And You Will Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here: Some Thoughts at the End of Lost

Warning: This essay is long and bizarre and kind of oddly personal at times. If you’d prefer some pre-finale reading that is a little more straightforward, I highly recommend this article on NPR’s Monkey See blog. There’s also io9′s list of 50 questions Lost needs to answer, if that’s more your thing. And, of course, if you haven’t checked it out yet, there’s Michael’s really funny Lost Finale Fantasy Game (which could easily be adapted to a drinking game, if you’d rather).

On September 22, 2004, I talked my mom into letting me commandeer our family’s big TV so that the two of us could watch the new show by the guy who did Alias. It sounded a little too high concept to us and I remembered watching Gilligan’s Island on Nick-at-Nite and seeing how labored that premise became. Then Oceanic 815 crashed, the show’s title whooshed into view with a discordant noise playing in the background and I was Lost.

And I have been Lost for the last six years, emotionally, mentally, physically at times.  Since this show premiered I graduated high school, went to college, and joined the adult world. And all that time I’ve felt more than slightly adrift. I didn’t fit in at my high school, I REALLY didn’t fit in at my college, I hate my job, I feel disconnected to the universe around me, I sometimes suspect that everyone hates me. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m this morbidly unhappy person; I’m not. And it’s not to say that I haven’t had some good times. But there’s this part of me that would like to blow it all up and start over again. I wonder what kind of person I’d be if I could go back in time and change the decisions I made. What would I do if I could go back and undo all the pain and bullshit?

*****

In a way, I don’t disagree with this New York Times article. I do watch Lost for the questions. It’s just that my questions are not the same as the ones he’s talking about. I don’t really care about what the light is or why Libby was in the mental institution or what the deal with Walt was. I mean, it is fun to speculate about it and I’ve certainly spent more time than is reasonable writing about it, but in the grand scheme of Lost, I can kind of take or leave the point-by-point mythology. The questions I do care about are the ones the characters have been talking about since day one: does free will exist? Is there a God? If there is, is he even on our side? Can we shape ourselves – our damaged, broken selves – into the people we want to be? And I think that’s why, despite my occasional whining and annoyance with the pacing, I’ve kind of loved this year and especially loved the flash sideways.

After all, if Lost really has been about the characters and their journey, then it makes sense to look at where they would be had they not gone on this journey. And how heartbreaking has it been to come to the realization that, all in all, they are vastly better off without the island, without Jacob, and without us. There is probably some twist to it all, but has there been anything sadder than seeing the kind, well-adjusted person Ben could have been.

That said, I don’t think this season is saying that the castaways’ lives (and, by extension, given how much I’ve personalized this show, my life) could be better. I remember reading a quote from Damon Lindelof about Jack’s plan to set off the bomb and how it was false heroism. Jack’s solution to the problems of the last five years was to run away from them, stick his fingers in his ears, and pretend none of it ever happened. As much shit as we gave the show for last season’s finale, (where everyone wanted to set off a nuke because they loved someone who didn’t love them back), is it really that hard to believe that Jack (JACK!!!) would think that way? And maybe the idea all along was that we weren’t necessarily supposed to be backing this plan? Either way, the point here isn’t that we can wish ourselves some kind of alternate universe where everything is better. The point is what that alternate universe can tell us about the real world; the world we live in.

I’ll circle back to that but, speaking of Jack, one of the things I’ve always wondered about him is whether he is a worse character than Tony Soprano and Don Draper or simply a less likeable one. For all that I rag on the guy, it’s not as if the show isn’t aware of the fact that Jack is a controlling, needy, stubborn jerk whose problems, compared to the conman who killed an innocent guy or the Korean gangster who ignored his wife or the man who was PARALYZED BY HIS OWN FATHER, seem a little smaller. And, in a way, I think I may have to come to terms with the fact that I’m way more like Jack than any of the other characters.

As much as we don’t want it to be, Lost has been Jack’s journey and it’s been his journey from a self-righteous, self-obsessed guy who needs to be needed to…what exactly? Now he’s the island’s protector: a position that one gets by being manipulated and holds by tricking miserable, lost people into coming to the island and then watching as they all die (or, if need be, presiding over a mass murder of all of them except the “worthy” ones). Is that really the note this show wants to go out on? Has Jack accepted his destiny, or is he just assuming another leadership position because people expect him too.

And now, a quick tangent about religion. A lot of this season has been about faith, as Jack came around to being a person who believes what Locke told him back in season one: we are here for a reason. But what has it actually been telling us about religion? That God (Jacob) actually doesn’t know that much more than we do. That he’s just as flawed and corrupted as we are? That the Devil, though he’s a bastard, was actually kind of fucked-over too? And that all of them are stuck in this cycle of violence and betrayal that doesn’t seem to end.

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So what do I want to see on Sunday? I want Sawyer and Juliet to finally get that cup of coffee. I want Jack to stop judging his own worth in terms of how other people need him. I want Locke to still exist in some dimension somewhere. I want Desmond to find Penny again. I want Kate to get shot in the face. But, most of all, I want that stupid island to be destroyed. Yes, I agree with the Smoke Monster, because, after knowing everything I know now, I think the Losties are the only people who can break the terrible cycle that’s been acted from the prehistory of “Across the Sea” to the island’s present (and, if I may make a quick aside, I think that’s the reason why “Across the Sea” makes sense in the context it did. We now understand that Jacob is as much a victim as anyone else is on this show, and we know what’s at stake). In the end, I think Jack is going to have to make a choice, whether to let this island keep doing what it’s doing to people or to stop it forever.

And the only reason our Losties are in this history-altering position is, paradoxically, because they’ve been through everything they’ve been through. Sideways Jack is a happy guy. Regular Jack is a guy who can save the world. I think, in the end, what this season has said to me is that reflecting on what could have been may be useful, but only because of what it says about what is. Its valuable for me to look at the choices I made and wonder how much better off I would have been if I had made different ones. But only because I can use that knowledge to make myself a better person in the real, actual future. It sounds syrupy and maudlin, but as someone whose mental peculiarities cause him to torture himself over his past decisions, it’s kind of freeing to me to think this way.

And that’s why I watch Lost. Because, for the last six years, no matter what personal stuff I’ve been going through, it’s been there for me. I’ve made friends, grown closer to my brother, stretched my own mental faculties, and even developed the beginnings of theories about art and aesthetics and storytelling all through the prism of this weird little show. And I’ve had a ball doing it. Lost doesn’t owe me anything except two and a half more great hours. But maybe that’s not your experience and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Lost is something different to each of us and, depending on how you’ve been watching the show, you will obviously have different expectations for Sunday night. If you’ve been hanging on the mythology and puzzling over the mysteries then, in all likelihood, you’re looking for a finale that will, in some way, justify the 100+ hours of your life you’ve spent watching Lost. That’s not unrealistic and that’s not unfair. But I personally have had a really great time watching this show and I don’t need the finale to justify that experience or provide me with something that lets me say, “Now I can judge that the experience of watching Lost was worthwhile.”

In the end, I think Lost is a very good show that falls just short of greatness. And I feel totally comfortable writing that and everything else in this essay without having seen the finale because, at the end of the day, it’s just another episode. I’m expecting it to be a great episode, but I like to think I expect that of every episode. And, regardless of my complaints about Lost’s occasional mishandling of its human side, I think no show has engaged with the medium of television as well as Lost has. If this decade of television really has been similar to the 1970s for cinema, then Lost is its Star Wars: a cultural force that utilizes a booming medium for entertainment in ways we had never dreamt of before.

*****

I am a totally different person that I was in September 2004 – I have met tons of new friends, lived in new places, grown and matured, thought seriously about what I want from life – and yet I still love Lost. In many ways, the show evolved and grew with me. It started as a relatively straightforward character show with some mystery elements and, almost as if it was waiting until I was ready, slowly grew into the kind of intellectually rigorous, structurally demanding mindbender that it is today. I’ve never quite understood the “I Miss Season One” camp of Lost fans because, to me, that show is far less interesting than the one that is telling complete stories over a season (instead of an episode) and bending the ways time and space are used in television narrative. Look at how “Through the Looking Glass” pulls the rug out from under the complacent flashback style of storytelling. Or how season five uses time travel to obscure character motivations and logic so that we see what people are doing and then slowly grow to understand why they’re doing it. And this season has committed itself to telling a story in a completely new dimension whose implications and meanings it has stubbornly refused to give the audience.

I hope I don’t sound like an unobjective, smitten fanboy. I could well be disappointed by the finale (and by the resolution of the flash sideways, which is my biggest question heading into Sunday). It’d be easy to just say “it’s a TV show, don’t blow it out of proportion” and it would be even easier to go in actively assuming “The End” will suck so that, at worst, the show simply confirms for me that it doesn’t know what it’s doing. But I think the former is disingenuous (of course it’s just a TV show, but it’s not like I haven’t been writing about it for the last 20 weeks) and the latter is lazy.

I always assumed I’d be sad about the finale, but I’m not. I’m excited. The fact that this episode was coming enabled the creators to make ones like “The Constant” and “The Incident.” It revitalized this show and made it into a truly vibrant and unique piece of art. I’m happy about all of that but I’m also happy that this show gets to go out when I’m still excited to watch it, unlike pretty much every TV show ever. In some alternate universe somewhere, Lost is gearing up for a seventh season and I’m doing something else and we’re both lesser for it. So this weekend I’m not going to stress or worry or obsess. Instead I’m going to crack open a can of Dharma Initiative beer (or a glass of Dharma Initiative Box Wine) and toast to the odd and enjoyable run of a show that, frankly shouldn’t have even gotten this far.

See you in another life.