Everything that happened on the island was “real life.” It’s what tested a person’s mettle and determined what kind of person they were. Ben remained on the bench outside the church because he felt he had a lot to atone for. Even though he saw the light and became Hurley’s right hand man (for who knows how long? Years? Centuries?) he still had to come to terms with his other sins. As Matthew Shepherd said on Jimmy Kimmel: “You have to remember your own death and all the people who were instrumental in it.”

For a while, during the episode, I thought there was going to be a third timeline, because Desmond seemed eager to leave both the island line and the sideways “timeline.”

I think someone should transcribe Christian Shepherd’s explanation to Jack, because therein lies the truth behind the sideways universe. The producers have always said that what happened on the island was important. The bleed-through in awareness was always from sideways to island…never the other way around. A fundamental question of Season Six was always: how could there possibly be two timelines? How could the bomb going off have created parallel realities? Well, now we know it didn’t. The sideways universe had absolutely nothing to do with Jughead. The bomb explosion might have propelled the gang back to island present time, but I don’t think it did anything more than that. Maybe that was enough—it got them back to where they needed to be to confront MiB. If they’d stayed in the 1970s, the smoke monster wouldn’t have had any opposition in 2010 when Ajira landed.

I have to watch Season Six over again to see some of the Easter Eggs they left for us in the sideways universe. Kimmel pointed out one: Rose telling Jack that it was okay to “let go” in the first episode, when Oceanic 815 survived the turbulence. Also, the cut in Jack’s neck that kept reappearing. I think there is a lot to be mined by watching them again with our current knowledge.

There were some fantastic scenes in the purgatory part of the finale. Hurley talking to Sayid: “None of this is ringing a bell? You, me, a tranquilizer gun?” And then the look on Sayid’s face when Hurley dumps the unconscious Charlie into the back of the Hummer. And Charlie’s reaction later on: “I was shot by a fat man.” And Hurley can’t get away without another Star Wars reference after a vague explanation. “That’s kinda true, Dude – he’s worse than Yoda.”

And that was one hell of an ultrasound. One scan and suddenly everyone can speak English. I wonder if their insurance covered all that. Their amused grins when Sawyer showed up as a detective—hilarious. “Hello, detective.” I never had any doubt that Juliet was Jack’s ex-wife—but one has to wonder what kind of purgatory involves divorces and the kinds of stuff Keamy got up to. If this was a place they all created, then why were there some bad things going on?

The reunions, of course, were the highlight of the finale. Sayid running to Shannon’s rescue when they were getting mugged outside the nightclub—and Boone was in on orchestrating her arrival. Kate and Claire…Claire and Charlie. (I very much liked Kate’s little black dress, by the way. She looked…angelic.)

Sawyer and Juliet at the candy machine, which robbed Sawyer the same way it robbed Jack back in the Jacob days. “Maybe you should read the machine its rights,” Juliet says before telling him how to legally rob it. After the first spark and Juliet recoils, she comes up with “We should get coffee sometime.” And then it’s “Kiss me, James” and “You got it, blondie.” Cue tear ducts.

I knew that Jack would be the last one to “get it,” and his scene with Kate was terrific. She’s preparing him for what’s coming, but this is his big wake up call, and it can’t be easy. It takes more than Kate…it takes his father.

And on the island, it was great to see Rose, Bernard and Vincent again. I think there should be a spinoff featuring them. “We don’t get involved in that stuff anymore,” Rose says, but something new comes up every week and they have to figure out how to get back to the status quo and their quiet retirement.

I was also happy to see Lapidus again. I was sure he was a goner, and Fahey even said his character was dead, but I guess that was part of the game. I was nervous when he talked about testing the electrical system, as I thought there might be some remnants of the C4 bomb that Locke dismantled. Great scene with Miles fixing the hydraulics while Richard (Ricky boy, to Lapidus) held up the schematics. “I don’t believe in a lot of things but I do believe in duct tape,” Miles says. Ultimately a pointless scene, only a delay tactic to allow Kate and Sawyer and Claire to make it to the runway, but funny. I do wonder how Lapidus is going to explain to his bosses at Ajira where he’s been all this time and why he brought the plane back with only one of the original passengers and four strangers. The Ajira Six, they’ll be called, and no one will ever fly on a plane with Kate Austen again.

And I loved Jack’s smackdown of MiB while they were lowering Desmond in to the hole. “You’re not John Locke. You disrespect his memory by looking like him. He was right about just about everything. I just wish I could have told him that while he was still alive.” I think the cut-to-commercial as Jack was attacking MiB was one of the best near-a-cliff hangers in recent memory. And Kate gets in the kill shot. “I saved a bullet for you.” Sounded like a line out of a western.

Ben is so good on the island at the end. He comes up with the dingy old Oceanic water bottle for the transfer of power to Hugo. “This is only temporary,” Hurley says. “As soon as you get that light back, I’m giving it right back to you.” No magic words required and now Hurley is like Jack. When Jack got to the bottom of the well, it reminded me of the scene where Ben was lowered to turn the frozen donkey wheel. He was injured then, too, wasn’t he? And Jack uses Desmond’s catch-phrase on him: See you in another life, brother.

And Ben gets a purpose when Hurley enlists him as his #2. I loved this exchange so much I wrote it down:

Hurley: It’s my job, now. What the hell am I supposed to do?
Ben: I think you do what you do best. Take care of people. You could start by helping Desmond get home.
Hurley: But how. People can’t leave the island.
Ben: That’s how Jacob ran things. Maybe there’s another way. A better way.
Hurley:  Could you help me? I could really use someone with experience for a little while. Would you help me, Ben?
Ben: I’d be honored.
Hurley: Cool.

And then the Ben scene with Locke outside the church. Though he’s redeemed himself in our eyes in recent weeks, he still has some things to work out. He was a “real good #2” according to Hurley and he gets absolution from Locke, which helps, but he still has other amends to make. He’s not ready yet—just like Ana Lucia wasn’t ready, according to Desmond. Or Eloise Hawking, who murdered her son but gets the chance to live a new life with him—which explains why she was so desperate to stop Desmond’s machinations.

I have a theory that might have some holes in it concerning Jack’s escape from the cave. When the hatch blew up, Desmond was propelled into the jungle (without his clothing, as I recall). I think the same thing happened to Jack when the electromagnetic pulse returned. For a while I also speculated that Jack was projected back in time to the day of the Oceanic crash, which would explain the shoe hanging from the branches and the fresh crash debris on the beach, but then he saw what I assume to be the Ajira flight passing overhead, so it couldn’t be that.

Random question: What made the MiB suddenly vulnerable? Was it because Desmond pulled out the plug? He withstood Kate’s fusillade but then Jack was able to punch and hurt him. Presumably the same thing that made Richard start aging (grey hair)? But that happened before Desmond’s actions. Richard was able to survive the MiB attack shortly before.

The Jimmy Kimmel show was fun. I don’t know if he realized that people were showing up in the jungle set behind him, one of them a boy who looked conspicuously like a young Jacob! The three alternate endings were pretty funny. One was a spoof of Survivor (Sayid turning to Michael saying: Where the hell have you been?), one a spoof of The Sopranos (Daniel Day Kim trying to park the Dharma bus) and one a Newhart finale spoof with Evangeline Lilly and Newhart himself.

This has been a long post, and I’m not sure it’s entirely coherent. My thoughts on the finale are still gelling. For a few minutes I was dismayed by the “we’ve been dead all along” revelation, but now it seems to make perfect sense. If the show had ignored this metaphysical sideways, then the show would have ended with Jack dying on the beach without any payoff. The big family reunion was the payoff, I guess. (I kept waiting to see Nikki and Paolo or even Frogurt show up. Apparently the guy who played Eko was offered the chance to come back but he demanded too much money and they decided to leave him out.) They all move on to whatever comes next—the great unknown. And the actors, all currently unemployed, can tackle such great new projects as Snakes on a Plane 2: Electric Boogaloo.