For the sake of my television, I'm so glad I stopped watching Lost at the beginning of its third season. Had I gone against my best judgement and stuck with the show for the duration, I'm sure something would've gone flying through my TV set by the end of Lost's finale last night. Now, to be fair I didn't watch the entire finale, just the last half hour but I think I get the gist - the future timeline where they're all off the island is heaven, or at least some version of the afterlife, and the characters have all reunited there in spirit because their time on the island was the most significant event in their lives (I guess it's hard to top living on a magic island). Some got off the island, some stayed, but in time they all died and met again in some version of the hereafter. Um, that's supposed to be an ending?I don't have much steam to blow off about Lost because I ditched it so early on but as far as I'm concerned, this was a six year scam on its audience and for what it's worth, I hope the writers and producers are called out for it. I don't doubt that some Lost fans found the finale emotional but let's be honest - if you took any long-running show and ended it with all the characters reuniting in fucking heaven, you'd get the exact same reaction. It's the lowest kind of emotional baiting (well, almost the lowest - it's probably even cheaper to have a wounded character stagger off alone and be kept company in their dying moments by a dog, which Lost's finale also stooped to). Compare the narrative smoke and mirrors practiced by Lost with the way a show like Supernatural has consistently played straight and true with its audience and I think the critical acclaim and adulation Lost has received over the years is nearly criminal.
Mysteries and ambiguities are fine but what the makers of Lost delivered was an epic cop-out. What's worse is that they clearly had this cop-out ending in mind for years, an ending that they knew would answer none of the show's long-standing questions. To call it a six season shell game with the audience would be giving Lost more credit than it deserves. In the end, it was just a full-on con job.
