In the first half of season six, episodes adhere to the flawed structure of the series’ first three seasons: intercutting events on the island with the story of one character in another time and place (though here they’re following that character in the flash-sideways universe instead of the past). I wrote about the fundamental flaws in this mode of storytelling in my review of season four as a way of praising the show for realizing the limited nature of this structure and moving past it by creating two separate timelines to which they could cut back and forth. Thus it was incredibly disappointing to find the writers returning to this mode of storytelling at the start of the final season. Now that the series was ostensibly driving towards its conclusion, spending significant amounts of time each episode in some bizarre alternate universe seems especially misguided.
Much of the critical response to the early episodes of season six espoused the belief that once the nature of this flash-sideways alternate reality was eventually revealed, these episodes would both make more sense and be rendered more interesting. That of course, didn’t come to pass because the alternate reality ultimately turned out to be some sort of purgatory, meaning that all of what the audience had spent so much time watching was just a bunch of people screwing around until they realized that they were dead. What they did before they came to that realization really had no meaning whatsoever.
If, on the other hand, the writers had revealed the true nature of the flash-sideways universe from the beginning, it would have saved the audience a lot of pointless theorizing and grasping at straws (postulating, for instance, that Sun stopped being able to speak English on the island because her sideways universe counterpart couldn't speak it). It would also have prevented the events in that universe from feeling about as consequential as a dream sequence (i.e. not at all consequential). And while some of the flash-sideways plotlines are interesting in and of themselves, when they aren’t interesting, the episode ends up being incredibly boring, something the last few episodes of an epic series like this one should never be.
But more than that, because the audience is led to believe that what they’re seeing in the flash-sideways universe is important, when it’s eventually revealed to have had very little meaning, it feels like the writers pulled a fast one. They had millions of viewers guessing at the hidden meaning of everything, drawing parallels between events on the island and events in the flash-sideways universe, when none of it really mattered. If you skipped every scene in the flash-sideways universe until the finale, the impact of the characters eventual ascension into heaven at the end would’ve been no less impactful. Hell, it probably would’ve had more of an impact because it wouldn’t have been tinged with the suspicion that the writers had just betrayed the audience.
There’s a moment in the finale where Jack tells Desmond, ‘Trust me, I know. All of this matters.’ That line, perhaps inadvertently, references one of The Wire’s taglines: ‘all the pieces matter.’ And, of course, on The Wire all the pieces did matter. But on Lost very little of what the audience saw over its six seasons (and especially what it saw in the last one) really mattered much at all. It’s a particularly tone deaf thing for the writers to have Jack say at the very end when the viewers are keenly aware that they could’ve ignored or forgotten much of what they’d seen before and it wouldn’t have impacted their ability to fully understand or enjoy the series in any meaningful way.
The writers, of course, were fond of saying that the characters were all that really mattered. The events on the island, all the questions that had been raised by all the mysterious happenings, were all secondary to the characters. But if that were the case, the series’ very last sequence, the one set in a church just before all the characters in the flash-sideways universe, or purgatory as it’s now been revealed to be, ‘move on,’ presumably to heaven, would’ve been much more fulfilling. As it is, the sequence, like much of the series before it, raises more pointless questions than it answers.
Jack’s father, upon leading Jack into the church, tells him that all the people there are the ones who mattered the most to them. Really? Then why is Sayid with Shannon and not Nadya? Why are Sun and Jin okay ‘moving on’ without their daughter? And what happened to Jack and Juliet’s sideways universe son David? The audience is led to believe that this sequence is some sort of pre-heaven reunion for people who were on the island. But if that’s true, why is Penny-- who never went to the island-- there and Charlotte, Miles and Daniel aren’t?
Ben’s decision to hang around purgatory a little longer is particularly troubling and gets at one of the fundamental problems I have with most people’s idea of heaven. Ben stays in purgatory because he wants to spend some more time with Alex, the daughter he let die in the real world who, in purgatory, has now become his best student. But if he can’t be with Alex in heaven, his heaven would kinda suck. That’s why I never understand why people who are devout Christians want so badly to have their loved ones believe. If their friends and family aren’t going to be with them in heaven, isn’t that a pretty crappy version of paradise? Can you really have eternal peace and happiness without some of the people you care about the most?
And so, like the rest of the series, Lost’s finale ends up raising a whole bunch of questions it has no interest in answering. I guess you could say that, in the end, Lost is a series more about asking interesting questions than it is about answering them. And that would be all right if the show’s writers didn’t lead everyone to believe that answers were forthcoming. By making it seem, in the ads for ‘the final season’ and in interviews, that answers were on the horizon only to end with even more questions, it’s hard to view the series as anything other than a failure. It’s not for nothing that every new mystery show since has taken great pains to make it clear that they’re not the new Lost, that they’re actually going to provide the audience with some answers.
Much was made of the showrunners’ decision, midway through the third season, to end Lost on their own time table. And for a while (at the end of season three and throughout season four) it appeared that this decision had been made with care and consideration, that the show was moving toward a well planned ending that would feel both satisfying and complete (even if it wasn’t able to answer every single dangling plot thread from earlier seasons). But then season five went immediately downhill, culminating in perhaps the series’ worst episode. And season six revealed that everyone was pretty much out of ideas. Thus, it seems that when Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelhof decided to end the show they had one good idea and hoped feverishly that they’d come up with a couple more. That one good idea carried them through season four, but they never figured out what to do after they got the castaways off the island. That’s kinda poetic, in a way, but nonetheless the series ends up being something of a disappointment. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised, but the occasional flashes of greatness displayed throughout hinted at the show Lost might have been. It’s more frustrating, in a way, that the show was occasionally brilliant than if it had never been interesting at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment