Thursday, May 25, 2006
A Satisfying Conclusion
******** semi-sorta-spoilerish, so if you hain't watched the TiVO yet, tread lightly ********
Sort of. No idea what’s up with Eko and Locke, or where the captured three are being taken, or whether Desmond’s alive or not (probably a big no here), or what Gale meant when he said they’re the “good guys”, or how the Widmore Corp. is tied in with Dharma / Hanso, or, uh, well, like eight billion other things, still, but they did give us enough answers on last night’s Lost to satisfy this guy here. Of course some of y’all will say that just means I’m easily satisfied, but whatever. Beer might make Lost better, but Lost totally makes beer better, too, or at least more acceptable on a Wednesday night. Even if that beer didn’t lower my critical faculties (I actually believe it has the opposite effect, to tell the truth) last night’s season finale, and all of the last six or so episodes, would pass muster.
But shit, man: what the hell was up with those last fifteen or so minutes? The electromagnetic Ragnarok, the weird look Jack gave Kate (like their being kidnapped was all a part of Jack’s plan or something), Michael and Walt being allowed to leave scot-free, and then, of course, at the very end, that odd ice-bound reporting station, somehow connected to the Widmore Corp. and, thus, Desmond’s lady. Is Desmond really the key to the whole damn thing? Were the crash of Flight 815 and the entire original premise of the show the indirect result of Desmond’s girl troubles? I don’t know if the name “Widmore” has ever popped up on the show before, but it is familiar from the internet game they’ve been running the last few weeks (that’s what those Hanso Foundation ads lead to). Apparently it’s also mentioned in that tie-in mystery novel that came out a few weeks ago. I’m surprised to see it suddenly take such a prominent role within the show, to be honest, especially since we still know mostly nothing about Hanso. Anyway, all these questions have me amazingly excited for the next season, far more than I was after the first year. I never much watched X-Files, so I can’t compare the two, but in terms of shows built around slowly unfolding mysteries, Lost is doing a much better job than Twin Peaks at interweaving revelations of long-awaited answers with the introduction of new and equally fascinating questions. If Twin Peaks had led directly from Laura Palmer into the Black Lodge arc, without all that random non-sense in the middle, perhaps it wouldn’t have squandered the public’s interest so quickly.
******** semi-sorta-spoilerish, so if you hain't watched the TiVO yet, tread lightly ********
Sort of. No idea what’s up with Eko and Locke, or where the captured three are being taken, or whether Desmond’s alive or not (probably a big no here), or what Gale meant when he said they’re the “good guys”, or how the Widmore Corp. is tied in with Dharma / Hanso, or, uh, well, like eight billion other things, still, but they did give us enough answers on last night’s Lost to satisfy this guy here. Of course some of y’all will say that just means I’m easily satisfied, but whatever. Beer might make Lost better, but Lost totally makes beer better, too, or at least more acceptable on a Wednesday night. Even if that beer didn’t lower my critical faculties (I actually believe it has the opposite effect, to tell the truth) last night’s season finale, and all of the last six or so episodes, would pass muster.
But shit, man: what the hell was up with those last fifteen or so minutes? The electromagnetic Ragnarok, the weird look Jack gave Kate (like their being kidnapped was all a part of Jack’s plan or something), Michael and Walt being allowed to leave scot-free, and then, of course, at the very end, that odd ice-bound reporting station, somehow connected to the Widmore Corp. and, thus, Desmond’s lady. Is Desmond really the key to the whole damn thing? Were the crash of Flight 815 and the entire original premise of the show the indirect result of Desmond’s girl troubles? I don’t know if the name “Widmore” has ever popped up on the show before, but it is familiar from the internet game they’ve been running the last few weeks (that’s what those Hanso Foundation ads lead to). Apparently it’s also mentioned in that tie-in mystery novel that came out a few weeks ago. I’m surprised to see it suddenly take such a prominent role within the show, to be honest, especially since we still know mostly nothing about Hanso. Anyway, all these questions have me amazingly excited for the next season, far more than I was after the first year. I never much watched X-Files, so I can’t compare the two, but in terms of shows built around slowly unfolding mysteries, Lost is doing a much better job than Twin Peaks at interweaving revelations of long-awaited answers with the introduction of new and equally fascinating questions. If Twin Peaks had led directly from Laura Palmer into the Black Lodge arc, without all that random non-sense in the middle, perhaps it wouldn’t have squandered the public’s interest so quickly.
