Thoughts on the "Lost" Season Finale (Spoilers)

I'll admit that I've been inexorably losing faith in "Lost" this year, and I've hated that feeling.

This show in its first two seasons was fresh, innovate, densely themed and possessed strong, intelligent writing. It's characters were multi-faceted, its situations unpredictable and its dramatic moments some of the best I've ever seen on television. It was, in short, a marvel and a maverick on modern network television; something I never thought I'd see again, and I wanted so badly for it to continue to be so.

This season, for whatever reason, the show just didn't seem as sharp. The characters seemed to lose their way a bit, literally and figuratively. The once dynamic character interactions disappeared with the influx of new, less interesting characters and the show seemed to meander plotwise. Most distressing was the loss of that sense of fate that permeated the first two seasons. Yes, those years had death and violence and conflict to be sure, but underlying all that were questions of purpose and destiny. I missed the philosophical debates between Jack and John Locke, the brother-like love/hate relationship between Jack and Sawyer, the feeling of "live together, die alone" that characterized the first two seasons. This season we had incidence after incidence of confrontations with the mysterious "Others" that always put our castaways on the losing end of things. It was as if they were just puppets; to the Others specifically and to the island generally. Their every strategy was anticipated in advance and turned against them. Their every victory was pulled out from under them and thrown in their faces as an example of their ultimate powerlessness. The Others knew EVERYTHING about them and they knew NOTHING about the Others or the island, and the Others used that knowledge time and again to gain the upper hand. It's an old and successful writing technique to deny your characters the very things they want and then craft your drama from that denial, and it's a perfectly reasonable technique to use. But with week after week of nothing but torture and psychological manipulation and imprisonment, I almost felt like a sadist watching these people I genuinely liked (admittedly, because of the strength of the writing) suffer time and again.

The depressing direction of the narrative wasn't the only problem. With the new emphasis on the Others and their connection to the island, many supporting characters were practically ignored. Sayid had little or nothing to do until the last six episodes, Claire fell off the map entirely, Charlie was totally useless as a character until the revelation of his impending death, Hurley's connection to the numbers was completely forgotten as he became little more than a "team cheerleader" for the castaways. Jin and Sun basically had no plot whatsoever other than to help try and rescue the kidnapped castaways and mull over Sun's pregnancy. In short, the entire concept of a group of people thrown together by fate having to survive on a strange island in the Pacific while not killing each other was largely abandoned. You can't very well explore a group dynamic when there literally ISN'T a group anymore, just individuals struggling with their personal dramas.

I realize that the introduction of the Others was very popular in some circles, and it wasn't a total loss. The character of Ben was and is a great villain, alternately lying and divying out small doses of truth as he pleases and all the while using his knowledge to manipulate everyone around him into doing just what he wants. The character is played with a kind of manic, messianic glee by Michael Emerson, who had he been born about 30 years earlier would have made a great Norman Bates. But for me, the character of Juliet was rather force fed to us, as it seemed the writers needed another complicating factor in the ongoing Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, having tried (and failed) to make Ana Lucia function well in this role. Elizabeth Mitchell did all right with the role, as week by week she made us wonder if she could be trusted or not, and we came to see the layers of this woman who would by turns, seem to hurt and help our heroes. But for me the emphasis she enjoyed was too strong and too quick and it was at the expense of many of the supporting characters I listed above. I think that creators always make a mistake when they forcefeed new characters to an audience that is already quite content with the established characters. It's better to gradually introduce the new characters and allow them to win over the audience (or not) in an atmosphere that doesn't seem too pushy or contrived.

Unlike a lot of "Lost" viewers, I was not terribly distressed by the lack of significant answers to some of the larger mysteries. I understand that revealing too much too soon is self-defeating for the show; once these mysteries, a core part of the show, are solved, there's less and less reason to tune in every week. I was more upset by the leaps in logic and the character inconsistencies. Would Jack really have bonded so closely with Juliet in the two or so days he spent with the Others after Kate and Sawyer escaped? Why didn't the castaways ever sit down as a group and share information about all the odd things that had happened to them and try to come to some conclusions? Why did Kate, who seemed to be such an assertive character in the first two seasons, seem so passive this year? Yes, she led the rescue effort for Jack, but most of her on air time this year seemed to be spent looking sadly at either Sawyer or Jack. She seemed to have little or no relationship with any of the other cast members. Would Sawyer and Sayid really have been so easily cowed by Juliet's threats to reveal their pasts? Even if you say yes, what about the forty or so other survivors? Wouldn't ONE of them have said, "Hey, we're not going to trust this lady just on Jack's say so. She's part of a group of people who killed, kidnapped, and tortured us. Either she provides some answers or we throw her to the polar bears."?

Another successful element of the show's first two years, the flashbacks that revealed key moments of each character's pasts, seemed less sucessful this year as well. We didn't learn much from any of the new flashbacks, except maybe Locke's , Desmond's, and those of the Others. Perhaps it was just burn out from so many successful early flashbacks, but most of this season's seemed weak and honestly, unnecessary.

All that said, "Lost" remained essential viewing. When done right, it has the ability to knock you onto your seat dramatically and make you well up inside at the same time. There is something timeless about the story of a band of imperfect, damaged, but essentially well meaning human beings struggling to survive in a hostile environment and perhaps find redemption in the process that echoes our own experience. We root for these people, all of them, despite or perhaps because of their flaws. We see ourselves in them, and we want them to ultimately succeed. We don't want to see them hurt or disappointed. We cheered Jack's incredible power play early in the year that allowed Kate and Sawyer to escape; we worried about Charlie and Desmond's predictions of doom, we were crushed when Mr. Eko was, well, crushed, after his moment of self-validation and justification, we booed and hissed at Ben's Machievellian plotting and we cheered when the castaways finally took the upper hand in the season finale. Our heart broke when Jack saw Kate with Sawyer, when we discovered the truth about Jin's pregnancy and when Charlie made his final sacrifice. It's not as if the season was a total loss. But when placed in comparison to the first two years, Season Three was oddly paced, sorely lacking in character interaction and wildly inconsistent in terms of writing precision.

The finale saw several key developments for the show. It gave us the presumably final conflict between the castaways and the Others, it featured what seems to be the impending rescue of the castaways, it was the first episode to use a "flash forward" device as opposed to a flashback, and it contained the deaths of several characters, including Charlie.

The war with the Others was very well done and paced terrifically. We had a race against time with Jack leading the survivors of 815 to the radio tower, while we simultaneously had Ben learning of their exodus and planning to intercept them. Back on the beach, Jin, Sayid and Bernard lie in wait for the Others hoping to ambush them by blowing up the dynamite in the empty huts and kill them. Still elsewhere, Charlie and Desmond went on a mission to deactivate the jamming frequency in the Looking Glass hatch and encountered two female Others who were ready to violently protect it. All of these threads finally tied together in a climax that left Charlie, Naomi, Tom, a handful of unidentified others, the two Looking Glass guards, and maybe, hopefully, Mikhail, dead, Ben beaten and broken and the rescue helicopter presumably on the way. Several characters faced agonizing decisions. Jack had to decide whether to give Ben the cell phone and save Sayid, Jin and Bernard in the process. Knowing Ben is a pathological liar and that this might be the only chance they'd ever have of actual rescue, Jack refused to give him the phone and, as far as he knew, let Ben kill the three captured 815 survivors. (Later, it was revealed they were unharmed, for reasons left unanswered). Sawyer and Juliet both decided to risk possible death by returning to the camp to learn the fate of the shooters, as both characters realized they owed the community this gesture and hoped to regain (or in Juliet's case, gain for the first time) their trust. Hurley, despite warnings from Sawyer, chose to follow the two and ultimately helped to rescue them. Sayid, Jin and Bernard made the hard choice to stay behind on what was basically a suicide mission in order to safeguard the community and not compromise the overall plan. Desmond offered to go to the Looking Glass in Charlie's place, hoping to spare his friend's life and escape the destiny his visions had been pointing toward. But perhaps most poignant of all was Charlie's decision not only to go on the mission because in doing so he hoped to ensure Claire's safe rescue, but his insistence on going into the Looking Glass despite Desmond's vision and his offer. His love for Claire and Aaron and concern over their well being won out over any thought of self-preservation.

It was gratifying to see so many characters' nobler instincts coming to the surface during this critical time in the survivors' lives. So much of this season has been downbeat and defeatist in its tone, with the Others seeming to constantly hold the upper hand over our heroes because of their knowledge of the island and the 815 survivors as well. Every power play the "Losties" made seemed to be either successfully countered, negated or even anticipated and used by the Others for their own purposes. It was not a season that conveyed a great deal of free will on the part of our heroes.

Unfortunately, the final five minutes of the "flashforward" which revealed that this chapter in Jack's life did NOT take place before the crash but after the rescue, seemed to dilute that feeling of ascendency and self-determination. Here we had a post-rescue Jack, drunken and drug addicted, pausing from a suicide attempt only to save a young mother and her son who had crashed because of his presence on a bridge. He's depressed because of a death he sees in the paper (the identity of the person unknown), but even before that he seems to be plagued with guilt and regret over leaving the island, flying all over and praying that the flights crash and put him back on the island. He's apparently not with Kate, who mentions a mysterious "he" that will be waiting for her (perhaps Sawyer, perhaps not). In general, he's a mess.

Are we to think that Jack and his decision to not trust Ben was "wrong"? That he should have believed a man who had kidnapped, murdered and tortured his people? This ending, depressing and full of the futility that characterized the entire third season, seems to undercut if not negate the tremendous acts of heroism by the 815 survivors. Was it all for naught? Were the rescuers evil, or did the whole thing go awry in some way? That's the impression I was left with, and it angers me. Sure, we need a cliffhanger, especially for a show that's destined not to return for eight months, but this continual "pulling the chair out from underneath our heroes" wears on my soul. I hardly expect a "happy ending" at this point in the series, which apparently has 48 episodes left in its overall arc, but once again we as viewers seem to be being toyed with a bit.

I am not one of those that demands or even wants answers to everything right away. I don't mind that we still don't know what the smoke monster is or what the numbers are yet. But as time goes along we are getting more and more mysteries introduced before any of the old ones are fully explained. For instance, I'm guessing that the writers assume the "hatch" questions have been dealt with, but that begs several questions. Who exactly was Kazinski? What was the true purpose of the hatch? What was the "incident" mentioned in the film? Why did the hatch implode and if it did how did Desmond and Locke and Eko survive? Maybe we're going to get answers to these questions, but it's been over an entire season since that hatch has even been mentioned and give the direction of the show now I can't see them backpedalling now and saying "Hey, let's take a break from this "flash forward" stuff and the rescue gone bad and talk a bit about that hatch thing". And it's not the end of the world if they don't, it's just another indication of the kind of coyness and inconsistency that's bugged me this season. The creators have asserted that the show has truly been planned in advance but so many developments seem to belie that claim; the quick introduction and equally quick deaths of most of the "Tailies", the departure of Michael and Walt, the overwhelming emphasis on the Others, the odd absence of even any MENTION of the numbers this year all seem to point in another direction.

With the dust still settling after the startling events of the finale, we are left with many, many questions. Is that future we see "the shadow of things that will be" or "the shadow of things that might be"? Can it be changed? Should it be changed? What happened with the rescue? Was Ben lying about the rescuers? Were they Dharma people looking for their own and assuming that anyone left there was a "Hostile" that needed to be purged? Why is Juliet not in the future? Why did Jack talk about his father as if he were alive in the future? Who was in that coffin? Who exactly are the Hostiles? What was their purpose and motivation? How was Richard basically the same age 35 years ago? Was Naomi lying, evil, a dupe, or none of these? Why did Locke feel it necessary to kill her instead of just tackling her and taking the phone for himself? Why didn't anyone step forward and pound the crap out of him when he did so? Is Locke to be the new leader of the surviving Others? Who or what is Jacob?

Truth to tell, I'll be back in January when the show is. I still care enough about the characters and their fate to tune in, and that's what the creators have counted on, I suppose. I just wish I thought they were playing fair with me. I maintained early on that the show is really about destiny and redemption and the way in which opposing forces combine to make meaning. Fate and free will, science and faith, good and evil, lightness and darkness, fear and bravery all are present and all combine to produce characters and situations which still excite and intrigue us. I hope the writers remember and remain true to these themes and at the same time try to be consistent with the narrative and logic of the show.

If it doesn't it's destined to be remembered as another ground breaking TV show that started out strong and original and with a true vision that overstayed it's welcome and "lost" its way.