Yes, I Watched It. And I Didn’t Think It Was Dumb, But I Might Be.

My husband and I started watching Lost the year we were married.  It was 2005, and we spent an entire weekend ordering in, not leaving the bed, and watching the entire Season 1 on DVD (ahh, the pre-children era), so we could be caught up for the start of Season 2.  After that, we never missed an episode, and we almost never missed an episode together.  If one of us was traveling we’d call the other one and end up talking about it.  Lost had a weekly seat at our family table.  As of last night, it won’t be back.  And man, is everyone I know ticked off about it.  

I am not pissed off about the ending.  I am pissed off at myself because…I already knew it.  Really.  I mean, didn’t we all?   

No, no, think about it.  How many times (over the past few weeks, especially), have we heard this line of dialogue: “Because I’m dead.” 

And just in case anyone was unclear, Richard Albert gave a big old campfire lecture about that very thing.  And remember (couple seasons ago, I think), the news footage of the underwater wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815?  Complete with bodies?  Complete with ”Wait sir, there were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!”  Remember that?  Remember when they gave the logical explanation that resolved that little wrinkle?  Oh wait, they never did. 

In fact, from the first season, the Lost-o-phile community seemed in unanimous agreement that the characters had to be in some sort of puragatory or afterlife.  It was the only thing that answered most (but not all of the questions).  In the seasons since, I didn’t see anyone come up with a better or more widely accepted theory. 

And yet, we persisted with the collective denial.  Dead?  NAH, c’mon!  This all must be part of some greater complex mystery that I, a simple-minded viewer, am ill-equipped to understand.  You see, I look to this show as a hero of my weeknights.  A hero is smarter, handsomer, more insightful than I am.  And that’s fine.  I like it when people think storytellers are heroic for what they can create.

And what was created here was a sense of frustration.  We can’t believe all our characters were that dumb, that Jack really was that deep in denial over his own fate.  Or, is it our own denial over something we so clearly, plainly knew already, that’s making us angry?   

It’s hard to be a person who loves to read, who loves to listen and watch and observe stories as they unfold, and not hold out for that holy grail of tails — the one that solves the unsolvable, and somehow makes sense in both real and fictituous universes in the end.  This story was not the holy grail that we all, even against overwhelming evidence, insisted that it was.  But I’m not sure I’m sad about that. 

I wonder what life is like once you’ve already heard that holy grail of a story.  I think I rather enjoy life lost and looking for it.

But I still want to know what the hell all the fuss was about Walt.           

      

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