Lost: Postmortem

The ABC hit series “Lost” is finally over after a 5 and 2/3rds year run.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s difficult to imagine a more trivial fact.  After all, of all the cultural artifacts humans create, TV shows are notoriously the least relevant or enduring.  It’s a challenge to imagine, actually, why anyone should care that “Lost” existed, much less that its story has come to a close.

And yet here I sit, in the wee hours of the night, writing about it.  Indeed, I certainly do have better things to do.  Like sleep, for instance.  But I can tell that until I get this out, I won’t have any peace.  It seems ridiculous to me even to say that, but I can’t deny the truth of it.

So I guess I’ll just get started.

Beginning with the long view, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that “Lost” will not be one of those shows that lodges itself into popular imagination across generations.  Now that the show’s over, we can proclaim with confidence what many have long suspected, that much of the draw and mystique of the show relied upon people watching it as it aired and having to wait for long periods of time to get answers.  This is especially true since during the downtime people were given all manner of content outside of the show to keep them engaged in the story.  For the person who will rent or buy the DVDs of the show without ever having watched it before, all of those things will be absent from their experience.  A person watching the DVD’s won’t likely spend any time theorizing about what’s going on, for example.  Which means they’ll be much less likely to get distracted by elements in the show that are ultimately unimportant.  Which means that, for them, the plot and character arcs will, in many cases, unfold in somewhat predictable or unsatisfying ways.  And while there’s enough good acting and writing going on in the show to keep a person watching clear through to the end, there’s a very good chance that, once they’ve finished watching, they’ll wonder why the show was touted as such a cultural phenomenon.

Had the show had a more surprising ending or concluded in a way that dramatically illuminated mysteries in past episodes, perhaps the show’s prospects would be more optimistic.  But in the end the main plot arc terminated in a fairly uninspired fashion, several key character arcs were uneven or uninteresting, and there were too many plot twists that seemed to serve no other purpose besides rendering pointless certain sub-plotlines that had previously been fascinating.

Why then am I still thinking about this show… or, more accurately, its finale… hours after it’s ended? If my opinion is that, all told, it was a better-than-average drama that will, nevertheless, have limited long-term cultural impact, why is it keeping me up tonight? I guess that’s really what I’m trying to figure out here.

In the final episode, we find out that the alternate reality we’ve been shown all season is actually a post-death reality for all of our characters.  This revelation really sort of makes everything else that happens in season six fairly insignificant.  That didn’t have to be the case, though.  The events that lead to Jack’s death could have conversed better with events taking place after his death.  In the first three seasons, events in flashbacks conversed amazingly well with events on the island.  But it seems clear that all of the meaning of season six was poured into the post-death narrative while the pre-death story was treated almost like a technicality.

But I think it’s that post-death narrative that’s really getting to me.  The theme of forgiveness and the suggestion that none of us actually “die alone” were very powerful (and particularly timely).  Even though these points could have been better complemented by the pre-death narrative, they still packed an intense emotional punch that I just can’t get over.

I suppose the way I feel about it is this:  The show’s ending is something they’ve had in mind since the beginning.  It really doesn’t seem fair to criticize it.  If any of us have a problem with it, the fault probably lies in how it was set up.  In other words, the problem with “Lost” won’t be found in the beginning or the end, but in how the writers ultimately connected those two points.  And, for my money, they could have drawn a much smoother and compelling arc there.

But looking, then, at the ending just on its own… again, it’s difficult for me not to be deeply moved by it.

The idea that people “enter the light” and “receive their reward” not on an individual basis, but as a group is, to me, for some reason, overwhelmingly inspiring.  And as I watched Jack’s “lost tribe” gather with such joy, I couldn’t help but think of my own “Lost tribe” and the important things we’ve shared since we’ve met.  I’m not talking about things relating to the show, of course.  It’s just TV, after all.  Rather, I’m talking about all the deep conversations.  The words of encouragement when one of us was going through a difficult time.  The expressions of gratitude and celebration when something great happened in the life of one of our members.  I’m talking about all the things that make a group of people a community.  The most important things in human life.

And, of course, I think not only of my “Lost” friends, but also of my lost friends; the people that I rarely talk to, both new acquaintances and old, who have had and continue to have an unspeakably profound impact on my life.  And I think about my family.  And I think about those who have passed on before me.  And it’s almost like hearing Clarence speak to me from that greatest of all films, reminding me that I’ve actually had a wonderful life.

As cosmically insignificant as a TV show can be, it’s an incredible thing when it brings people together and inspires such dramatic feelings.  Whatever else will be said about “Lost” in the years to come, I will always be grateful to it for giving me these things.  And in spite of my criticisms of the finished product, I think I’ll always have respect for it because of these things.

And… maybe that’s all I need to say about that.