If you haven’t seen the ending of LOST, this post will contain spoilers, so don’t read further. And Warning, this post is probably going to be really long–haha
I’ve been asked to blog about my thoughts on the television show LOST as a fan and from a writers prospective. Wow is all I thought when I saw that posted on my Facebook.
I’ve been a rabid fan ever since My Guy, Mark forced me to watch it with him. I heard plane crash with monsters and if you know me well enough, not something I go screaming towards—more like away! I’m a romantic comedy, sitcom, drama type girl. Occasionally, I get into paranormal stuff, but for the most part, I’m pretty boring.
However, if the characterization is there, if I immediately care about the people on the show—no matter what it is, I’ll watch. These characters had me at hello. I cared about Jack and Kate and I wanted to know more about them. I was intrigued and got sucked into a show that I was essentially lost in, but dammit, I couldn’t stop watching. It was like crack for the mind. This house stopped what it was doing to tune in. We watched it as a family.
From the beginning, Mark said he thought they were already dead. He was raised Catholic, so he looked at the Island like it was Purgatory. I disagreed with him, but then would wonder if there was some truth to it. The healing powers the island had—a paralyzed man could walk, a woman with cancer was in remission and feeling wonderful. But then people started to die and I argued that I thought purgatory was a place that you waited, not died—or was their deaths a way to hell? We had discussions with the kids about the show. We weren’t obsessed, well, maybe a little. But we had the discussions because each of us would catch something one or more of us didn’t. Its complexity was brilliant, but the characters and their arcs were what kept me tuning in. I wanted to know why a killer (Kate ) would want to help people the way she did. I wanted to know more about Sawyer and why Locke had been in a wheelchair. I rooted for a romance between Jack and Kate and yet loved the triangle of Jack, Kate and Sawyer. I wanted to know about Hurley, Boone, Claire, Charlie, Sayid, Sun and Jin. Alison Kent said it best when she tweeted: “ Is it clear now why the romance gene outsells all others?” # LOST
So, what do I think? I think the show was aptly titled. I think, like Jimmy Kimmel that this was a journey. I think that each and every one of us are stumbling in this world, that we meet people who irrevocably change our lives. I think the plane crashed and the bonds these people created by such a traumatic experience bonded them for life. No matter what you believe in, I think that we do wait for each other or need the people who’ve touched us to help us move on to the next life. We’re lost. I think this was Jack’s initial journey and that he was the last to die once he was sure Kate, Claire and Sawyer were off the island. I think that the reason why Ben didn’t go inside the church is because he didn’t need the people inside to move on—that he was still searching for his redemption. OR perhaps he wasn’t going to Heaven as Mark claims, Ben was going to hell.
My favorite parts? When one touch took them back to the island and they had the montages of scenes of being together and they remembered. I bawled. I needed to see those connections again, especially in light of Sun and Jin dying so tragically together.
I think the writers were creative in that they left a lot of unanswered questions so that each of us could interpret in our own way. For me, this show stretched my imagination and made me think, it also made me fall in love with characters that I hated to say goodbye too, even though I knew they got their happy endings. I’m going to be lost without LOST. 