This post has spoilers for the finale of Lost.
Yep, I like Lost
In middle school and high school, I watched the X-Files and ER every week. I developed crushes, I obsessed. For most of that time I didn’t have the Internet, so I’d wait for new TV Guides to come out so I could look up synopses and scan for articles. My best friend and I passed notes, little prehistoric instant messages with crude illustrations of our favorite characters. Because those experiences and infatuations carried me through such formative years, I’m super sentimental about both shows. (I also stopped watch them both before they ended. Probably because the quality went down hill and I went to college.)
My husband and I started watching Lost the year we got married. Until then, we hadn’t really kept up with any TV shows. We watched all of Buffy with friends, but we didn’t watch things live each week on TV.
Lost started a tradition of snacking and dinner on the futon in front of the TV. We’d make steaks and gnaw on them. We’d cuddle and drink wine.
Our lives have changed enormously over the past six years. We settled into married life, we moved, we changed jobs (a few times), we had a baby, we moved again, I changed jobs again, we had another baby, we sold our house.
We watched Lost.
And that might sound trite, but hey, traditions are traditions. I’m grateful for having something we both liked enough to keep up with it each season. Last night’s finale wasn’t perfect, but it gave me the closure I needed. (As evidenced by me crying my face off about six different times during the episode.)
You see, I’m scared of death. I’m not a highly faithful person. But I want to believe that things get tied up somehow, that we stay with the people we love. I found it cathartic and soothing when those who loved each other were reunited, when they found peace. I definitely didn’t expect to get that kind of comfort from a television series that has always been a little dark and crazy, but it worked. Maybe it worked because I didn’t expect it.
The tears felt good. It felt good to get out of my brain and cry over characters I’ve “known” for a long time.
Yes, I have questions. And I know they didn’t answer about a million of them, but I think that two and a half hours of question-answering would have destroyed the mysticism and frustration they cultivated carefully for so long. I mean, Lost is like getting slowly punked over several years. (Somehow, in a good way.)
Ultimately, I like having questions. I like that we’ll never know what the island was. I like that while the religious imagery started to get a little heavy-handed, it was left open enough to allow many different believe systems and mythologies to be applied. I like that people will talk about this and wonder and debate.
Above all, I’m impressed that in the last five minutes they actually made me sort of like Jack, who I have diligently hated on for six years.
I really am mourning the end of an era. In a bittersweet, satisfied way.
That was fun.
Sob.
(Speaking of talking about it, I totally want to talk about it. GO!)
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