And from the "WHATHEFUCKWASTHAT?!?!" camp.

I've already spoke my peace. But there are some genuine feelings of "we got screwed" concerning last night's Lost finale  that I haven't seen since 1997 when Vince McMahon called for the bell in Montreal. To give a voice to these angry masses, I give you Lee Rubenstein - Writer for Upright Citizens Brigade Maude Team, High Treason. And one pissed off Lost fan. Lee, you have the floor.

With that final fade to white, I flipped off my TV. I didn’t turn it off though. I just sat there, middle finger outstretched, watching the credits roll. I knew in my heart that, somewhere out there, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were rimming each other and murmuring softly about how they don’t owe anybody anything.

It would take days to write out all the ways Lost finale failed as a piece of fantasy (or sci-fi, whatever you want to call it). And I’m not going to bother, because apparently, I wasn’t watching it for that reason. I was watching it for the characters. For the love stories. Ok. Sure. Let’s say I was.* HOW THE FUCK WAS THAT A REASONABLE OR SATISFYING CONCLUSION IN THAT CONTEXT?

1. Apparently you must be a certain height to ride the great space coaster into the white light. And apparently it takes you to Fuck-Palace 7 where you just bone all day. That’s the only reasonable answer, right? Because even though parenthood and the proper raising of children were such huge themes in Lost, no one seems to care about meeting their children in heaven. Not even, say, the child we are told is SPECIAL and IMPORTANT and MUST NOT BE RAISED BY ANOTHER. Where’s your child Claire? “Who cares, I’m going to go angle-fuck this drug addict.”

2. But that bad parenting pales in comparison Jin and Sun. Jin chose to die instead escaping the island to raise his kid. And Sun let him. Jin has only had two motivations on the entire show: Protecting and providing for his family, and finding his family so he can protect and provide for it. And how did he end his life? By, you know, maybe sacrificing himself to protect and provide for his family? NOPE. He died doing the exact opposite. Because that’s good writing, right? If you close your eyes, you can literally feel Damon Lindelof pissing on your face.

3. Is Sayid evil? Well, he did torture all those people, both in Iraq and on the Island. And then he did murder a shit ton of people across the world and on the island in cold blood. But, to his credit, he did choose to not shoot a dude sitting in a well. But good, evil, apparently doesn’t matter, cause he gets to go to heaven with his true love, Nadia.

4. Wait, what? Where the fuck is Nadia? What do you mean, Nadia who? FUCKING NADIA. The strong, independent women that Sayid based all his adult life around loving and protecting. Is she not-WHAT THE FUCK IS SHANNON DOING HERE? Get her out of here or it’s going to be awkward when Nadia shows up! So for reals though, was the big plot twist of Lost that Sayid is really Tiger Woods with his hair grown out? Sayid’s entire life is based on what he would and wouldn’t do to be reunited with Nadia. Turns out though that he’d throw it all away for an eternity of whiny, shallow sex with some chick he knew for less than a month.

5. Desmond and Penny, where is baby Charlie? Wait, sorry, I’m done talking about not going to heaven with your kids.

6. So Ben kills like a million people in cold blood, but he can still be redeemed. Then, after he gets redeemed, he kills two more people, just for good measure. No worries, he can go to Heaven after he lives out his dad fantasy with Alex and Rousseau. But Michael, under extreme duress, trying to protect his HUGELY IMPORTANT son (sorry, I momentarily forgot that none of the fantasy plot points mattered at all), shoots one person on purpose and another accidentally, and he’s forever trapped as a ghost? Yup, a good resolution to that character, just as I wanted from my character drama.

6. Why was Jacob and MIB’s mom a ghost? Who did she shoot? Doesn’t matter.

7. John Locke, fresh out of his wheelchair, is apparently going on the space coaster solo. Sorry Kathy Segal, at least you’ve still got Fry.

8. You must never let the light go out…or else you will have to turn it back on again. What a pain, am I right?

Ok, I’m straying back towards discussing the MASSIVE PLOT HOLES instead of the nonsensical behavior of characters in a supposed character drama, so I’ll stop for now. What a fucking waste of time.

*It’s weird, as much as people want to tell me this was why I was watching, I really don’t remember going from website to website, pouring over in-depth analysis of Kate and Sawyer’s breathy exchanges. I don’t remember reading long, speculative blog posts about whether Jack and Juliette’s flirty banter was well-earned. I don’t remember spending off-seasons playing long and convoluted mystery games about finding the location of Locke and Kathy Segal’s first date. Weird .

Last Episode of Lost.

In the book "Misery" by Stephen King, there is a scene at the end, after Annie Wilkes has held Paul Sheldon hostage for a year while forcing him to write the final book in his series about her favorite character Misery. After keeping Annie at bay with page after page while getting strong enough to kill his captor with his bare hands, Paul tells Annie that the last page he has written contains all of the answers to her questions and her desires for the story characters. Paul then lights the page on fire to get Annie to dive after it while he bashes her head in with a typewriter.  If he had allowed Annie to read 75% of the page fulfilling all of her hopes for the story before reading the last line which read "Misery Takes a Hot Runny Shit on Annie" before bashing her head in, I would have a perfect analogy for what I just saw.

I knew we wouldn't find out why Walt could move shit with his mind, or why Cindy took the kids in. All I wanted was to have closure. Good closure. Not that kind of ending like The Sopranos or X-Files where the writers say "Well what do you think happened?".
Well, fucksticks, if I have to write the ending... that makes you pretty shitty storytellers. So here it is SPOILER ALERT: THEY ARE ALL FUCKING DEAD. Some died on the island, some died later after living what I can only assume to be rich, meaningful lives. But they are all dead.

Okay, so they are all dead in the flash sideways, but that's still dead.  The ending everyone guessed from season one, that all of the shows producers, writers, actors, and directors swore up and down they would never do, just got did. Meaning that anything that happened in the "alternate reality" had absolutely no bearing on the plot as it related to the island.Well shit shoot and howdy, thanks for stretching this shit out. The ending was a great ending for Season 6 but not the series as a whole. Great, Jack closed his eye. I knew how that was going to end, but just doing it was akin to not showing your work on word problem.

I gotta tell you, up until the Jack/Christian hugfest, I was in. I thought it was a great way to say goodbye. I damn near cried during Sun and Jin's "awakening" as I almost did during Claire/Chahlie's. Even the Shannon/Boone cameo which should have felt forced and ham handed got carried off with some genuine emotion. And then the ending.......

Look, I don't regret one minute of watching this show. I thought Cuse and Lindeloff told a pretty entertaining yarn while developing characters in a way no one really cares to do anymore. I was into it, really into it. I read Dark UFO, and the comments on Pop Candy, and I knew there was no way to really answer everything. But I would have liked to see them clear up these few loose ends (which , by the way, are all from beyond season four, when the writers had supposedly known their endgame)

* What was Widmore and Eloise's purpose? Why was Charles Widmore so interested in the island. He didn't seem to want to protect it, yet they never really showed him exploiting it either. When he returned, was he trying to kill Locke/smoke monster or just hold him at bay while Desmond did the uncorking?And why was that so important to him. And Eloise, keeps helping people get back to the island, telling Desmond where he needs to be, and seems to have left the island and sacrificed everything (her words) but for what?

* Why was Ben Linus so obsessed with Juliet? This wasn't some small story that didn't play out. Ben brought Juliet to the island under the guise of a fertility doctor only to reveal that she "belonged to him". Harper told her that "she looked just like her" and Ben went so far as to have Goodwin killed just because Juliet had feelings for him. I guess they just ran out of time, and decided it wasn't that important, but it sure looked like it could've been a big reveal about Ben's past.

*What was the purpose of "The Others"? I get that the Dharma initiative was studying the electromagnetic properties of the island and that they warred with the island's inhabitants who eventually destroyed the group in "The Purge". But why did they take over their experiments? And how did they disguise themselves as a company who recruited Juliet? Why are they all super strong and super fast? Now I'm just nit picking.

Awww fuck it. Now that I think about it, I'm sitting here writing a blog next to no one will read talking about my feelings for the end of a TV show. When is the last time any show made me this invested? I guess the fact that I am still re-running that episode in my head over and over is a testament to it's strength. I still maintain that just throwing questions at an audience and answering the ones you like can fool people into thinking it's great storytelling, and to be a truly great story teller, your ending should answer the questions you pose in the story's exposition.  But I was a fan, and still am and it because Abrams, Lindelof, and Cuse created a world I could escape to once a week, no easy task, so thank you -truly and sincerely- for that.

See ya later LOST. It's like a good drinking buddy moved away, only to find out he opened a credit card in your name.  Cue the "Somebody is about to Die" Piano, and hope the fan fiction about Hurley and Ben's adventures gets kept someplace far, far away.

Friday Night Lights Logic Problems

You know, I really do love this show. Why NBC has buried it on Direct TV until summer while pushing a hateful bloody pile of shit like "Chuck" is beyond me. Friday Night Lights is the most realistic high school sports show I've ever seen (Just inching out "The White Shadow") and might be the best show on Network TV right now. Yeah that's right, "Lost". I said it. The island is the light huh? That's what you have for me after 7 years? Come talk to me after the finale. But even though FNL gives a pretty honest look at Texas High School Football and the mania it causes in small towns, I find myself being prevented from truly getting caught up in the story of Dillon, Texas the way I get with "Lost" or "The Wire" because of the sports involved plot twists that require a HUGE suspension of disbelief for anyone who has ever watched an organized sport for more than ten minutes.

In no particular order:

1) "Smash" Williams gets blackballed from colleges for punching a kid- Setup: Smash is the Me-First-Entitled-to-everything star running Back of the Dillon Panthers. In season 3 he is said to be the top running back in Texas and one of the top ten in the nation. Then he punches a kid who was harassing his sister and all of the colleges recruiting him turn their back on him. Why this is complete bullshit to any sports fan: You have got to be kidding me, colleges recruit violent felony offenders and you expect me to believe they turn their back on a kid because of a fight? Christ, John Thompson recruited Allen Iverson WHILE HE WAS IN JAIL. If colleges didn't admit guys with shady backgrounds then the University of Miami would have 5 less national titles than they do now and The '85 Oklahoma Sooners wouldn't have had almost everyone from that team serve time in prison for cocaine trafficking and shooting each other.

Oh For Fuck's Sake, Just Give It To Him Already!

Tonight's Idol was pretty bleh except for Lee DeWyze's "Hallelujah"and I don't think that's any coincidence.  For the last month AI has had to take a real hard look at itself and realize they were headed straight for the ramp in front of the shark tank. Ellen hasn't worked out,  Kara wont shut up, and Simon has  3 shows left.  They need to get the teen girls all tingly again and pushing Crystal "We cloned Jewel one too many times and have had....... an accident"  Bowersox's  subway platform act aint gonna cut it.  Casey James gave it the old college try, but this show has been set for awhile. And to ensure that Lee ends up in the finals, they pulled out a bigger fix than Holyfield-Lewis I, the black choir.

Since the beginning of the show, the black choir was only used in the finale. Each singer got the back up, but for some reason, tonight, in the round of three. DeWyze gets it? What the fuck. And don't give me that shit that that wasn't a choir just because they weren't in robes.  AI = WBC