The grand finale episode of MacGuffin Island. No real answers, just emotional manipulation. Essentially the same ending as a recent cop show on the BBC, fwiw. J.J. Abrams has a
TED talk where he talks about his mystery box. Because he never opened it, he doesn't know what's inside, he prefers the mystery to the reality. It seems like he treats his shows the same way; he doesn't know what the mystery really is, just that mystery itself is interesting.
I don't understand why they bothered to wrap everything in Science Fiction clothes if they weren't going to respect that and instead resolve with a character-driven "spiritual" conclusion. With the ending they gave, the bulk of the series could have been a western, a cop show, a medical show... The LOST writers seemed to have used science fiction trappings only to tell a story in a "weird" way. I would have found the "Bardo church" conclusion much more acceptable, if they had at least _tried_ to address some of the science fiction /mystery aspects first. I think that they really dropped the ball by treating almost everything that drove the characters for the past five seasons as _only_ being a crucible for the formation of relationships. When you have a myth that spans millennia, to have its importance reduced to the relationships between a busload of people does the myth a disservice, as well as being disrespectful to the audience. What made this a "water-cooler" show was not the relationships, but the mysteries.
I can almost picture it... Early on, one of the show runners sticks his head into the writers room and says "We're going to base this partially on that thing by Ambrose Bierce." The writers say "Great!" and then head to the bookstore. The only trouble is that they aren't sure what "thing" the show runner meant, so half of them pick up "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and the other half pick up "The Devil's Dictionary." They'll fix it in post.
The LOST finale was _almost_ like you had been keeping up with Sherlock Holmes stories, but in those Sherlock Holmes stories there was never any resolution to the mysteries contained within. There was a promised extra long finale story that was going to prove that the author(s) knew what they were doing all along. When that finale arrives, you discover that the mysteries had no real solutions, and that the stories were written to get Holmes and Watson laid a lot. If you were only really committed to Holmes and Watson, you found this a satisfying ending, but if the mysteries were much of the reason you were following things, you felt cheated.
It strikes me that they could have explained a couple things fairly easily that would have made for a more balanced myth/character conclusion. Even some expository lump, vague hand waving about the origin of the Dharma Initiative and the relationships between Dharma / Hanso Foundation / Widmore Industries, etc. would have gone a long way, for me. I would have happily traded half the time from the Richard Alpert backstory for some Dharma / Hanso backstory. They've had a few seasons to plan for this, why did it feel slap-dash and rushed?
What's that writing rule? Something like If you see a gun in the first act, it has to be used by the third? The trouble with LOST was that it showed so many "guns" early on, then in subsequent acts those guns turned out to be spears, or maybe fish, and eventually they didn't even matter, anyway. It's funny that almost all the things that fans obsessed over for the last six seasons don't matter, given this ending. Maybe that's the point: let go. Still, LOST was the only show that has been worth talking/thinking about for a long time. This ending only partially makes me regret watching the series.
The Chalkboard from the Simpsons on the same night as the finale: "End of 'LOST': It was all the dog's dream. Watch us." If only that had been true.
