I remember watching the pilot episode of Lost in part because I’d heard an interview about it on NPR that day. The interview was vague enough, but suggested that more was going on than a simple survival show. That, coupled with the fact that it was a very expensive show and looked incredible said to me, “Hey, maybe tune in, see what it’s about.”

I tuned in.

And at the end of the pilot, I was rapt. Glued to the television. Slack-jawed and stunned. What the fuck? Who the? Where the? What was that thing? Was that a…? Where is that coming from? Wuzza? Wooza?

Six seasons later, I was treated to one of the weirdest, craziest, holy-shit shows… well, probably not ever, but certainly the only one to last six seasons. (X-Files, for all that it did, is a fairly pedestrian show compared to the tangle of madness that Lost represents. Do any other shows really compare? Shows that lasted this long? I’m not coming up with any.)

It’s a show that made me happy, sad, confused, angry, frustrated, and amazed from episode to episode. Hell, I sometimes ran that gamut during the course of a single episode.

For a show to accomplish that — I mean, wow. Hot damn. And thing is, it’s not just a weird show with a tangled plot. It’s a show that takes seriously powerful literary traditions that have informed the greatest novels and films. This show could be a primer on how to inject all that great stuff — themes, foreshadowing, metaphor, flashbacks, flashforwards — into a television show. In fact, Lost uses such literary techniques often literally; flashbacks and flashforwards are not merely narrative tricks, but rather, fundamental parts of the story and the plot. The island is a place where such narrative conventions come alive; foreshadowing can be for real, and some characters (Eloise Hawking, for instance) seem actively tapped into what you might think of as a “literary matrix.” It’s like she knows she’s in a story, and can read it that way. Metaphor, too, is a living thing, the way the Man in Black as Smokey can become characters or ideas (like the black stallion). Themes, too, are real, palpable, livable; they play out again and again, the cycles of history manifesting through twins, through light and dark, through the shades of gray to the polar coordinates of black and white outside that fog.

I also love that the show constantly gives us allusions to those literary nods: Sawyer’s reading habits, for instance, are a constant reminder that they take this stuff very, very seriously.

It’s a dope-ass show, is what I’m saying.

Even when it fails at what it wants to accomplish, it’s a brave and powerful experiment.

And now it’s coming to an end.

I figured I’d ramble my way through some thoughts as we reach the closing hours of the show (2.5 hours, though now they’re saying the DVD will feature another 20-30 minutes that help to further clarify). Don’t expect these thoughts to be well-arranged or anything. I’m not writing an essay. I’m just fumbling my way through the tangled warren to which this rabbit hole brought me.

Favorite Episodes

Is it worth talking about our favorite episodes? It might be. While the show I think will be remembered largely as a whole picture, the individual parts of the elephant are still notable.

Obviously, the pilot rules just for what it was able to do.

“Numbers” is great, because we dig into the Curse of Hurley.

“The Long Con” is a great Sawyer episode — we meet Cassidy, and we get more on Rousseau. The finale that season (“Live Together, Die Alone”) was a pretty great one. Michael and Walt leave. Our heroes captured. Desmond. Penny. A polar station where they find coordinates which may very well be the island. Boom.

The father-son thing with Hurley and his Dad (fathers and sons = major theme) is great in “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead.” Plus — the van! The beer! The skeleton named “Roger!” Good times.

“Some Like It Hoth” — for the title alone, baby.

“Ab Aeterno” — The truth, er, mostly, about Richard Alpert. Great stuff. Batmanuel with his beautiful eyes really sold the episode, I think, made me really feel something.

What about you? Favorite episode? Why?

Favorite Season

Best seasons for me are the first and this last. Both represent seasons to me that feel purposeful, that come together, that feel like the writers and creators have control over their story. The opening season introduces a lot of the Big Mysteries, and this latest and last season seeks to answer a lot of the Big Mysteries. They’re bookends, hemming in the good and not-so-good volumes of text in the middle.

The middle of the series got a little wonky. They were necessary, but it feels like certain arcs represented them getting, erm, lost in their own story. Mr. Eko, for instance, or Anna Lucia and the Tailies — the second and third season represent some zig-zagging. I don’t blame anybody for this — really, the problem was that ABC hadn’t yet let them off their leash. Television is a tricky beast. Is your show successful? Then you’re renewed! Not successful? Then you’re canceled!

That’s been the model for God Knows How Long, and it serves the jobs and the network, but doesn’t serve the story or the audience. Both BBC and Japanese television know how to give you shows that rise and fall in arcs and end when they need to. So, once ABC allowed Lost to continue only to a certain point regardless of its success or failure in the ratings, well, that was huge. Big ups to that network, actually — you don’t see a lot of properly-concluded television shows. Babylon Five. Battlestar Galactica. Any others?

Once the creators knew they had a proper timeline, they could start firing on the plot and story elements and answering mysteries in parcels as opposed to, “Uhhh. Just drag it on like the X-Files did.”

What’s your favorite season of the show? Least favorite?

Favorite Characters

The best thing about this show is, for me, not the mysteries, but the characters. The mysteries matter only because I care about those affected by them. Another big win for Lost.

Jack was a character I generally didn’t like through… three or four seasons. First season, yes. After that, not so much. That may have been necessary, because now? Now I see that he’s the guy the island needs. I can look back through those struggles and see how it is that he came out on the other side. Still, he’s a challenging character throughout for me. (And he was supposed to die in the pilot, go figure.)

Kate, too, is another challenging character. So strong in the first season, but real wonky and wobbly throughout. Is she a weak, man-starved woman? A chaotic element? A murderer? A mother? A runner? She’s too many characters throughout. Sometimes I adored and admired her strength. Other times, you just want to grab her and shake her like a baby. And not in a good way — not in the “suspense is created because the character is making the properly wrong choice,” but in the way that, “why would the character do this? do they even know their own character?”

Still, though, the show gave us such great characters.

Sawyer, maybe my favorite. Hard not to be. A meaner, quippier Han Solo.

Hurley is the show’s moral and non-mysterious center. He’s the only character who basically throughout is like, “Hey, can we talk about stuff? I totally just saw some weirdo shit out there.”

Miles is always Miles. And for that, I really dig him.

Juliet was for me the strong female character, the anchorpoint. Her death (er, spoiler alert?) was the most tragic and the most keenly felt — though Libby comes up close, because you could feel it through Hurley.

The Kwans, I liked, but their… er, conclusion felt overly tragic.

Ben is one of the most powerful characters on television — a keenly creepy play-both-sides villain-you-love-because-maybe-just-maybe-he’s-not-a-villain.

You? Fave characters?

A Brief Note

This show feels like the biggest and best example of a roleplaying game writ large. It has a lot of those “at the game table” trappings — groups of characters; keeping secrets; shuttling from one area to the next; uncertain mysteries; sometimes it feels like people are just making shit up (which is okay); central location; certain rulesets; etc.etc.

I don’t say this as a bad thing. I think it’s kind of awesome, actually.

You could very easily tell a Lost-ian game with the World of Darkness Storytelling System.

Unanswered Questions

The unanswered questions to this point are so myriad, it’s not worth even digging out the list, is it? Suffice to say, my prediction is that they’re going to answer the Big Questions, and fail to answer a lot of the Little Questions. Oh, and by the way, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

Here’s what I suspect: the little questions will have answers near to our grasp when the big questions are handled. Nobody may address, say, the island’s healing properties directly, but we know that the island is a source for some crazy miracle light, and so we can infer an answer to the healing properties — “Well, it’s the light, stupid.” Do we really need to know where Walt’s powers came from? Isn’t it enough to look back over the whole scope of the island story and say, “The show has very plainly told us that some people are special. Walt had powers, and that’s what matters.”

That’s not to say there won’t be some nagging outliers. But I suspect they’ll be less troubling than expected.

Plus, I predict the fan community will have a great post-show life. The show is so rich, so dense, that the fan community will have meat and gristle to chew on for years after the show’s end. Part of the fun will be going back through the show and pulling threads together, see how well they weave.

How Could It End?

I won’t bother saying how it “should” end. I’m comfortable in saying that they know their story better than I do. Still. Predictions?

The Sideways timeline needs to bridge the gap. I predict that we’re in store for a surprise here. I predict that it isn’t exactly what we think, that’s it’s not just, “They set off the nuke and undid the timeline.” I think that’ll figure into it, but not in the way we have in mind, maybe. I feel like we’ll get a turnaround here on par with the one where the “flashbacks” revealed themselves as the “flashforwards.” At first I toyed with the notion that the Sideways timeline was some kind of purgatory created when Smokey got loose, so we’re seeing the effects of “his world,” almost like Stephen King’s own darkly twisting Dark Tower mirror worlds (and by the way, wouldn’t that be a fucking trip to find out that Lost is actually one more part of the Dark Tower story?). But I’m left feeling that this isn’t quite right. The Sideways story is actually a pretty good one for the characters. Everybody’s got a fairly good life. Kate doesn’t, but she’s (theoretically) paying for her crimes. Sawyer’s a good guy. Jack’s got a good relationship with his son and now knows his sister. Hurley’s in love. The Kwans didn’t get married, but are still in love and may now be free together.

But then you have the Desmond factor. The fact that he’s trying to wake everybody up to “let go.” Is it possible that this isn’t even a timeline? Is that the ruse? Is that timeline some kind of dream? Some kind of illusion that the Man in Black conjures? And only if they can awaken from it can they stop him? I dunno. What happens when they all become aware? Hurley is clearly very aware — not just of flashes, but of the whole scope. Clearly something means something here. They’re not just trying to make others aware; they have purpose. They must awaken.

In the current timeline, where is Desmond? I wonder if we’ll find him somewhere, connecting the timelines.

We’ll have to see Eloise Hawking again.

I figure that our show’s most prominent con-men — Sawyer, Ben Linus — will run a con. Maybe on Smokey himself. Or maybe on Jack. Could either become the Man in Black to Jack’s Jacob? (It occurs to me now how Jack, Jackob, Jacob, very similar names. I wonder if something else lurks in there, something about the power of names.)

Kate, I dunno. I wonder if she’ll bite it. That’s the other question. Who dies? Sawyer and Ben could be good sacrifices. I actually don’t think they’ll kill Kate, and the creators have hinted they won’t “answer” the Kate-Jack-Sawyer triangle, which I assume means that may not resolve.

I hope we find out that Hurley has some prominent role. I actually think, honestly, Hurley could’ve been the island guardian — it’d be unexpected and not entirely inappropriate. He’s kind of Zen. He was directly communicating with Jacob. He has that pleasantly plump Buddha Ho Toy thing going for him. Plus — free Dharma food! Woo!

We may see Jack with awakened powers. Jacob clearly had powers beyond our ken. We at present must assume that he arranged for everyone to come to the island. We may even assume that Hurley’s “curse” was his responsibility. Jack is now a major X-Factor as the island guardian. For better or for worse, he’s our Neo; awareness and enlightenment translate directly to magical abilities.

Will we see other island roles fulfilled? Someone becomes The Others? A group serves Jack? Will there be a new Richard? A new Ben? A new Man in Black Smokey Cerberus NotLocke?

We’ll see Juliet again. Getting coffee in the Sideways world. But that scene may mean something more than just that. It might be a pivot point. (Or maybe I’m nutty.)

I dunno. What else? What else am I not thinking about? Come. Dream with me. Predict some shit. Hey, go wild. We’ve nothing to lose. What do you think will happen?

Final Question: Are They Making It All Up?

They’ve had a plan all along, they say. I’m inclined to believe them and I think the show’s central premise and story have been (loosely) in place all along. But I also think that a lot of the mushy middle will be the result of them making stuff up as they went.

And I don’t blame them for that.

It’s a shame that they didn’t have some kind of inhuman authorial control, but c’mon. Reality has to come into play here. First, they’re dealing with a television show. I’m involved now in the plotting and planning of a television pilot, and I promise that looking three or six seasons down the line is nearly impossible. Second, a television show is not subject to the vision of a single creator. We’d love for it to be, but it ain’t. The network. The producers. The actors. The ratings. The community. A television show is like taffy, pulled this way and that. In the end, I actually think they’ll have created a far more “put-together” show than any human beings have the right to create. A show like this is an old boat on storm-tossed oceans. You’re not looking to land at a specific dock — you’re just trying to make it to shore alive.

So, yes, I suspect the truth is, they’re making a lot of this up as they go. I don’t mean episode-to-episode, exactly, but season to season. And that’s okay. It’ll give us more to talk about as the years go on and we try to suss out those questions that have hidden answers, and those that just plain have no answers at all.

In the end, it matters little. It fails to diminish what this show accomplished. It fails to reduce the potency of the Lost phenomenon.

The end is nigh.

I am so bloody geeked.