“If you stick with me,” says Hurley about a third of the way through the epic “Lost” series finale yesterday evening, “you’ll be happy you did.”
We are. We think. Six equally fascinating and frustrating seasons of ABC’s hit drama came to end tonight with a conclusion that delivered gratifying codas for beloved characters, though it maddeningly side-stepped the show’s legion of unresolved enigmas.
Which we kind of expected when, during the special to preceded the finale, "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof summed up the drama this way: "The show is, at its heart and soul, a character study. We were fascinated as storytellers by what makes people the way they are."
Or we can quote from the finale itself:
Sawyer: "Doesn't sound like he said anything about anything."
Hurley: "That's kinda true, dude. He's worse than Yoda."
Lindelof and partner Carlton Cuse offered up the island's backstory in the recent "Across the Sea" episode, in which viewers learned that the castaways of Oceanic 815 were brought to the island so that one could become a protector of a mystical golden light, that the Man in Black became the Smoke Monster after twin brother Jacob threw him into the light, that both have some serious Mommy issues, and that C.J. Cregg will bean you with a rock if given half a chance. And that was about it.
(Cuse, in an exclusive interview with Alan Sepinwall, defended the polarizing episode by saying, "This is what an episode of 'Lost' that is about answering questions looks like. This thing is a big mythological download. Our belief is that the real resolution of the show and the one that matters is what happens to these characters." To which we say, that's what a crappy episode of 'Lost' that is about answering questions looks like.)
Too bad, then, for those of you who wondered what was the deal with Walt's superpowers, what purpose did the so-called "tailies" or temple-dwellers serve, who shot at the castaways from the outrigger, how does Jacob get on and off the island, who built the four-toed statue, why doesn't shirtless Sawyer get sunstroke, and whatever happened to the Russian in the Pine Barrens.
Okay, wrong show, but that brings us to another question: Where does the “Lost” ending rank in the pantheon of iconic finales?
Certainly it was more rewarding than “The Sopranos” and “Seinfeld,” both of which didn’t end so much as stop, and we’re grateful the writers didn’t go the the route of “Newhart” or “St. Elsewhere” – the happenings of “Lost” were merely the extended acid dream of one frustrated high school chemistry teacher named Leslie Arzt!
Perhaps the most satisfying wrap-up in recent television history was the finale of “Six Feet Under,” which flash-forwarded through the lives and to the deaths of all of the major characters, although “Friends,” “Sex and the City” and, to an extent, “M*A*S*H*” also adjourned neatly.
"Lost" was a little messier, and those final moments, indeed the entire meaning of those sideways flashes, are bound to be debated along the lines of the "Battlestar Galactica" ending. (It actually reminded us of the ending of "Longtime Companion," in which the survivors of the early AIDS plague imagine the day the disease is cured and see their fallen friends and lovers in a carnivalesque reunion.)
We'd like to think that everyone had their happy endings, thanks to, among other things, a staged bar fight, a tempermental vending machine, a well-timed delivery, and some spot-welding and duct tape.
See you in another life, brotha.