Miscellaneous: May 2010 Archives
Skip this if you haven't watched the finale and care.
But the final season of Lost is one of the most remarkable achievements in television history. They took one of the most popular shows of all time, in which every moment of the show had meaning and purpose toward the end ... until the final season, in which they literally wasted half the season in some afterlife that, when all was said and done, added precisely nothing to the story.
It's remarkable in its wastefulness, its gratuitousness, its decadence, and in its disrespect of its audience. I can't think of anything similar in television history, with the exception of the final moments of Newhart, except that was a comedy, and the ending was intended as a joke.
I suspect someone will, at some point, make a cut of the final season that completely obliterates this afterlife plotline, and with the exception of the Desmond episode, no one will miss it.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
